Read If the Shoe Fits for Free Online

she thought; it was just (finally) happening.
    ***
    Sarah rolled over the following morning fully expecting an empty bed. She had known last night that Devon would have to leave early to make his way back to Dunlear to spend the day with his soon-to-be-married only brother. So when the knock on the door woke her from her delicious half-dream, half-reenactment of the night’s antics, she assumed it was room service with the breakfast she had ordered the day before. She rolled out of bed and made her way across the room, stopping at the closet to pull on one of the complimentary robes. “Coming,” she added.
    Just as Sarah unlocked the door, Nelson James bounded into his daughter’s room, barely waiting for her to fully open it. His conservative steel-gray hair was combed to precision. His cashmere green turtleneck sweater and gray trousers were immaculate. He was in full captain-of-industry-on-British-holiday mode. Jane had probably organized his packing, individually wrapping each ensemble with a little note that read “Country Outing” or “Dinner in London.” He and his overeager wife were apparently ready to tour the local countryside, and he didn’t want Sarah wasting time lying around.
    “It is well past 9:00,” he boomed. Sarah looked dazedly at her bedside table and saw it was 9:04. “And we agreed to meet downstairs in the hotel lobby at that hour.”
    She was so disoriented, she couldn’t even think of anything to say. Enough was enough, his impatient silence seemed to suggest.
    “Sarah! Wake up! What in the world are you doing just standing there…” His voice faded out from a bellow to a mere whisper as he looked around the expansive hotel room and noted a veritable spin cycle of clothes flung in every direction. “Uh… your mother, uh, stepmother, and I will…”
    Sarah suddenly realized that it wasn’t just her clothes that were littering the floor. “Oh my God! Dad! What are you doing in here?! I thought you were room service! Don’t you knock?!”
    “Of course I knocked!” He was making his way backward, comically, out of the room, when the previously immobile lump of sheets and blankets piled on the bed began to shift and groan.
    “Dad! Get out!” She reached to quickly open the door before Devon revealed himself. For some lucky reason, he had burrowed under the whole pile of linens. Then Sarah remembered the reason Devon was cocooned under all the bedding and flushed anew, right up to her hair follicles. “Go! Now!”
    “I’m going, I’m going!” Her father was out the door in seconds, muttering inanities about British weddings having the strangest effect on young people.
    Sarah shut the door behind him and moaned with embarrassment.
    Devon started rustling around and Sarah walked back to the bed, sitting at the edge as she waited for him to emerge. He pulled her back into his arms and slowly undid the belt of the robe. He smiled and said nothing as he reached his arms behind her and hugged her to him, ultimately settling his lips on her neck, then making his way lower still. She made a futile attempt to swat him away.
    “Do you have no shame?” she scolded.
    “Of course I have shame, but thanks to your fierce protection of my anonymity, I don’t have any shame as far as your father is concerned.” His voice was a muffled caricature of itself. His kisses resumed along the ridge of her breast, then lower toward her navel.
    “Cut that out!” Sarah half laughed, half reprimanded. “You are relentless.”
    “Isn’t that the idea?”
    She turned and sat upright, pushing some pillows behind her and tucking the robe firmly back across her chest. He lifted his head on one elbow and looked up at her expectantly, his face boyishly framed under the bedding.
    “Devon…”
    “Sarah…” he said, mocking her serious-Sarah voice.
    “Well, I mean, I’d rather not get embroiled in some family conflagration with my father and my stepmother and you all having some meet-and-greet in