"I don't know, Mikayla." Her assistant leaned against the counter, her hair falling around her face as she grinned impishly. "I know what I'm missing by sleeping alone."
Mikayla laughed. "As if you sleep alone that often. You and Drake aren't exactly abstaining, last I heard."
Deirdre and Drake Marshal had been on-again, off-again since high school. They couldn't seem to make up their minds if they loved each other or hated each other. Just as Deirdre couldn't seem to decide if Drake was Mr. Right or just Mr. Available.
"Okay, I'm out of here then." Mikayla straightened the paid invoices again before gazing around the shop a last time.
Grabbing her keys, she turned and opened the old-fashioned glass front door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Hagerstown was in its full flush of late-spring warmth. The trees were fully budded, many already showing their bright green foliage and swaying with the gentle wind that pushed through the historic town.
Mikayla loved it here. This was home. She had been born in Hagerstown, raised in it. She had gone to design school in New York, and the whole time she had been away all she'd wanted to do was come home.
It was sprawling, often loud, filled with tourists on the best of days, and pulsing with life. It wasn't as exhaustingly busy as New York or D.C., but Hagerstown still thrived with life and hummed with excitement.
At least, she felt the excitement.
Pulling her keys from the pocket of her light jacket, she hit the remote and unlocked the doors to the cherry red Jeep, she'd finally allowed herself to buy, before stepping onto the running board and lifting herself in.
Her skirt tightened above her knees before she swung her legs in and closed the door behind her. Starting the engine, she almost grinned at the feel of the motor throbbing through the vehicle.
Pulling into the stream of traffic, she eased through the busy streets, heading for I-70 and the job site her brother was working on several miles along the interstate.
The building site for the newly designed office space was a major deal for the company her brother worked for, as well as for her father. Her father had won the plumbing contract for the building, and a cousin had won the interior design contract for part of it.
Hagerstown was booming, and growing, though sometimes Mikayla feared it was growing too fast. Still, she loved watching its progress.
Flipping on the CD player, she slid one of her favorite CDs in. The soft-rock eighties tune filled the interior and soothed the weariness that was beginning to blur at the edges of her mind.
She had put four months of steady, hard work in to make the deadlines for the early-spring weddings of the brides whose dresses were waiting at the shop. Ordering, fitting, sewing, adjusting. From late winter through late fall the store, though not booming, was definitely busy. This year had been their best year yet.
She wanted to get home, relax in a bubble bath, and let that sense of satisfaction work through her before she started on reconciling accounts, bills, and orders.
It might be Friday night, but Mikayla still had work to do. Not that she had much else to do. The dating pool had been relatively dry lately, she had to admit.
Or maybe, as Deirdre accused her of doing, she had perhaps just set her sights too high.
That was always a possibility, she admitted to herself. She wanted something that might not even exist in the real world.
None of her friends had ever been swept mindlessly off their feet with a kiss. Sex hadn't made the earth move beneath them. They didn't love with a devotion that canceled out the thought of ever being with anyone but the one they loved. They were often unfaithful and saw the practice as a game of sorts. The thrill of the chase, of being chased, and being smart enough not to get caught.
They played with their own lives and with their children's lives, and it was something Mikayla wanted no part of.
She wanted the romance, the excitement, and she wanted honesty. She hated being lied to, and the thought of having the man she loved being unfaithful to her was enough to make her take a third and fourth look at any man offering to fill her life.
Was she as deranged as her friends often accused her of being? Were her standards simply set too high and dooming her to failure as well as to a life of loneliness?
Perhaps not deranged, but she was definitely beginning to worry that she was that hopeless romantic who was going to turn into an equally hopeless spinster.
What had her brother Scotty said? She was going to end up living alone in her perfect house, surrounded by her dresses, and still waiting for her perfect Prince Charming the day she died a perfectly lonely death.
And she was very afraid that was definitely the future she was looking forward to.
And in those moments she wondered if Deirdre wasn't right . . . if perhaps Mr. Almost was good enough. Except Mikayla hadn't even managed to find a Mr. Almost, either. If she ever laid eyes on him, then she might consider it. Just to say she had tried.
Shaking her head at the thought, Mikayla took the exit along a newly developed business site and drove along the rough, uneven road to the hulk of steel and metal rising from the dirt at the end of the dirt drive.
She pulled her Jeep alongside the six-story skeletal frame of the office building where her brother Scotty had all but ordered her to meet him.
Why her youngest brother couldn't manage to keep his own ride running she hadn't figured out yet. He was always tinkering with this, tinkering with that, and it never failed that he called her when he managed to tinker it into complete auto failure.
One of these days she was going to do as she threatened and get the family together for a mechanical intervention where her brother was concerned. He was going to have to learn to keep his hands off his vehicle's guts. If something wasn't truly broken, then there was no need to fix it, right?
Pulling into the muddy mess at the front of the unfinished building, Mikayla blew out a hard breath.
Mr. Unreliable had struck again. As usual, he wasn't where he was supposed to be or doing what he was supposed to be doing.
In this case, waiting for her to pick him up.
So where was he? Where was anyone? The place was utterly deserted.
Turning down the lush, wild strains of Barry White on the CD player, Mikayla tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. Pursing her lips, she stared around the muddy mess of the job site, eyes narrowed against the dim light as she searched for her brother.
Her lips thinned as she mentally counted to ten.
She wouldn't get upset, she told herself. Her day had been too good to let this ruin it. She'd just finished two of the most gorgeous wedding gowns she had ever created and the last bridesmaid's dress. Rows upon rows of seed pearls, yards of satin, silk, and lace, and miles of tucks to go along with the hefty payment she had received.