A present, she remembered, from a shipping magnate old enough to be her grandfather. She'd never slept with him, though the press had beat war drums about their affair. He'd only wanted someone young and attractive to talk to, someone to listen while he spoke of the wife he'd lost to cancer.
He had been, in the two years she had known him, a rare thing in her life. A male friend. The pearls had been nothing more than a gift from a friend who was pining away from a broken heart and who soon died from it.
"Is this clasp eighteen-karat?"
Suddenly Margo wanted to snatch them back, to scream at the woman that she couldn't have them. They were hers, a reminder of one of the few unselfish and loving things she'd ever done in her life.
"Yes." She forced herself to speak through a smile so stiff it ached. "Italian. It's stamped. Would you like to try them on?"
She did, and hemmed, hawed, preened, and stroked. In the end, she handed them back with a shake of her head. Margo locked the pearls into the display like a guilty secret.
Tourists came in, poking through the treasures, carelessly clanking porcelain against glass, china against wood. Margo lost three potential customers when she testily informed them not to handle the merchandise unless they were prepared to buy it.
That cleared the shop long enough for her to run upstairs and pump some aspirin into her system. On her way down again, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.
Her face was set and angry, her eyes deadly. She felt her stomach jitter with repressed temper.
"Want to scare all the customers away, Margo?"
She closed her eyes, breathed deep, visualized a cool white screen. It was a technique she'd often used in modeling when a session had dragged on, with hairstylist and makeup artist poking, photographer waiting, assistants whining.
All she had to do was go away for a minute, remind herself that she could, and would, fill the blank screen with whatever image they wanted.
Calmer, she opened her eyes, watched her face smooth out. If her head still throbbed, no one had to know but herself. She walked downstairs ready to greet the next customer.
She was delighted when Judy Prentice dropped in, bringing a friend with her. She poured them tea, then excused herself to show another customer into a fitting room. At two, she opened the first bottle of complimentary champagne and wondered what was keeping Laura.
By two-thirty, she was feeling frazzled, struggling with the gift wrap she was afraid she would never get the hang of. And Candy breezed in.
"Oh, what an adorable little shop." She clapped her pretty hands together and bounced over to the counter, where Margo was sweating over a tape dispenser. "I'm so sorry I couldn't make it by for your opening, Margo. I just couldn't squeeze it into my day. But I made a special point of coming by today."
Particularly since the shop and its owners had been the hot topic at brunch.
"I'm just going to poke around, but don't you worry, I'll be sure to buy something. Isn't this fun," she said to the woman waiting for the package. "Just like a big yard sale. Oh, what a nice little bowl." She danced over, running her fingers over the frosted glass, looking for chips. "The price is a little high for secondhand." Still holding the bowl, she turned a sharp-edged smile on Margo. "I suppose you inflate it to give your customers room to bargain.''
Keep cool, Margo warned herself. Candy was just trying to get her goat, the same way she had in high school. "We consider our merchandise priced to sell."
"Well." With a careless shrug, Candy set the bowl down. "I suppose I don't know very much about cost. I just know what I like." She eyed a pair of enameled candlesticks. "These are… unusual, aren't they?"
"You have lovely things," the waiting customer commented as Margo slipped the wrapped box into a bag.
"Thank you." Margo shuffled through her tired mind for the name on the credit slip. "Thank you very much, Mrs. Pendleton. Please come again."
"I certainly will." She accepted the bag, hesitated. "Do you mind if I say I only came in today because I've seen your photograph so many times? I spend a lot of time in Europe. La Margo's face is everywhere."
"Was everywhere. No, I don't mind."
"I switched to the Bella Donna line of skin-care products primarily because of your advertisements."
She winced before she could prevent herself. "I hope you're satisfied with the products."
"It's an excellent line. As I said, I came in because I wanted to see you in person. I'll come back because you have beautiful things imaginatively presented." She slid the bag onto her arm as she stepped back from the counter. "I think you're a very brave and adventurous woman." Mrs. Pendleton flicked a glance toward Candy, who was frowning over a paperweight. "And an admirable one." She leaned back over the counter, her eyes dancing. "Make sure that one doesn't stick something in that Chanel bag of hers. She looks shifty."
Chuckling, Margo waved her now favorite customer off and walked over to deal with Candy. "Champagne?"
"Oh, such a clever idea. I imagine the offer of free drinks lures in a certain type of clientele. Just a tiny glass. How are you managing, darling?"
"Well enough."