These Boots Were Made for Stomping (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

“You’re still here?”

The voice came from above, and Lydia Carmichael tilted her head up, her gaze following a path of comic book pages she’d taped
to the interior wall of her teensy cubicle until she found herself looking into a pair of smugly superior dusky brown eyes.

“If you’d quit wasting all your time reading that trash, you’d get your work done fast enough to get out of here at a normal
hour,” Darla Dingbat sniped. Okay, so her name wasn’t actually Dingbat, but if there were justice in the world, it would be.

Lydia opened her mouth to tell Darla to: a) mind her own business, and b) get a freaking clue. It just so happened that Lydia
had finished every scrap of work in her cubicle
plus
reviewed her neighbor Jason’s expense report over three hours ago. She was still in the office for the sole, limited and highly
irritating reason that her boss, the infinitely obnoxious Martin Stout, insisted he wanted to talk to her about a cost-benefit
analysis she’d turned in before lunch.

He, however, was chatting on the phone in his office, oblivious to the fact that it was well after five and he was wasting
her time. And she, Lydia, was sitting in her tiny blue cloth–framed prison cell, seething, her irritation kept at bay only
with massive doses of
X-Men
, Season 8 of
Buffy
the Vampire Slayer
, a few classic
Wonder Woman
s, and, of course, her entire collection of
Silver Streak
comics. Because when she was in a really pissy mood, about the only thing that calmed her down was losing herself in the fantasy
of . . . well, losing herself in the dark, sexy, slightly bad-boy arms of the Silver Streak, with his sexy scar and his superpowers.
In addition to the standard superhero fare, the Silver Streak could melt weapons. In the comics, he was also always melting
women’s hearts.

That, of course, really was a fantasy. As much as Lydia might dream of the perfect man—sweet, funny, strong, capable and,
yes, a superhero (it was fantasy, after all)—it wasn’t as if she’d ever land such a guy. Even if she tripped over him on the
street, she’d probably manage little more than a mumble and a shy attempt at communication. Was it any wonder she liked to
lose herself in comic book fantasies where she could be a hero, too? Saving the world even while saving herself at the same
time?

Not that Lydia relayed any of this to Darla. Instead, she said, “Yeah. You’re right. Whatever,” then dipped her head back
down, her cheeks burning merely from the effort of that tiny bit of defiance.

Get a backbone, Carmichael.

Lydia scowled, ignoring the voice in her head that sounded remarkably like her best friend Amy’s familiar drone. Amy repeatedly
told Lydia she needed to stand up for herself. For that matter, Amy also repeatedly told Lydia she needed to get up her nerve
to talk to a man. Any man. What Amy failed to ever do was give Lydia a clue how she was supposed to manage either of those
things.

“Have a
nice
evening,” Darla said, the sneer in her voice matching the one on her face. Then she turned sharply and sashayed down the corridor,
balancing on her designer shoes, swinging her designer bag, and looking for all the world like a woman who always got exactly
what she wanted. In other words, the antithesis of Lydia.

It’s not so bad,
Lydia thought.
Who’d want to be like Darla,
anyway?

But a tiny voice inside her head answered up:
Me.

Okay, so the truth was, she didn’t want to
be
Darla (because, you know, what a bee-yatch), but there were certain Darla-esque qualities it would be nice to acquire. Like,
oh, the ability to talk to someone without turning all shades of purple.

She went back to her comic books, even burning through the stash of fanfic Silver Streak novellas she’d found on eBay, while
she waited for Mr. Stout. Nothing.

What she needed to do was get up, march down the hall and firmly and resolutely tell Mr. Stout that she was waiting. What
she did was pull up her Internet browser, pop over to eBay, and start searching for good deals on vintage comics.

Typical.

Her whole life—or at least since she’d been five—she’s turned to comic books when she couldn’t quite get up the nerve to face
real life. Comics soothed her. More than that, they spoke to her. Comics were a window to another world. A world that was
happening all around, if only people would wake up and pay attention.

Or maybe the superheroes needed to just stop hiding.

