My Bluegrass Baby

  “I really do,” slim, sandy-haired Angela Moser told Kelsey as I tossed the brochure at my irascible assistant. Kelsey and I were scouring Angela’s shop for something suitable to wear to the Derby, having put it off for a bit too long due to my “distractions” at the office.

  Unique Repeats was housed in a discreet restored Victorian in the historic Main Street district in Shelbyville. The location, halfway between Louisville and Frankfort, was close enough to service shoppers in both cities while offering the privacy of distance. No one wanted people to know they were selling their clothes, or that they were buying someone else’s clothes, but they definitely wanted the bargains.

  While Angela lived in the upstairs quarters, the shop level was done up like a lived-in lady’s parlor. The furnishings were beige and ivory, providing a neutral background to show off the clothes. Angela kept carefully organized racks of clothing, divided by size, in the downstairs bedrooms. She wheeled the racks into the parlor for customers to peruse while they sipped iced tea. Because we were friends, Kelsey and I got to come in after hours, drink margaritas, and put our feet up on the sacrosanct refurbished Ethan Allen coffee table while Angela made us into her personal Barbie dolls.

  Most of her clothing stock consisted of perfectly respectable Calvin Klein and Donna Karan pieces, with the occasional precious Chanel thrown in. But what drew in Angela’s customers was the shoe collection, displayed in the dining room like a sumptuous banquet of foot candy. Somehow she always managed to sniff out when small shoe boutiques or high-end department stores in surrounding states overstocked, then swooped in to buy up their untouched stock at rock-bottom prices. Jimmy Choo. Manolo Blahnik. Prada. Newer, edgier brands like Alexander McQueen. She had it all, and she was willing to sell it to us at a deep discount because she’d roomed with me junior year and she knew how I loved and cared for shoes. That, and I had never snored or asked her for money.

  Kelsey had cemented Angela’s affections with comments like the following:

  “Well, if you would relax that damn list of yours and take a spin on the next man that asked, maybe you’d be a little less cranky, Prudie McClosedKnees.”

  “I’m not a prude; I’m selective.” I sniffed as Angela pulled out a peacock-blue cocktail dress with a low-cut draped back. I shook my head while Kelsey gave her the thumbs-up. “And frankly, not many of the candidates were worth refreshing my condom stash. I’m not going to waste it on people I don’t count on seeing again. And by the way, I’m not going to take any crap from she who dates a man named Darrell.”

  “Darrell is okay,” Kelsey said defensively as Angela held up a sleek gray suit with pencil-thin slacks. I gave it two thumbs up and Kelsey vehemently shook her head. “It’s a little too power-suit for Derby Day. And you have two like it already!”

  “Don’t change the subject. Darrell is a rash on the ass cheek of humanity. He refers to himself as a ‘theoretical entrepreneur.’ He sits at home all day playing Guild of Dominion while he’s supposedly gathering ideas for some earth-shattering Web site that would allow people to hold online yard sales instead of going to the trouble of setting up card tables in their front yards. Which sounds an awful lot like eBay, but when you bring it up, he stops talking to you. You’re only dating him to keep your mom off your back,” I shot back as Angela huffed out a sigh and dug deeper into the rack.

  “Hey, hey, keep the gloves above the belt, Hutchins,” Kelsey muttered, a flush staining her cheeks as she sorted through Angela’s tray of recently acquired bracelets and costume rings.

  I instantly felt a prick of shame. Kelsey’s mother was a former runner-up in the Miss Kentucky pageant who had done her damnedest to turn Kelsey’s childhood into one long scene from Toddlers & Tiaras. When Kelsey’s body type and pesky “personality” interfered with her mother’s plans, Elizabeth Wade basically washed her hands of her daughter and told her she was her future husband’s problem. As long as Kelsey had a man, her mom seemed satisfied, no matter how screwed up that man happened to be.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her as Angela rifled through the rack. “That was going too far.”

  “It is what it is,” she said, shrugging. “And I am changing the subject—are we really going to spend our girls’ night going over campaign ideas? Because with a couple of drinks in me, I’ll agree that most anything is a good idea.”

