Lingerie Wars (Invertary 1)

He pushed his hands into his jeans pocket as he, she assumed, tried to look all cuddly and non-threatening.

“Come on, people,” Kirsty said. “You’re not seriously thinking he should be a part of the runway show?”

“If you think about it,” said Dougal, “he was the one who invited the national press. We wouldn’t even be having this meeting if it wasn’t for him.”

“You wouldn’t be worried about being called InverTARTY either,” she pointed out.

“Still,” Dougal said. “It will bring a lot of business to the town.”

Now everybody was nodding and mumbling agreement. Kirsty’s mum stood up.

“I think Kirsty has enough clout to attract attention on her own. We don’t need the other shop. After all, she was a very famous lingerie model in her own right,” she said, and Knit or Die whooped in agreement.

Kirsty smiled smugly at Lake.

“This isn’t about who’s most famous,” Lake said. “It’s about being fair.” The devil appealed to Caroline. “Do you think it’s fair that only one lingerie shop gets to have a fashion show during the market?” he asked, all fake innocence.

The women of Knit Or Die groaned. Everyone knew that you never questioned whether Caroline was being fair or not. She prided herself on her sense of fairness—that and her high moral standards.

“Oh,” Caroline said, and gave Kirsty a pained look.

Don’t you dare, Kirsty told Caroline by telepathy.

“If you put it like that,” Caroline said, “I guess it should be both shops.”

That blasted tele

pathy never worked. Caroline mouthed “sorry” at Kirsty.

“Fine, he can have a show, but he can’t have mine.” Kirsty folded her arms and took a step away from Lake, crowding out the person beside her.

“Actually I have an idea about the show,” Lake said.

Kirsty threw up her hands in despair.

“Are you trying to kill me here?” she demanded.

He smiled sweetly.

“I thought, same show, same night,” he carried on. “We can have a lingerie competition, make people vote for their favourite runway show, we can call it Battle Of The Bras.”

The crowd went wild. They loved every sick word falling from his lips. Kirsty scowled at him.

“You came up with that on the spur of the moment?” she said to him as everyone spoke at once around her.

He smiled with fake innocence. Little bells went off in Kirsty’s head.

“You already knew about the show,” she said. “Who told you?”

“No one.”

And then it clicked.

“You broke into my place, didn’t you? You messed with my website and saw my plans on the desk.”

“Me?” He pointed at himself in mock innocence.

“You’re going to pay for that,” she told him.