Clued Up (Millgirl Mirandy Story 2)

Chapter 1 Chapter Text

Everyone at Runway knew Miranda Priestly was having an affair. They just had no way to prove it. But the gleaming white walls of the staff bathroom had seemingly bounced the news off the tiles, and the swinging doors in and out of the Closet then ricocheted it through to Editorial. A rumour grew there until the idea had nouns and verbs attached, and then the whispers went through to Features and finally to the Art Room.

Clara told Jocelyn who told Pip who whispered it again to Jim Cox, who slid the news across to Serena. Serena, who had her own secrets to keep, was dubious, but mentioned it over their supper, (if you could call it that), to Emily Charlton.

“Have you heard?” she asked, because Emily was as close to the heart of any action as anyone at Runway could get, being First Assistant to Miranda herself. “Everyone says it’s true.”

Emily snorted, “Bollocks,” which was her go-to expression of contempt. “No way. She’s just starting her divorce from Sweaty Pants. He’ll have made her allergic to sex with any guy. “

She peeled the outer leaves off a very small section of lettuce and eyed it cautiously. “What proof do they have anyway? I should know if anything was going on in that direction. I keep her diary.”

“Yeah, sure.” Serena pushed the low-fat mayonnaise towards her, to encourage her to eat a few more calories.

“That’s why I asked you. No-one knows where the info came from, but you know, walls have ears. Maybe we could look for clues from now on. And you know, it doesn’t have to be just with a guy.”

She fluttered her very long (if false) eyelashes at Emily and made her laugh despite herself. The salad with ten grams of mayo was consumed together and Serena then took her lover to bed.

Emily enjoyed the sex very much, and justified it to herself as useful and enjoyable exercise. She had read somewhere that thirty minutes of vigorous bedroom gymnastics used more calories than the same time running on a treadmill. She knew which she preferred.

The one person no-one had included in this delicious gossip mill was Andy Sachs, Miranda’s smart but hopelessly guileless second assistant Andy shared an office with Emily, but rarely received her confidences, not that she seemed concerned.

Emily considered Andy beyond the Pale for most of the time. Her fashion sense appeared minimal, although this had changed dramatically after Nigel Kipling, Runway’s Art Director took her under his wing, and seemed to enjoy dressing her up like a true New York fashionista, instead of some mousy librarian from Ohio. Now she looked the part of a true Runway girl, until she opened her mouth and said something so leftfield that the clackers all gaped at her ignorance.

Emily clung to her status as FATTEIC tenaciously, and part of her strategy in that goal was to keep Andy firmly in her place, which was at the smaller desk, with the shorter lunchbreak and also in the perfect position to act as the scapegoat whenever Miranda lost her cool and wanted to blame somebody for something.

The following morning, a Tuesday, Emily observed Andy across their two desks and wanted to find out if she knew anything about Miranda’s supposed affair, but without including her in the rumour circle. She didn’t think the girl deserved such a privilege.

“Hmm, when Miranda took you to that reception at the French Consul the other weekend, did you see if any one met her afterwards?”

“There was no time to meet anyone afterwards. Remember the thunderstorm? Roy came with the car, and we ran for it. Oh shoot, that reminds me, I must collect the gowns from the dry-cleaners tonight.”

Andy wrote herself a post-it note and stuck it on the left hand side of the desk. Her left wrist was bandaged up with a little silk scarf, as it had been for a week or more.

“Anyway, why do you ask?”
“No reason. I just need to follow up anything which came out of those meetings. Being away last week I couldn’t follow up all the contacts. Did you find out which ones Miranda wanted to chase? I suppose you had your head away with the fairies all evening as usual and didn’t concentrate. “

“I’ve typed up all the notes and put them in a folder on your desktop screen. You can read them whenever. “

“Oh. Right. So what’s with the scarf round your wrist? Is it to remind yourself to set the alarm clock on time in the morning for once?”

“Oh, no, it’s just a little sore, nothing to worry about. I. . . um . . . burned it on the oven.”

“The boyfriend lets you cook then?”

“Actually Em, we’re not together anymore. He’s moved out. He said my job was getting in the way.”

Emily was well-bred enough to offer a minimal commiseration.
“Sorry about that. “

“Thanks but don’t be. It’s for the best. I’m fine”

“Hadn’t you better scoot off now to fetch Miranda’s coffees? She’ll be here soon. You know how she hates to be kept waiting.”

Andy looked up at the clock, grabbed her bill-fold and phone, and did indeed scoot off. Emily saw her texting as she ran down the corridor. She knew she’d be late back with the coffees, and could not resist a little feeling of triumph at the rollicking she’d undoubtedly get from Miranda.

Emily discovered she quite enjoyed being a bitch and she was learning from the best. She kicked off her heels and leaned back in her chair. She had six minutes until Miranda was due to sweep into the offices, so she gave herself half that time to luxuriate in the feeling that Andy would soon be in big trouble.

Andy was in trouble, but not for the reason Emily imagined. Reading her text would not have helped solve the mystery because its recipient rarely replied in the same vein, much preferring to call rather than fiddling about with tiny keyboards.

Be there in 5. Sorry!

Andrea’s phone immediately rang as she entered the elevator, and she was still finishing the conversation as she emerged twenty-three floors below.

“Of course! No, How could I forget?. . . .

“I love you too. How much? -To the moon and back. . . . . . .

“Well, Venus then. . . . . . . .

“Stop it! That’s not fair. How would I be able to concentrate on work in the office all day if you did that.”

They passed each other in the Elias-Clarke foyer, studiously avoiding eye-contact. But Miranda slid a small package into Andy’s hand as she moved past. No-one noticed, and the younger woman then exited the building into the swirling crowds of the Manhattan streets.

When she reached the nearby Starbucks, she nodded her normal order over to the barista, who turned up the steam on her expresso machine, and began to set up the cardboard tray and plastic cups. While she waited she undid the package and pulled out a state of the art I phone. It had a sapphire blue shield round it, and she could see it was already charged and set up ready to use. There was one number entered in the contacts list.

She pressed the single button, and responded with a laugh to the expected voice.

“Hi, yes I love it” . . . .

“Thank you darling. It’s wonderful.” . . . .

“Yes I know. Not for work. Just for you” . . . .

“Yes, I’ll keep it on me all the time.” . . . .

“And switched on, of course. Don’t worry” . . .
.
“Yes, and charged.” . . . .

