Lingerie Wars (Invertary 1)

“Are you ever going to give up?” she said.

“Are you?”

He took a step towards her in the dark vestibule. Kirsty stepped backwards, bumping into the leaflet-covered, wood-panelled wall. He put a hand on the wall beside her head and leaned into her.

“Come on, Kirsty, you know you want to give in,” he said softly. “I’m not usually one for advocating surrender, but in this case, I would recommend it. In this case, surrender would be a very good option.”

Kirsty licked her lips at the thought of it. Surrender. To Lake.

The door to the church hall opened. Lake stepped back smoothly and smiled at Caroline—who, as usual, was blissfully unaware of the undercurrent in the room.

“Good,” she said in her crisp business tone. “You’re here on time.”

“As if we would dare to be anything else,” Kirsty teased.

Caroline smiled at her, well aware of how uptight she was about timekeeping.

“Here are the rules,” Caroline said, handing them a pile of paperwork. “I printed them out for you.”

“Of course you did,” Kirsty said with a smile.

Lake read them as though they were a mission brief for an overseas operation. She’d read Suzanne Brockman’s books; she knew how the army worked.

“You’ll sit at the red table,” Caroline told Kirsty. “That means you’re at the blue, Lake. The women who’re auditioning will walk down the centre of the hall, and you make a mark on your sheet if you want them.”

Lake cleared his throat. Caroline looked at him blankly while he suppressed a smile.

“She means want them for models, not want them in bed,” Kirsty told him.

Caroline’s jaw dropped.

“I know that,” Lake said, but his mouth did that wanting-to-smile twitch thing that made Kirsty want to put a finger on the spot to stop it.

“Okay,” Caroline said. “You mark the women you want.” Kirsty watched Lake struggle not to laugh. “And then once it’s over, you hand the sheets to me and I’ll decide who gets whom in a fair and unbiased manner.”

“What if we want the same woman? Do we share?”

Kirsty narrowed her eyes at him.

“No. We don’t share.”

“I’ll sort it all out,” Caroline said, completely oblivious to any double meaning that was floating around.

When Caroline walked ahead of them, Kirsty kicked Lake on the back of the leg.

“Hey, what was that for?”

“You know fine well,” she told him. “Stop with the double entendres. You’ll embarrass Caroline.”

“Seriously? It goes over her head.”

“She’ll get it eventually. So stop it.”

“Fine.”

He held up his hands in mock surrender and sauntered to his appointed blue desk.

There had been an ad in the local paper announcing that anyone interested in auditioning for the fashion show should turn up ready to walk in a straight line wearing their swimwear. It had been Kirsty’s idea to get people to wear swimwear. Women were more used to being seen in public in their swimsuit then they were in their underwear. Plus, after two years of running her shop, she knew how ugly some of the underwear in Invertary was and she didn’t want to spend an hour looking at it.