  Well, that certainly explained Darrell. But I wasn’t going to say that aloud, because I’d already pushed her that night. Instead, I nodded toward the boxes of files she’d toted with us to Shelbyville. Far from the office, we were going to decide, once and for all, which theme I was going with.

  The first idea—“Bizarrely Bluegrass”—was my original concept, emphasizing the quirky aspects unique to the Bluegrass. Where else could you find oversize fiberglass chickens and school-bus derbies alongside all of the sophistication of multimillion-dollar research hospitals and horse culture? I would spotlight attractions like the Jefferson Davis Monument (the aforementioned miniature Washington Monument look-alike in the middle of nowhere), the Mother Goose House in Hazard, and, of course, Cave City. It was fun, and a little funky, but I couldn’t help but hear Vaughn’s voice say “quirky” in that disdainful tone.

  To which I heard my own inner voice reply, “Amen!”

  My other idea, “Kentucky—Something for Everybody,” was a bit sketchier. It was more of a middle-of-the-road approach—a little bit country gentleman, a little bit redneck. Bourbon, Fort Knox, quilt museums, barbecue festivals, and strangely themed little roadside motels. But I didn’t like the idea that I was toning myself down, which I’d never done before, because of Vaughn’s concerns about my quirkiness.

  Vaughn’s ads and press releases promoting the Derby as a runway, as an opportunity for ladies to come out and strut their stuff in their most ostentatious hats and suits, was considered widely successful. And that had eliminated any sense of humility or new-guy awkwardness. He was letting it all hang out, so to speak. He kept his office door wide open, proudly displaying sketches and rough storyboards for all the office to see. His concept was definitely themed around the idea of Kentucky as a bastion of gentility and manners. He was calling every well-known horse photographer in Lexington to get rights to elegant “horses running across a pasture” shots. And bourbon distilleries had taken to sending him sample bottles, hinting that they would love to provide a location for television or photo shoots.

  I was going to have to be better. And I was going to have to be quick about it.

  “I know it seems paranoid to work outside of the office, but I want to keep Vaughn guessing,” I told her. “If he doesn’t see any progress, he may think I’m slacking off and let his guard down.”

  “Still calling him Vaughn, huh?” Kelsey asked, tossing a black-and-green enameled bracelet at me.

  “Josh is too friendly a name for that guy. Vaughn is just detached enough,” I told her, catching it and clasping it around my wrist. “Vaughn is the name of that guy who hears you’re having a party from a mutual friend, shows up, drinks all your beer, and asks why you didn’t serve better chips. You know him, but you don’t want to.”

  “I have mentioned before that this is a place of business and not your personal girly-girl dress-up palace,” Angela said drily as she approached with a boxy pink suit reminiscent of Jackie Kennedy.

  “Am I going to be wearing a pillbox hat?” I asked.

  “Why are you being so difficult?” she groaned, stomping back to the rear of the house.

  I rounded on Kelsey. “And correct me if I’m wrong, but are you not the same person who went into his PowerPoint presentation for the Greater Louisville Area Chamber of Commerce today and took all of the l’s out of his ‘public’s?”

  “He’s going to do a speech on ‘pubic funding.’ ” Kelsey snickered, but tamped it down quickly. “I was provoked.”

  She had a point. Coming fro
m a large firm, Vaughn was clearly used to having his own personal assistant, a personal assistant who put up with a lot of crap. Despite her usually stellar level of work, Josh rarely told Kelsey “thank you” or “good job.” Rather than politely asking for something, he tended to bark orders when he was in a hurry. Such as, “Coffee, black, three sugars.” Or “2010 campground occupancy reports, yesterday.”

  It turns out that talking to somebody like they’re a coffee-dispensing robot is not a good idea when she has your password and can change your files without leaving a digital trail.

  “You are a paragon of restraint,” I assured her, digging out the files we needed. Angela cleared her throat as she came out of her pantry/secondary stockroom with a hunter-orange wrap dress and a matching jacket. “Oh, come on, it’s like you don’t even know me!”