“Anytime. Day or night. Of course.” . . . .

“Coffee? Yes, it’s coming. I’m coming.” . . . .

“Miranda! Stop it!”

Her laughter rang round the café.

“Bye.”

Twenty-three floors above her, Miranda had just reached her outer office as she finished the call with a smile, and tossed her bag towards Emily. It was far too hot in New York to add a top coat as an additional missile, but she still enjoyed the slightly violent ritual throw every morning.

One day she hoped Emily might toss her purse back at her. One day Emily might tell her to hang up her own coat for once. One day pigs might fly. But then one day Second Assistant Andrea actually had let herself be kissed, had fallen into the arms of her boss and locked them together for life, so any magical thing might happen. The whole world seemed suddenly quite capable of turning upside down.

She and Andrea were now playing quite an engrossing game of keeping their love affair under very tight wraps, at least until her divorce papers were submitted, and Andrea’s final severance of all connections from her Ex-boyfriend was complete. Miranda capitalised the Ex in her mind whenever she thought of him. It bolstered her confidence, which faltered too often. Andrea was so young, and so very, very beautiful. Any sane person would fight to hold on to her.

They were also waiting until they could share as much information as was needed with her twins. The girls were still at summer camp, giving them a quiet two weeks together in the town house.

Miranda also needed to see a way forward on the way to separate Andy from working at Runway, and so avoid a nuclear fall-out all round, even though she couldn’t bear the thought of not being able to gaze on her for ten hours a day.

Runway was such a gossip shop, and Irv Ravitz, the CEO of the whole publishing empire, had been on Miranda’s case for years. There was no love lost between them, and if he had any excuse she’d be fired, regardless of her status as New York Fashion Queen.

Miranda knew all this secrecy was very sensible and tactical and necessary, but a large part of her mind just wanted to shout from the roof-tops, put it in lights up in Times Square, and hire a plane with a huge banner. “I love Andrea Sachs.” And with an even bigger banner behind it saying, “And we are having the best sex ever”

The sex was actually extraordinary, better than anything she had ever enjoyed in her life. She had more energy now than she had had at eighteen, and Andy’s body, the touch of her skin, her responses, gave her complete and continuing joy. She looked forward to going to bed every night, in complete contrast to what she’d endured during her marriages.

Andy returned to the office within ten minutes, and placed the coffees on Miranda’s desk. “Your usual,” she said quietly, “and an extra Frappuccino. It’s going to be hot again today.” She had turned her back towards Emily, blocking them so only she could see Miranda’s face. She saw a wide-eyed innocence there reflecting her own blank canvas. Honestly Miranda could have gone on the stage.

“And do you think the heatwave will carry on through tonight?” she heard her ask under her breath.

“I expect so, but you know more about the weather-forecast than I do.”

Their eyes slid cautiously over each other until they finally locked. For Andrea this was like docking a star-ship. She never tired of the new game of chasing Miranda’s gaze across her body, forcing her to look up from staring at her breasts to meeting her dead centre, in the eye. They often played this game of tag in the shower. Just remembering what had then ensued that very morning brought a flush to her cheek.

As if by telepathy Miranda read her mind and she blushed as well. It took much to embarrass Miranda, but Andrea’s very presence in the same room these days could achieve it. Conducting the affair at work was proving more difficult than she had planned. She knew she was playing with fire here. It was a good job Emily could not hear their words, just an indistinct murmuring.

“Appalling service. When will you learn to fulfil the simplest tasks competently?” Miranda raised her voice so that Emily, who she knew was straining to catch every insult, could hear. “Emily! Come in here now.”

Emily hurried in, notebook in hand.

“Andrea, you can go. Expense claims for July, on my desk by tonight. You can take the receipts from my purse.”

“Yes, Miranda.”

“Now Emily, I trust you are no longer spreading germs all over the office from your hay fever. Good. In that case we need to get on with planning the Paris trip. I am putting all the arrangements in your hands. Make sure they are capable ones.”

Emily regretted the five extra calories in the mayonnaise the previous evening. She was aiming to be a size 2 by Paris, if not a zero. Her mind swirled over the happy thought of all the new fashion lines from the major houses with which she might be gifted.

“Sure Miranda, of course.”

Miranda did look somehow different this morning. Well, she had as well the day before, to be honest. She sort of glowed, not just from the heat, but from inside. Maybe this was what had set the rumour running that she was having hot sex with someone.

To Emily it was like postulating about the statue of liberty’s love life. Out of bounds! But Serena had urged her to look for clues. So she started to assemble them. The “Look” could count as No1.

“Clue No 2 is the Texts.”

“How do you mean?” asked Serena, lying beside her on the couch in their small apartment that evening.

“She’s been getting texts all day. She never answers them. I don’t think Miranda knows how. But she stares at them for a long time, then she bites her glasses frame and goes to the window to stare out at nothing. She often does it while she’s waiting for Andy to come back with coffee.”

“Any No 3 yet?”

“Well, she asked me to look up properties in Provincetown, Mass. for sale. She said specifically, on or near the beach. I’ve sent her through all the ones I could find on the Internet”

“Hey, Em, you know what that means. It’s the lesbian capital of New England! I think we’re looking for a woman here, not a man.”

“Ugh, Miranda can’t be gay.”

“Why not? You are!”

“I’m not!”

“Well, what’s going on here then? Between us?”

“It’s different. . . . I just”

“You what, my little querida?”

“I just, oh I just love you, Seri.”

“That’s the first time you’ve ever admitted it.
“
“I know, but I do.”

“So you should admit Miranda is possibly gay too.”

“Hmm. No way. Nigel might know something. Let’s ask him tomorrow. She confides in him sometimes.”

“Well, Emily not-gay Charlton. I bet you twenty bucks she is. Now come here!”

Miranda possibly–gay Priestly lay on her king-sized bed at roughly the same time late that evening as when Serena and Emily were having their conversation about her sexuality, and watched her lover prepare to join her. She was on the bed, not in it, because even with efficient air-conditioning it was far too warm to be covered by a sheet.

Andrea had tossed her about in such a wild emotional tornado over the last ten days that she felt all the civilization of New York, all the fashion, all the shoes, manicures, make-up, the jewellery she so normally loved to wear, was as ephemeral and unimportant as yesterday’s newspaper. She would have followed Andrea across continents dressed in rags, bare-footed if she’d asked. It was an extraordinary feeling, terrifying, but equally, absolute bliss.