She frowned, remembering that summer right before she’d turned six. Her parents hadn’t believed her when she’d told them what
she’d seen, and when the newspapers printed a perfectly reasonable explanation for how the baby had survived being tossed
out of a moving limousine, that had been the end of it. Everyone had assumed that Lydia had a vivid imagination rather than
really good eyesight. But even now Lydia could remember the spectacle that had played out before her. How the warm, thick
air had felt across her face as she’d stood on the sidewalk in Times Square, stared goggle-eyed at—

Thud, thump!

She sat bold upright, her memories vanishing in a poof. Footsteps. Finally, there were footsteps, and she sat up straighter,
anticipating Mr. Stout’s bellow, calling her back into his office.

It didn’t come.

She scowled at the side of her cubicle, checking out the pink kitty clock with the ticktock tail. Already past seven o’clock.
Damn.

She frowned, then slumped down in her seat and started throwing Velcro darts at the side of her cubicle. Then she stopped,
realizing that maybe—just maybe—Mr. Stout had shot off an e-mail asking her to pop down to his office and—
finally
—go over those reports she’d spent the last two days hammering out.

She pulled up her e-mail and skimmed through the incoming messages. Nothing. She clicked over to the junk mail folder in case
the computer thought Mr. Stout was spam. Nothing.

She considered walking down to his office and telling him that she was supposed to meet Amy for dinner, and even if she left
right this very minute she’d still be late. And
that,
frankly, would suck. Because after two years of trying for a baby, Amy and Cash had finally managed to get pregnant, and exactly
five months and twenty-seven days ago, Lydia’s goddaughter Chenda had been born.

Lydia wanted to tell Mr. Stout what a big deal this dinner was, because Amy so rarely went anywhere without Chenda these days.
Lydia was craving girl night with her best friend, and Mr. Stout’s tardiness was completely messing it up. She needed to get
off her butt, march down to his office, and tell him exactly that.

Except, she didn’t. No surprise there. Just the idea of telling Mr. Stout—or any boss—to get a move on was enough to give
her heart palpitations. Actually
doing
it? Um, no thank you very much.

No, no, no.
She had to start getting a little backbone. How painful could it be? It wasn’t like he was going to fire her on the spot.
All she had to do was push back the chair, stand up, walk out of the cubicle, march down the hall, knock on Mr. Stout’s office,
and then—

What?

She frowned, considering. Asking him what the holdup was wouldn’t work. No way. Even if she could manage to grow some backbone
in the next five minutes, that was really too ballsy to hope for.

But, maybe, possibly, perhaps she could poke her head in the door and say she heard something and had he called her? That
would be good, right? And even if he said no, surely it would remind him that she’d been sitting out there waiting for him
for one hour and fifty-seven minutes. She could do that. Right?
Right.

Lydia took a deep breath, pushed back her chair, stepped out of her cubicle, and ran smack into Martin Stout.

“Oh!”

“Carmichael,” he said, his caterpillar eyebrows wiggling as his brow furrowed. He glanced down at his watch. “What are you
doing here at this hour?”

“I . . . um. . . I . . .”

“Gotta get more efficient there, Carmichael. You see anybody else here now?”

“No, sir,” she squeaked.

“They got their work done and went home. That’s the point, young lady. Gotta learn to balance work and life.” He gave her
a friendly pat on the shoulder.

“But . . .” She froze, the words trapped in her throat.

“Well, speak up,” he said. “I’m late for drinks.”

She drew in a breath. “The cost-benefit analysis sir. I thought—”

“That’s exactly my point,” he said. “That should be on my desk. Get it to me in the morning, and we’ll overlook that it’s
late this once.”

“But—”

He lifted a finger, then cocked it. “You finish and lock up,” he said. “Get that report in, and this conversation stays in
the past.
Capiche?
”

She swallowed, her mouth working, but nothing coming out.

Say something,
she shouted in her head.
The report’s done.
It’s
been
done and on your desk for half the day. I’ve been waiting
in this stupid cubicle for hours to talk to you about it because
you told me to.

The words didn’t come. And as she stood there, her mouth hanging open and her tongue tied in a knot, Martin Stout walked down
the hall, pushed the button for the elevator, and disappeared.

Damn.

“Tell me you’re kidding,” Amy said, tapping a perfectly manicured nail on the tabletop. “You have
got
to be kidding.”

