Party Crashers

boyfriend—and her car—had simply disappeared. But Gary drove a Mercedes—why would he want her Mercury? In her mind, her car being stolen and Gary dropping out of sight were mutually exclusive. The uniformed man hadn't been nearly so magnanimous when he'd told her flat out that she'd been royally scammed.
    Squashing the train of thought, she gave herself a mental shake—she couldn't afford to be distracted, not now, when she needed to be on her sales game. She resumed scanning for ripe customers.
    Her gaze landed on a tanned and rumpled sandy-haired man, strangely dressed in holey jeans and an expensive sport coat, hovering near a sleek blonde to whom Michael was showing a strappy shoe that Jolie hadn't yet memorized—Stuart Weitzman? Stubbs and Wootton? Her head swam with trendy monikers. From the restless look on the man's rugged face, he was a salesman's worst enemy—a "straggler," the person who accompanies the primary shopper and shifts from foot to foot until the shopper moves along. Interesting face or no, he wasn't useful to her.
    Scan, scan— stop . Jolie cringed.
    Ten feet away, Sammy "Sold" Sanders, real-estate agent extraordinaire and Jolie's ex-boss, scrutinized a Manolo Blahnik bootie with laser blue eyes. Jolie's pulse hammered as she imagined the belly laugh that Sammy would enjoy when she discovered that her employee who had quit in a puffed-up huff over the questionable ethics of a deal had been reduced to selling shoes. Jolie had hoped to see Sammy again, but not until the Jolie Goodman Real Estate Agency was well into the black...or at least had letterhead. She stacked boxes high in her arms and lifted them to obscure her face as she hurried toward the stockroom. Maybe she could hide out until Sammy left.
    During the two hundred or so trips she'd made to and from the stockroom that day, Jolie thought she had the path and its obstacles memorized. Apparently not , she realized, as she collided with something solid and bounced back. She teetered on the heels of her sensible pumps, trying to stabilize the boxes that swayed one way and then the other. She failed spectacularly and acrobatically, falling hard on her tailbone while propelling the boxes into the air so high, she had time to envision the sound and sight of the merchandise crashing to the ground before it actually happened.
    Except it was so much worse than she'd imagined.
    The shoe boxes landed on and around Jolie in a thudding avalanche. Everyone within earshot turned to stare, including Sammy Sanders, which was bad enough on its own, but since Jolie was on the floor with her legs spread and her skirt rucked up to her thighs, it was the stuff of which nightmares were made. In those first few seconds of stunned silence, she was afraid everyone was going to start clapping, like the time she dropped her tray in the school lunchroom in the seventh grade. But no one clapped: The customers of Neiman Marcus simply seemed annoyed that she'd interrupted their pristine environment.
    "I beg your pardon," a deep voice said.
    Jolie bent her head back to find the sandy-haired man with the holey jeans standing over her, his hand extended.
    A smile played on his mouth. "I wasn't looking where you were going."
    Afraid that she might pull him down with her when she tried to stand, Jolie rolled over on her side and pushed herself to her knees before accepting his hand and being helped to her feet. His gentlemanly behavior, she noticed, didn't keep him from stealing a peek at the expanse of leg she had on display.
    "Thank you," she chirped, yanking down her hem. She'd managed to lose one of her own shoes in the aftermath, and proceeded to toe it upright and stick her foot inside before anyone noticed it wasn't a brand that came with a registration card.
    "Are you okay?" the man asked.
    She nodded, cheeks flaming "I should be asking you. I just clobbered you with five thousand dollars' worth of shoes."
    One side of his mouth lifted. "I'll live."
    But it was the smile in his brown eyes that made her tongue do a figure eight.
    Michael Lane rushed up. "Are you all right, sir?"
    "I'm fine."
    "Please accept our deepest apologies. This is Jolie's first day on the job." Michael shot her a frown that indicated it might also be her last day on the job.
    "No harm done," the man said smoothly.
    "Jolie? Jolie Goodman, I thought that was you."
    Jolie closed her eyes briefly, then turned to face the music. Sammy Sanders glided toward them in all her pink and white