Archer, who during the drive into town had acted as if nothing important had or had not occurred between him and Nell, had given the single mom one of his trademark smiles before driving away.
Nell marked off the floral decorations on her checklist and wished she could mark off Archer as easily. She glanced at Delia. “Your grandmother told me she wasn’t expecting you back for a few weeks.”
The girl lifted a shoulder. “I decided to come home early.”
Another thing that Vivian had said about Delia. She was as spontaneous as a spring breeze.
“I imagine this is usually your job.” Nell gestured at the tables down below.
“Organizing one of Vivian’s boring little soirées?” Delia laughed. “Not likely. She doesn’t trust my taste at all. Tells me I’m too prone to sequins and glitter.” She stopped next to Nell and looked out at the patio, too. “She obviously trusts yours, though. Very...tasteful.”
“You mean boring,” Nell interpreted drily.
“It’s not boring if that’s what makes you happy.”
Paying exorbitant amounts of money for out-of-season floral arrangements—even scaled-down ones—wasn’t something Nell cared about at all. But Vivian did.
“How many people are on the guest list, anyway?”
Nell flipped to another page in her organizer and extracted the list. She handed it to Delia. “About thirty-two. Most of the town council and their husbands and wives. A couple others. Your grandmother’s architect.”
“Exciting.” Delia’s eyes looked mischievous.
Nell raised her eyebrows. “Maybe not, but you came.”
Delia shrugged. “Vivvie’s not the worst pain in my side. I figure it’s the least I can do. I’ve learned a lot from her since I started doing the personal assistant thing.”
Nell looked out at the empty buffet tables again. “Did you learn how to negotiate between Vivian and Montrose?”
“That’s not a skill anyone can master.”
Great. Nell squelched a sigh. “Well, everything on this list is taken care of. Except for the hostess and the guests arriving. And hopefully the food will materialize.”
“There will be food,” Delia assured her. “Montrose might act like a total prima donna, but in the end, he’ll come through for my grandmother. He always does. And there’s never a problem with the guests showing up. People around here are always curious to get a glimpse inside the Templeton mansion.”
“I can believe that.” Only then did she notice that Delia was eyeing her with an assessing look. “What?”
“That dress does nothing for you,” Delia said bluntly. Then she spun on her heel and disappeared as abruptly as she’d appeared in the first place.
“Gee thanks,” Nell said under her breath. If she had any illusions about herself, she might have been stung. Instead, she could think only that Delia was quite the young chip off her grandmother’s block. “Vivvie” was equally plainspoken.
With a few minutes on her hands, Nell left Vivian’s office as well, going down the hall to her own. There was nothing else she could do to hasten Montrose short of breaking through his barred kitchen door, so she might as well make some phone calls. Try to live up to her insistence that she’d soon be moving out of the Cozy Night.
In short order, she’d made three appointments to see one of the overly expensive apartment units near Shop-World, a two-bedroom house that was over in Braden and a room in a four-bedroom house being shared by two other people.
It wasn’t an impressive start, but it was still a start.
“I wondered where you’d gotten to.” Once again, Delia’s abrupt appearance caught Nell by surprise. She was holding two dresses hanging on hangers in one hand and she tossed them over Nell’s desk. “Either one is better than that thing you’re wearing. And I brought some shoes, too.” She was holding a pair of black shoes by the sharp, high heels in her other hand. “Size eight?”
Nell didn’t know if she was asking about her shoe size or her dress size. Only one would be right. “Um—”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Delia interrupted her hemming and hawing, “but I am never wrong.” Her eyes were assessing but not unkind. “And they’ll go with either dress.” She turned on her own high heel with a shimmering sparkle. “Leave your hair down, too,” she said before she reached for the door on her way out. “You have five minutes.”
Bemused, Nell looked from the door that Delia had just closed to the dresses lying in an untidy heap atop her binder and lists.
She took them by the hangers and smoothed them out, intending to just move them out of her way. But then her gaze fell on the shoes, pretty confections of narrow, velvety black straps with just a hint of sparkle on the delicate buckle.
They were pumps, all right. Closed toe, which would cover her naked, unpainted toenails, but otherwise as different from her chunky-heeled plain Janes as they could get.
And they were a size eight.
She hung the dresses on the back of the door and then kicked off her own shoes, tossing them to the corner.
Then feeling oddly trepidatious, she stepped into the black shoes and worked up the little zippers on the backs, then fastened the sparkling buckles that held the straps wrapped high around her ankles.
She straightened. She wouldn’t have had a single female cell operating inside her if she’d been unable to appreciate the shoes. They were beautiful. Sexy, without being anywhere near as flashy as Delia’s ruby reds.
She brushed her hands down her shapeless dress.
Then she made an impatient sound and whipped it off her head. It landed in a heap atop the shoes banished to the corner and she turned to the dresses Delia had brought. They were both black. One had spaghetti straps and a slit that went up the thigh. The other looked like a tuxedo jacket, with a softly shining satin collar and buttons that ran all the way down the front of it.
She undid the buttons and pulled the lined dress over her shoulders, certain
