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“My time isn’t all that limited. I prefer to take my own measurements. And please don’t call me Mr. Miller.” He’s wearing his charming smile, weathered jeans and cowboy boots. His roughly raked dark hair shoots up to create an effortless pattern. The strands hover in the air, on the verge of falling.
“Let me guess. Mr. Miller is your father?”
“That’s right,” he agrees. “Stand up straight and hold out your arms.”
I’ve been through the measurements thing a thousand times with my grandma and I know my digits by heart, but it seems like doing what he wants will save time. I’m surprised that the most uncomfortable moment is when he takes the waist measurement and not the bust. His hand rests for a second, very lightly, on my belly. Someone who wasn’t watching Gareth Miller’s every move probably wouldn’t have even noticed.
The more my face heats up, the more in his element he seems to be. I glance at his biceps and quickly look away.
He paces around me, making notes on a small sketchpad. “You’re blonde. But not exactly a winter.
“It’s your eyes,” he decides. “They’re blue.”
“Wow. They’re not wrong when they say how observant you are.”
Gareth chuckles. “The gold flecks. They make all the difference. Let you carry off warm colors. They probably look green when you wear green.”
He’s right. And I hate it.
“All right,” he continues, snapping the pad shut. “I know what I’m gonna do.”
He sits back down at the table and picks up the list of questions I typed up on my brand-new laptop. “Hmm. Yes. No. My grandmamma. At my ranch mostly. I hate the city. It doesn’t inspire me. There’s no such thing as a color philosophy. Color is mood. Season. Temperament. What’s the one thing a designer can’t live without? The right seamstresses and that is a matter of fact. I’ve never really thought about it, which frankly means it probably isn’t relevant at this point.”
I’m scribbling frantically on my notepad. “Typically, in an interview, I get to actually ask the questions. Listen to the answers. Ask follow-up questions.” He doesn’t answer my question about why the largest size he manufactures is a size ten when the average American woman is between a twelve and fourteen.
“And you’d describe interviewing someone like me as a typical part of your career up until now?” It’s sort of evil, the way he can insult me and still come across as charming. I know I’m in some kind of trouble because every time I breathe, I suck in icy air, feeling like I’ve swallowed a thousand mint Tic Tacs.
“You’re very modest.” I’m struggling to feel as irritated as I make myself sound.
“Modest? No. Hungry? Yes. I thought we might have a spot of late breakfast. You must be hungry since I made a point of telling them not to feed you at the hotel.”
Truthfully, I didn’t bother asking anyone about breakfast. It’s a meal I’ve always done without. “It’s really charming the way you’re referring to me like I’m a bear in Jellystone Park. Don’t you have to get ready for your show?” I ask.
He laughs again. “This isn’t Project Runway. We don’t run ’round like chickens with our heads cut off makin’ the clothes today. We did a full rehearsal last week. I’m in good shape.”
Now I’m mad for real. I don’t know much, but I know fashion. I know how clothes are made and what designers do to prepare for a show. “I only meant that on a show day there must be a lot of demands on your time. I can’t be the only person wanting to interview you today.”
“You’re not.” Gareth makes a token effort at appearing sheepish. But it’s a look that really doesn’t work for him. “And now I’ve offended you when I meant to do the opposite. Because there are a thousand people I could be talking to right now. And I want to talk to you.”
My cheeks heat as he goes on. “Ah, Cookie Vonn, whatever we’ll be to each other, let’s always be honest, okay? We both know that there’s only one question on this list you really want to ask. Only one you need to ask, because I get the idea you understand me pretty well. Will I make a plus-size capsule collection? Well, come convince me.”
My knees are jiggling at the hint that we’ll ever be anything more than a famous designer and the nerd following him around. But he’s giving me the opportunity. He clearly knows why NutriMin Water sent me and what they’re hoping I’ll get from him.
He stands up, and there seems to be nothing else to do but tail him as he breezes out of his studio. Reese runs in circles around him the way an overenthusiastic puppy might treat its owner. Gareth doesn’t stop walking as she talks loud and fast, saying things like, “Mitchie wants front row and there’s no way,” or, “They’ve gotten the feedback issue on the rear speakers addressed.”
