Finding Christmas. Gail Gaymer Martin
certainly didn’t try to find jobs for them.
“Any sign of movement, Mr. Romano?”
Luis Santos’s voice, carrying clearly through the wireless device in his ear, had Sam ruthlessly reining in his thoughts and focusing on the museum. He had two young men, Luis and Tyrone Bass, stationed at the back and side doors of the building Pierre had entered. Luis and Tyrone were P.I.s in training, or so he’d told the judge when he’d arranged to supervise the community service they’d been sentenced to. He hadn’t told either of them yet what he intended to do today.
If he did it right, he would never have to tell them. But the timing had to be perfect.
“Everything’s quiet here,” he said. Except for the rap song, he thought as he glanced at the pickup truck. The driver was reading the morning paper and sipping coffee, seemingly oblivious to the racket his radio was making.
Once more Sam flexed his fingers to ease the tingling. “You got the time?”
“Seven-twenty,” Luis said. “He’s been in there fifty minutes.”
“He’ll be walking out the front door in ten,” Sam predicted.
He didn’t have a doubt in the world that his godfather was going to walk out the museum door with the Abelard necklace. He’d researched the man thoroughly when he was a kid, and there’d been no jewel thief in Europe to match him when he’d decided to retire forty years ago.
The problem would be to convince his godfather to put the necklace back before anyone knew it was missing. It was a task that required his full attention. He certainly didn’t have time to think about the tiny blond woman who wanted to save him from a life on the streets.
“LET’S JUST SEE,” A.J. said as she slipped the skirt over her head and pulled it down. Then she studied her reflection in the mirror. What it looked like was any other black skirt. She had one she’d bought from Bloomingdale’s hanging in her closet just like it. Almost. The thing was—this one might look like the other one, but it felt…silky…and light…almost as if she wasn’t wearing anything at all. And it fit perfectly.
If it had been too big or too tight, she would have had an excuse to call the whole experiment off. “It feels sort of—different.”
“Isn’t that the whole point?” Samantha handed her one of the three mugs of coffee she was juggling. “If you’re going to get the men at your law firm to start thinking of you as something other than a research nerd, changing your dress style is an excellent first step.”
“The skirt shows off your legs much better than those slacks you always wear,” Claire pointed out.
A.J. studied herself in the mirror. She wore slacks and jackets because in a law firm that had only a few token women on its roster, she felt she fit in better. Behind her, she could see her two roommates studying her as closely as she was studying herself. It was hard to believe that she’d known Samantha Baldwin and Claire Dellafield for less than two months. In the short amount of time since they’d rented Tavish Mclain’s apartment, she’d begun to feel as if she’d known them forever. She shifted her attention back to the skirt. “Don’t you think it’s a little short?”
“It’s much shorter on me. I was thinking you could tape up the hem a little. All the better to wow those stuffed shirts with,” Samantha said with a wicked grin.
“I think it’s fine,” Claire said.
“I don’t know. I just don’t feel quite myself in it.”
“That’s perfectly normal,” Claire said. “You put on a skirt that’s supposed to have the power to draw your true love to you—that’s a scary step.”
A.J. held up a hand. “Time out. I’m not looking for my true love. All I want is to be taken seriously at work and for Uncle Jamison to trust me enough to assign me to a litigation case. The pro bono cases I’ve been doing don’t seem to carry any weight with the executive board.” Her dream was to become a partner at Hancock, Potter and King. Once she did that, surely her aunt and uncle would stop worrying that she was going to blemish the Potter name by running away with a ne’er-do-well like her mother had.
Claire exchanged a glance with Samantha, then said, “It’s a little hard to predict exactly what will happen when you wear it. The skirt has a tendency to surprise you.”
That was one of the reasons A.J. had waited nearly two months to give the skirt a whirl. And first, she’d done some research. The simple black skirt that had helped them rent Tavish Mclain’s apartment already had quite a history in Manhattan. She’d found the three articles that had appeared in Metropolitan magazine, all giving evidence to the skirt’s power to attract men. It had even made the news on a morning talk show, and a smart entrepreneur had sold a department store chain a whole line of knockoffs.
But the skirt A.J. was wearing was the real McCoy. Samantha’s cousin, Kate Talavera-Logan, had mailed it to her right after her wedding. And both Claire and Samantha had testified to the fact that the incident that had gotten them the apartment had not been an isolated one. The skirt did have some kind of power over men.
“Too late for second thoughts,” Samantha said glancing at her watch. “You’re already running late.”
“Besides, what have you got to lose?” Claire asked. “Even if you strike out at the office, you’ll probably get a date with a tall, dark and handsome stranger.”
“I’ll pass on the date,” A.J. said. “The only tall, dark and handsome stranger I’ve seen lately is the homeless man camped around the corner of 75th Street. And I’m certainly not going to date him.” She bit down hard on her tongue before she told them that she was trying to get the homeless man a job. They would think she was nuts. And how could she explain why? It had to do with his eyes—and that intent, searching look he’d given her the first time their eyes had met. She could still recall the strange sense of recognition that she’d experienced. “I’d really be in a pickle if he turned out to be my true love.”
She’d be just like her mother then—falling in love with the wrong kind of man. To push the uncomfortable thought out of her mind, she raised her coffee mug. “I propose a toast. To the power of the skirt.” She clinked mugs with her roommates and was about to take a drink of her coffee when she saw a flash of light in the mirror. “What was that?”
“What was what?” Claire asked.
“I saw something. I think the skirt flashed,” A.J. said.
“Nerves.” Claire put a hand on her shoulder. “I felt a little apprehensive the first time I wore the skirt too. But you’ll get used to it.”
“Eventually you might even get used to the strange way that men react to it,” Samantha added.
A.J. studied her friends’ faces in the mirror. Their faint smiles told her that they were slipping off into their own private worlds again. They’d been doing that more and more lately, and it had all started when they had each first worn the skirt. It was beginning to make her feel like an outsider. The moment the thought drifted into her mind, she stiffened her shoulders. That was not going to happen. Living with Samantha and Claire for the past two months, she’d felt as if she’d belonged for the first time since her parents had died. She liked it. And she wanted to feel that way at the law firm too. “Okay, I’m off to give this thing a little test drive at the office.”
“Good luck,” Claire said, taking her mug.
“You go girl,” Samantha said, handing A.J. her purse.
A.J. was smiling when Claire and Samantha pushed her out into the hall and closed the door behind her. How different her life had become since she moved into this apartment. She had never felt this at home growing up in her uncle and aunt’s place.
“Yoo hoo! Ms. Potter, how fortuitous that we should run into each other. I was just going to knock on your door.”
A.J. bit back a sigh. Of course,