If the Shoe Fits by Mulry Megan

Author:Mulry, Megan [Mulry, Megan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2013-07-01T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

At first, the days crept along at a wretched snail’s pace; her mind’s constant focus on Devon slowed the passage of time to a crawl. It got easier for Sarah to distance herself from her feelings as the weeks accumulated. For the following six months, she was able to avoid Devon—in person if not in her mind—very handily. She was frequently in London overseeing the construction on the new boutique but rarely strayed from the four-block radius in Mayfair that began at her room at the Connaught Hotel and ended at the construction site. Initially, she had narrowed the search for her new store location down to three properties: one was on Walton Street, a chic, upscale snake of a road, near Harrods and Sloane Square, and projected a very respectable, old-world Georgian feel; the next was just off Carnaby Street, near one of Stella McCartney’s edgy boutiques, where the entire row of shops exuded hip, cool fashion; the third was on a tiny lane near Bond Street called Bruton Place, which had a mix of galleries, an upscale pub, and a falling-down former garage from the 1950s.

Sarah was looking for a situation similar to what she had in Chicago (shop below, living above), but it would have felt like too much of a carbon copy if she’d applied it to the Georgian town house on Walton Street. There was no way she could live near Carnaby Street; it was far too bustling twenty-four hours a day and she would have no rest whatsoever. She finally settled upon the Bruton Place garage property.

The location was close enough to the high-end shops of Mayfair (and Bond Street in particular) to give it the proper air of haute couture, it was relatively quiet at night, and the building itself offered an alternative, modern feel that Sarah wanted the London store to possess. The second and third floors had rough original beams and charming exposed brick walls (“More like decrepit,” her father had commented dryly), so she could easily envision converting the top into a modern living space and the middle into an office and storage space, with the shop at street level.

She was finally able to wrest the freehold from the family who had been holding on to it for the past sixty years by assuring them she would not tear it down. For some reason, they were sentimentally attached to their little garage in Mayfair and had yet to meet a buyer who was willing to leave the property intact.

After she had returned from her honeymoon in late October, Bronte was also back in London to help manage the marketing and PR for the new Sarah James store. She and Max lived in an adorable mews house in Fulham that Max had bought and fixed up before they’d met. Bronte’s marriage to Max Heyworth had done nothing to hamper her enthusiasm or talent for the advertising business she had built before she met him. Motherhood, on the other hand, might put a slight crimp in her plans.

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