Whoever had been taking care of her store while she was gone had been thorough. Even Sahara’s plants had been watered and cared for and her mail was stacked up on the middle of the table, when she arrived home two days later.
Pippin twirled around her ankles, purring happily, as she pulled the rolling suitcase into the apartment and dropped her keys on the table. The suitcase contained the more casual of Micky’s clothes, the ones that didn’t make Sahara feel self-conscious. As she’d left San Francisco wearing nothing but a tee shirt and sarong, she’d been forced to take the clothes for her return home.
There was a Fed-Ex box on the table, put to one side, like it was a last minute arrival. Sahara examined it curiously. It was for her, not the store and the return address was for the Retail Financing Corporation Ltd.
Puzzled, she opened the end of the box and tipped the contents onto the table. Silks, satin crepe and brushed cottons slithered onto the table in a glowing heap. Sahara picked up the pale green dress she had worn to Thessaly’s and held it up so the diamantes sparkled in the light from the full moon shining through her kitchen window.
She sorted through the pile. Five designer dresses. That left five more somewhere else.
“Good luck with your business, Jacqui,” Sahara whispered.
It took her a couple of weeks to find a date when Joy-May and Howard could both meet with her at once. As she had never before contemplated selling her business, she wanted both legal and accounting advice at once.
Plus, she wanted to know what to do with the check that had arrived a few days before.
Sahara hadn’t realized that she would be paid for what she had done in Seville. A week after arriving back in Ocean Beach and trying to pick up the strings of her life again, she had opened her mail to find a very large check in her name, from the United States government.
For a week she had kept the check, unable to deposit it. It felt like blood money. A payoff. She wanted to check with Howard and Joy-May on what her options were, now she had this enormous amount of cash.
Then there was the sale of the dresses too. Even on the second-hand market, they would raise a substantial amount of money and Joy-May knew far more about the fashion industry than Sahara did.
The next morning, Sahara headed for Raphael’s diner for her breakfast meeting with Howard and Joy-May. It would be the first time she had eaten there since her return. She had not been ready to face her friends and provide the painful explanations they would demand of her. Even now, she knew she would have difficulty getting through this meeting with any calmness.
The restaurant was busy, as usual and Joy-May and Howard were both sitting at Sahara’s customary table, each sipping their tea and coffee and watching the door for her arrival. She took off her sunglasses and walked up to the table. “Hi, guys.”
Howard’s mouth opened and his eyes got very large. Joy-May put down her cup of tea. “Sahara?”
“Holy shit,” Howard breathed. He jumped up, or tried to. His thighs connected solidly with the edge of the table and he sat down again with a heavy thud, thrusting his arms out for balance, pin-wheeling madly, while the people sitting closest to him at the next tables dodged his flailing hands.
Joy-May stood up and pulled out the other chair. “Now I understand why you want to sell your shop. It isn’t yours any longer.”
Sahara sat with a sigh. “No. It’s not.”
Howard gripped the edges of the table and readjusted his seating. “You look like a million dollars. Jesus. It’s amazing.”
“You’re drooling, Howard,” Joy-May said. She studied Sahara again. “It isn’t simply the clothes, is it?”
Sahara considered the designer jeans and stiletto sandals she was wearing. She had put them on this morning with barely a thought and had applied make-up and arranged her hair on autopilot, while thinking through the coming meeting. “The clothes don’t even begin to cover it,” she confessed.
Joy-May reached for her briefcase. “Then let’s get down to business. Howard, you’re still drooling.”
When Howard had left, Joy-May slowly packed up her papers while Sahara sipped her coffee.
“What will you do, once the store is sold?” Joy-May asked.
“To be honest, I have no idea,” Sahara told her. “I’m leaving the old life behind, because it no longer fits. But I don’t know what the new life will be. I can afford to take a bit of time to figure that out, though. That’s something I’ve never had before. Time to think.”
Joy-May rested her hand on Sahara’s. “You’ll be fine.”
“Thanks.”
Something heavy hit the window next to Sahara’s shoulder, making both Joy-May and her jump. Sahara looked over her shoulder and her heart came to a thundering, groaning halt, while the earth dropped out from under her.
Angel was leaning against the window, her hands around her face so that she could see inside. She saw Sahara and banged on the window with the flat of her hand, capturing the attention of everyone in the store. “Sandy, come out! Quick!” Her voice was filtered through the glass but quite distinct.
“Sandy?” Joy-May repeated and giggled. “That’s cute.”
Angel was looking to her left, further along the sidewalk and beckoned furiously. “She’s here!” she called. She looked at Sahara once more and beckoned again.