He tells her only one thing. About the dress I’ll be wearing. “The Crista-Galli. In green. Size six. Send it over to the Refinery for Cookie to wear.”
There’s a car waiting at the curb. A dark, perfectly polished Town Car, which I’ll later find out is NYC code for dedicated, private driver. Gareth Miller never stops to think I won’t have breakfast with him. He holds the door open for me in a gesture so ingrained that he does it without looking up from his phone.
I scoot in all the way to the driver’s side, pressing my leg against the door, feeling claustrophobic at the thought of being in another close encounter with a man who could really be called devilishly handsome, a man who belongs in a Harlequin novel. I barely made it through the plane ride.
He slides in too, making a skeptical face at the distance between us. I notice the stubble on his cheek, that the first two buttons of his black shirt are undone, that his jeans are weathered in all the right ways. But more than anything, there’s a scent.
No one smells like Gareth Miller.
Like cinnamon and wild honey and cedar wood and fire.
I blurt out, “What’s that smell?”
Gareth does the first gentlemanly thing he’s done all day. He pretends he hasn’t heard me. “I’m sorry?”
I reach into my bag for my notebook, taking the opportunity to suck in a deep breath while my head is inside the massive bag. “Your fragrance. Are you wearing it?”
“Is that a backhanded manner of saying you like the way I smell?” And just like that, the gentleman is gone again. The devil has pushed the angel off his shoulder.
With a click of my pen, I make a great show of pretending to take notes. “I’m supposed to be writing about my experience here today. So I’m giving you a chance to talk about products that you sell.”
The grin widens. “Well, thanks for that. And in your official capacity as a dedicated reporter, I’d like to tell you I’m thrilled with my collaboration with the Keels Fragrance corporation who’ve helped me to bring my signature scent to market. I consider Gareth Miller Homme an essential for today’s modern man.”
We’re driving up Fifth Avenue, and I’m having flashbacks of my last visit to New York. This trip seems both easier and harder at the same time. The view is a lot better from the back of a private car. But for the first time, I feel like I’ve got something to lose.
Miller reaches out and takes my notebook so I’m left holding my pen in midair. “Off the record, I don’t wear it.” He moves over, tilting his head toward me in an invitation to join his secret world. “Between you and me, there’s a perfumeria near my ranch and the old lady there, she must be a hundred or something. In the village, they say she makes love potions. She mixes this for me.”
“Why not make your signature fragrance smell like...like...how you smell?”
“Some things aren’t for sale, Cookie.”
The way he says this, with his smile fading and his dark eyes crinkling, suggests he’s thinking hard about everything he’s put on the market.
But that passes fast and he smiles again. “Besides, if I sold this stuff to everybody, how would I get you to look at me the way you are right now?”
I turn toward the window so that he can’t see my mouth hanging open. We’re passing through the fashion district, where, in a few hours, he’ll present his show to a worshipping crowd.
I’m both relieved and disappointed when we arrive back at the Refinery. I realize that I must have taken things too far and that Miller has decided to have breakfast with someone a bit more pleasant. At least I won’t have any more opportunities to make myself look stupid.
When he gets out of the car, I’m back to internally freaking out again. I sit there like an idiot for a minute while he holds the Town Car door. I’m there so long that he leans down and waggles his eyebrows.
I’m getting out of the car, pushing my blue Goyard St. Louis in front of me. I scored it at a NutriMin event and it’s pretty much my prized possession, my go-to accessory when I want to feel fabulous. Trying to make a glamorous exit from the car, I swing the bag way too wide. Only Gareth’s fast reflexes keep me from whacking a woman who’s the spitting image of Betty White in the gut. But the near miss is startling enough that she drops her own purse. Drinking straws, sugar packets and several rolls of toilet paper scatter all over the sidewalk.
