Fix Her Up (Hot & Hammered #1)(101)

A teenager appeared on the scene dragging a broom behind him, music blaring in his earbuds, and Rosie ushered the kids over to their mother, waving off her gratitude, knowing she needed to find her bottle before—

“No perfume, I see,” Zelda drawled, rising from behind the glass counter like a vampire at sundown. “How are we to entice the customer?” She pretended to search the immediate area. “Perhaps our commission will appear out of thin air.”

Smile in place, Rosie picked her bottle back up and gave it a shake. “Armed and prepared, Zelda.”

“Oh! There it is.” Zelda sauntered off to go terrorize someone else. But not before calling to Rosie over her shoulder. “You’re sampling the Le Squirt Bon Bon tomorrow.”

Rosie ground her molars together and threw a thumbs-up at her supervisor. “Can’t wait!” No one had ever sold a bottle of Le Squirt. It smelled like someone woke up with a hangover, stumbled into their kitchen without brushing their teeth and housed a cupcake, then breathed into a bottle and put it on shelves.

She was debating the wisdom of paying the janitor to hide every bottle of Le Squirt—an inside job!—when the sound of footfalls coming in Rosie’s direction forced her spine straight, as if on command. She pushed off the glass and held her perfume bottle at the ready, a smile spreading her mouth and punishing her sore cheeks. A man turned the corner and her smile eased somewhat, her hands lowering. Even if he were to buy the scent as a gift for his wife, the dude definitely wouldn’t want to go home reeking of women’s perfume.

Rosie assumed the man would pass on by, but he stopped at the counter across the aisle, peering into the glass case for a moment. Then he straightened and sent her a warm grin.

“Hi.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and Rosie performed her usual customer checklist. Nice watch. Tailored suit. Potential for an upsell if she could convince an obvious businessman that the three-scent gift box was a must have for his lady. “Shouldn’t they have sent you home by now?”

Was he talking to her? Weird. On the cosmetics department floor, most people passed by Rosie like she was an inanimate object. A minor annoyance they had to successfully avoid for three point seven seconds, unless they needed directions or help wrangling their kids. She had the urge to glance over her shoulder to make sure the man wasn’t addressing someone behind her. Maybe Zelda had doubled back to make sure she was spray-ready.

“Um.” Rosie tried not to be obvious about shifting in her heels, transferring the ache between feet. “No rest for the weary, I guess. The mall closes at ten, so . . .”

Speaking to a man felt strange. Foreign. She hadn’t even talked to her husband, Dominic, about anything of real importance for years. And God help her, someone giving enough of a damn to ask why she was terrorizing people with a perfume bottle at nine-thirty did feel important. Someone asking about her, noticing her, felt important.

For a split second in time, Rosie let herself notice the man back. In a purely objective way. He was cute. Had some dad bod going on, but she wasn’t judging. With both hands in his pockets, she couldn’t scope for a wedding ring. Some intuition told her he was divorced, though. Maybe even recently. There was something about how he’d approached as if intending to go straight for the exit that told Rosie he was only pretending to be interested in the jewelry case now. His tense shoulders and stilted small talk suggested he’d actually stopped to speak to her and wasn’t overly comfortable doing it.

“Have you been working here long?”

This man was interested in her. In the space it took Rosie to have that realization, she realized her own wedding ring was hidden behind the perfume bottle. Without being obvious, she curled the bottle into her chest and let the gold band wink at him across the aisle. The light in his eyes dimmed almost immediately.

Rosie had been faithful to Dominic since middle school and that wouldn’t be changing any time soon, but she allowed herself the feminine satisfaction of knowing a man had found her attractive. Had she even allowed that simple pleasure for anyone but Dominic? No. No, she didn’t think so. And in the years since Dominic had returned from active duty, she hadn’t gotten that light, bubbly lift from him, either.

Everything between them was dark, lustful, confusing and . . . so far off course, she wasn’t sure their marriage would ever point in the right direction again.

Maybe it was silly, allowing this stranger’s attempts at flirting to bring everything screaming into perspective, but that’s exactly what happened. On a boring Tuesday night that should have been like any other. Suddenly, Rosie wasn’t just standing in her usual spot beneath the fake crystal chandelier while boring piano music piped in over the speakers. She was standing in purgatory. Whose life was this?

Not hers.

Once upon a time, she’d been the straight-A student. A member of the Port Jefferson high school volleyball team—B Squad, but whatever. She’d been an aspiring chef.

Wait. Wrong. Rosie was an aspiring chef. She needed to stop thinking of that dream in the past tense. Something that faded with a long ago wish upon a star. Ever since she and her friends, Bethany and Georgie Castle, had formed the Just Us League, her dreams of opening a restaurant had been rekindled. Transformed from pipe dream to reality. They’d even signed her up for one of those crowdsourcing websites and people had donated. Invested in her dreams. Or at least given her a push to get started.