Dangerous Curves Ahead: A Perfect Fit Novel Read Free

pair of jeans that covered her heels. Ellis’s personal services weren’t cheap, but when those women walked out with a garment that fit them perfectly, they were more than happy to pay the price. They were grateful and loyal, and they were the reason Ellis would continue to live on canned soup and boxed cereal.
    If things stayed just the way they were, she would be fine. But if anything happened, anything at all—if the air conditioner broke, or her computer died, or the wind blew the wrong way—she would be done for. She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t give Jack the satisfaction of watching her fail. She couldn’t go back to the career that made her miserable.
    “I can see you thinking,” Cherri said. “You are having that daily internal battle where you’re wondering if quitting your job, dumping your asshole boyfriend, and opening this store was a mistake.”
    “You know me so well,” she grinned at Cherri.
    “I do,” Cherri said softly. “I want to be you when I grow up.”
    Ellis could barely afford to keep Cherri on as a worker, but she would forever. Cherri was a good girl. She was mature. She worked hard, went to school full-time, had another job in her college’s library, and took care of her grandmother, but those weren’t the only reasons Ellis admired her. Cherri was probably the most beautiful woman Ellis had ever seen, with thick golden hair and a face so classic it should have been painted. But Cherri wasn’t like most twenty-one-year-old girls. She was over six feet tall, and while her body was ample and lush it was far from model-like. Far from the notice of boys her age. Ellis knew how she felt. Ignored. Like an outsider. Ellis had opened Size Me Up for the outsiders, and she would gladly forgo a paycheck to ensure Cherri had this place, too.
    “I want to be you when I grow up.” She gently squeezed the girl’s arm. “Now be a good little worker and go to my office and balance the books.”
    “Sorry. I can’t. I’m no good with numbers. That’s why I majored in art.”
    Ellis threw back her head and whimpered. “Please. I suck at the business part of owning a small business. I just want to make pretty clothes.”
    “You don’t have to worry about the books, Ellis. Just let them sit there. Of course if you do, the only clothes you’ll be making will be out of old newspapers you find on park benches. We can make it a trend. Call it homeless chic.”
    “Wow.” Ellis blinked at her young friend. “That’s some effective guilt.”
    “I live with a seventy-four-year-old lady. I learned from the best.”
    Ellis flashed Cherri a grin before taking a huge bite of her cookie. The sugary rush gave her the strength she needed to stop whining and face the mess in her office. “I’m heading back to the grind.”
    When she got back to her office, papers were still scattered all over her desk and her bookkeeping software was still up. All the numbers were the same as when she’d left half an hour ago. Apparently the office-managing elves had yet to pay her a visit.
    “This is fucking depressing,” she whispered, taking yet another bite of her Black and White. The cookie was really good. Just like she’d imagined, and she didn’t even have to touch a penny from her meager savings to enjoy it. Too bad that whenever she ate one from now on she would think of the man who’d bought it for her.
    Mike Edwards played a bigger part in her life than anybody had known. At first he was the hot guy in her neighborhood she fantasized about from afar. Her secret crush. Which became not so secret anymore when she pointed him out to her older sister. To this day she didn’t understand what had possessed her sister to go after him. But Dina did go after him. She brought him to Ellis’s apartment. Forced Ellis to spend time with them and then had the nerve to try to have sex with him in her bed the night of her law school graduation party.
    That was the night things irrevocably changed