Shoe Addicts Anonymous Read Online Free PDF Page B

at the rich and unassuming patrons who milled around, oblivious of the plight she’d endured these past few years, looking comfortable and rich and carefree. Though at least some of them probably shared her uncomfortable situation.
    Like that woman over there. Pretty. Too pretty to have been born rich. She’d been bought. She practically had a SKU symbol across her butt. Over the years, Helene had grown quite good at telling the real thing from the fakes. Like herself.
    The fakes always had a little shadow of uncertainty across their pretty faces.
    Like Helene. Somehow, despite the bank account she shared with Jim, she’d never fully reached that relaxed feeling of carefree spending that so many of the Ormond’s patrons seemed to enjoy. There had always been some sort of threat hanging over her head.
    The threat of Jim’s disapproval.
    Well, forget that. She wasn’t going to live at his mercy, and prosper at his whim. And she definitely wasn’t going to hang at his command.
    As if in a dream, she bent down and put her Jimmy Choos into the Bruno Magli box and replaced the lid.
    She stood up, feeling as if she were pushing against the force of Jim’s disapproval as she made even that one small gesture. Yes, he’d knocked her down. Humiliated her, even, and then let a store clerk give her the news. But he wasn’t going to win this round. He wasn’t going to pull the leash in on her by cutting off her credit cards.
    She took a step, thinking far more about the symbolism of walking out from under Jim’s control than the fact that she was still, technically, wearing shoes she hadn’t purchased.
    But she’d be back, she told herself as she took another step. Ormond’s wouldn’t notice her leaving; she knew from her own retail experience in the suit department of Garfinkels—where she’d met Jim, incidentally—that the security sensors were at midbody level at the doors because that’s where most shoplifters carried their goods.
    Helene wasn’t a shoplifter, though. She was a regular patron, who had probably contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the Ormond’s coffers. Hell, she’d even left a perfectly good pair of Jimmy Choos back where she was trying the Maglis on.
    She needed to do this. The Bruno Maglis she had on felt so damn good. And that wasn’t true for everyone. Some people found them uncomfortable, but people with the right shaped feet loved them. So who wouldn’t want to keep walking?
    Well, maybe that was stretching it. She wasn’t walking because the shoes felt good; she was walking because the escape felt good.
    She’d pay later for the shoes, easily. As soon as she got home and either got her hands on some cash or talked some sense into crazy Jim so he’d release the credit on her cards again, she’d come back, explain that she’d accidentally left in the Maglis, and pay.
    No problem.
    It wasn’t like she was stealing them, for heaven’s sake. She almost chuckled at the thought. She hadn’t stolen anything for thirty years, and even though she’d been good at it then, she wasn’t about to pick up the habit again now.
    Her heart pumped and she felt the flush in her cheeks. Jim was not going to win this time. It was exhilarating. She should get in her car and go get a bottle of champagne and drink it over at Haines Point, watching the planes take off from Reagan National Airport. Who was it that had taken her on a date to do that all those years ago? Woody? Yes, that was it. He was so cute. He drove a Porsche 914, back when that was cool. She wondered what had ever happened to him….
    She was nearly out, she could see the star-dropped twilight above an orange-and-pink horizon, and she could almost feel the balmy air on her skin when the security system began to wail.
    It tripped her up for a second. It was loud. And were those flashing lights?
    Guilt flushed over Helene and stiffened her gait, but she forced herself to keep moving. She kept walking, trying hard to ignore the