Leave It to Cleavage (17 page)

“All right, then.” Miranda turned from the two combatants. “Thank you both so much for your generous contributions.” She cleared her throat. “Anyone else?”

The other girls volunteered for smaller, more reasonable amounts, which Miranda made note of. She was very glad she wouldn’t be around when Andie and Mary Louise discovered just how much work they’d goaded each other into.

“I know the ladies of the guild will be very appreciative. Now then,” she continued, raising a strappy black dress sandal aloft. “Shall we begin?”

Andie felt like a skyscraper in the pointy-toed heels she’d found at the Second Time Around Boutique. She was used to towering over everybody, but doing it with her center of gravity thrown so far off kilter was a whole other thing. She’d survived her solo walk and turn, but now they were lined up in a big circle like circus elephants following each other, and they were supposed to be doing it with the short, fluid, on-the-balls-of-their-feet steps Miranda Smith had promised would show their legs and bodies off to best advantage.

Andie held her breath and attempted the subtle sway Mrs. Smith had demonstrated, but the only thing swaying was
her
as she teetered along behind the other girls like a rogue elephant tied to the back of the herd.

“Eyes forward, chin up. Don’t look down. Glide, ladies, glide.”

Andie closed her eyes in frustration and quickly realized her mistake as the toe of one shoe dragged on the floor and made her wobble wildly. Her eyes flew open, and her arms shot forward grasping for something steady to cling to, which in this case turned out to be Earlene Johnson.

“Hey!” Earlene tripped, then righted herself before turning to glare up at Andie.

“Sorry, but . . .”

“Don’t give up, girls,” Mrs. Smith said. “Remember, we’re walking and gliding. We are positively floating on air.”

Drawing in a deep breath, Andie squared her shoulders, then took one small step, then another, all the while fighting the urge to look down and check what her feet were up to.

“Yes, that’s it. Lift your feet, but don’t march. Very good, ML. That’s it, Susan. Much better, Andie. Glide, girls, glide.”

Andie gritted her teeth. The shoes pinched her toes, yet somehow managed to slide up and down on her heel, and she felt taller than she’d ever felt in her life, and that was saying a lot.

The second time around she teetered and clutched a little less, but she still couldn’t find anything resembling her normal sense of balance. Keeping her chin raised and her eyes forward meant she was looking over the tops of the other girls’ heads. She had her eye on the clock on the far wall when the girl in front of her stopped.

“Ooof.” Unprepared and unsure how to downshift in the heels, Andie slammed into Earlene, who banged into Susan, who crashed into Mary Louise.

They went down like dominoes, each knocking into the other, so that the next person hurtled forward with a shriek or a gasp. Andie watched it all as she teetered in place, her long arms windmilling as she frantically tried to regain her balance. In her effort to get out of the way she stepped back and felt one foot catch under the metal leg of a desk. With no one to grab onto she, too, started to go down.

Blake raced to the high school with his siren blaring. It took him only five minutes to get there, but he spent those minutes with the image of a bruised and bloody Andie stuck in his head.

His heart slowed a little when he reached the classroom and confirmed the lack of blood at the scene. Then he spotted Andie, her long jean-clad legs splayed out in front of her, her back propped up against a desk, with Miranda crouched beside her. And he was torn between anger and relief.

Andie’s right hand had a plastic bag full of ice on it and lay limply in her lap. A passel of girls stood in a semicircle around her, and every one of them had on a pair of high-heeled shoes.

The girls skittered out of his way as he hunkered down next to Andie. “Where does it hurt?” he asked, more gruffly than he meant to.

She sniffled, and he could see in her eyes how much she hated that. “Everywhere. But it’s kind of numb now, and I—” She looked up at him and swallowed. “I can’t move my fingers.”

“I called Donald Greenwell, the head of orthopedics at All Children’s,” Miranda said. “We need to take her up there right away for X rays. He thought it sounded like a possible wrist fracture.”

He looked into Miranda’s face. Now that the fear for Andie was fading he felt his anger build. Mad as he was, his daughter’s hurt and embarrassment called out to him. He wanted to scoop her up in his arms and cradle her against his chest as he had when she was a child; or read her the riot act and ground her for life. He settled for fashioning a quick splint out of his nightstick and a stray scarf while Miranda dismissed the other girls.

