The Art of Running in Heels Read online

  Sean felt the vodka kick up his comfy glow a few more notches. Lexie Kowalsky probably wasn’t as pretty in real life as in pictures, and those boobs that practically fell out of her shirt in every photo were likely bought and paid for with her daddy’s money. If Coach Kowalsky wasn’t such an asshole, Sean might actually feel sorry for the guy.

  It had been no secret that Kowalsky hadn’t wanted to trade Kessel and Stamkos for Sean, and the thought of John “The Wall” dressed up in a tuxedo and forced to perform in the Gettin’ Hitched chaos brought a smile to Sean’s lips.

  Sean turned his attention from the parking lot to Jimmy. “What kind of dire emergency can there possibly be that someone has to get to Sandspit in a hurry?” He took off his sunglasses and shoved them in the pocket of his jacket. “A local jam or jelly heist?”

  “What?” Jimmy glanced at Sean, then returned his attention to the shore. “Not necessarily dire, but I . . .” Jimmy’s voice faded to a whisper. “Holy shit. We’re a go.”

  Sean’s gaze followed Jimmy’s as a silver MINI Cooper screeched to a stop in the parking lot. The door flew open and a white pouf erupted from the car like an old-school pan of Jiffy Pop. The pouf struggled for several seconds, expanding and growing, then it practically fell from the car, getting poufier. The whole scene was so unreal, Sean half expected clowns to start jumping out, one after another, honking party horns, and acting like fools. Yeah, Sean was a little drunk. Maybe more than a little, but he wasn’t stupid drunk. He wasn’t hallucinating drunk. Just to make sure, he said, “Tell me you’re seeing what I’m seeing.”

  “Yep.” The driver stuck a hand out the window and waved as if signaling something. Jimmy waved back, and the MINI Cooper sped away, leaving behind all that pouf. The setting sun reflected within the pouf like twinkly lights, and the cold breeze caught the ends of a veil and whipped it about a woman’s head. At least Sean assumed it was a woman as he watched her swat at the veil like she was being attacked by bees. In all that over-the-top froth and twinkles, it could be a drag queen, he supposed. All at once, it spun right then left, bent forward, grabbed an armful of dress, and sprinted toward them.

  “Get in. We’re taking off.”

  “What?” Satin and gauzy veil swirled around and behind her as she raced across the parking lot and stepped onto the long dock. Sean raised a hand to shield his eyes from the pinpoint reflections in that horrible dress. “We’ve been waiting for that?”

  Without answering, Jimmy scrambled into the Sea Hopper’s cockpit and fired the engine. The steady tap-tap-tap of the woman’s heels on the wavering dock was drowned out as the three-blade propeller began to slowly spin.

  “Get in!” Jimmy repeated himself as he jumped onto the dock again. He held a pair of headphones and shoved one at Sean. “We’re out of here,” he said, his voice as urgent as a drug smuggler’s with the federales on his ass.

  Sean took the headphones but couldn’t take his eyes off those long legs and glittering pumps. The dock swayed on the waves, and Sean expected those high heels to wobble, snap an ankle, and pitch the woman into the lake.

  “Get in,” Jimmy repeated himself. With one last look at the woman, Sean stepped onto the struts and entered the small cabin. Jimmy had removed the first row of seats for comfort, but the plane was still fairly cramped. At least it was for a six-foot-two man who weighed in at two-twenty. He took the starboard seat and slid the Bluetooth headphones around the back of his neck. They reminded him of the Monster Beats he wore when he worked out, only these were more high-tech and had a slim microphone that sat at the corner of his mouth. He ducked his head to look out the double windows as he hooked the earphones over the backs of his ears. Sean had seen some crazy shit in his life, but this ranked right up there with singing dogs, talking fish, and elephants playing basketball.

  Several moments passed before all that white appeared in the windows. The sound of the propeller grew louder, the blades lashing the water and whipping that veil around the woman’s face. Jimmy fought all that gauzy froth, then she disappeared. Sean wondered how she was going to get herself and all that pouf into the Sea Hopper. He fit the headphones’ small gel cups in his ears and adjusted the microphone at the left corner of his mouth. A few moments passed, and then all that gauze got shoved headfirst through the door. Through the headset, a female voice ordered, “Push, Jimmy!”

