Chapter Thirteen

“I can’t concentrate in flats.”

—Victoria Beckham

What had her life devolved to when Sylvie had only thrown one pair of flats into her overnight bag? Not a single pair of chunky heels, knee boots, or mules. Every girl knew nothing made your butt look better than a pair of heels. They were the most often used weapon in a battle of seduction, and Sylvie needed everything in her armor to get Tony to see past his self-imposed rules.

She dug through her Louis Vuitton orange leather duffel, praying to the fashion gods that she’d find something hidden in its depths. Her fingertips hit the soft suede bottom. Shit, not only were there no heels, but her search failed to discover a second pair of shoes at all. She plopped down on the bed in Tony’s room, knocking the overnight bag to the floor. Even when she’d had only two pairs of shoes in her closet at her last foster home, if she ever went anywhere, both pairs came with her.

Priorities, sister. You weren’t exactly thinking straight when you packed that bag. You’re hiding from the stalker nut job who broke into your apartment.

True. But here in Tony’s manly man bedroom in the wilds of Waterberg, the disturbing reality of her life seemed like a child’s game of pretend. Which, in fact, it had been. Pretending to be the High-Heeled Wonder. Pretending to be happy in a relationship with a man whom she knew didn’t love her. Pretending she wasn’t petrified of taking chances.

But she was done with all that.

She slid her feet into the muted eggplant-and-navy-striped Fendi ballet flats. Today, she was the no-heeled wonder on a mission to get her groove back.

She stood, and her jeans, tailored for wearing with three-inch heels at the minimum, pooled at her feet. She sighed. And so the transformation begins.

After a quick assessment in the mirror, she went to work. She rolled her jeans until they stopped just above her ankle, swapped the patterned blouse for a cream tank, and slipped on her favorite cropped navy blazer. A chunky gold necklace and a few bangles finished the look. It wasn’t her usual armor, but somehow it worked.

Bring it on, world. I’m ready for you.

As if hearing her thoughts, her phone chirped. Then it gonged. A piano trill sounded a second later. Holy crap. Henry, Drea, and her sister all texting her within thirty seconds of each other. Her insides became as fizzy as a shaken soda. So not good. She grabbed the phone and peered at it with one eye closed.

She opened Henry’s first.

Honey, I know a lot of crazy things are going on in your life right now, but today’s posts aren’t like you at all.

What was he talking about?

Drea’s text was a bit longer. And even more stress inducing.

Are you smoking crack with HHW posts?!? Also did you see Pippa’s quote in FashionWear Daily about you coming out as the HHW? “Really, it’s not surprising considering her background and her fathers. Not that it matters. These so-called fashion bloggers will never make a lasting impact on the world. They lack taste. They lack knowledge. They lack influence. The real power will always be with Chantal. Always.” Da-y-um! Wear kevlar to fundraising dinner tomorrow. Don’t worry. I’ll bring the Uzi! :)

Shit. This could not be good.

Heart pounding, she punched up the last text. Anya was more diplomatic, but the trend continued.

It was satire? Yes?

All of the bubbles inside Sylvie’s stomach replicated and grew until they squashed her lungs against her rib cage. In three clicks she had the High-Heeled Wonder Web site up on her phone.

The top of the page was taken up by a large candid photo of a plus-sized model eating chocolate cake with the headline: Do Fatties Have a Place in Fashion?

Her cheeks flamed as her blood thundered through her veins.

She scrolled down. A photo of a well-known buyer for a major department store sniffing white powder off a woman’s naked butt appeared next, with the headline: How Certain Fashion Lines End Up in Stores.

The bubbles in her abdomen popped, replaced by a panic that squeezed her kidneys.

The final image had been taken outside of her apartment building. It showed her smiling and walking down the steps, waving to an unseen someone in the distance. A crudely drawn cartoon dialogue bubble floated over her head: Hi! My Name Is Sylvie Bissette and I’m the High-Heeled Wonder!

Her fingers fumbled frantically on the touch screen as she typed in her password on the blog login page. Denied. She tried again. And again. Each time, an error message flashed across the screen. Damn! She’d meant to change the password last night, but after getting all freaked out seeing Tony’s file on her fathers, she’d forgotten about doing it. The asshole stalker must have changed the password. She couldn’t access her own site.

She stumbled backward until her back hit the wall. The phone slipped from her fingers, whacking against the hardwood floor with a hollow thud. My God. Those horrible posts. Mean. Ugly. Nasty. The bastard had turned her whole life to shit with the click of a mouse. He wouldn’t be the only one calling for her to shut down the blog now. If it hadn’t been her own Web site, she’d be one of the voices calling for the blogger’s head.

Her muscles screaming with the need for action, she swiped her phone off the floor, tossed it onto the bed, and paced the twelve-by-fourteen room. Fury boiled her blood to cold fusion levels. Which cleared her thinking and let her brain zero in on what needed to be done. Like Rocky, she apparently had to get knocked around before she could work up enough anger to land a killer punch.

She really wanted to pull the asshole’s fingernails out with a rusty pair of pliers. But that was way too good for the bastard. No. This dirtbag needed to be stripped of his anonymity and exposed for everyone to see, along with his crimes. There had to be something in those posts that gave him away.

She’d find it, and she’d nail his ass to the wall.

