"A young girl becoming interested in appearance and grooming is natural," Margo shot back. "You were the changeling in the family. Still are, as you constantly prove, by going around like a scarecrow dressed in navy blue serge."
Unoffended, Kate sipped at her tea. "Navy serge is classic because it's serviceable. There is only a very small percentage of the population who feel honor bound to fart through silk."
"Jesus, you're crude," Margo managed over a laugh. "I don't even want to argue with you."
"That's a relief." Hoping to keep it that way, Laura hurried over to turn the Open sign around. "I'm still cross-eyed from arguing with Allison. If Annie hadn't intervened, it would have been hairbrushes at ten paces."
"Mum always could defuse a good fight," Margo commented. "Okay, ladies, remember, we're pushing Mother's Day. And in case it slipped both of your minds, expectant mothers also warrant gifts."
Kate braced for the onslaught and struggled to ignore the viselike clamp on her temples that was usually the sign of a migraine on the boil.
Within an hour Pretenses was busy enough to keep all three of them occupied. Kate boxed up a Hermes bag of dark-green leather, wondering what anyone needed with a green leather purse. But the slick slide of the credit card machine kept her cheerful. She was, by her calculations, neck and neck with Margo on sales.
It was a fine feeling, she thought as she wrapped the gold and silver box in elegant floral paper, watching the business progress. And the combo of competition and medication had eased the headache that had been threatening.
She had to give Margo full credit for it. Pretenses had been a dream rising like smoke from the ashes of Margo's life.
Just over a year ago, Margo's career as a popular model in Europe, her exposure and financial rewards as the Bella Donna Woman, had been rudely cut off. Not that Margo was blameless, Kate thought, smiling as she handed the purchase to her customer. She'd been reckless, foolish, headstrong. But she hadn't deserved to lose everything.
She'd come back from Milan broken and nearly bankrupt, but in a matter of months, through her own grit, she had turned her life around.
Opening a shop and selling her possessions in it had been Josh Templeton's idea originally. His idea, Kate mused, to keep Margo from sinking, since he was blindly in love with her. But Margo had expanded the idea, nurtured it, polished it.
Then Laura, reeling from her husband's deceit, betrayal, and greed, had taken the bulk of what he'd left of her money and helped Margo buy the building for Pretenses.
When Kate had insisted on acquiring a one-third interest, thus making herself a partner, it had been because she believed in the investment, because she believed in Margo. And because she didn't want to be left out of the fun.
Of all of them, she understood the risks best. Nearly forty percent of new businesses failed within a year, and almost eighty percent went under within five.
And Kate worried over it, gnawed on it at night when she couldn't sleep. But Pretenses, Margo's conception of an elegant, exclusive, and unique secondhand shop that offered everything from designer gowns to teaspoons, was holding its own.
Kate's part in it might have been small, and her reasons for getting involved certainly straddled the practical and the emotional, but she was enjoying herself. When she wasn't obsessing.
Here was proof, after all, that life could be what you made of it. She badly needed to hang on to that idea.
"Is there something I can show you?" The man she smiled at was thirtyish,
attractive in a rugged, lived-in manner. She appreciated the worn jeans, the faded shirt, the dashing reddish moustache.
"Ah, well, maybe. This necklace here."
She looked down into the display, zeroed in on his choice. "It's pretty, isn't it? Pearls are so classic."
Not regular pearls, she thought as she lifted the necklace out. What the hell were they called? She continued to search through her mind as she draped the necklace over a velvet form.
"Seed pearls," she remembered and beamed at him. He really was awfully cute. "It's called a lariat," she added.
She'd gotten that off the tag. "Three strands, and the clasp, or the slide thing has a…" Give me a minute. "A mabe pearl set in gold. Tradition with a flair," she added, enjoying the ad lib.
"I wondered how much…" Hesitating, he flipped the tiny, discreet price tag over. To his credit, he winced only slightly. "Well," he smiled a little, "it hits the top of my price range."
"It's something she'll wear for years. Is it for Mother's Day?"
"Yeah." He shifted his feet, running a calloused finger over the strands. "She'd go nuts over it."
She melted toward him. Any man who would take such time and trouble for a gift for his mother earned top points from Kate Powell. Especially when he looked just a little bit like Kevin Costner. "We have several other really nice pieces that aren't quite so expensive."
"No, I think… maybe… Could you put it on so I could get a better picture?"