Last year, Marilyn and Amber had been lucky enough to fall in love—with Marilyn getting married on Christmas Eve. She and Blake were “due” in August with their first child. Amber and Gage were still in the beginning of their relationship and as far as she knew, Gage hadn’t asked Amber to marry him, or bear his children for that matter…yet.
Gabriella worked her way up the ranks in one of those national lingerie companies and after five years, she had been granted the position of Buyer for the company and she had absolutely loved it. It was her one and only job she had gotten out of college and it was the sole reason she wanted to open her own lingerie store. She had a vision and wanted to market her store in a certain way that she couldn’t do at her previous job.
She unlocked the glass door to Lolita’s and walked inside. The pride in her heart swelled every time she came here. Although she was biased—because she had done it herself—she was always amazed by the beauty of what Lolita’s was on the inside. She had painted the inside of the entire store herself…well, not all by herself. Logan had helped her tremendously.
They both had spent almost two weeks painting all of the walls sea-foam green and then all of the baseboards and trim around the doors antique white. It was breathtaking. The chandeliers afforded enough lighting to see well but they weren’t bright bulbs. The dressers and tables were painted with the same antique white and she had used the mint color to paint all of the chairs and nightstands. Where she could, she used both color combinations on a piece of furniture. For something to accent the two colors, she had painted a magenta table that sat in the center of the room.
Her goal was to create a look that gave patrons the feeling that they were inside their bedrooms getting dressed for their most special night out. She knew from experience what it was like to get ready in anticipation of that date where that particular man might see what you were wearing underneath your clothes. The thought, that as a woman, you prepared in advance, hoping that he would want to find out what you were wearing underneath and he would take his sweet time savoring all there was to behold.
Logan found that moment to send her a message. I’m free today. I’m coming over. She smiled. That was fine by her, she could always put him to work. Since it was Saturday, she was open. Logan, however, was off during the weekend and aside from Lucy—who he was careful not to get too close to—he had his family. There was always a small part of her that envied Logan’s big Sunday family dinners. She had been a part of them for as long as she could remember. Her Sundays for the past twenty years had been mostly filled with real family dinners. Laughing, playing board games, cooking and cleaning the kitchen, had been the most normal thing she had experienced as Logan’s best friend. His mother, Donna, was the closest thing she had ever had to a real mother. A mother who listened to her, showed affection, gave her advice and went with her to check out her dorm room and meet her roommate—all opposite qualities of Tammy Crawford. Donna Stokes, as she had been remarried for the past eighteen years, had done far more motherly things in Gabbie’s life than Tammy ever had.
Thank God for Gabbie’s sake, she and her sister had been fortunate enough to have their parents move to Alabama. Their father, Robert, sober enough to follow work out there one summer while she was in college, hadn’t ever cared to come back. She hardly spoke to either one of her parents so she assumed her mother was living with…or without…Robert and still living off the system or doing whatever it was she could in order to survive. Whatever could mean a multitude of things and she didn’t want to know, nor did she care, what those things could be. Whatever. Gabriella tried to live as far removed from them as she possibly could.
Her sister, however, was far more generous. Genevieve, five years younger than Gabbie, still spoke with their mother. Not too frequently, but enough to know the going-ons in their lives. Many times, Gen had spoken of going down to Alabama to see their parents, pleading for Gabbie to go with her, but Gabbie had adamantly refused each and every request. It had finally gotten to the point that Gabbie had to threaten their sisterly relationship with her, that if she hounded her any more about them, Gabbie would not spend time with her. She respected Gen’s decision to remain connected—her sister needed to respect Gabbie’s to remain estranged.
“Hello, are you in here, Cinderella? Why don’t you have any of the lights on?” Logan reached over and flipped on the dimmer switch just inside the door, lighting up one of the chandeliers in the front of the store.
“I’m here. Just was thinking, I guess. Don’t you have anything better to do on your day off than hang out with the likes of me?” Gabriella loved teasing him. In all honesty, she loved having him around. She wanted him around. There was no other place she would rather he spend his day off than hanging out with her.
His bright open-mouthed smile always made her heart skip. She was more than lucky to have him in her life. His happy-go-lucky personality and the way he could make her feel good about herself, never ceased to amaze
