Age Before Beauty (3 page)

Her lacquered lips formed an
O
of astonishment, and her slim fingers tapped gently against the palm of her other hand as she nodded around the room for everyone to join in the applause. Allie clapped her hands a few times without enthusiasm. That’s how these people suckered you in. They made you feel like a heel if you didn’t spend enough money for your hostess to win a “lovely gift.”

“Varie Cose got its start in Italy two decades ago when an orphaned woman named Fiorenza Hyppolito fell in love. Her beloved was from an old Italian family that put a lot of store in tradition. She learned that her beau’s mother was gossiping about her around the small town where they lived. She didn’t want her son to marry Fiorenza because she was poor and didn’t even have a proper dowry.” She shook her head sadly, tsking over the travesty of an inadequate dowry.

Allie leaned toward Joan and whispered, “That’s what bridal showers are for.”

Sally Jo flashed an irritated look in her direction before continuing. “So Fiorenza decided to create her own dowry. She scoured the Italian countryside for bargains. Within a year she had assembled everything she needed to set up a proper Italian household.” A pained expression flooded Sally Jo’s features, and she placed a hand lightly at her collarbone. “But alas, Fiorenza was so exhausted by her efforts that she fell ill. While she was recovering, her beau visited her in the sanitarium and fell in love with her nurse.”

Gasps around the room drew Allie’s attention from the story. A vaguely familiar blonde in jeans and a lime green blouse wore an outraged expression. “That’s terrible! The poor girl.”

Oh, come on. Surely they weren’t falling for this story. No doubt it had a few grains of truth, but it had to have been embellished. Allie caught Joan’s gaze and lifted her eyes toward the ceiling. Joan nudged her foot and stared pointedly at the saleswoman.

“I know.” Sally Jo nodded toward the blonde. “But actually, it turned out for the best. Fiorenza couldn’t stand the sight of the dowry she’d gathered, so she sold it piece by piece.” A flash of white teeth blinded them. “And she made money, lots of it. Many people wanted to buy the items she’d found, but nobody wanted to roam the countryside to seek them out. When she’d sold everything, she started over. Before she knew it, word had spread, and she had customers calling from other towns, and then other countries. Varie Cose was born.”

“What does Varie Cose mean?” asked a heavy brunette with gigantic hoops dangling from her ears.

“It means
various things
.” Sally Jo’s ready smile burst forth again. “Which is just perfect, of course, since that’s what the product line includes. Everything you’ll ever need to run your household. It’s all delivered right to your door by your Varie Cose consultant. Once you become a Varie Cose customer, the only time you’ll ever need to shop in a store again is for groceries.”

“Boy, Tori would hate that,” Allie mumbled.

Joan’s lips twitched. Their baby sister was an enthusiastic shopaholic.

A knock sounded on the door, and Eve jumped up to answer it. Sally Jo paused as the room’s attention was diverted toward the new arrival.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” a girl’s voice said from outside. “I started packing up the car an hour ago, but then he woke up and I had to feed him, and then he messed up his outfit so I had to change him. Here.”

An arm with a diaper bag hanging from it thrust through the door, followed quickly by a young woman whose other hand clutched the handle of a blue bundle. As Eve took the bag, Allie sucked in an outraged breath. That girl was carrying a baby seat! A blue receiving blanket formed a tent over the handle to cover it completely, presumably protecting a baby inside.

She whirled in her chair to glare at Joan. “I didn’t know we could bring our babies.”

Sally Jo coughed politely. “Of course we welcome babies, but we hope a Varie Cose party will be a relaxing time away from the responsibilities of motherhood. You know,” she tilted her head toward the new arrival, “a girl’s night out.”

Allie would have bristled at the insinuation in her tone, but the young mom didn’t take offense. She laughed as she set the baby carrier beside the chair Eve had vacated. “I haven’t had one of those in so long I wouldn’t know what to do.” Her smile swept the room. “Hi, everybody. I’m Darcy.”

A chorus of greetings welcomed Darcy as she sat. She peeled the blue blanket back with exaggerated care to peer inside. Allie wanted to jump up and see the baby, but Sally Jo took control once again.

“You’re just in time for the fun part. The demonstration!”

She turned toward the corner and removed the white sheet from the card table with a flourish. Allie craned her neck to see the array of products piled on the table’s surface. There sure was a bunch of stuff.

