A Custom Fit Crime Read Online Free PDF Page B

singular compassion for the ordinary person. She sold her runway designs to everyday people for pennies on the dollar. Everyone should have a chance to experience high fashion, she’d been known to say.
    She looked up at me. “I guess I have been around too long to be an up-and-comer, then,” she said. A twinge of self-doubt flitted over me. Did that mean that I was too young? Too green? Too country?
    No, I was being overly dramatic. I was good at what I did, and what I did was fashion for the everyday woman.
    Orphie seemed to sense my doubt. “Soon everyone will know Harlow’s name,” she crooned, gliding up beside me and slinging her arm around my shoulders. “We were both on Maximilian’s premiere design team.”
    Beaulieu’s head snapped up, his stare burning holes right through us both. Looked as though there was no love lost between him and Maximilian. “Maybe so. We should talk,” he said. Or more accurately, he ordered. “We have some things to discuss.”
    Orphie continued, looking right at Beaulieu as she said, “She learned from the best, but developed her own style. Harlow’s designs are unique. No one has an aesthetic like hers. She has a special gift.”
    This time my head snapped up. There it was again. Orphie’s reference to my gift made my heart stutter. Only a handful of people knew—and that’s how I planned to keep it.
    I laughed, waving away Orphie’s praise—and my suspicion that she might know more about my charm than she was letting on. “I work hard, that’s all,” I said.
    Beaulieu scoffed as he plucked an issue of Vogue from the magazine rack and absently flipped through it, flashing a look at each of us in turn, ending with Midori and then with me. “We all work hard, sweetheart. There’s nothing new about that.”
    “Some more than others,” I said, not letting his dismissive comment get to me. “I’ve built my shop from the ground up—”
    “In Bliss. Go to New York. Better yet, go to Europe. At least you’ll do something more than . . . than that,” he said, gesturing toward my work room.
    “I’m right where I belong,” I said. “Bliss is my home.”
    “You’ll never amount to anything if you stay here,” he said.
    “I’m doing what I want to do.” I hadn’t thought about it in such clear terms before this moment. I’d chosen to leave Manhattan, I’d set up shop in Meemaw’s house, I knew she’d brought me here for a reason, but I hadn’t questioned it too hard. I’d fallen into life in Bliss just as surely as my little teacup pig, Earl Grey, rooted in the mud outside when I let him. We sought out what felt good and right, and Bliss fit the bill for me.
    Lindy Reece stepped between us, looking as if she were ready to break up a fight. “Like I said, it’ll make for a great story.”
    “Every Texas tale needs a hillbilly element,” he said, not even bothering to play off his comment like a joke.
    The journalist looked tongue-tied. She clearly didn’t want to offend me, but Beaulieu was a bigger name. More important to keep him happy. “You each have something different to offer our readership,” she said.
    “If you say so,” he said, but his snide smile made it pretty clear he didn’t agree. Jeanette dropped one of the garments she’d been unpacking from her boss’s collection. Like a predator tracking its prey, Beaulieu seemed to sense the disturbance. He whipped around, zeroing in on his assistant. “Be careful with that,” he snapped. He shoved the copy of Vogue back into my magazine rack, and he moved to her in three long strides. “How many times have I told you to never . . . never . . . crumple the garments in your sweaty little hands? It needs to be pressed. Now.”
    Red splotches appeared on Jeanette’s cheeks, and the same color crept up her neck. Poor girl. From where I stood, it hadn’t looked as though she’d done anything to the fabric, but she seemed to know how to handle her boss. She drew in a bolstering breath,