Pink Slipper Read online

  Pink Slipper

  Gina Robinson

  Gina Robinson

  Contents

  Copyright

  GinaRobinson.com

  What is a Pink Slipper?

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  What’s Next and Free Offer

  The Billionaire Duke—Excerpt

  About the Author

  Also by Gina Robinson

  Copyright © 2011 by Gina Robinson.

  * * *

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Gina Robinson

  www.ginarobinson.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Pink Slipper/ Gina Robinson. — 1st ed.

  Created with Vellum

  GinaRobinson.com

  Visit ginarobinson.com to sign up for my VIP New Releases List. You’ll get exclusive access to new release notifications, series announcements, and more! Get the Gina Robinson Starter Library FREE for signing up!

  The Billionaire Duke Series

  Part 1—The Billionaire Duke

  Part 2—The Duchess Contest

  Part 3—The Temporary Duchess

  Part 4—The American Heir

  The Switched at Marriage Series

  Part 1—A Wedding to Remember

  Part 2—The Virgin Billionaire

  Part 3—To Have and To Hold

  Part 4—From This Day Forward

  Part 5—For Richer, For Richest

  Part 6—In Sickness and In Wealth

  Part 7—To Love and To Cherish

  The Billionaire’s Christmas Vows

  Gina Robinson’s Contemporary New Adult Romance Series

  The Rushed Series

  These standalone romances can be read in any order. But it’s more fun to read them all!

  Book 1—Rushed, Zach and Alexis’ story

  Book 2—Crushed, Dakota and Morgan’s story

  Book 3—Hushed, Seth and Maddie’s story

  The Reckless Series

  Ellie and Logan’s love story begins one hot August night. This series should be read in order.

  Book 1—Reckless Longing—FREE

  Book 2—Reckless Secrets

  Book 3—Reckless Together

  pink’ slip’, (pingk’ slip’) n., notice of dismissal from one’s job (1910-1915) In reality, a slip of paper that’s never pink, an announcement that one’s career is on a downward slide.

  * * *

  A license to look for work. A stab in the back by a company to which one’s been loyal, devoted hours of conscientious work, and plotted a climb up the ladder.

  * * *

  pink’-slip’, (pingk’ slip’) v.t.,-slipped, -slip-ping to dismiss from a job: Leesa’s ex-best friend Cara pink-slipped her on Friday after buying her lunch. (1950-1955, example from the present)

  * * *

  pink’ slip’ per, (pingk’ slip’ er) n., 1. A light, low shoe, worn mainly indoors, that may be slipped on or off easily, in the color of pink. 2. A person who has been pink-slipped.

  * * *

  —Standard dictionary definitions available online and elsewhere (updated, revised, and expanded upon by Leesa Winsome)

  Chapter 1

  Job-free days: 32, but who's counting?

  July Unemployment Log

  (Required by Washington State to continue to receive the weekly pittance. Generally only kept by rule-followers like me. The state never checks these things, so why not have fun with it?)

  Applications to date: 6 monster.com, 8 dice.com, 3 workaholic.com, 5 jobfox.com, 2 want ads.

  Number of online résumés posted: 12

  Number of interviews to date: 3 No new ones scheduled.

  Number of rejections: (Excuse me, responses. I must remember to keep a positive attitude.) 4 auto e-rejects

  Tasks for the day:

  1. Check e-mail for the perpetually perky message—we found a job that matches your specifications! (Exclamation point supplied by workaholic.com.) Do the ritual "apply" thing.

  2. Haggle with insurance company about beloved bungalow kitchen and bedroom reduced to ashes and sooty puddles during the great remodeling adventure.

  Bank account level: I feel an overdraft coming on. Depending on Employment Security to automatic deposit on time.

  Self-esteem: nonexistent

  Optimism level: Optimism, must look up meaning in the dictionary. If "optimism" has obscure usage as depressed, have plenty, no need for more.

  Thought for the day:

  Pink has gotten a bum rap over the years. Like most girls, I like pink. It’s a feminine color, my personal favorite. A classic for lipstick, blush, eye shadow, and nail polish. Hot pink, soft pink, fuchsia—I look great in any shade, most blondes do.

  So how did such a fabulous color cuddle up to an association with a layoff notice? Pink felt a desperate need for notoriety, maybe? The slut! Preferring infamy to obscurity!

  How’s this? Let’s rename termination notices after a color no one likes, like puce. Puce slip kind of sounds like how you feel about the time you get the slip, that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. And deep red to brownish purple? Come on, what’s to love about a color like that?

  Three pink slips in five years qualify me as a pink slipper. In my dreams I’d be the vavavoom fifties glamour girl slipper with the killer heels and feathers at the toes. But it’s hard to vavavoom anyone while wearing a salvaged wardrobe speckled with ember holes. I’d settle for reliable bunny slipper.

