The Bachelor and the Beauty Queen

“In a way, it pays for itself. All the mothers buy my dresses.”

He did not want this evening to end. “Do you mind if I ask why you stopped being a pageant coach?”

The set of her eyebrows softened, as her smile faded slightly. “Let’s say the time came for me to move on. I was sewing and designing dresses, but not selling them and when the opportunity came time to move on, I stopped.”

“You’re great with kids,” he stated. “Didn’t you enjoy it?”

“I did. It wasn’t the kids, but more the situation.”

Stephen sat back in his chair. “We have all the time. Please elaborate.”

The material of her top shifted, giving a slight hint of the blush on her ample cleavage. “I’m not proud of all the things I’ve done.”

Uh-oh. An alarm sounded off in the back of his mind.

“I told you I had to pay for school because my parents did not approve of my choice. Well, college tuition isn’t cheap. I used my knowledge from my teen years as a beauty queen to get me the Miss Florida A&M University crown, which opened the opportunity for me to continue on to Miss Florida, as well as the opportunity to make more money by appearing in a few local fashion shows. Can you guess which one I chose?”

“Does it have anything to do with the infamous dress?”

“So you’ve seen the video?” The blush deepened and traveled to her cheeks.

Stephen nodded his head with a grimace.

“My folks stopped talking to me after that. But I was young and I had a plan. The dress was a visual essay to get into Parsons School for Design.”

“Why didn’t you apply there in the first place?” Stephen asked.

“Eh, I wanted to hang with my friends Rosalind and Shannon a little bit longer, but that college life wasn’t for me. I partied too much.

“My Grandma Bea reminded me about how much I enjoyed sewing as a girl and encouraged me to expl

ore the field. I went to my folks and begged them to help fund the new adventure and according to them I was an embarrassment. Folks in town threatened to leave my family’s bank because clearly if my parents couldn’t control me, how could my dad control their money?”

“You’re not serious.”

“Very.” Lexi tilted her head to the side. “I think they were afraid their money would be used to bail me out of jail.”

“What?”

“So I killed two birds with one stone. I created an unforgettable dress,” she explained.

The image of Lexi in the dress reminded Stephen he was a man. He shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. “And pageantry?”

“Well...” Lexi sighed heavily, “Do you know how many starving artists there are in New York City?”

“No?”

“Neither did I. So when a connection opened up for me to privately coach, I took it, which of course opened up enough dialogue between me and my mother.”

“Which was a good thing, right?”

A smile tugged at the corners of her red lips. “Not really, since it was her way of telling me how disappointed she was in me to, in her eyes, shack up with some man.” The sadness in her voice returned and despite the way she smiled across the table at him, Stephen knew something wasn’t right. Who was this man? What happened? He wanted to see her to smile again, and the more she talked about it, the sadder she seemed.

The fork she set down against the dessert plate clattered into the silence. “So tell me, did you always want to do real estate?”

“I sort of fell into it,” he answered. Lexi propped her elbow on the table, cupping her chin in her hand to learn more. “Okay, so when I went to my grandparents’ house in San Juan, the mainland,” he clarified. A lot of people were not aware of the other San Juan, a small Florida island city founded by his great-great-great grandfather, Victor Torres. “While I was there, I met a guy who wanted to scout out locations to film and he was in the wrong place, so I showed him some hidden sights in San Juan and all around. He hired me on as a driver at first, and then I became his location scout and my name got around in Hollywood.”

“Because you knew how to get around?”