Andrea, normally a wordsmith, put it more succinctly, when she had tried to tell her how she felt.

“Yes, I’m the same. You turn me to Goo as well, Miranda.”

She was now stripping slowly, shedding her top and shorts, having been out to soft-ball practice, and then slipping out of her bra and panties.

“I should shower again,” she murmured. Even though she’d showered at the sports centre, she felt sticky with heat and perspiration. She’d called back at Runway to collect the Book on her way to Miranda, but it remained unopened. Miranda for some reason hadn’t felt motivated to touch it.

“Come here. I’ve been alone all evening. You can wash any time.”

Andrea rolled on to the bed and gave herself up to Miranda’s loving arms. The woman achieved supernatural powers once she had you captured, she thought. She could transform into an enchanted being, which wound itself up and down your insides as well as your outsides.. Miranda in bed was like an Indian goddess with multiple limbs.

“Oh my God, Miranda.”

Later, much later, Miranda felt like talking. “Next weekend, I thought we might drive up to New Hampshire together to fetch the girls. Save them the bus trip home. What do you think?”

“I’d love to do that. I’m free.”

“On the way back, maybe we can talk to them, about us. It will be easier in the car. They can’t run away.”

“I don’t think they’ll want to do that. We’ll be gentle about it. “

She wondered whether to say her next sentence, but decided to press on.

“You know they never liked Stephen.”

“How do you know?”

“They told me.”

“Oh.”

“They never wanted to hurt you. But they would talk to me sometimes, on the stairs. They were a little upset and didn’t like the way he treated you, and I had to secretly agree with them, though I never said anything of course. I’d just try to take their minds off their worries, chat about school you know.”

“I wish they felt they could talk to me about how they felt. But anyway, it’s all over now.”

“Yes. I do hope it wasn’t because of me, was it? I hope I didn’t make things worse.”

Miranda could only ever be totally honest with Andrea.

“It wasn’t maybe the main reason he left. But it was always there. Stephen was a louse but he was never a fool. He would often mention you just to get a rise out of me. He could see something in my eyes I think. It’s been this way for months, since you first arrived in my life in fact. I just fought against it for as long as I could. But I thank God I lost the battle.”

“Miranda,”

“Yes, darling?”

“When you go to Paris, I want to move in here with the girls. I can keep them company, and get to know them better, I can help Cara with them, and take them to school on time.”

“But I planned for you to come to Paris, alongside Emily. Though I haven’t told her yet.”

“No, let’s not do that. I have a funny feeling about what might happen if I went to Paris. Something . . . No, now don’t look like that! It’s just, you know we can bend the rules sometimes, forge our own destinies, and in this case. I just don’t think I should go. I’ll wait here for you, maybe use the time to move out of the apartment properly. Emily is so looking forward to the Shows, and I’d be out of my depth. It will be better this way.”

“Whatever you think is best. Just keep your phone charged at all times. I need to be able to know I can always talk to you otherwise I will never survive the separation.” Miranda played with Andy’s hair, winding it round her fingers and then releasing it before doing the same thing again and again.

Andy lay on her breast, and shivered. Miranda’s fondling sent tingles up and down her spine.

“I can hear your heart beating, “she said softly. “It’s in time with mine.”

“That’s reassuring. You’re twenty-five years younger than me, and a sporty type. My heart must be in good shape. “

“It’s in my permanent care from now on, so it should be.”

Miranda kissed the top of her head and they fell into sleep together. The Runway gossip mill could grind on in ignorance for a few weeks yet.

Emily not-gay Charlton also slept well, wrapped in Serena’s arms. She woke in the small hours with a sudden thought about what Clue No 4 might be.

“Oh God, of course! How weird was that?””

But the idea skidded away from her exhausted brain, and she went back to sleep. In the morning, she couldn’t for the life of her recall what it was she’d realised, but it must have been something significant. She tussled with the mystery all the way back to work.

Chapter 2 Summary:

The scent of a woman?

Chapter Text

Emily remembered the “weird” thing, the 4th clue, as she emerged from the elevator to the Runway Offices at 7 am the following morning. She always aimed to get a good start on the day - Emily was nothing if not hard-working – and the offices were pretty well empty at that time in the morning. This gave her a chance to check something out.

She sat down at Andy’s desk, not her own, because she wanted to check back through Andy’s latest docs. She knew her password – Cincinnati123 – obvious to anyone once you knew Andy’s strange loyalty to the little city from whence she hailed, and began to look through her recent work. She found what she wanted within three seconds.

Miranda’s expenses for July had been documented on a Spreadsheet template. The month had just ended, and there were usually at least two pages of entries, but Andy had finished the task the day before within five minutes. Emily had noticed it, because Miranda had implied it would be a big job, but Andy had whisked through it, produced the final form to be signed off by the Editor, and had then taken it down to finance in no time at all. Now she could see there had been just two lunches with named designers, and one drinks session with a fellow editor listed from earlier in the month, but no items for the last eleven days, not one.

It was the absence of expenditure put on to the Runway tab which was puzzling. No track of where Miranda had lunched, or what she had bought, whom she had met, or where she had gone since before the French reception. And even stranger, there were no receipts either. So what was the comment, “the receipts are in my purse” all about? It was as though Miranda wanted to draw a complete curtain over her extra-mural activities.

Emily thought this was a definite clue. She would interrogate Andy about it, but it also persuaded her to go with Serena when she believed Miranda was having an affair. If she wasn’t on Runway business all month, what was her boss doing, where was she doing it and who was she doing it with?

Emily had two obsessions in life, one, controlling her weight, and two, controlling Miranda’s diary, and as a result, knowing every last thing about her life. All this mystery and blank page nonsense was seriously bad for her health.

Andrea came in looking cheerful at 8.15 am. She was dressed for the heat, in a singlet and mini skirt which had a slight flare to its panels, making it swivel provocatively round her hips. Her legs were bare, long and smooth above the Jimmy Choo high heeled sandals, and her hair was swinging up in a high pony tail. Emily thought she looked far too relaxed and sexy for a day in the office.

Miranda wasn’t due until 9. She took a Pilates class on a Wednesday morning from 7 to 8.30, a fact closely guarded by Emily against the other staff, but one she had grudgingly allowed Andy to be told, so she knew not to book appointments then, and why to fend off phone calls.