Sahara began to shake. There was only one other person Angel could be speaking to.
“Sahara, are you all right? You’ve gone completely white,” Joy-May asked.
“I have to…. I have to go outside.” Sahara got to her feet and moved through the restaurant to the front door. She could hear the silence that spread as she moved through the tables. Everyone was watching her.
She couldn’t have cared less.
Angel met her just outside the door, throwing her arms around her and jumping up and down.
Sahara looked down the sidewalk. Logan was walking toward her. Rather, he was limping, leaning heavily on a cane. Angel skipped back to him and tugged on his sleeve, pulling him along, then ran back to Sahara.
“It’s totally wicked!” Angel declared. “You’re going back to red!”
“Strawberry blonde,” Logan amended, reaching her side. He sounded winded. He was very pale and had lost weight.
But he’s here, Sahara told herself. Warmth was building inside her, spreading to her extremities. She thought she may have lost the ability to speak.
Logan’s piercing gaze pinned her to the spot, destroying the oxygen in her lungs and leaving her breathless.
He let Angel pull him right next to her.
“My dad has something to ask you,” Angel said, tugging on his sleeve with excitement.
He cleared his throat. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she returned, suddenly shy.
“You should know….” He took a breath. “There is a bootleg sound file circling the company. It’s a recording of you telling Elias what you thought of him, the night you left.”
She felt a little giddy. “Celia,” she gasped. “But how?”
“It was the morgue, Sahara. They record autopsies. There was a mike hanging over the table.”
Sahara rubbed her temple. “I didn’t think of that. I really wasn’t thinking straight that night.”
“You’ve won a small army of fans. When I got to hear it, it made me curious to know what would cause you to mouth off that way, so I managed to talk Celia into letting me hear the rest of it.”
She rubbed her temple harder. “Oh, hell.”
“But that’s not why I’m here,” Logan added quickly. “It got me here faster than I intended or the doctors liked but it’s not why I’m here. You should know that up front.”
“It’s not? Then….”
“I love you, Sahara Taylor-Hughes. I’ve loved you ever since I saw you standing up to Seoc, to draw his aim away from your friend.”
“Oh, Logan….”
“I didn’t know how to tell you,” he said, pushing past her breathless reaction. “I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get you into my life and make you stay there, seeing that my life was such a miserable circuit around hell.” He moved restlessly, easing his weight on the cane. “Well, you fixed that for me, didn’t you?” He smiled.
“You left the company?” Sahara said, holding her breath.
“In Technicolor,” Logan assured her. “I think there’s probably a second bootleg file floating around preserving my last conversation with Elias.”
She bit her lip. “Not for me, Logan. Don’t do it for me.”
“It was all for me,” he said quickly. “Once you had shown me the way out.” His smile was warm. “You were right, you know. You had me figured out and Elias couldn’t see it.” He frowned. “Well, he does now.” Then, amazingly, he laughed. It was a carefree sound that warmed Sahara all over again. She found herself smiling at him and realized that Angel was too. Angel tugged on his sleeve once more. “The question!” she demanded.
“All right, all right,” he soothed. He reached out with his free hand and took Sahara’s. “I don’t want to wait for the perfect moment, or the right place to do this. I have to do it now, Sahara, because I’ve waited too long as it is and I think a piece of me would die if I don’t do this now. Will you marry me?”
Sahara could feel the tears starting to build and blur her vision. “Can I throw my arms around you while I say yes?” she whispered.
“Hell, yes,” he growled and rested the cane against the store window and opened his arms up to her. He kissed her thoroughly and long and when she came up for air, she found they had been surrounded by everyone who had been inside the store, now clapping and laughing and celebrating the moment with them.
She looked up at Logan. “Another.”
He kissed her and she could feel her senses fade as she was drawn into the magic of the kiss, until it was just her and Logan.
Until tugging on her arm drew her back to reality. She looked down at Angel, who was tugging on her arm because she could not reach Logan’s.
“Not that question!” Angel said, sounding peeved. “The other question.”
“That question,” Logan said. “Right.” Suddenly he looked awkward and even bashful. He reached for the cane again and leaned on it, looking down at the ground.
“Logan, are you blushing?” Sahara said wonderingly.
“It seems I’m between jobs at the moment,” he said, “and I have a pretty narrow set of work skills and experience….”
“He wants you to give him a job,” Angel finished triumphantly.
Sahara felt a lightheaded laughter shake her. “A job? But summer’s over. You should have applied last spring.”
Logan’s eyes were twinkling with their own laughter.
Sahara took a breath and sobered. “I think, between the two of us, we can arrange a job. We can arrange anything.”
“Anything at all,” he agreed.