~ Maggie And Ice;

Book I, The Patterson County Chronicles

by

B. G. McCarthy

"Just give me five minutes of your time. I am so dying to see how this thing will look on someone with the right figure. Please, Maggie." Like all of the charming but lethal Newmans, this woman could probably talk the birds right out of the trees.

"No, Starr, I have to get back--"

"I know you’d love to see yourself in it."

"It’ll complement the regulation steel-toed boots."

"I know it’ll be perfect. Are you wearing a bra?"

She flushed. "I just have a sports bra on. I don’t need a real bra with my uniform."

"I’ve got something that’ll push up what you have there. You’re not really flat at all, are you? You have nice ones. Ice told me this joke about the biker breast rating system once. It was hilarious. A for Almost Boobs. B for Barely there. C for Can Do. D for Damn Good. E for Enormous. F for--"

She gave Starr her best I’m-giving-you-a-citation-glare. "Starr?"

"F for Fake. Oh, Maggie, humor me."

Maggie looked around, frowning harder, trying to look like the authoritarian figure she was paid very well to be by the town of Preston. Oh, what would it hurt? She was curious anyway. No one was going to know. The shop didn’t even open to the public until ten. She’d be long gone before that. "Okay. Just don’t tell me about Ice Newman’s appalling breast rating system ever again. I’ll do this just so you can see what the dress looks like. I have no intention to buy it."

~ * ~

What the hell am I doing here? I have a ton of paperwork, thought Maggie as she followed Starr into the cramped retail space. There were clothes, shoes and accessories and other junk everywhere, even high on the walls, needing one of those hook things to get it down. The place looked like Liberace and Joan Rivers had exploded together in a gaudy orgasm of excess. Starr was already climbing into the window and taking the dress out of the display.

"Starr, I don’t think I--"

"Don’t change your mind. You can’t change your mind now." She climbed out of the window waving the slinky little number in front of her. "Isn’t it great? And it was never packed in mothballs so it smells just fine."

"What a relief."

"Some stuff I can’t even buy because it smells gross. You know how old pissed-on feather beds smell?"

"Um, I have pygmy goats as pets, so I can imagine."

"You have pet goats?" she said. "Aw, how cute. Are they like kids to you?"

"I hope you’re punning. Gonzo and Alice are just little, smelly goats."

She laughed. "Anyway, this dress was properly packed in tissue like it came straight from Paris. I don’t even know if anyone ever wore it. This dress is magical." She held it up and gazed at it lovingly.

Okay, Maggie thought. Well, it was very pretty. Very glamorous, something she was definitely not. But magical...

Nothing stayed magical for very long.

"Do you have a boyfriend, Maggie?" Starr quizzed, looking through a pile of what appeared to be undergarments. Scary looking ones.

The question was embarrassing for some reason. "Not for a while now, no time for men."

Starr gave an animated, red-lipped smile, making Maggie think of Disney’s Snow White. This woman was anything but innocent, however. More like pushy. "I don’t believe you haven’t got time for a good man. There are lots of good men around here. What about Pete Posey at the feedlot? He’s so cute."

"He’s also around twenty. He’s a cousin once removed, apparently. I have about a thousand cousins in Preston. Local dating is a risky business because of the shallow gene pool."

She hooted with laughter. "I know what you mean. Maybe I’ll go after Pete, come to think of it. I like younger men sometimes. Have Newmans and Sloanes ever mated?"

Odd way to put it. "I don’t know of any. I’ll have to ask Ellen."

"Well, the first guy who sees you in this dress is going to fall head-over-heels in love with you anyway, Maggie."

Maggie snorted. "Well, then let’s hope that Carl Dawson doesn’t walk by here." Carl Dawson was an eighty-year old potato farmer who liked to park his skinny rear in front of the hardware store next door, play cards and spit into a dented tobacco can all day. "Can we get this show on the road? I do have a job to go to."

"Sure thing, sheriff. Ah! I think this one will be perfect." She held up a lace contraption that looked to have been created of spider webs and popsicle sticks.

"What the frick is that?" Maggie asked.

"This is a Merry Widow. You need it under the dress. It’s absolutely essential."

"Does it lace up?" Maggie asked, paralyzed with fear.

"Yes. Of course it does. Come on. Don’t tell me you’re chicken."

"I’m not chicken."

"You look ready to run away screaming. If this is worth doing, it should be done right."