I throw myself down to the concrete and try to scoop the contents back into the woman’s bag. And I’m momentarily distracted by the fact that the woman’s purse is actually much nicer than mine. A vintage Louis Vuitton Noé bucket bag. Probably 1960s, judging from the darkening of the monogram pattern. The stitching is in excellent shape, but the leather tie is frayed and won’t keep the bag closed.
While I’m busy thinking about how they really don’t make things like they used to anymore, and wondering why someone with a $2,000 handbag needs to go around town swiping basic necessities, I become conscious of the fact that the woman is talking to me. Getting pretty agitated, really.
“Girl! Girl! I say. What in the world are you doing?”
This is what the lady is sort of shrieking.
What I’m doing is holding on to the end sheet of one of the rolls of toilet paper and trying to use it to drag the whole roll toward me, which is having the opposite effect from what I intend. The roll is bounding up the sidewalk and is several feet away. A businessman crossing the street steps on it on his way into the hotel.
Gareth kneels down, desperately trying to get the drinking straws before they’re all knocked into the gutter. The driver even helps us. He’s got fistfuls of dirty sugar packets that it doesn’t seem right to give back to the lady.
We’re taking up a lot of space on the sidewalk and people grunt and snort in impatience as they pass. The woman makes a couple of attempts to lower herself to join in our efforts to pick up her things, but she can’t make it down.
I realize that she’s probably got arthritis in her knees like my grandma, and she looks like she wants to cry, which makes me want to cry.
“Oh, there, now. There,” she says. “Please just give me my bag.”
I get up on my knees and hold it out to her, but Gareth takes it instead.
He gives the woman his most charming smile. “I sure am sorry about all of this.”
“I’m sorry too. I’m sorrier than he is,” I add, scrambling off the ground.
Gareth nods at me but the woman can’t take her eyes off him. He taps his driver on the arm. “I’ll be very busy for the next coupla hours and my friend Joe here will be bored out of his mind. Why don’t you let him drive you home? And on the way he can duck into the market and replace the items we’ve lost here.”
“Oh no, no, I couldn’t possibly...” the woman says, but she’s already busy sinking into the posh interior of Gareth’s car.
Before the driver slams the door, the woman bites her lower lip and stares at me. “Well, dear, I must say, I can’t recall ever meeting someone quite so uncoordinated. Lucky for you, you’ve got your looks.” She breaks into a smile at the sight of Gareth. “And you’ve got yourself a very nice fellow there. A real keeper.”
My mouth falls open. Here’s another first. Being pegged as someone’s sugar baby. I bite back a retort. I mean, I did almost knock her off the sidewalk.
Gareth waves the car off. It pulls away, and his face shifts into a skeptical mug. This isn’t a man who dreams of being kept by anyone.
“That was...uh...” I struggle to complete the sentence. Weird? Surprising? Older women seem like they’d rank right up there with fat gals and babies on the list of people Gareth would love to push onto an iceberg and send off to sea. “Um...um...nice?”
His devilish grin returns. “Ah, I’m offended by your shock, Cookie Vonn. I figured it was the least I could do, considering you seemed so hell-bent on tossing all that poor lady’s toilet paper into the street and making sure she has no sugar for her coffee.”
My face heats up. “I’m not sure how I was supposed to know that the lady was making her way through Midtown scooping paper products into her handbag.”
Gareth laughs. “Well, that’s New York for you. I only wonder what Georges Vuitton would say if he knew that the Noé bag could be used to hold twelve rolls of toilet paper instead of five bottles of champagne.”
I brush off my navy pleated skirt and laugh. “Well, he always was practical. I think he would have approved. After all, he only put the LV logo all over everything to prevent counterfeits.”
Gareth motions for me to follow him. “Funny, isn’t it? They added the design to stop counterfeiting and now it’s the very thing that makes counterfeits desirable. Sometimes, things don’t go as planned.”
Yeah. Funny.
He turns and walks about a hundred miles an hour, and I’m almost running to keep up with him as he makes his way to the hotel’s main restaurant, Parker & Quinn. Although the place is packed, a greeter meets us at the door with two menus in hand and escorts us to a giant booth in the very back.
