Hook Shot (Hoops 3)

There’s something calming about sewing. The hum of the machine. The rhythm. Watching a creation take life and shape under your hands in real time. It’s always soothed me in ways few other things do. I was a wild, angry, damaged twelve-year-old when I landed in MiMi’s care. She wasn’t sure how to occupy my time, how to direct the violent storm churning inside of me, so she tried everything. Some things stuck, and some didn’t. But from the first time she sat me down at her Singer, sewing made sense.

“You almost done with that?” Yari asks from the doorway leading back to the atelier’s workroom.

I like to sew alone. It gives me time to think. Out there on the floor, there’s a dozen languages the seamstresses speak, flying around and distracting. And the gossip is non-stop. I like to see where my thoughts take me. Sewing is meditative and not for the chaos of the workroom.

“Yeah.” I hold up the dress for Yari’s inspection. “I had to tear the whole seam out and start all over.”

“Looks good.” She takes the dress, folding it over her arm. “I’ll get this to the seamstress so she can start on the buttons. Meanwhile, JP wants you in his office.”

“Did he say for what?” I stand and stretch out the muscles locked tight while I concentrated at the sewing machine.

“Nope.”

We leave the backroom together, she headed for the workroom, me up the steps to JP’s office. His door is open, so I knock on the doorframe. He glances up from his position on the floor, kneeling in front of a woman easily six feet tall.

“Oh good,” he says around a mouthful of pins. “You’re here.”

I walk over and hold out my hand. He drops the pins from his lips into my palm.

“I meant to ask you something yesterday.” Still on his knees, he shifts on the floor from her front to her side, adjusting the fuchsia material he’s draping into the shape of a dress for the September show. I rotate with him, handing him a pin without him having to ask. We work well together, read each other well.

“Yesterday?” I frown because JP is notoriously last-minute. “What do you need?”

“Your eye. Your sense of style. Your essence.” He bats his lashes through all the BS flattery. “For you to come with me on a shoot today.”

“Sure.” I nod and hand him another pin. “I didn’t know we had one scheduled.”

“It’s kind of last minute.”

Shocker. “Oh?”

“Yeah, Kenan’s going out of town next week, so I asked Chase if he could shoot today instead.”

I accidentally prick my finger with a pin at the mention of Kenan’s name.

“You know,” I say, sucking the sore finger, “maybe I should stay here. We’re expecting that shipment of silks today, and I wanted to be here to receive them. It’ll throw off our whole production schedule if anything happens to that delivery.”

“Anybody can sign for a package,” he says dismissively. “You are the only one Kenan wants to see.”

I freeze, glaring at my boss, the matchmaking devil. “Did he ask me to come or something?”

“Not in so many words.”

“In how many words?”

“I mean, the man agreed to do the whole campaign for a chance to kiss you,” JP says, sparing me a glance away from the material he’s draping and pinning over the model’s hip. “I’d be a fool not to keep you close.”

“You mean use me?”

“Don’t think of it that way, Lo.” He turns teasingly calculating eyes up to me from the floor. “Or do. Either way, you’re coming.”

He adjusts one last fold on the dress, and pats the model’s bottom. “Go on, cherie, and ask Yari to take a picture before you disrobe.”

The model turns on bare feet and glides gracefully through the office door.

“And watch my pins,” JP yells after her. “Be careful taking that dress off. It’s worth your weight in gold.”

He grabs his man pouch and turns to me. “Ready?”