She couldn’t wait. She stormed out of Tony’s bedroom. Pumped up on righteous indignation, she peeled around the corner into the kitchen—

And jerked to a stop.

The early morning sunlight filtered in through a bay window, casting a warm glow around Tony, who wore a pair of worn jeans frayed at the bottom…and nothing else.

Bare toes.

Hard abs.

A police shield bisected by a black band tattooed on his left shoulder.

Her insides went gooey and she caught her breath. The man before her was very bad in a very, very good way. “W-when did you get back?” she stammered.

“About ten minutes ago. Long enough for a quick shower.” He cracked an egg on the edge of a frying pan, and the yolk sizzled as soon as it hit the heated surface. “Ready for breakfast?”

She knew just how that little yellow goop felt. “I’m so ready.”

“Good. Grab an orange juice and sit down. These will be done in a second.”

Her brain jerked back into control, resurrecting her anger and bringing high indignation along as backup. Spending the morning eyeballing Tony’s six-pack out of the corner of her eye was so not going to happen. “Wait. We don’t have time to eat.”

He flipped the egg and then reached up and took down the pepper from a cabinet. A few sprinkles and he slid the egg out of the pan and onto a plate. The motion set off a ripple of muscles across his back. “There’s always time for breakfast,” he said calmly.

“Somebody hacked into the High-Heeled Wonder and put all sorts of hateful crap on my blog. Like I wrote it. Plus they outed me.”

He paused, the pan hovering above the stovetop. The muscles in his shoulders danced for a moment, and then he clanked the Faberware down and grabbed the plate with a curse.

“So much for having one single fucking thing in our favor with this stalker.” Tony laid a blue plate loaded with toast, strawberries, and a fried egg on the table in front of her. “I’ll go grab my laptop. You eat.”

“What is with you and food?”

“I’m Italian.” He shrugged. “Eat.”

Sylvie had finished crunching her way through the toast when he returned, his fingers thrumming across the keyboard as he walked.

“Can you hack into the site so I can take that shit down?”

“Yes, but I won’t.”

Her jaw dropped before she remembered her mouth was full of toast. “Why the hell not?” She wanted to scream in frustration.

“Because our boy has moved to the next level. Meaning he’s about to make a mistake…if he hasn’t already. And then we’ll get him.” Emitting a low whistle, he pulled out a chair and sat down. “What can you tell me about these photos?” He indicated the oh-so-fucking-lovely pics accompanying the vile posts.

Looking at the High-Heeled Wonder’s bloodied carcass made the toast rhumba in Sylvie’s stomach. In one fell swoop, the bastard had torched everything she’d spent years building. Her audience would rebel. Advertisers would abandon her. Worst of all, her family and everyone she loved would pay the price, too. Guilt by association was practically a bylaw written into the fashion world’s social contract.

Whatever it took, she was going to hunt this weasel down and make him pay, big time.

She pointed at the woman eating cake. “This is Estelle Vance. She’s the premiere plus-sized model in the industry. Gorgeous woman, great personality, and smart as hell. She’s walked in several of my fathers’ shows.” She pointed to the next picture. “That’s Bob Shneizer, head buyer for Dylan’s Department Store, taking a hit off of Mila Kontis’s right butt cheek.”

“How can you tell whose ass it is?” He stared at the screen showing a woman’s body but not her face. She couldn’t blame him. Mila’s back was arched and her right arm raised above her head, showing off her cellulite-free behind to perfection as she lay on the glass coffee table.

“Tattoo on her elbow.” Sylvie touched the screen, an inch below the Olympic rings tattoo. “She won a silver medal in archery.”

Tony grunted and leaned in for a closer look. Close enough that his breath practically steamed up the screen.

Sylvie fought the urge to kick him in the shins. Hard.

“Hot damn.” His voice had risen an octave.

“What?”

“There’s something reflected in the glass. See it? Right…here.” His pointer finger landed three inches up from the crack of Mila’s ass.

Squinting, she could almost turn the blur into a recognizable form. “I give up. What is it?”

Tony clicked a camera icon on the desktop and opened the photo to full screen. Mila’s butt took up seventy-five percent of the space. He scrolled upward until the blur took center stage. A few more clicks and he zoomed in further. Two pinkish, pixelated triangles appeared.

An answer tugged at her subconscious, taunting her. While she tried to yank the truth to the forefront, Tony grabbed his phone and dialed.

“Hey, Carlos, I’m sending you a picture. The resolution is for shit. I need you to clean it up and get it back to me.” He paused. “It could be the thing that breaks this case wide open. I need it yesterday, man.” He nodded. “Great.”

He set the phone down between them and they both stared at the screen as if it were the second coming of Coco Chanel.

She said, “It could be a street sign.”

“Maybe, but the color seems off.”

“A picture?”

“That’s my guess. Or…it could be a store logo.”

She tilted her head to gain a different perspective. Still nothing. Chewing the inside of her cheek, she tilted her head the other way.

The cell buzzed. “Hiya,” Tony answered.

The gears shifted in Sylvie’s head. Hiyah. As in a karate kick. With a high falsetto… She whipped her head around and locked onto the screen.

Little pink triangles.

“Tony, those are Miss Piggy ears.” Her words wheezed out, squeezed out of her by the too tight corset of realization. “Just like the ones in Anders Bloom’s last collection.”