“Where are you dragging me?” she asked, trying to pull out of his grasp, but it was like trying to break free of a tow truck.
“I’m taking you to see a friend of mine. Not really a friend, more like a cousin.”
Pulling her through offices, he didn’t stop until he came to one glassed enclosure. Behind a desk sat a young woman who was not beautiful exactly, but very striking. Her hair looked as though it were incapable of being out of place, and her clothes had obviously been made for her body alone. The sight of her made Samantha look about for a hiding place where she wouldn’t be seen by this elegant young woman.
As soon as the woman saw Mike, she smiled and stood up, but Mike did not smile. Drawing himself into a military at-attention stance, he clicked his heels together, took her fingertips in his hand, and kissed them. “Your royal highness,” he said in a voice of an official courtier.
Looking about the office at her co-workers nervously, the woman said, “Mike, stop that.”
Grinning, Mike grabbed her into his arms, bent with her like something out of a Fred Astaire movie, and kissed her neck enthusiastically. “Better?” he asked as he lifted her to stand straight again.
“Much,” she said, blushing, trying to act annoyed but obviously charmed by him as she moved out of his grasp.
“So how’s the palace and the folks?” Mike asked, smiling as though very pleased with himself.
“Everyone is fine—as you’d know if you bothered to visit. Mike, as honored as I am by your visit, I have work to do. What can I do for you?”
“Help us shop.” Pulling Samantha from the hiding place she was trying to make for herself between the door and a filing cabinet, he presented her as though she were something he wanted repaired, like a watch or, actually, more like a squirrel-eatin’, rifle-totin’ hillbilly.
Seeing the way the woman looked from her to Mike in question, considering the proprietary way Mike was holding her arm, Samantha tried to explain. “It’s not like it looks. He’s my guardian.” As soon as she said it, she realized how dumb the words sounded, how she was making things worse by speaking.
“Rather like Tinkerbell,” Mike said, still grinning.
“More like Captain Hook,” Samantha retaliated quickly.
At that the young woman laughed and walked toward Samantha with her hand extended. “It sounds as though you understand him. My name is Victoria Montgomery and Mike and I are cousins of sorts.” Looking Samantha up and down with a professional eye, she appraised her face, her figure, and the dreadful clothes. “What can I do for you?”
Giving the young woman a crooked smile, doing what she could to redeem herself, Samantha said, “Make me look like one of those women on the street.”
With a smile of complete understanding, Vicky said, “I think we can manage something.” She turned to Mike. “Why don’t you meet us in about three hours?”
“Not on your life,” Mike answered. “I’m staying through all of it. If she’s left on her own, she dresses like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Can you fix her up?”
He made Samantha sound like a car whose transmission had fallen out and it was questionable whether the car was repairable or not. After one sympathetic look at Samantha’s face, now the same color as her deplorable sweatsuit, Vicky turned to her cousin. “Mike, you’ve been using your muscles too much and your brains not enough. Mind your manners!” Her voice carried authority as well as much affection for her handsome cousin.
After a smile filled with gratitude directed toward Vicky, Samantha turned toward the elevators and started walking, feeling better already.
“How much?” Vicky whispered to Mike when Samantha was a few feet away.
“Whatever,” Mike answered, shrugging.
Vicky lifted one perfectly plucked eyebrow at him. “Are we talking Christian Dior or Liz Claiborne?”
“I guess that means expensive or cheap. I want her to have both. Everything. But don’t let her see the prices on the clothes and send the bill to me.” He paused a moment in thought. “And I want shoes and whatever else women wear.”
“What about hair?” Vicky was studying her cousin. She knew very well that he could afford what he wanted to buy, but she also knew that he didn’t spend his money frivolously.
Mike was looking at Vicky with eyes that nearly begged for her help. He was so tired of seeing Samantha with her beautiful hair scraped back into a tight, ugly bun. “You know,” he said wistfully, “I think her hair just may be curly when it’s down.”
“You don’t know for sure?” Vicky asked archly, doing her best to figur
e out what this woman meant to him.
“Not yet,” Mike said with confidence and a wink at his pretty cousin. “Not yet.”
Samantha knew she had never spent such a heavenly day in her life as the one she spent at Saks with Vicky and Mike. When Samantha was a child she had often gone on shopping expeditions with her mother, and they had been an enormous amount of fun, but after her mother had died, she hadn’t seemed to have much time or even the inclination to adorn herself. After she was married and had moved to Santa Fe, she had had neither money nor time nor the desire to shop.
But even when she’d been with her mother, she’d not had as good a time as she had on this day. Vicky’s taste in clothing and corresponding accessories was irreproachable, and her diplomacy in guiding Samantha toward the correct garments was something that had to be experienced to be believed. At first Samantha haphazardly and hesitantly chose a few outfits from the racks and tried them on, but when she looked in the triple mirrors, she found that she looked as she always did: boring. Then Vicky very sweetly, casually, tactfully, asked if she might be allowed to choose a few things for Samantha, and of course Samantha agreed. What woman hadn’t yearned for an elegant, regal-looking woman like Victoria to help her dress?