Emily had closed down her screen and returned to her side of the office earlier. She didn’t want Andy to see she’s been snooping around on her computer.

“What on earth went on last week while I was away?” she asked once Andy was seated, using a tone of voice designed to prise out any new information which might be floating about near the surface.

Andy replied placidly enough, (her years in the youth theatre group at High School had trained her well), but she could feel her heart begin to thump and her mouth grew dry.

“What do you mean?”

“I saw you toss Miranda’s expenses off in five minutes. It looks like she did nothing at all. “

“Oh, that. I don’t know. She was in the office some of the time. The photo shoot based on NYPD was being organised. She met with the people here who are setting that up. I don’t remember much else.”

“Anyone come in?”
“Oh, yes, people from the police. . . “

Andy realised she shouldn’t identify their brilliant handcuff hero by name. She didn’t want Emily to start imagining anything close to what had really happened, (well who would?) But she also didn’t want to reveal the writing assignment Miranda had given her, about a day in the life of a patrol officer in a long hot New York summer. If it was accepted for publication, she would have to use a pseudonym, otherwise accusations of favoritism would certainly be flying round the whole office.

Officers Sal McCarthy and her work partner Kate Burns had indeed visited Runway the previous Thursday for an initial encounter. They had strode like Amazons among the waif like young models, so the resulting design “look” was very striking, and Miranda had taken to the concept of mixing hard and soft, reality and frothy frivolity more keenly.

Nigel, tanned and quite relaxed after his long weekend away in Canada, had also warmed to the idea, and the pair of patrol officers were booked in to return the next week to take part in the photo-shoot. Andrea had fixed to meet with Sal that very evening to interview her properly for her article.

Emily was convinced Andy could tell her more. Even if the clueless girl had no idea what she’d seen, she might have witnessed something, but Andy’s face remained blank and her mind seemed distracted on things far away. She was obviously going to be hopeless as a Dr Watson to Emily’s Sherlock Holmes.

They stared at each other for a few moments, and then Emily decided to let Andy in on the big Rumor. If she knew the point of Emily’s questions, she might be better able to help her find the answers.

“Now, listen to me very, very carefully! I should not be telling you this, and for God’s sake don’t let a word of it pass your lips to anyone else, but the word going round Runway is that Miranda is dating someone.” She emphasised the last word by lowering her voice and stressing the D.

Andy looked astonished.

“Dating? Where did that idea come from?”

“Not sure, but it’s my job to find out if it’s true, and it’s your job to help me.”

“Are you sure it’s any of our business if Miranda is dating anyone? You’ve always told me how private she is.”

“Of course it’s my business, certainly. So I can . . . , so I can make things easy for her, assist, and you know, help keep things private!”

Andrea didn’t see much that was logical in Emily’s argument. She knew Em was the worst gossip hound in the business, and once she knew something definitely juicy she wouldn’t be able to resist sharing it with all and sundry.

But she could see that if she could send Emily barking up the wrong tree, chasing red herrings whatever they were, and the mixed metaphors really fuzzed up her brain) then she could maybe deflect the woman opposite from suspecting the truth. Andrea began to feel like a secret double agent in her own life.

“Oh, I see. . . Yes. So what evidence have you found so far?”

Well, there are four definite clues.”

“Hmm?”

“Firstly, and everyone apart from you seems to have noticed this, she looks different.”

“Different?”

“Yes, really weird. She seems happy.”

“Oh, I hadn’t noticed.”

“Well you wouldn’t. She’s always so rightly irritated by your appalling carelessness and being late all the time you can’t expect her to be happy around you! But when you’re not here, she often walks the corridors looking really happy. She was even singing yesterday.”

“Singing?” This did make Andy sit up and look astonished.

“Yes. It was a song about the weather.”

“Oh what a beautiful morning?” Andrea grinned.

“No. You are the sunshine of my life!”

“Not sure I know that one. Perhaps we could ask Miranda to sing it for us.”

“Don’t be an idiot. As if!”

Chapter 3 Summary:

To thicken a plot, just stir it up a bit.

Chapter Text

Andy ate her egg salad lunch perched in the corner of the Elias-Clarke canteen next to two guys from Adventure Monthly. They were regaling her about their recent trip up, or maybe down, the Amazon. There were no available seats so they were unwrapping plastic wrap on their feet and using the window sills as tables.

“Gosh. Full flood eh?”

She tried to look and sound enthralled with their narrative, which was almost as long and winding as the mighty river itself, but her mind was definitely on other things. Life as a double agent was more complicated than she had imagined. First things first, she had to disguise Miranda’s unique scent from her body. At the moment she felt immersed in it, and that would never do if Emily was to be led off the trail into the boon-docks.

Hiding it in plain sight was the answer. She’d drown the scent in a bouquet of several others from the ones she was writing up for the November edition. She was supposed to be doing the research for it on which the editorial team would base their article.

The medley of different perfumes would smell rather strange, unlike her usual light sporty deodorant from Walgreens, but it was the only answer, short of showering and washing her hair in some dreadful anti-dandruff medicinal shampoo. But that would be equally suspicious, as well as an affront to Miranda’s delicate nose.

“Then we had to drink our own pee . . . “

“Whaat?” She came back to the present and looked at the guys who were still dragging her through their recent adventures. “With all that water available to drink in the Amazon?”

“Hey, weren’t you listening? This was later, in the Atacama Desert . . . “

“Sorry guys. Absolutely riveting but I’ve got to go. I only get fifteen minutes lunch break.”

“Gee, what a bummer. Why don’t you come down five floors and work for Adventure Weekly with us? We’d get you in, cool chick like you. You’d look hot in fatigues.”

Andy tried not to think of their pee drinking tendencies. They were good looking guys with deep tans and an excess of cheerful muscle, so unlike the palely loitering males who drifted about the Runway offices. She just knew she found neither type of men remotely sexually attractive. They were obviously trying to chat her up, and eventually did manage to squeeze her name, rank and serial number out of her before she escaped.

She threw the debris from her lunch wrapping into the trash bin, and went back upstairs to Runway. In the beauty department she found a few random bottles of $100 an ounce perfume and sprayed them across herself as she returned to the office.

Emily snorted with laughter as she caught her doing this as she came in through their door.