  * * *

  In troubled times, many people run to the bosom of their family for comfort. I generally just run—in the opposite direction. The bosom of my family is as soft, natural, and nurturing as an old silicone implant. But losing my job and coming home to a toasted bungalow had driven me back to my father’s house and his kitchen table, which is where I found myself the morning my sister Julie dropped the bomb.

  "Daddy has a surprise for you." Julie could look very catlike when she chose. With her dark-brown hair swept up and clipped behind her head, loose ends escaping, she even had the appearance of feline ears, perked up and ready to delight in the damage she wreaked.

  "I do indeed have a surprise for you." Dad sounded too nonchalant. It took a practiced ear to discern malfeasance in his tone, but I’d had thirty-two years of it.

  I feared the infamous surprise. Surprise never boded well for me in the Winsome household. Surprise meant getting a dress on special from JCPenney while Julie got a designer label. Somehow I had the feeling that scenario was about to repeat itself.

&
nbsp; My father shoved a brochure across the table at me. Under his breath he hummed a little ditty I recognized from my youth, the "get a job" song he’d composed when I was fourteen.

  I caught a glimpse of a glossy featuring a high rise building and a skyline suspiciously like Seattle’s. "What’s this?" The question slipped out. Did I really want to know?

  "We’ve decided that you could use a little help." His tone implied professional help.

  Great. My family bosom struck again, smashing me with the steel teat.

  When I gave Dad the I’m-not-happy look, he added, "with the job search."

  "Breakthrough to Greatness Seminar?" I scooped up the brochure. "The Northwest Institute," I read aloud, amazed that I could read at all considering how stunned I felt. "You’re sending me to one of those hokey, pop psychology seminars! You know I don’t believe in that touchy-feely stuff."

  Julie took a coy bite of toast, but I felt her gloat just the same as if she’d sniggered.

  "Think of it as a retreat, Lees. Alice put me onto the idea."

  Of course my godmother was behind the idea. Dad wouldn’t think of my well-being without prodding. I consoled myself that if Alice suggested this seminar, it must have some merit.

  I flipped open the brochure. "Join us for an explosive seminar that will empower you to transform the results you are producing in your life. In our dynamic program you will: learn to take charge of your destiny, consciously navigate the future, release limiting decisions, break through limitations of past personal programming, role model and integrate excellence, and reprogram your mind for total career and life success!

  "Set in beautiful downtown Seattle, Washington against the backdrop of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains, The Northwest Institute offers the finest in life coaching and counseling services in a comfortable urban environment…"

  Attend some boring seminar! I don’t think so.

  "Thanks, Dad, but no, thanks. I’m not into this motivational boloney."

  Dad reached across the table and patted my hand again, trying in his own way to be encouraging. "Successful people teaching you how to achieve greatness. Think about it, Leesa. Everyone wants to be great."

  I crossed my arms, letting my closed body posture speak for itself.

  "Alice assures me that this seminar is innovative and upscale." Dad would play the Alice card on me.

  But I wasn’t budging. "Why don’t I just bag the seminar? You can give me the money you spent on it for something more pressing, like say, a new wardrobe? I don’t need any…help."

  "Nice try." Julie set her napkin on the table. "You’ve been cracking up around here lately. Moping around, sleeping all hours. You need counseling and you know it. You’re adrift. You have been since college and that short-lived engagement you had."

  I flinched.

  "You can’t hang on to a job or catch a man," she continued. "Who knows? Maybe you’ll meet someone at this seminar and kill two birds with one stone. At the very least it’ll give you something to do while Daddy and I are on our vaca."

  This from the relationship queen—one divorce and a series of failed relationships.

  "You mean a jobless, loser man?"

  Something didn’t smell right, and I mean literally. I sniffed the air. "Do I smell… Smoke!"

  The smoke alarm sounded simultaneously with my realization. My mind flashed back to the horrific vision of my bungalow kitchen engulfed in laughing, licking flames. Flames that danced up the walls and roared at the firemen who tried to douse them as I watched from across the street, helpless.

  Ohmygosh, Dad’s kitchen was going down, too! With us in it! My pulse roared into overdrive, pounding in my ears. Flames shot from the toaster.

  I lunged for the fire extinguisher that I made Dad keep in the pantry. Almost instinctively, I pulled the pin from the trusty Kidde XG41, and blasted the base of the flames from slightly more than six feet back, just like the instructions on the unit said. Just the way I’d drilled after my house became toast. I would have made the fire marshal proud, I felt certain, as I stood there shaking.

  Julie stood up, slack-jawed, and came to stand next to me by the foaming toaster, which chose that moment to ding. A piece of frothing toast popped up.

  "Toast anyone? Butter? A little fire retardant?" I felt nauseous and suddenly cold. My knees went weak. I started laughing and couldn’t stop.

  Julie put her arm around me and led me back to my chair. "She’s totally cracked up," she said to my father, who’d gone over to inspect the damage.