  Sean might have offered to help if he knew where to grab. All he could see was the top of a rhinestone crown, a mass of blond hair, and yards of veil. He didn’t think he should pull her in by her hair. He was a nice guy that way.

  “Push how?” Jimmy asked.

  “I don’t know. Just push!” One hand reached for the metal frame of the pilot’s seat, then like a champagne cork, the pouf exploded into the cabin with a breathless “oof.”

  Sean stared at the white explosion. The dress covered his feet and was even uglier close up. The whole scene was getting crazier by the minute. Maybe he should slow down on the Grey Goose.

  Jimmy untethered the Sea Hopper and climbed into the cockpit. He wore his headset over the top of his helmet and he shut the door behind him. He pushed buttons and flipped switches and pulled away from the dock. “Belt yourselves in,” he said through his microphone as the seaplane taxied to the red buoy in the center of the lake. The small craft rocked, and the woman at Sean’s feet struggled to her knees within all that dress. He heard a “Dang!” and then a total collapse. She lay facedown for several heartbeats before she managed to turn onto her back. The Sea Hopper shifted right, then picked up speed.

  The woman’s eyes were closed and a tiny microphone sat at one corner of her full red lips. A red mouth that was in stark contrast to all that white. Her lips moved and he thought he heard her whisper, “I’m in deep, deep trouble.” As the seaplane hurtled across Lake Union, she kind of moaned and whimpered at the same time. The top of her dress hadn’t exactly rolled with her, and her right breast looked like it just might pop free. One big, perfect breast pushing against all those rhinestones sewn onto the satin. Maybe he should help her fix that dress and adjust her boobs for her. He was good at adjusting boobs. He was real helpful that way.

  She pushed the veil from her face and spit a piece of hair from her mouth. Her dark blue eyes opened, a little wild and crazy, and she had long black lashes. Not that Sean usually noticed a woman’s eyelashes, but hers were hard to miss. Her cheeks were almost as white as her dress. She pulled air deep into her lungs, and her chest rose and fell. Her breasts strained the fabric to the point of bursting all those rhinestones. The seaplane lifted, and this time he definitely heard her say, “I can’t believe I just did that. Everyone is going to kill me.”

  Sean chuckled and snapped the seatbelt in his lap. His chuckles turned into soul-deep laughter, drowned out by the three-hundred-horsepower engine. He guessed someone wasn’t gettin’ hitched after all.

  Chapter 2

  •love wholeheartedly, but always have an escape plan

  Alexis Mae Kowalsky placed a hand on her stomach and closed her eyes. Through the earphones Jimmy had managed to get around the back of her head, she heard someone laugh. It wasn’t Jimmy, but at the moment she didn’t care. The floor beneath her rocked and rolled, and it wasn’t the Sea Hopper that made her stomach jump around. “I’m going to be sick,” she whispered. It was the thought of her father, waiting for her in the hall at the Fairmont, ready to walk her down the aisle, that made her stomach hurt. Her parents had been against her marriage to Peter Dalton. Her mother thought she should wait. Her father thought Pete was a sissy boy. They both couldn’t believe she was getting married to someone she’d met on a reality TV show. They’d been right about everything, but Lexie had been too caught up in Gettin’ Hitched fever to listen.

  She’d really done it this time.

  There had been moments, though, when her saner side had popped up and forced her to stop and think. In those few moments of sanity, her rational brain reminded her of the good and valid reasons to call
off the wedding. The most important of all:

  She didn’t love Pete. a. Not one bit.

  In those few moments of rational thought, she knew that marrying him was insane. Anxiety gripped her stomach and choked her throat, and she’d felt like screaming at the top of her lungs, “I can’t marry Pete!” Just as suddenly, denial soothed her like a warm bath filled with rose petals and she embraced it. Denial whispered comforting lies in her head and told her exactly what she wanted to hear:

  Pete seemed like a nice guy. a. He had good manners and opened doors.