  Angela rolled her eyes. “You know, there are colors beyond black and green. You’re not a Slytherin.”

  “I don’t only wear black and—” I looked to Kelsey, who smirked at me and glanced down at the black-and-green bracelet on my wrist . . . which went nicely with the sage-green sundress and matching sweater I was wearing. “It brings out the green in my eyes, okay? And my grandmother’s birthstone was peridot, so I have a lot of accessories to match. I don’t have to explain myself to you!” The girls cackled wildly. “I hate y’all. I really do.”

  “You wear a lot of it,” Angela said. “Besides, the orange dress was just a palate cleanser. This is what I want you to see.”

  Angela pulled out a suit-dress made from buttercup-colored raw silk with a tucked waist and three-quarter sleeves. It was gorgeous. And while I normally didn’t wear yellow, it looked rather nice with my skin tone when I held it up to my body in front of the mirror. “Are there matching shoes?” I asked hopefully.

  Angela scoffed and pointed me toward the shoe nook. “I’m insulted you have to ask.”

  “And the files are forgotten,” Kelsey murmured, sorting through some proposal sheets because she could not physically tolerate paperwork being out of order.

  “We are going to get some work done tonight,” I insisted. “Right after I look at some shoes.”

  “And by that, you mean all the shoes,” Kelsey called as I scurried into the shoe room.

  Angela turned to Kelsey, whose body-image issues made her selection process even less fun than mine, if it could be believed. “Okay, problem child, your turn.”

  • • •

  I would like to say we struck a great victory for honesty and fair play with what became known as the Pubic Funding Address. But honestly, we hurt Vaughn more when we hoarded all the jelly donuts for a week, weakening the enemy by cutting off his morning snack supplies.

  On the rare occasion I ventured into the office’s “Vaughn zones,” I was sure to find Gina perched on any available piece of furniture, engaged in some serious flirtation with him. She’d act so surprised to see me, as if she’d forgotten that I worked there, which made me want to smack her. I’d wanted to smack Gina a lot lately. While I’d always found her vapid and annoying, somehow her attachment to the carpetbagger from Ohio County had served to increase my hostility to “don’t make me take off my earrings” levels. It wasn’t jealousy, because I definitely didn’t want Vaughn. I wanted him gone.

  For the sake of professionalism, Ray had to remain impartial in our strange office-based parody of the Hatfields versus the McCoys. (Bonnie avoided us both because she thought the air of competition between our offices was “unhealthy.”)

  Josh Vaughn was tap-dancing on my last damn nerve. He was always “checking in” to see if I needed any help with my campaign, which on the surface seemed nice enough, but it was done in a condescending tone that made me want to staple his lips to his tie. He was not my boss, damn it, but he certainly was behaving like he already had Ray’s job.

  As if the mind games and “helpfulness” were not enough, he was always there. Despite my attempts to avoid being in the same room with him, he somehow always managed to be in the break room, in the elevator, in my office, in my space. He stood too close, head bent, his mouth nearly brushing my ear. It just skirted the border of inappropriate, but “almost touching me and making me feel all tingly” was nothing I could take to HR. The worst part was the damn Mothra-size butterflies it set loose in my belly when his breath grazed my neck, the stupid way my pulse sped up when he handed me a file and my fingers brushed his.

  These bizarre reactions, combined with my strong impression that he seemed to get a little more attractive with every passing day, were demoralizing. The more confident he got, the wider his smile stretched across that generous mouth. His blue eyes twinkled mischievously as he set my blood to boil. I would not be that girl, I told myself. I hadn’t fallen into the backseat with the cute quarterback who stole my homework in high school. I would not fall for the hot guy who was trying to steal my job.

  My attempts to avoid Vaughn were brought to an abrupt end one morning when Ray called us both into the conference room and tossed two hats at us. This was actually a pretty typical way for Ray to start a meeting, but Vaughn seemed startled and irritated to have a navy-blue Civil War–era slouch cap slap him in the face. I managed to cover my snicker with the large gray Confederate cavalry hat Ray had lobbed at me.