“Dad, I’m sorry I—”

Blake helped Andie stand. “Let’s just get you taken care of. Then I plan to give you some serious shit for blackening the Summers name this way. High heels!” He shook his head and snorted in disgust. “I knew you should have gotten a pair with training wheels.”

Miranda grabbed her and Andie’s coats from the rack. “We can take her in my car if you’d like. It shouldn’t take more than twenty-five minutes to get to the hospital.”

“That won’t be necessary. I’ve got the cruiser here and I can make it in fifteen.” He walked Andie toward the door.

“You can drive if you want to, but I’m coming.” Miranda was already pulling on her coat and draping Andie’s over the girl’s shoulders.

Apparently considering the conversation over, Miranda helped Andie into the front seat, positioning the injured hand so that it wouldn’t get jostled. Then she slid into the backseat and waited for Blake to give up and take his place behind the wheel.

They made the trip in one of the thickest silences Miranda had ever experienced. Blake kept his eyes on the road and his mouth set in a grim line as they sped toward the hospital. Midway, Andie laid her head on his shoulder and Miranda noticed how careful he was not to make any sudden movements. Occasionally he looked down at his daughter, and the look of pure love he shot her pierced Miranda to the core.

Together they walked Andie into All Children’s, where Dr. Greenwell was waiting. He ushered them through a series of X rays, which revealed a buckle fracture of the right wrist and broken middle and index fingers on the same hand, and then took Andie away to be casted.

Once Andie and the doctor disappeared around the corner, Blake fixed Miranda with an accusing look. “She got hurt prancing around in high heels.”

“No one was prancing,” Miranda said. “We were practicing.”

“Practicing, prancing, what’s the difference?” he said. “I told you before, this whole—” She watched him search for a word that would sum up his feelings “
pageant thing
. . . is not for Andie. You take a girl who belongs in high-tops and stick her in high heels and something’s bound to happen.”

“It was an accident,” she pointed out calmly, which seemed to piss him off even more. “She was just starting to find her balance when she had to stop suddenly. It wasn’t as if—”

“She had any need to be tromping around in shoes high enough to give her a nosebleed.”

Now Miranda was the one gritting her teeth.

They stood toe to toe, their faces only inches from each other, and only pulled apart when Andie came toward them. Her cast was neon orange and reached from her fingertips to the middle of her forearm. Her face was almost as dark as her father’s.

“The doctor said this won’t come off until after the state championship.” A lone tear squeezed out of her eye.

“Yeah,” Blake observed, as he slung an arm around his daughter’s shoulders. “You’re definitely going to be sitting this one out.”

His tone softened and he gave Andie a wink. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if you make the record books anyway. You’re bound to be the first forward in the entire Southeastern Conference to get injured falling off a pair of high heels.”

Miranda followed them out to the car, trying to understand what she’d just witnessed. How could a man be so irritating and so endearing at the same time?

chapter
16

A
ndie lay on the living-room couch and felt sorry for herself. Mrs. Smith had dropped off get-well balloons and a batch of oatmeal cookies, but her father was pissed off at her, her coach was pissed off at her, and the only reason everybody else wasn’t pissed off at her was that they were too busy laughing at her.

Her right hand was propped on a pillow beside her, and she held the TV remote awkwardly in her left hand. When her father walked in to check on her, she was spoiling for a fight.

“Hey, Andie. You need anything?”

She kept her gaze on the TV screen, where a frustrated Wile E. Coyote was plotting yet another doomed trap for the Roadrunner.

“Andie, I’m talking to you.”

“No,” she grunted, not appreciating his tone. He wasn’t the one everybody was laughing at. And he wasn’t the one who wouldn’t be playing in the basketball championship—even though he sometimes acted like he was. “I mean, no, thank you,” she ground out, adding as much insolence as she thought she could get away with, given her injury and all.

“Don’t take that tone with me,” he said. “I’m not the one who put myself out of commission with a pair of high heels.” He actually had the nerve to smile at her. “Well, at least now you have a good excuse to get out of that Rhododendron business.”