  She could grow to love him. a. He was handsome and he’d chosen her out of twenty women.

  She didn’t have the best of luck choosing men on her own. a. She was cursed with being a bad picker as evident in her pick of former boyfriends: (1) Tim.

  (2) Rocky.

  (3) Dave.

  Millions of people thought she and Pete made a good couple. a. The whole country expected a big wedding.

  Lexie had a big capacity for denial, but she could not always ignore the second reason for rushing into marriage with Pete:

  She hadn’t known how to get out of it.

  The more she’d let it go on, the bigger it got. It was like a big boulder chasing her downhill and she’d felt powerless to stop it.

  The only person she’d confided in was her best friend, Marie. She’d known Marie most of her life, and Marie had been the single witness to her panic attack in the housekeeping room at the Fairmont.

  Fifteen minutes before she’d been set to walk down the aisle, her anxiety had grabbed her by the throat and made it hard to breathe. It grew more powerful than her capacity for denial and she’d blurted out to her best friend, “I can’t do this.”

  The director of Gettin’ Hitched had stashed the two of them inside the small housekeeping room while the crew set up to get a shot of her father seeing her for the first time. The thought of involving her dad in the charade made her add, “This is wrong!” She raised a shaky hand to her mouth to keep her true feelings behind her lips, but they shot out anyway. “I have to, but I can’t! He has bad toes, Marie. Really gross!”

  “And a mullet,” her best friend added.

  “Our kids will have bad toes and mullets!” She moaned. “But I have to marry him.”

  Marie had placed her hands on Lexie’s shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Do you love Pete?”

  “No, but I have to go through with this! My face is on the billboards and in magazines. Gettin’ Hitched Honeymoon starts filming the day after tomorrow, and we film the reunion show in a few weeks! All the girls will be there. I have to be there. Married.” Her cheeks got hot and she felt dizzy. “There’s no getting out of it now!”

  Someone knocked on the door, and Lexie about jumped out of her stupid dress. “Fifteen minutes.”

  “You have to tell them.”

  That was the right thing to do, but facing the director and producer and telling them that she couldn’t go through with the wedding they’d spent big money to bankroll—all because she’d said yes at the final barn-burning ceremony—made her vision go black around the edges. “I can’t.”

  Then her best friend held out her hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “How?” Of the two of them, Marie had always been quicker on her feet. Lexie was the planner. She’d learned years ago that acting on impulse usually backfired. Sometimes with dangerous consequences.

  “I’ll tell them you need to go to the bathroom.” Marie paused, and Lexie could almost see the scheme coming together in her brain. “You’ll need money. All I have is twenty bucks.”

  Lexie patted her left breast. On the rare occasion when she couldn’t carry a purse, her DDD bra came in handy. “I got a Visa.”

  “What else?”

  “Driver’s license and spearmint Tic Tacs.”

  “My car is right by the elevator in the parking garage.”

  “You have a MINI Cooper!”

  “No one will suspect it for the getaway car.” Marie found a piece of paper and pen on a housekeeping cart and handed them to Lexie. “All we have to do is get to it without raising suspicion.”

  “Then what?”

  Without missing a beat, the master schemer said, “I’ll call Jimmy. Let’s hope like hell he isn’t buzzing tourists around the Space Needle and can fly you out of here ASAP.”

  It was crazy, but so was marrying a man she’d known for ten weeks, spent maybe a combined total of twelve hours with, and didn’t love. It was impulsive. She didn’t like to act on impulse, but it seemed like the only way out. She grabbed the pen before she changed her mind and wrote a quick note to her parents and an apology to Pete. “This is probably the worst mess either of us have been in.”

  Marie grinned like when they’d been fifteen and running from the greenskeeper at Broadmoor. “If you’re a bird, I’m a bird.”

  The production crew kept such a tight watch over everything, Lexie was almost certain the plan would fail, but luckily they’d made it to the elevator without being seen. Her luck held as Marie called Jimmy, who was about to take flight from the Lake Union dock.

