Lucky Charm by Valerie Douglas Page A

rattle around her empty apartment. As often as she was on the road, she hadn’t had the chance to make many friends. Her parents lived on the East Coast but she rarely visited them, her mother kept asking questions she didn’t want to answer. Rather than go home to nothing she’d decided she might as well stay in Florida. It would save the cost of the airplane ticket home and she could use some of the travel expense money saved to stay in a better hotel in Tampa than she had here.
    The next morning’s session went reasonably well but Miriam took one look at what she was wearing when she walked into the office and shook her head.
    “Don’t you have anything fun to wear?”
    The trim suit Ariel wore was the closest thing she had to party clothes.
    Ariel looked at her apologetically. “Sorry, Miriam, this is it. I didn’t know I was going out so I only brought business clothes.”
    Her eyes lighting up, Miriam looked at her roguishly. “Got money?”
    With amusement, Ariel nodded as she eyed Miriam warily. “Yes, I have money. A little.”
    That was all Miriam needed.
    “Ladies,” Miriam crowed to some of the others as they walked down the steps at lunchtime. Heads turned. “We’re skipping lunch and going shopping. Ariel needs something to wear for tonight.”
    Now Ariel knew another reason why so many of the employees liked Miriam.
    There was a least one whoop and assorted grins.
    “Make it something sexy,” Steve yelled, as the guys shook their heads and split off. “I’ve got first dance.”
    Miriam shouted back, “Shut up, Steve.”
    By the time they returned from lunch, Ariel had a casual dress that wouldn’t be sexy enough by Steve’s standards but was deemed acceptable by the girls and a new pair of high-heeled strappy sandals.
    It had actually been a lot of fun since she hadn’t been shopping for ages. For a little while, though, she’d understood how a Barbie doll must feel as they insisted she try on a few different dresses.
    It had been a long time since she’d actually thought about what she looked like in clothes. Most of the time she bought her business suits off the rack, choosing them more for comfort than style. There was no one she wanted to impress but she’d liked to look good.
    The dress she bought was made of real silk but it had come from the sale rack. It hugged her body but not too tightly. It looked like a sunset in patterns of rose and violet, scoop-necked with little fluttery sleeves. The skirt was definitely shorter than her suits, much shorter than she was used to. She’d liked the dress so much she’d found another one in shades of blue. The heels of the sandals were higher than she usually wore, raising her above her five foot three inch height. She’d been a little hesitant about the sandals.
    “But Ariel,” Miriam said with a conspiratorial grin, “they make your legs look great and you have great legs. Go on, live a little.”
    Rolling her eyes, she’d bought the sandals, reluctantly admitting to herself that Miriam was right. They did make her legs look great.
    Surprisingly, she found herself looking forward to the evening. It gave her afternoon training session on her last full day a lift it didn’t usually have. She’d be back in the morning just in case there were problems, but only for half a day, though, and then she’d be moving on to Tampa.
    Miriam took her home with her to her tiny apartment to change, which was very kind of her.
    That was Miriam, though, a big, hearty, merry girl with a heart to match.
    “A lot of folks from the office go to this place, it’s sort of become Marathon’s unofficial watering hole,” Miriam explained as she opened the door to the club.
    It was a cute little place with a Cuban/Latin flare and a lot of neon.
    She gestured Ariel in ahead of her.
    Around one side of the bar, everyone started clapping. Steve, predictably, wolf-whistled as Aidan from the morning session stepped out, bowed and raised his glass to