Sally Jo pulled a stack of catalogs out of a bulging leather satchel and handed them to Allie. “Take one and pass them around, honey.” She spoke to the group. “When you get your catalog, turn to page four and you can read all about the first fun product I’m gonna demonstrate.” She snatched an item from among the jumble on the table and, beaming, held it aloft like a precious jewel. “The laundry pen!”

As she handed the stack to Joan, Allie whispered, “Oh, joy. A laundry pen.”

Eric jiggled the bottle up and down in the kitchen sink, hot water showering over its side from the faucet. Clutched in the curve of his left arm, Joanie cut off her shriek long enough to draw a quick breath and start again.

He bounced the baby in rhythm with the bottle bobbing up and down in the hot water. “Just a minute. I’m warming it as fast as I can.”

When he shook the bottle to test the temperature, the milk still felt cold. This was taking way too long. He glanced toward the microwave. Surely a few seconds wouldn’t hurt.

No. If Allie found out—and she would, because she had a sixth sense that surfaced whenever he tried to keep something from her—she would do him bodily harm. He wasn’t sure he bought her argument that the microwave changed the chemical makeup of the milk, but she certainly did. He thrust the bottle beneath the water and continued jiggling, wincing as Joanie roared her impatience.

“Shhh, shhh, it’s coming. I promise. Food is minutes away.”

Her face a deep purple, the baby gasped another lungful of air and then launched into a series of short shrieks, her body rigid. Just like his nerves. Allie had told him about the occasional fit Joanie threw if her demand for milk wasn’t instantly satisfied, but he’d only half believed her. How could such a tiny set of lungs produce such volume?

There. Surely that was warm enough. It was still a little cool, but at least he’d knocked the chill off. He shoved the nipple into the gaping mouth, and the noise cut off mid-screech as Joanie latched on and sucked like she hadn’t eaten in days. Better not tell Allie how easily she accepted the bottle.

Eric headed for the living room and settled onto a couch cushion. Feet propped on the coffee table, he tucked the bottle into his neck, held it in place with his chin, and punched the remote control On button. As he surfed through the channels, his taut nerves began to relax. They’d enjoyed some quality daddy-daughter time for the first thirty minutes after Allie left. Then Joanie lost interest in the toys dangling from her baby gym and started to fuss. She couldn’t be hungry, he’d reasoned. She’d nursed at five o’clock and wasn’t due for another meal until eight. Besides, it would be good for her to fuss a bit, build up an appetite. Learn to wait for the things she wanted. That’s how character developed.

His resolve lasted a whole five minutes—until the shrieking started.

He gazed down into her red face. “You really are a little fiend when you’re hungry, aren’t you? Your mama said you could be, but I had no idea.” Eyes scrunched tight, her greedy sucking filled the room with piggy noises. “I guess I’ve lucked out so far, since she has a ready supply of milk.”

A sitcom rerun caught his attention as he flipped through the channels. When the show first aired, he’d thought it ridiculous, another of those kid shows starring a cherub-faced blonde with a too-cute-to-be-believed lisp. But the little girl’s dimpled grin and bouncy curls as she grinned up at her on-screen daddy snagged his eye, and he let his finger hover over the channel button for a moment. In a few years, Joanie might look like that kid. Already her downy blonde hair pressed against her skull in damp waves when she finished her bath. Maybe when it was longer, it would curl like that. And her eyes, though still infant dark blue, would probably get lighter as she grew, maybe greenish like Allie’s.

He pressed a finger into his daughter’s fist. “You’re gonna be a knockout like your mom, kid,” he told her.

At the rate she was growing, she’d be crawling before they knew it, and then walking, and then skipping on a jump rope or whatever little girls did.

An image flashed into his mind, the picture of a pretty four-year-old who’d gone missing from her babysitter’s yard over in Lexington a few years back. Dozens of those photos decorated the bulletin boards in the hallways at Eastern Kentucky University where he’d attended the dispatcher training program. Kids who got snatched came in all shapes and sizes, but cute little blonde girls seemed to be special targets for the sickos of the world.

He gripped Joanie tighter to combat the fear that accompanied the thought. “Not you, though,” he vowed, his voice a whisper. “Not on my watch.”