Lydia took a long draw on her piña colada, managing to finish off half the glass in one suck. Other than that, though, she
ignored the question.

“Honestly, Lyd, do I have to tie you down and shove a steel bar up your butt?”

“Excuse me?”

“Dude! To give you some backbone.”

“That is positively gross,” Lydia protested. “A steel bar?”

Amy waved the words away. “Got your attention, didn’t it? That’s what you need, my friend. A great big wake-up call. You need
something to happen where you
have
to stand up for yourself.”

“I think that happened two hours ago,” Lydia said, thinking of the debacle with Mr. Stout. “And in case you weren’t paying
attention, I blew it.”

“
See?
” Amy said, inexplicably. “That’s what I’m talking about?”

“What?”

“Just now. That tone that you took with me right this very second. You were standing up for yourself.”

“Well, sure. You said—”

“My point,” Amy said with a haughty wave of her hand, “is that you’re perfectly capable of standing up for yourself. You simply
don’t do it when it counts.”

“Okay. So?”

“So, why not? Why stand up to me and not Mr. Stout?”

“Um, because I know you? And because Mr. Stout is my boss and could fire me, or tell me I’m an idiot and suck at my job. Or
demote me to the mail room or something.”

“But do you really think he would? I mean,
do
you suck at your job?”

“No,” Lydia said automatically. Because she didn’t. She simply never had the guts to tell Mr. Stout as much.

“Exactly,” Amy said, leaning back in her seat and crossing her arms over her chest in a case-closed sort of manner.

Lydia shook her head, clueless. “And your point is?”

“Confidence,” Amy said. “We need to find something that’s going to make you as self-confident around Mr. Stout as you are
around me. Or, hell, even twenty-five percent as confident. I mean, honey, you don’t have anywhere to go but up.”

True enough. “But how?”

“A talisman. A token. Something that you can have on you to remind you that you’re a competent, successful woman who has the
right to stand up for herself and—surprise, surprise—actually knows how to do it, even if you forget half the time.”

“A talisman will do all that?” Lydia quipped. “What are you thinking of? A voodoo doll? I poke pins in my confidence centers
and figure that will be good enough?”

“We could try that,” Amy said, her lips pursing in concentration. “But maybe something less complicated at first. Take me.
I’ve got my Scooby-Doo underwear.”

“Well, yeah,” Lydia said, remembering how her best friend had—ever since high school—worn Scooby-Doo pan ties whenever she
had a big test, presentation, date—anything important. “But I don’t like Scooby-Doo.”

“Heretic,” Amy said. “And I’m not thinking that for you, anyway. No, I think you need something a teensy bit more than underwear.”
She tapped her index finger against pursed lips as her eyes skimmed over Lydia. “Yeah,” she said, in the kind of voice that
always made Lydia very, very nervous. “Definitely a little bit more.”

“I don’t look like me,” Lydia protested, looking in the mirror at the face staring back at her. It was a pretty face—no, a
stunning face—but certainly not a familiar one.

“Don’t be stupid,” Amy said. “It
is
you. So of course it looks like you. It’s just you with eyeliner, shadow, blush, powder, and some lip gloss. If you’d ever
once bothered to step into Sephora . . .” She trailed off, clearly deeply offended by Lydia’s failure to bend to the power
of the cosmetics gurus.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate it,” Lydia said. “But I don’t think it’s really doing the trick.” She pursed her lips at
her reflection, waiting for that little
oomph
of confidence.
Nada.

“Not even with the hair?” Amy asked, sounding so disappointed that Lydia had to rush to reassure her.

“No, no,” she said. “The hair is great. Love the hair. But, well, do you really think highlights are my thing?” She tilted
her head, admiring the way the golden streaks seemed to shimmer against the tawny brown that a few hours earlier had seemed
so plain. Okay, yes. So maybe it really did look good. But still—

“It’s not like hair is going to do it for me,” Lydia insisted. “That’s just not who I am. Besides, is a make over really a
talisman? I thought you said I needed a talisman.”

“Patience, grasshopper,” Amy said. “That’s the last step. And lucky you, we’ve already reached the penultimate step in my
plan to completely rehabilitate you. Clothes.”