Page 81 of Win Some Love Some
Revenge.
The bell over the door rang out as I stepped inside the hushed, sophisticated store. Fiona had impeccable taste and her store gave off very European vibes. I immediately felt comfortable.
“Hello,” I called out.
“Be right there,” came a voice in the back of the store.
Fiona kept a very nice rack of consignment pieces. Prom dresses, bridesmaid dresses, vintage pieces. I went through the rack looking for the sexiest strapless dresses.
“Hello, Nora!” Fiona cried, coming through the curtain at the back of the store. Fiona was probably in her fifties, maybe sixties? But she was like a lot of French women I’d met while living in Paris: timeless. She wore trim black pants, a pair of chic black ballet slippers and a black turtleneck. Her silvering hair was cut in a sleek bob.
I want to be her when I grow up.
“Hey, Fiona. Uh…I expected Sheila to be working.”
“Nope. She’s on her honeymoon, so it’s back to the basics for me.”
Her honeymoon. Right. So silly to be thinking that Sheila would even care about what happened six years ago. It was a good reminder to me that life moved on, and history became just that. History.
“Your father still grumbling about how much money I took from him at our last poker game?” Fiona asked.
“Yes.”
“Good. I love making Roy grumble.”
“He calls you the Black Widow,” I confided in her.
She steepled her fingers together in a villainous pose. “Excellent,” she said with a wicked smile. “Now what brings you here?”
“I need a dress for a wedding.”
“My darling, I’ve seen all your videos. Why don’t you wear that sexy Gaultier piece you found in that thrift store in Marais? Or that vintage Dior? Or even…who was that new designer with that whimsical red dress?”
“DeVilmorin?” I said with a wry chuckle. “Can you imagine that dress at a Calico Cove wedding?” The dress she was talking about was floor length, completely sheer and blood red.
“Perhaps not. But the Dior…”
“They were spectacular, weren’t they? But they’re gone. I had to sell them. All of them.”
Fiona gasped as if I’d stabbed her, then her lips thinned out into a grimace. “Men,” she spat.
“Indeed,” I said. “Anyway, I can’t afford new so it’s consignment only.”
“Not a problem,” she said and came to stand beside me in front of her consignment rack. She smelled of Maison Louis Marie, which was to say she smelled like every rich French woman of a certain age. I loved it. “What is our motive?”
“Motive?”
“Darling, every time a woman puts on an evening dress she has something she wants to accomplish. Class, elegance, sophistication, sex, revenge.”
“That one. The revenge one,” I said. Six years of pain from Nick not seeing me as a woman. Only to have a split second of change on a dance floor. A split second he wanted to forget ever happened.
That felt revenge worthy.
“This one,” Fiona said and held up a dress on a silk hanger.
It was red silk, it was fire, but it was long sleeved.
“I’m looking for something that shows off my shoulders.”