  “Okay, you two, I couldn’t help but notice that you’re still not working together like happy little campers. I respect the two of you too much to ask you to shake hands and be best friends. Well, ‘respect’ may not be the word, but it’s much nicer than the one I have in mind. This cannot continue in my office, Sadie. I mean it.”

  Josh was this close to preening over Ray laying the blame at my feet when our boss pointed a finger in his direction and said, “And that goes for you too, Josh. You’re dividing the staff, distracting them from their duties, and most importantly, causing extra stress for me when I should be coasting through my last few months here, and I just can’t have that. I expected better from both of you. So, to help speed along your journey to behaving like two civil adults, I have a little project for you.”

  Ray tossed pamphlets at us. This time, Vaughn caught his, glaring at me as if Ray’s launching meeting materials at our heads was somehow my fault. I glanced down at the glossy paper in my hand and saw that it was for the Columbus-Belmont Civil War Days.

  As in all things, Kentucky’s position in the Civil War was a unique one. The commonwealth was one of the few neutral states and was considered vital by Lincoln because of its location. But the population’s loyalty was seriously divided over issues of states’ rights and the fact that Kentucky farmers sent tobacco and whiskey to markets in both the North and the South.

  In 1861, Confederate troops claimed the hills above the Mississippi River, at the site that would become Columbus-Belmont State Park, and that neutrality was broken. Union troops moved through Paducah, eventually taking over Belmont, Missouri, just across the river, prompting Southern troops to rally around the so-called Columbus Heights and keep heavy artillery trained on the river. The siege was short-lived and the Confederates were soon cut off from their support by Union victories in Tennessee. The Heights were now a state park, complete with campgrounds and a walking trail around the preserved Confederate fortifications. Each year, in October, history buffs gathered at Columbus-Belmont for a reenactment of the battle, a Civil War Ball, and a memorial service for the fallen. It was like stepping back in time for a day, wearing the period-appropriate clothes and eating food cooked over an open fire. Kids milled around the campground, visiting the blacksmith’s tent, the glassblower, and the toymaker’s tent while their parents munched on kettle corn and candied apples. The office staff attended the encampment every year as volunteers, answering questions, leading student groups, and offering advice on how to remove candied apple from one’s hair.

  “The fall encampment has become so popular that the park is adding a summer event as a sort o
f training for people who are interested in participating but don’t know how to get in contact with a reenactors’ group,” Ray said. “The state park director wants the summer encampment to be part history boot camp, part orientation. They’re planning workshops on appropriate dress and weapons and behavior. And they’ll have vendors set up on-site to help participants start their stash of supplies.

  “And because I know that the two of you are eager to help launch this wonderful new event, you will be happy to work together to organize a campaign to promote it. Here’s your budget and the contact information. Your deadline is June first. Play nice.” Ray dropped the folder on the conference room table and walked out.

  “Is that the way he normally conducts meetings?” Vaughn asked.

  “Throwing things at us and talking like he’s a high school principal? Pretty much par for the course, yes.”

  “Where do you want to start?” he asked, stepping closer to get a better look at the paperwork Ray had left behind. He reached around me to grab a file folder, his arm sliding against the small of my back. Yet another electric shock skittered up my spine, making me jump and fumble right into him. Off-kilter in my trademark heels, I pressed my hands to his chest to catch my balance. Too close! Too close! my brain screamed as my head dipped toward his throat, my hair brushing against his chin. That summer grass scent wafting from his collar overwhelmed me. I pushed off his chest to get some distance and realized I was basically cupping his pecs in my hands like some perverted teenager.

  Vaughn eyed me with calculated interest, poised to say something that would no doubt piss me off royally. I snatched my hands away as if his very respectable chest muscles burned my skin. I snagged Ray’s papers from the table and made for the door. “I’m going to take this to my office and start brainstorming. I’ll get back to you in the afternoon with some ideas.”