2

“Just formal, then,” I settle on, knuckles whitening behind my back. Then I dive into the racks.

Clothes are my kingdom. When my hands are buried in fabrics, I am in my element. I pick out three vintage jackets that look roughly the customer’s size, eyeballing the measurements of his broad shoulders, and lay them on the table.

But there’s one in particular that I want him to pick; one that I just know would go stunningly with those blue eyes, his black hair, his fair skin. He may be an asshole, but he isn’t a bad-looking one. With that thought, I put my pick third.

Most customers will be drawn to the option in the middle. Put a cheap jacket first, a wildly expensive one third, and the costly but fairly-priced vintage one in the middle. Whenever I want to find an old-timey piece a good home, that’s how I do it. Most of the time, it works like a charm.

Sometimes, however, a customer will walk in and just smell like money. While we were talking—correction: while he was insulting me and I was trying to remind myself of all the good reasons not to end up in jail at twenty-four—I sized him up just as much as he sized me up. I was just more discreet about it.

I know, for example, that his current suit is Tom Ford; that his watch is the brand-new Rolex they’ve been advertising nonstop in Times Square; and that his cologne is Dior Sauvage X.

A man like this would never settle for second-best.

The customer approaches the jackets. I begin to describe the first piece: “This is a 2009 Dolce & Gabbana. Midnight blue, stretch wool. Not a limited edition, but still extremely rare to find.” He barely glances at it, moving on to the second before I’ve finished. I pick up the pace. “Versace, 1991. Embroidered black velvet, number 873 of only 1,000 pieces ever produced. Extravagant, but tastefully so. I would recommend a dove gray shirt underneath —”

“This one.”

Bingo. Never fails.

“Ah, yes, the Turner.” I pick it up, smoothing out the fabric to show off the colors. “Embroidered silk, anthrax gray with Han blue reflections. A pioneer work: Vuitton would only get there in the late 2010s, with its Oriental collection, but in much brighter hues. However, this piece was hand-sewn in 1983, using antique Chinese textiles for the embroidery. The pigment is 100% original.”

I take his hand and run it over the fabric, guiding his fingers over the floral pattern, barely distinguishable from a simple arabesque one. That’s Elias’s specialty: hiding secret messages in his work.

In this one—the only floral piece in his entire collection—he hid it in the petals: forget-me-not.

It was the piece that made me fall in love with this place.

The man’s breath hitches. I realize I may have forgotten personal space entirely, taking his hand like that, but what comes out of his mouth is not a reprimand. For once.

“Why would you keep this out here?” he murmurs, something close to awe in his voice. “Where everyone can touch it?”

“Pretty things are made to be touched.” At some point—I don’t know when or how—his hand took over. Now, it’s guiding mine as it moves across the design. “To be used.” His skin is warm; I don’t know why that surprises me, but it does. I guess I thought that the man with icy eyes would be just as cool to the touch. “Nothing this beautiful should ever be left behind glass.”

He looks at me. At my hand, still on his. Belatedly, I realize how wildly inappropriate the air feels suddenly. We’re close—when did that happen?

“Would you, um…” I mumble something incoherent and pry my fingers gingerly from his grasp with sheer force of will. “Would you like to browse some mo —”

“I’ll try it on.”

I blink. “Pardon me?”

“I said I’ll try it on.” His gaze on me is even, steady, but there’s an undercurrent of impatience in his voice that I don’t want to test. “Lead the way.”

And, God help me, I do.

APRIL

Update: the jacket looks amazing.

I watch it shine under the changing room’s lights, the embroidery perfectly matched to the blue of my customer’s eyes, and I feel a tingly burst of pride.

I’m this close to pumping my fist in the air, but I restrain myself. The man has a glare that could melt steel, and I’d love to not feel that heat again quite yet.

Instead, I keep it professional. “So, what do we think?”

“It’s a bit loose,” the man comments, scrunching up his face in distaste.

“That it is,” I agree. “Luckily, it’s an easy fix.” I walk up to him with my trusty tape measure. “May I?”

He gives me a curt nod.

“Jacket off, please,” I tell him, positioning myself behind his back. I help him out of the garment and hang it carefully inside the changing room. Then, tape measure in hand, I mount the stepstool.

But even when I’m elevated, I have to rise up on my tiptoes to reach him.

This man’s built like a tree—strong, lean, tall. If I can just reach a little higher, though…

“Should I hunch?” the man drawls.

Dammit. I keep forgetting about the stupid mirror. Has he been watching me struggle all this time? “No need,” I reply, still straining on my tiptoes like a ballerina.

I can feel the heat radiating off his body. It definitely isn’t helping me sweat any less. Between the freckles and how red my face must be, I probably look like a strawberry right now.

“There,” I say with relief. “Done.”

“Where’s the rest?”

The rest? It takes me a moment to grasp what he means. “Of the suit?”

“Yes,” the man replies, that familiar impatience ringing out again. “Unless you were planning to send me out there in nothing but the jacket.”

I hastily delete that particular mental image. Not because it’s unpleasant—far from it, actually. That’s the problem.