She turned her head to meet his gaze for the first time since he’d entered the room. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you were injured in that class. I doubt anyone will expect you to continue.”

She turned her head away and stared, unseeing, at the television. “You don’t think I’m pretty enough to be in a beauty pageant, do you?”

“This has nothing to do with being pretty. This has to do with wasting your time.”

“You’re not answering the question.” She flicked off the TV and turned back to face him. “Do you or do you not think I’m pretty enough to enter the Miss Rhododendron Pageant?”

He looked like a
Survivor
contestant who knew he was about to get voted off. “Don’t be ridiculous, Andie. Why would you want to do that?”

“You’re still not answering. Are you afraid I’m going to embarrass you? That people will laugh at the idea of Andie Summers thinking she might have a chance at winning a beauty contest?”

Her father’s look turned even more wary. “You’re not seriously considering . . .”

“Really, Dad. What is your problem with all of this?”

He thought about his mother and the dissatisfaction winning a crown had bred. Then he thought about Miranda Smith, who’d held pretty much every small-town crown there was and ended up toting her tiara around Truro for most of her life. He wanted more than that for his daughter. “You have so much athletic and academic potential, Andie. I don’t want to see you squandering it on something so . . . so . . . frivolous.”

“Frivolous like . . . Mrs. Smith?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you think women should be more . . . serious.” She waited a beat. “Like Mom.”

“Well, that might not be the best example.” He was totally backpedaling now.

Andie pictured the satisfaction on Mary Louise’s face if she were to drop out. But Jake didn’t see anything strange about the idea of her entering a pageant, and neither did Miranda Smith. She was a competitor, her father had seen to that. And she wasn’t going to be competing in basketball this year. Why shouldn’t she just shift arenas and show a few people—her father included—what she was made of? “I’m not quitting now,” she said.

“What?”

“I’m not quitting. And there’s something else.”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” her father said.

“Yeah, well, I promised to make a hundred tissue-paper flowers for the Guild Ball, and I’m not going to be able to make them with my hand in this cast.”

“I’m sure, under the circumstances, Miranda will let you off the hook.”

She pictured ML’s face again, heard her taunt about Andie’s botched makeup. She was going to have to learn how to do it better and find a ball gown, too, if she was going to win the right to be the Ballantyne Bras contestant in this year’s Miss Rhododendron Pageant.

“You always taught me to take my commitments seriously, Dad, and I don’t want to be off the hook.” She added a quiver to her voice. “I just need some help.” She looked up at her father and let some moisture accumulate in her eyes. She was tempted to bat her eyelashes at him, but decided to stick with the tried and true. “You’re so good with your hands. I bet Mrs. Smith could teach you how to make those paper flowers in no time.”

“Andie, that is totally out of the question.”

She started to cry in earnest then, squeezing big fat tears out of her eyes as she delivered the appropriate sound effects. They streamed down her cheeks and slid down the front of her shirt. Looking up through tear-soaked lashes she added the coup de grâce. “Believe me, I wish I had somebody else to ask. I’d ask my mother to help. Only I don’t really have one!”

Her father groaned and shook his head, but even as he muttered about ungrateful children and the ridiculousness of making things out of tissue paper, she knew that she had him.

Then he brightened and said something about “bad penny potential,” which made no sense at all. But it didn’t really matter. All Andie could think about was rubbing those flowers in Mary Louise’s face.

Miranda wheeled her grocery cart toward the Piggly Wiggly checkout line.

Ridiculously pleased, she contemplated her haul, which was unsullied by so much as a single fruit or vegetable. She hadn’t been this close to this much junk food since her high school graduation party.

At the register, Grace Krump looked her up and down as she scanned in the contents of Miranda’s bulging grocery cart.

“You got enough salt and fat here to clog up a whole passel of arteries,” she said. “Or satisfy any number of cravings.” Her eyes sparked with interest. “Why, I ate a whole gallon of chocolate chip ice cream and two grilled cheese sandwiches at eight
A
.
M
. one morning when I was carrying my Bobbie.”