  No damage done, all danger averted, I told myself.

  "What were you trying to do?" I said as I wiped my eyes. I was still laughing. "Toast the house!"

  Julie’s gaze traveled from Dad and the toaster to me. "Sorry. I must have bumped the controls when I put in that last piece of bread." She gave me a squeeze. "It’s not funny, Leesa. Come on, buck up."

  Dad grabbed the toaster and hauled it out to the garbage. When he came back, he gave me a stiff hug. "Breakthrough to Greatness. No more arguments, kid."

  Julie smiled like the picture of the Cheshire cat in our childhood copy of Alice in Wonderland, the picture that always gave me nightmares. She knew she’d won. I wondered what was next for me—total greatness or life in the looney bin?

  Chapter 2

  Job-free days: 33

  July Unemployment Log

  Number of rejections: Does my family leaving without me count?

  Task for the day: Live through it.

  Bank account level: $432 The unemployment check has been credited to my account. Will splurge and treat myself. Can buy candy and pop and binge until I die of a sugar overload, which sounds pretty good at this point.

  Thoughts for the day:

  Family sucks. Maybe Julie is right. I was switched at birth. Out there somewhere is a frustrated woman whose family smothers her with love and common sense, but accuses her of squandering money on vanity. Tragic really. Wonder how I can find my real family? I smell a book deal and a movie of the week, maybe a lawsuit. Big money, big money. Won’t need a job again! Internet search, do you think?

  * * *

  Alice stopped by. She let herself in without knocking. "Anyone home? Leesa?"

  I was in Dad’s shop in the garage, involved in my ongoing salvage operation when I heard her call from the house. I extricated myself from rubbing alcohol, rags, and stacks of movies and CDs, and bounded up the few stairs from the garage into the house, breathless from too much lying around and lack of exercise. I needed to make a new rule about exercising. Wiping soot from DVDs probably doesn’t count as cardio-vascular exertion.

  "No one here but us chickens," I said as I came around the corner into the entryway. "The family executives are at WAR."

  Julie went to work for Dad at Winsome Aerospace Retrofitters, like a dutiful daughter, and had been breezing her way up the corporate ladder ever since.

  Alice gave me a concerned once-over and wiped a smudge of soot from my nose. I wore one of Dad’s castoff shirts that hung on me like a kindergartner’s painting smock, sleeves cut off in concession to summer, and a pair of cutoffs. Very stylish.

  "Does Jack know you’re pilfering his wardrobe?" she said in a teasing tone as we moved into the living room.

  "This old thing?" I laughed. "Dad had it in the charity box. I figure I’m charity case enough these days. Can I get you something? Pop, iced tea, water?"

  "No, thanks."

  I fell into an overstuffed chair. Alice took the sofa.

  "How goes the salvaging?" Alice looked her usual self—calm, and put together. She’d colored and cut her hair, and acquired a hint of a tan since I’d last seen her.

  "Thank heavens for iPods is all I have to say. I’ve only recovered about half of my CD and DVDs. There’s a lot of meltage." Salvaging was a safe topic. "I have good documentation. The insurance company should pay to replace most of what I lost.

  "I never thought I’d be grateful to Brett for anything, but I’m glad he
insisted on making that inventory video for me years ago."

  "Brett’s anal retentive, but he always did have good common sense."

  Alice never seemed to like my boyfriends, which had been few and far between these last years. Let me see, I broke up with Brett, what, a year and a half ago? Who had I dated since then? Had I even been on a date?

  "I hear you had an incident with a toaster and a fire extinguisher," Alice continued. "Another flare-up of your pyrophobia?"

  It looked like Alice had been reading psych books again. But she had me. I was afraid of fire. But given my current circumstances, who wouldn’t be?

  Just then the phone rang. I picked it up on the second ring, motioning for her to excuse me.

  "Hey, Leesa, it’s Trey."

  I rolled my eyes. Trey, indeed. I’d known Willie, William Samson the Third, since kindergarten. We went all the way through high school together. He’d been plain old Willie until he joined his father’s insurance firm after high school and decided to rebrand himself Trey. Unfortunately, poor Willie/Trey simply wasn’t cool enough to pull off the transformation. Like everyone else, I still called him Willie.

  "Hey, Willie. What’s new with my claim? You have my check yet?" I turned my back on Alice to muffle my conversation.

  A guilty hesitation followed before he spoke. Even across the phone lines, I could read Willie. "Sorry, Leesa. No, I don’t. Just more questions. This part of your claim for your clothes, I’ll have to see canceled checks or credit-card statements ASAP. How about bringing them by today?" Willie sounded stranger than usual, a mixture of hopeful and nervous.

  "I stored the statements in my desk in the kitchen, which, as you will recall, burned to the ground. I’ll have to call my bank to get them."

  "Fine, Lees. Anything for you. Because of our relationship…"