“That’s not how you apply perfume, you idiot. Haven’t you any idea? I will never understand why Miranda hired you in the first place. Honestly, you haven’t a clue!”

Andy smiled sweetly under duress. She was used to Emily’s baiting and usually ignored it.

“Talking of clues, have you found any . . . you know . . . any more about . . . ?”

She nodded her head in the direction of Miranda’s empty office. It was important to keep her knowledge of what Emily supposed Miranda to be doing in her love life up to date. (Gosh, even thinking about it was complicated!)

“Yees, well,” Emily whispered and bent her head forward. “There’s a new calendar entry in her day book, for tonight. A/SM 9. Fultons. “

“And do you have any wild idea what that means?”

“Well, no, but SM could mean sado-masochism.”

“What!?” Andy nearly jumped out of her skin. This was from a girl who could hardly pronounce the word Gay without going crimson earlier in the day.

“Just saying”

“And A?”

“Maybe it stands for Advanced.”

Andy looked shocked on poor Miranda’s behalf. That was the trouble with prudes like Emily. When they were given an inch of encouragement, their imaginations ran wild. She pressed forward.

“What about Fultons? Have you looked it up? “

“I’m just going to.” Emily tapped it into Google. “Oh, it’s a bar up in mid-town. It looks like a sports bar. Why would Miranda want to go to a sports bar?”

“Maybe she follows the Yankees. You know sitting on the terraces, chilli-dog in one hand, kazoo and rattle in the other.”

They both giggled at that picture, and Andy allowed herself a chuckle. Miranda had tied her emotions in such knots over recent days, she almost felt she was losing her own agency. It was so damn painful to love someone this much, at times she felt she was drowning. The thought of Miranda sitting in a baseball cap in the bleachers cracked her up. She vowed then and there to get her and the little girls some tickets and make them all go with her to a game sometime soon. The twins would love it.

“Why don’t you ask her what the entry means?”

“No. You know how that would go down! Never ask Miranda anything.”

“Well then?”

“I’m going to go to this bar, tonight! I’ll hide in a corner, just to see who she’s meeting.”

“Are you sure, Em? You’ll get into real trouble if she sees you. You could get fired”

“Well then,” Emily really didn’t want to lose her job. “I know, you can go! You never have much to do in the evening, and if she catches you, you don’t like this job anyway! Yes, you go this evening and tell me who it is she meets!”

“Whom.”

“What?”

“It should be whom, not who. Sorry. Journalism major. Forget it.”

“Shut up. Did you hear what I was saying? You have to go tonight!”

“Em!”

“Go on. I’m your line manager. Do as you’re told. And you can take some photos of them for me on your new fancy phone. Where did that come from, by the way?”

Andy’s double life was turning her into a liar. It didn’t feel comfortable. “Er . . it is a present from . . . “

“Your parents? Yeah, I guessed as much. Well, go and practise using the camera then this evening. You can be the great under-cover journalist you say you always wanted to be.”

Andy gave a gusty sigh. She didn’t need to be a great investigative journalist to find what the entry was in Miranda’s date book. She knew just to what it referred.

She, “A”, was meeting Sal McCarthy, “SM”, at eight that evening to start plotting the article on being a cop in New York. Miranda had invited herself to join them at 9, so say, to be friendly and give them some pointers on how to shape the article.

But Andy knew her Best Beloved still felt insecure about letting Andy loose among the great and the good of the NYPD ladies. She’d suggested the article precisely to show she wasn’t jealous, but of course she was, just a little at least. Wow, life was complicated. But it was also damn amusing.

Andy explained her new mission as an undercover agent to Miranda as they consumed dinner together in Andy’s apartment that same evening, an hour after work, and before she needed to go out. Miranda enjoyed slumming it there. It made her feel uninhibited and raunchy, and there was the frisson of having to be really quiet while ravishing Andy, so as not to waken the many neighbours above, beneath and to the left and right, through the thin brickwork.

They had used the walk-up several nights recently as a stopover. It was nearer mid-town than Miranda’s town-house, and without either the twins, or sadly Patricia, who had died early in the summer at the ripe old age of ten (which, yes, she had known would be the average life span of a St Bernard, but it still hurt) she didn’t care to be home alone much anymore without Andrea.

Andy was trying to get Miranda off red meat. It wasn’t a total success. She waved a forkful of quiche in the air disapprovingly. “Nothing but carbs and dairy. Honestly darling!”

“Eat it and be grateful. At least no poor cow died to put that on your plate.”

“You need to research the dairy industry, my girl.”

“I had planned double chocolate mint choc ice-cream for afters. Shall I just put that back in the freezer then?”

Andy knew Miranda’s secret weakness. Silence ensued. Then Andy returned to the issue at hand.

“Anyway, back to tonight, what shall I do? Emily’s demanding visual evidence of whatever dirty deeds she thinks you’re up to.”

“Appalling. Well, we’ll just have to give her some, won’t we? Let’s go on from the bar and go clubbing.”

“Miranda, have you gone mad? Aren’t we trying to keep ourselves off Page 6, not get plastered all over the National Enquirer as well?”

“It’s the connection between us we want to obscure. Give me your work phone. Haven’t you got Sally’s number on it?”

Miranda opened the phone and pressed the button for Sal’s name. She launched into a conversation, the upshot of which was that Sal would be very pleased to have her girlfriend join them at 9 and make up a foursome. Yes, she remembered her comment at Miranda’s house about what would happen if Andy went clubbing, and she’d be happy, just for fun, to test her theory. She knew some really discreet gay clubs. Yes, she got the idea, and was only too pleased to get involved.

Andy was bemused, but Miranda’s eyes sparkled.

“Are you about to be as wicked as I think you are?” Andy asked. She had dished out the ice-cream and was feeding Miranda a generous portion in very small coffee spoonsful, kissing down her throat as she slipped each one between her lips.. Miranda was further distracted, (as if that wasn’t enough in itself), by slowly unwinding Andrea’s little wrist scarf, and then gently nursing the now healed and faded abrasions left by the handcuffs.

When Andy let her, she said, “Hmm, Emily was quite correct. You can practise using the camera on your phone, and if you’re behind the lens, there’ll be no evidence you were even with us. I’m going to launder this scarf and keep it safely as a souvenir by the way. The thought of it protecting your precious wrist makes it very important for me. “

Andy stood up reluctantly.

“Come on then. You can do the dishes, oh my great Queen, while I clear away the food.”