Surprising how quickly he fell into the role of Protector of the Family. The depth of his protective instincts for his kid still astonished him because they’d come on so quickly. Allie, of course, changed personalities like the wind changed directions. He’d watched her go from sexy college student to eager wife to expectant mama to a maternal force to be reckoned with, all in the space of a few years. The way she threw herself into each part, embracing it with gusto, was nothing short of amazing to him. He, on the other hand, remained basically the same guy as the one who flirted with the gorgeous blonde at the campus pizza restaurant a few years back.

Until the baby came along. He set the remote control on the cushion and traced a finger lightly over the soft skin of Joanie’s cheek. From the moment that squalling bundle drew her first breath, something like awe settled on him, and it hadn’t left yet.

The doorbell chimed, followed by an impatient
rap
,
rap
,
rap
on the metal frame of the storm door.

He wasn’t expecting anyone. Probably Carla, Allie’s mom, stopping by to see how he was doing with his first babysitting job. Good thing he liked his in-laws. He saw a lot of them lately. He heaved himself to his feet as carefully as he could, trying not to jostle Joanie as she ate. Not that it mattered. The little piggie sucked with vigor, gulping loudly.

The doorbell sounded again.

“Hang on a sec,” he shouted. Bottle propped beneath his chin, Eric twisted the door handle and pulled it open. When he saw who stood on the front porch, his jaw went slack. The bottle dropped to the floor, and Joanie let out a shriek.

Stunned, Eric could only stare.

3

Allie sipped from her glass of diet soda, a paper plate covered in cake crumbs balanced on her knees. Sally Jo had interrupted her product demonstrations long enough to allow them to fill a plate, grab a drink, and return to their seats to view the next batch of stuff-no-home-should-be-without.

Joan leaned sideways. “If you see anything you like, let me know. I still haven’t gotten you a birthday present.”

Allie awarded her a withering glance. “If you buy me a laundry pen for my birthday, I’ll never speak to you again.”

Joan laughed as Sally Jo selected an item from the table and made a show of holding it behind her back. She flashed a grin with the manner of one who is about to show them a map to the fountain of youth. “And now we move into my favorite product line. Can anyone guess what that is?”

Allie turned her head so Joan could read her lips.
Tooth
care?
she mouthed. Beyond Joan, the girl named Brittany noticed and hid a laugh behind her glass.

“Makeup!” Sally Jo announced, beaming as she whipped out a tube of lipstick and held it before her like a kid taking a turn at show-and-tell. “But actually, it’s so much more than makeup. Varie Cose offers an entire line of skin care products far superior to anything else I’ve ever tried. And believe me, ladies, I’ve tried a lot of them.”

Judging by the amount of makeup layered on her face, Allie figured she must have tried them all tonight, one on top of the other.

“Skin care is by far our most popular product line, with the cleaning products coming in a close second. Why, sixty percent of my sales each week are makeup items.”

“Sixty percent?” Allie glanced at the table in the corner, at all the stuff piled on top of it. “You must sell a lot of makeup.”

“Trust me,” Sally Jo said, her smile secretive. “I really do.”

Allie’s ears perked up. How much money did the woman make selling this stuff? Enough to support herself?

As Sally Jo drew breath to launch into a description of the lipstick she held, Allie interrupted. “Do you have a job, Sally Jo, or do you do this full-time?”

Around the room, the ladies stopped flipping through the pages of their catalogs to listen to Sally Jo’s answer.

“Varie Cose
is
my job, though I only work part-time. In fact …” She paused and let a conspiratorial smile sweep the room. “I’ve been so successful, I got my car only four months after I signed on as a consultant, and I moved up three levels in just a year. You may have seen my Lexus in the parking lot.”

Allie looked closer at the woman. Nice clothes. Expensive shoes. Lexus. The Varie Cose business must be pretty lucrative.

She sat back in her chair as Sally Jo launched into a detailed description of the amazing staying power of Varie Cose’s lipsticks. Just how lucrative, though? Enough to match her paycheck as a state employee? If she worked part-time as a Varie Cose consultant, she wouldn’t have to take Joanie to daycare at all. Most of the parties would be held in the evening, like this one. Now that Eric was on first shift, he would be at home in the evenings. All the business stuff, the ordering and paperwork and all that, could be done during the day while Joanie napped or played.