  “Where’s he headed?” Lexie asked.

  “Canada.” Marie dropped her phone in a cup holder. “He didn’t say where. I imagine somewhere in Vancouver. Probably one of those swanky lodges or a lake with waterfront cabins.”

  Again, luck was on Lexie’s side. Her father was Canadian and she had dual citizenship. She had an enhanced driver’s license, and a swanky little cabin sounded like heaven.

  The most difficult part had been fitting into Marie’s MINI Cooper. She owed her friend big-time. Jimmy, too.

  The seaplane lifted from Lake Union, and Lexie didn’t even try to get up. She stared at the dome light above her head, aware that she wasn’t alone. Besides Jimmy, there was someone else onboard. Someone who wore big leather loafers without socks. She didn’t bother to even turn to look up past the man’s shoes; she was too busy trying not to get sick. “I can’t believe I just did that.” She pulled her hand from within the three-tier, chapel-length veil and placed it on her forehead. Everything about Gettin’ Hitched had been planned and organized and controlled. Everything from the number of phone calls she could make from the pig-shaped phone in the Hitchin’ House, to her My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding–style dress. The producers had wanted everything to be tacky. If Lexie hadn’t been so fixated on winning, she would have seen the stereotypical portrayal of farmers, and if she hadn’t let her competitive side give her tunnel vision, she would have done something to get kicked off by the third episode.

  If there was one thing Lexie avoided, it was tacky. She’d been raised to turn in horror and shield her eyes from tackiness. In her mother’s world, tacky was right up there with tying a bandanna around her face and not shaving her armpits. Or worse, wearing white shoes before Easter. It just wasn’t done.

  The plane leveled off, and her stomach settled. She struggled to sit up and had to roll one way, then the other, like a beetle trapped on its back.

  “Are you okay, Lex?” Jimmy asked through the earphones.

  “I’ve been better.” She managed to scoot herself up and rest against the fuselage. The boning in her dress poked her ribs and pushed her breasts together. Her Louboutin satin-and-crystal stilettos hurt her feet. She was lucky that she hadn’t twisted an ankle as she’d sprinted toward the Sea Hopper. She was an expert at running in five-inch heels and considered it an art form. For several years now, she’d run the Heels for Meals, a one-mile race to benefit local animal shelters, and she’d run after a pickpocket in Italy, but she’d never run on a swaying dock.

  The damn crown on her head pulled her hair and hurt her scalp as the full ramifications of what she’d just done rushed at her. Tears stung the backs of her eyes. Her family would have discovered her gone by now. She’d run away from the mess she’d made and implicated Marie in her escape. She’d left her family to deal with it.

  Because she was a coward.

  “Need
a drink?”

  Lexie turned her head to the left and finally looked at the owner of the big shoes. Tears blurred Lexie’s vision, but she didn’t need to see perfectly to recognize a handsome man. The kind of handsome that made a woman glad she’d recently had her dark roots dyed to match her blond hair, and her eyelash extensions touched up. At the moment, she was immune to men. Even handsome men with dark skin and stunning green eyes.

  “What do you have?” She brushed the tears from her eyes. The guy had dark brown hair that touched the collar of his jacket. The five o’clock shadow covering his square chin and jaws made his skin even darker. And he was big. The kind of big that came from genetics and workouts. Beneath that black jacket he wore, he was probably all hard abs, sculpted chest, and big pecs. The kind she’d sworn off after her last relationship. Well, the last relationship before Pete. Testosterone rolled off the guy like carbon monoxide. Invisible and deadly.

  “Grey Goose and tonic.” He pulled a fifth of vodka from a YETI cooler between the seats.

  “Any lemon?” He was the kind of big that might intimidate some women, but not Lexie. She was five-ten and liked the way she fit against a big man’s chest.

  He chuckled, and fine lines creased the corners of his green eyes. “No, princess.”

  “I’m not a princess.” Lexie was more of a wine drinker, but needs must, and a shot of vodka or two would calm her agitated nerves.

  He pointed the bottle at her head. “You have a crown on your head.”