“You’re sure Nate really has gone for good now then?”

“Yep. My friend Lily says he’s moved to Boston, lock, stock and barrel. She and all my mates blame me for breaking up with him, but I think he’s found solace with a girl who works with him in his new place. I’m expect we’ll be back on speaking terms before too long. We don’t really dislike each other. We just weren’t compatible.”

“Do you think you and I are compatible?” Miranda stretched the word out so each syllable was clearly enunciated. She often did that with words which frightened her. She lifted their plates into a tiny sink, and turned on the tap. A gas boiler wheezed and choked beside them on the wall. The squalor reminded her of her youth. She then looked in vain for any kitchen gloves to protect her manicure.

Andy deflected her from what might be a flash of insecurity with a silly pun. “Well you are certainly able, and I’m very pattible.” But then she realised she needed to say or do something more. She embraced Miranda in a tight hug, found her the gloves, and kissed her on her ear.

“More than compatible, my darling. Our love affair is Inevitable. Inescapable. Inextricable. And that’s just the “I”s. I will love you till my dying breath, Miranda.”

Miranda did a bit of eye-rolling, but Andy knew she was reassured. She responded briskly, “Which will hopefully be somewhat further off if you try to stay on the sidewalk, instead of walking in front of New York traffic all the time. Do you have any washing-up detergent?”

Later on, Andy just about made her appointment with Sal by 8pm, and they had a great hour talking, giving and receiving information and ideas. Andy had a good feeling about the article. Sal had so many stories from her everyday working life, they could almost fill a book, but this article would just give an account of one day in her working life, from early morning till late at night, during the current heatwave in NYC. It would be anonymised, and also checked through all the appropriate PR departments, as well as past Miranda’s eagle editorial eye. Andy knew their relationship would not soften her judgement on the suitability or quality of her writing, nor would she ever want it to.

By 9pm, the early evening crowd in the bar who had been there from work- time onwards began to thin, and a later group of drinkers and merry-makers turned up, including Miranda from one direction, and Sal’s girlfriend, Kerry, from another. The night was very warm, too warm for leather, or boots, but Miranda achieved a similar look with crisp black linen and high heeled sandals. Miranda had dressed very cleverly, not exactly butch, not exactly high-end Diva, but subtly saying, “I’m here. I own whatever we’re doing. This girl, she’s mine.”

Andy pulled out her sapphire coated I phone and started to take pictures. She used its capabilities to practise hard and soft focus, driving up the pixels. It was a brilliant camera, and she learned how to catch Miranda’s glorious cheekbones and high forehead in a low light. In some shots she looked almost like Marlene Dietrich.

It was past 1am when they returned to Andy’s apartment and folded into bed. Miranda had proved she could drink even hardened cops under the table but was now pretty tanked up with vodka martinis. They had indeed had a very good time as a foursome, and Sal won her bet about the strong following Andy had soon amassed in the two gay clubs where they had ended the evening.

No paparazzi had been admitted, so she hoped her photos were the only evidence of the evening’s frivolities, and would satisfy Emily’s wild fantasy of seeing Miranda cavort through New York club land in the company of some beautifully butch, off-duty police women. One or two looked really hot.

Miranda skimmed through the pictures last thing as she cleaned off her make-up, and they amused her. Andy was actually rather skilled with the phone camera, but this meant there were no snaps of Andy herself anywhere on the camera. So in bed, just before she fell asleep, she picked up the phone and took a whole new set of images of her young lover, lying naked in front of her, her eyes shut and her hair spread over the pillow.

“Whaddyadoin?” murmured Andy, falling into dreamland.

“Nothing, darling, I’ll tell you in the morning,” replied Miranda. But of course, as in all the best spy thrillers, she completely forgot to dispense that small but vital piece of information when she woke up. As usual, they parted at the door. Andy took the subway to work, and Miranda summoned Roy to take her home to bathe and change. Andy’s erratic bathroom plumbing was a compromise too far, even for her rapidly broadening aesthetic tastes.

Roy was enjoying the recent route changes. Being a driver was similar to being a priest in an old style Latin American soap opera. He got to know everything, but was scripted to reveal nothing. Miranda relied on him implicitly, even though she pretended to bully him. Theirs was one of the most positive relationships in her life, and she, who trusted few people, always trusted him with the care of her children, herself, her secrets, and of course now with the love of her life, Andrea Sachs.

“Oh Andy,” she thought, as she let herself in through her front door. “How can I continue to keep up the pretence? I love you so, so much. It must be written all over my face.”

Meanwhile, across town, Andrea took her normal route to work, caught a crowded elevator up to the Runway Offices, and prepared to reveal the results of her evening’s sleuthing to the Emily Holmes Detective Agency.

Chapter 4 Summary:

The Camera never Lies

Chapter Text

By the time she reached her office, Andy had her strategy all worked out with regard to her gum-shoe report to Emily. She was going to pull out just a few selected photos to show her, none of which would show Miranda in close up, or staring directly at the camera, so she might have been filmed without her knowing. There was a good photo of her dancing with Kerry at one point.

“Come on girl, let’s show them how it’s done!” and Kerry had swung Miranda off into a jive, which kept the others open-mouthed. Miranda did have good legs, and my, how she could move them.

Kerry could remain anonymous, and as she wouldn’t be coming to the offices to join in the photo shoot, Emily would not identify her.

The pictures where Miranda had been quite tipsy and had stuck out her tongue at the photographer were definitely off the table. Likewise so were the ones where she had pulled said photographer in for a wet kiss resulting in a picture being taken of her cleavage at close quarters.

There were plenty too of Miranda looking straight into Andy’s eyes with a definite “Come hither” smirk, and some profile ones where Andy had virtually been sitting in her lap.

Andy also wanted to secure a promise from Emily she wouldn’t share any of the photos with anyone else. She would only part with the images after a solemn vow. She hoped the ones she had chosen would look sufficiently convincing to persuade Emily that Andy had indeed followed Miranda secretly from Fulton’s to the Clubs, and had not been spotted by her or her mystery friends.

The later it got, and the more martinis Miranda had consumed, the more plausible that fairy tale might become. The photos, if carefully chosen, would show Miranda was out on the town with various unidentified ladies. She was having fun. She might or might not be dating any of them. There was nothing to indicate she was likely to bring Runway into disrepute, and what she did in her few free hours was nothing to do with Emily and not her business. Andy hoped this might stop Emily obsessing about it, and they could go back to work as usual.

