Read Online Sandra Hill by Love Me Tender - Free Book Online Page B

her crutches —Damn, how can a woman look so sexy on crutches?— he thought of something else. “And consider one more thing, Ms. Sullivan. When our differences are resolved, I still have a question to ask you. And I would hate to have to wait five years to get my answer.”
    She hesitated and glanced back at him over her shoulder. He could tell she didn’t want to ask, but she did. “What question?”
    “What are we going to do about us? ”
    And P.T. was serious this time.
    Sort of.
     
    Cynthia pressed the button, then leaned her shoulders against the back wall of the elevator. Closing her eyes with exhaustion, she waited forthe doors to slide shut and the descent to begin. She knew from her earlier ascent that it was a slow elevator, running directly to the underground parking garage, unlike the other express elevator that went only to the first floor. She’d driven today, rather than take a taxi, because she’d had so many picket signs to carry.
    It had been a stressful day and her corn was throbbing with a vengeance. She looked forward to a long soak in the deep, old-fashioned, claw-footed tub that had been one of the original fixtures in her hundred-and-fourteen-year-old apartment. Dreamily, she planned her evening. A little Opium bath oil, a glass of chilled Chenin Blanc, the soundtrack from Riverdance on the CD player, followed by some microwaved leftovers…Peking fried rice and lobster egg rolls. Yummm.
    After that, she’d call her lawyer.
    Then again, maybe she’d follow her instincts and wait till tomorrow to see if the prince came through, as she expected he might…at least with a counteroffer.
    “Wait a minute!” a feminine voice shouted.
    Cynthia’s eyes flew open as a tall, thirty-something woman in paint-spattered denim coveralls put a hand on the elevator door to prevent its closing. Martha Stewart had worn a similar outfit on “Good Morning America” last week when she’d been installing her own toilet. Maybe it was the latest fashion. After all, good ol’ Martha was considered the czar of good taste.
    If “Martha” made her grin, the two characters who entered the elevator next made Cynthia’s mouth drop open with astonishment.
    A short man in an aqua sequin-studded jumpsuit—complete with extra-wide belt and high, stand-up collar and mini cape—gave her a crooked smile as he edged to one side of her. “Thank ya verra much, ma’am, for holdin’ the door,” he drawled in a deep Southern twang he’d probably picked up in Nashville.
    Cynthia remembered belatedly to close her mouth.
    He had to be approaching forty and must be an Elvis impersonator. What had he been doing on the sixteenth floor, which housed only Ferrama offices? She looked down at his high-heeled blue suede boots, studded with rhinestones. Maybe Ferrama is going into boot-wear now. No, those boots are too garish for the ritzy Ferrama lines .
    On the other hand, “gaudy chic” might actually be a successful ploy…the kind of on-the-edge type gamble an avant-garde business like Ferrama would try .
    Hmmm. A stock settlement is sounding better and better .
    Then her attention was drawn to the simpering woman on her other side. She was about the same age as Cynthia—thirty—or a few years older, but there the resemblance ended. Wearing skintight, leopard print pants and a ruffled, off-the-shoulder blouse that had gone out ofstyle about thirty years ago, she teetered on a pair of stiletto high heels. The only thing keeping her in balance was the massive teased hairdo straight out of Grease . The woman was a living flashback to the fifties. And the eye makeup! Lordy, she’d better hope she didn’t run into a horny raccoon.
    Cynthia wished her grandma was still alive. She’d get a kick out of hearing about this incongruous trio. With Grandma’s age-old perspective on life, she would probably have said something profound, like, “Aye and begorrah, but there never was a slipper but there was an old stocking to match