Maggie forced herself not to run out the door. "Okay, Starr, I said I’d do this for you and I will. We just have to hurry."

Starr hustled her in the back and waited while Maggie went into the changing booth and stripped off her shirt. "Wow, fabulous, Maggie. You do look like a model! You have nice tits and a great ass. Astonishing taste in under fashions. That bra’s the latest thing. Are you sure that’s a sports bra?"

"Evidently. It came from some fancy catalogue. Ellen gets me catalogues and gift certificates. I’m apparently hard to buy for."

"You have to take off the bra, Maggie," Starr said, opening the curtains in the changing booth with a yank. Maggie gave a start as Starr reached up, undid her bra and opened it. Starr gave a whistle. "Fabulous boobs, Maggie!"

"Um... thanks..."

"Do you work out?"

"Sometimes. I work out at my farm chasing goats. And unlike my peers I try to avoid donuts."

"Turn around." Starr--who was now cheerfully humming along with Justin Timberlake on the radio she’d flipped on when they came in--fit the Merry Widow around her waist. It was stiff as hell, but it made her slightly less than C-cup boobs pop up over the top like risen bread dough. She gasped aloud as Starr commenced to lace her up. Tightly.

Oh, God, something like this was pure torture for a tomboy like her. But she had to admit that it looked kind of sexy. She could see a man liking to look at something like this on a woman. One of her few boyfriends in college used to go on and on about women’s underwear. She’d suspected he was the one who wanted to wear it and got rid of him fast.

Star tugged at the contraption, finally tying the thing off. It was not tight enough to actually restrict Maggie’s breathing, but it was not very comfortable. "Do you smell that?" Starr asked suddenly, sniffing the air. "Do you smell something kind of gross and burning?"

Maggie sniffed the air. Maybe she did.

"Oh, goodness. It smells like burnt coffee, doesn’t it? I think that I left the half-full coffee pot on the burner last night. It’s must have just burnt dry. I was here so late working. Geez, I hate when I do that. Let me go and check. You try to get that dress on. Don’t step into it; it won’t work. Put it on over your head."

She hurried off to her back room, leaving Maggie to fend for herself. Maggie picked up the dress and began to tug it over her head. It was tight. Very tight. The music in the room was too loud, too, and she was getting a headache and she hadn’t even gotten in to work yet. How did she get herself into this?

She was swearing a moment later as she tried to tug the dress down over her head. It seemed to be stuck on her shoulders like a rubber tire. One of her cousins had pulled a small inner tube over her once at the lake when they were kids and trapped her. Then he’d put a pail on her head. It felt about the same. "Starr?" she called. "I need some help here!"

She backed out of the tiny dressing room, as there was just no place to maneuver. God, this was awful. She tried to wriggle but the corset thing restricted her movements further and her arms were caught in the dress and up over her head.

"Starr! Help."

She heard the slight scrape of shoes on the uneven concrete floor. Thank God. Starr was back and Maggie was very grateful. "Can you just help me get it off now? I really don’t think this is going to fit me. I feel really dumb being trapped in this stupid thing and this damned corset is digging into my waist and my boobs are popping out like puppies in a basket."

A hard, blunt thumb brushed her left nipple as the fabric of the dress hem was grasped. Before she could completely digest the disturbing detail that the helping hands seemed far too strong and rough-textured to be Starr’s, the dress was being skimmed skillfully up and over her head. A little like skinning a rabbit. Obviously her helper was very adept at helping women trapped in tight clothes get undressed.

She didn’t get to breathe a huge sigh of relief when the dress finally came off because momentum thrust her forward and off balance. A big hand shot out to catch her, splaying over her hip. It was then that Maggie spotted the boots situated between her bare feet. Scuffed boots. Huge, scuffed biker-style boots. Starr had not been wearing those when they came in. Her sandals had been pink patent leather with little flowers scattered across the toes.

Starr had not been wearing perfume that smelled unmistakably like leather and gasoline. Her helper was.

Her heart leaping in dismay, Maggie turned halfway and followed the boots up a pair of long legs covered in snug black leather, all the way up the wide cotton-covered chest, to a ruggedly handsome face with a crooked little smirk on it. His eyes were a cool, ice-gray with a slight green cast. She hadn’t made direct eye contact with those eyes since maybe sixth grade when he’d stolen her Pink Pearl eraser. She’d popped him a good one for it and they’d both gotten detention. She’d missed girl’s hockey tryouts because of him.

Oh, God... Ice Newman.