In real life though, the fictional scenario would not have held water for a moment. Miranda and Andy seemed to have been set in an open psychic corridor, with the channel switched permanently to maximum alert. Andy only had to breathe in for Miranda to be aware of her location and seek her out.

She remembered the unfortunate incident at the French Consulate when Miranda had thought she detected her flirting with various lissom-limbed young men in a corner. She had bodily hauled her out of the reception in a flash and berated her all the way back to Runway. That had led to kissing, handcuffs, illicit chocolate eating and a lot more kissing, an inescapable trail of suspicious behavior leading to where they were now.

“So? What did you find out?”

Emily pounced on her like a cat as soon as she came in.

“Hey! Hold on. Give me a chance.”

Andy sat down and opened her computer. She wanted to download the chosen pictures from her phone and send them to Emily. Her Miranda-phone was tucked deep in her pocket and she wasn’t going to let Emily get her hands on it.

“Give me five minutes, and then I’ll spill the beans”

“So there are beans then?”

“Yes, well, one or two. Just be patient and I’ll show you.”

Emily fussed and fumed, but Andy ignored her to concentrate on the job in hand She slid thumb-nail pictures from the phone into an album on her desk top, intending to delete them as soon as she had chosen the few to show Emily.

She knew the ones towards the end of the evening were too personal of Miranda to use, so she ignored them. They would make an album of their own for her to enjoy later. She didn’t remember taking quite so many as seemed to be on the list, but she presumed she had taken some extras. Her memories were very vague about what had happened in the hour after midnight anyway.

Within a little while she had chosen six photos to show Emily. There was one of Miranda coming through the door of Fulton’s smiling at someone slightly to the right of the camera, and one of her back view having a drink at the table with two women, neither of whose face could be clearly seen.

Then from their time in the women’s gay bar later on, there was a beautiful middle-distance one of her with her arm round someone’s shoulder, wearing a quizzical grin on her face. Andy was returning from the bathroom at that point, and had managed to snap her from behind the coat stand. It looked suitably furtive.

Next there were two of her drinking and talking to some woman, (Sal) whose arm stretched out and gripped her wrist. Andy thought she recalled they’d been arguing about gun-control, or maybe dog-mess in the Park, but anyway it looked quite passionate.

And ultimately, there was the last one, where Miranda had been dancing with Kerry, in the second club, just before Sal and Andy had hauled her out and they piled into a taxi. In all of them Miranda looked relaxed, intimate and beautiful. Andy really did not want to share anything of her Miranda with Emily, but she couldn’t avoid showing her something, nor avoid making her basically look gorgeous.

She pasted the pictures across to Emily, and started her fictional narrative account of the previous evening.

“I did as you said, and hid by the coats at Fulton’s. Miranda came in and met some women. They left after an hour or so, and I managed to follow them to the next bar you can see. It’s the Pink Geranium.”

“Uh, how did you manage to do that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did Miranda say, “Oh Hi Andy, come and join us in our taxi. We’re off to the Pink Geranium”

Andy had a momentary panic. “Oh, they all walked. I kept 50 yards behind and followed them.”

“Miranda walk? She must have been well tanked up to set foot on the street!”

“Miranda has strong legs. It was too hot for taxis.”

Well, it had been, but they had still hailed one. Sal had glimpsed one of her male colleagues enter the Sports bar, so they had hastily exited out through the opposite door.

Emily stared at the images. She seemed a little wistful. “She looks so . . . she looks so happy, so different from the way she is here. We don’t know who it is, do we, who her date was, but do you think she’s in love?”

Andy couldn’t find it in her heart to lie. “Yes, I believe she is.”

Then she paused. “And if last night taught me anything Em, it’s made me realise we really should drop this snooping about. I won’t do it again, not for you or anybody. Please let’s get on with our work and leave Miranda’s private life as just that, her own business.

She pulled her phone from its connection to the computer, and put it back in her pocket.

Emily looked a little ashamed, and went rather quiet, but them she bounced up again.

“O.K. but what about Provincetown? We need to get to the bottom of that as well. If she is going to retire and just walk up and down the beach collecting sea-shells for the rest of her life, I need to know. “

“Perhaps it was for a photo-shoot. The photographers love it up there.”

“Well, maybe, but I need to find out. I’ll ask Nigel if anything is planned.” Emily fidgeted for a few moments, then jumped up and ran out.

In doing this, she missed Miranda’s actual arrival at the office. She came in looking cool, immaculate and regal. She stood by Andy’s desk and passed her over her Michael Kors bag, very softly and very quietly. Andy took it and equally gently stowed it away in the cupboard. They exchanged glances.

“So?”

“I think she bought it. I chose just a few images, trying not to make you look as gorgeous as you are, but she’s now started going on about P-town. She’s gone to ask Nigel if we’re expecting a photo shoot up there. Are we?”

“Oh, that wouldn’t be a bad idea in fact.
“But, no, I just had a fancy to walk with you along a beach and make love to you next to the sound of waves, and I know too many people in the Hamptons. I wondered if we might drive up that way tomorrow, make a detour on the way to the twins’ camp and have a night on Cape Cod. Would you like that? We could take tomorrow over it, and enjoy the weekend.”

“Aw Miss,” Andy gave her an imitation of Eliza Doolittle,” and there was me telling the boys from Adventure Monthly about ‘ow you never gave us any free toime up ‘ere.” For someone born with Ohio vowels it wasn’t too bad an impression. Miranda, though, didn’t pay much attention to the accent. Her antennae started to flash at the content.

Chapter 5 Chapter Text

“Caught you!”

Emily shot in the air in such panic that she nearly bit her tongue. She jumped out of her chair and slithered quickly over to her own side of the desks. Serena stood in the doorway, laughing at her. “Hey, what’s up? Guilty conscience?”

“I didn’t hear you coming, that’s all. I was just . . . just checking Andy had closed down her computer properly. You know what Irv is like about saving electricity.”

Andy’s screen was still lit up, but Emily knew it would fall asleep again in a few seconds. She was torn between desperately wanting to share Miranda’s pics with Serena, (it would be such delicious fun,) and her solemn promise to Andy precisely not to do that, with anyone, even Serena. Andy had stressed that especially. Emily remembered her upbringing as a vicar’s daughter in the south of England, and her days in the British version of Girl Scouts. After a mental struggle, her better self triumphed.