On the table in an ice bucket, there’s a bottle of champagne, which the greeter uncorks before he leaves. Miller gestures for me to sit first and then moves in so close that our knees lightly brush. “Let’s try sitting together this time, okay? So we can hear each other.”
He pours me a glass of champagne, which I stare at because I’m nineteen, under the legal drinking age, and because I never waste calories on alcohol. “Let’s get the unpleasant stuff out of the way right now,” he says, also leaving his glass untouched. “Why don’t I have a plus-size collection? Because I own a fashion business. A business. I’ve never romanticized it. Never lied to myself and said I’m in it for some reason other than the money. If I just loved to make pretty dresses, I would’ve stayed in Whitefish and dressed Miss Montanas and Cowboy Queens.”
“But—”
He cuts me off. “But look how many overweight people walk the street. Look how many plus-size women there are. Someone has to dress them. There has to be profit there somewhere, right? Well, maybe. But the thing is you can’t just dress plus-size women, you have to also pull off something of a magic act. You have to make them look thin. Otherwise, they won’t be opening their pocketbooks. Especially not for clothes at a luxury price point.”
I’m starting to really hate the word overweight. What’s the ideal weight that everyone is supposed to be and why do people like Gareth get to decide who’s “over” it? Anyway, these are old arguments, and so infuriating coming from him. My anger is rising. “When did you get so lazy? You of all people. You know how to fit clothes. And I don’t buy for a second that it would be any harder for you to tailor plus-size. Your own grandmother couldn’t fit into the clothes you sell. What does she say to you?”
He shrugs. “Thanks for paying the mortgage again, Bubee.”
His cynicism catches me off guard. My imagination didn’t prepare me for a world in which Gareth Miller doesn’t love making clothes. But then I say, “Wait. She calls you Bubee? Why?”
“You’d have to ask her.”
He picks up the glass of sparkling gold. “Truce, okay? I promise I’ll give it some thought. We can discuss it more after the show.”
Now we’re getting somewhere.
“Can I tweet that?” I ask, fighting back a smile.
“Yes.”
I reach inside my bag for my phone, but he adds on to his statement. I wonder if he’s always like this. If, for him, everything is conditional, is quid pro quo.
“On the condition that you wait until after breakfast. And we have a toast.”
“Okay. What do you want to drink to?”
I learn that Gareth Miller likes to test people. “Lady’s choice.”
As I hold the flute by the stem like my mother does in her shoots for Movado wristwatches, I run through the options. To your health. To your show. To New York.
But I come up with something better. “To love potions. The kind they make in Montana.”
He doesn’t raise his glass, eyeing me in confusion. “What kind of love potions do they make in Montana? It doesn’t take much to make sure the bull and the heifer go to the hoedown and do the do-si-do, if you know what I mean.”
My face is flushing again and my palms break out in a sweat. “Didn’t you just spend the entire car ride telling me this charming story about a perfume shop near your ranch?”
He really laughs this time. Not a chuckle but a real belly laugh. “My ranch is just outside Camino a Seclantas.”
When I clearly have no idea what he’s talking about, he adds, “Remember Mr. Miller?” he asks. “My father’s ranch is in Whitefish. Mine is in Salta, Argentina.”
“Okay, then. To Argentinean love potions.” Whitefish is a world away from Argentina. Another reminder of the distance between Gareth’s world and mine.
Our glasses clink together as he says, “I’ll drink to that.”
I put the flute down and switch to the water glass in front of me. “I’ll have to get you to write that down so I can stop by next time I’m in the area.”
A waiter approaches our table, sees the menus we haven’t even opened and retreats in silence.
“Don’t bother,” Gareth says. “I’ll take you there after the show. And that, my girl, is a promise.”
“Sure. And I’ll treat you to Taco Bell at the ASU Student Union the next time you come to Phoenix,” I answer with a snort.
He takes the last swig of his champagne and tilts his flute in my direction.
“Welcome to the big time, Cookie Vonn.”
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