“It’s so lovely to see you,” she simply said, looking up at her willowy and naturally skinny girl-friend. “I’m waiting for the Book. Andy’s skived off, and Miranda has asked me to edit it over the weekend. She asked me specially.”

Serena sat herself down on Emily’s desk and softly caressed her cheek. She was getting addicted to Emily’s prickly but very cute personality. Whether it was the heatwave, or the weird emotional pheromones floating through the offices, but she was getting keener than ever to bed Emily on a permanent basis. She wanted to completely secure her affections, and break her out of her love-hate attitude towards her own sexuality. Their earlier talk about the Massachusetts marriage equality legislation had driven these thoughts further along.

“Where’s Miranda gone?” she asked thoughtfully.

“She’s going up to Provincetown, with SOMEONE. She even asked me to make the booking. Look. “

Emily swivelled her screen round so Serena could see it more clearly, and clicked back to the booking form pictures. “See! The place looks divine. But I need to know who she’s gone with. It’s definitely someone. She ordered a king-sized bed and a hot-tub.”

“Ayeee.” Serena gazed at the pictures. A very wicked thought crept into her mind.

“Em, why don’t we follow her up there and track down who she’s with? We could book in somewhere nearby for the weekend as well. There must be plenty of inns along the coast there.”

“But . . . she’d surely see us spying on her . . “

“Not if we’re very careful. We’d be the last people she’d expect to see. We can then probably identify her lover and then . . . you’d know. It would settle you down. Wouldn’t it be worth it?”

Emily gulped. This outrageous idea made Andy’s spying operation the previous night look really small beer in comparison.

“But I’ve got to take care of the Book. Miranda asked me. . . “

“I know, my darling girl, she asked you specially. But we can take the Book along with us. On Fridays, the editorial gang hardly produce any work for it anyway. Collect it tonight and we can take off with it in your luggage. If we get tired of sex, you can pull out your post-it notes and get editing. “

Emily could not imagine ever getting tired of sex with Serena, but she might make time to work on the Book somehow, maybe on the long road up there, if Serena drove.

“It’s a long way, more than three hundred miles.”

“Yes, but the road is fast, if we avoid the rush hour, and I’ve got my Merc. We could leave really early tomorrow, and we’d be going against the heavy traffic into NYC.”

“Wow.”

“Look, you book us in somewhere, you know, on one of those last minute secret escape websites. And get us a hot-tub too, why not.”

“It’ll cost.”

“I’ve got plenty of money, and platinum cards. No worries. Come on. Why should Miranda have all the fun?”

“But she asked me specially . . . “

Serena could see that Emily was weakening. She gave her a kiss on the cheek, “And I’m asking you, specially, as well. Doesn’t that count?”

Emily sighed, and smiled, and gave in. So it looked now as though five of them would all now be travelling up to P-town the next day, Miranda, Miranda’s mystery Other, (unless she was meeting him/her there), Serena, Emily, and the Book. She could almost feel the sand between her toes already, and began to think of what outfits to pack.

Meanwhile, over at the townhouse, Andy and Miranda were also packing for the trip. On Miranda’s guest bed there were two suitcases open, one rather large, one cabin sized.

“I thought we were travelling light. It’s only for one night. “

“This is my system, I never deviate from it.”

“Four pairs of everything?? And three complete evening dresses?”

“I put one in which would fit you. And remember the night of the thunderstorm. We ruined two in one evening.”

“Darling woman, I don’t intend to spend much time in a ball gown. In fact I don’t think we will need much outerwear at all. I like your fancy undies though. I shall enjoy removing them.”

“You are getting far too much above yourself. I shall have to impose some sanctions, I can see.”

Miranda was wrapping up a thin leather belt. She wound it round her hand as she spoke. Andrea caught her devilish look, and took a deep breath in.

“Hmm. But don’t forget the trouble your last idea of imposing sanctions got us into. Will I need to wrap up my wrists again next week?”

Miranda had the decency to look a little abashed. She put the belt neatly away in the packing cube for belts and bits and pieces, but then her gaze slid sideways towards Andrea.

“You know, I like to know where my boundaries are as well, sometimes. It’s a matter of give and take.”

Andrea gathered her in for an embrace. She put her arms round Miranda’s back and nuzzled her ear. “Hmm,” she whispered. “Giving and taking. You give me so much. I can take it all, whatever’s on offer, and you know you can take whatever you want in return?”

“Want, or need to?”

“Both.”

They swam down into one of their deep-water silences. Then Miranda shook herself.

“Well, what I need now is some peace to finish packing here. Then I want to sit down for one last chat with the twins. They’ve had such a good time, I was worried they would forget about me, but they’ve been very faithful about calling.

“When do they break camp?”

“2pm Saturday. We’re invited to a closing ceremony of some sort.”

“Will we get there in time? “

“Oh easily, if we leave Cape Cod by 8am. We must just make sure the Lexus has enough gas.”

“I’ll go and fill it up now, if you like, for the trip up.”

“Thanks, darling, and Andy . . . “

“She called me Andy! Wonders will never cease . . . “

“ . . .you know, I would never do anything to intentionally hurt you, not in a million years.”

“I know. That’s why we’re rewriting the script, aren’t we? Love you too, Babe.”

And she ran downstairs, scooping up Miranda’s car-keys from the hall table and went out to retrieve the large car from an underground garage beneath the building. The evening pulsated with heat, and so did she, but the air-conditioning in the vehicle helped cool things down a little. The heatwave was still intense though, and wasn’t cooling off any time soon.

Back at the office, Emily tried to wrap her head round her next big adventure. She knew Serena missed the beaches of Rio really badly, and they had never been away together, just the two of them. Photo shoot expeditions didn’t count. Part of her hoped they would not find Miranda at all. Then they could just escape for a quiet weekend of love on a beach. She felt really guilty about hounding her boss any further, but it would give some point to their travelling so far up the coast.

Having been tempted into such bad behaviour by Serena, Emily decided not to snoop on Andy’s camera work as well, for now anyway. She closed down both their computers, wrenched The Book out of the startled hands of the guy from Layouts and Line-ups, and left the building as the evening light was fading into a hot and sultry darkness. Before she left though, she had put an outgoing message on the Editor’s office telephone system.

“Miranda Priestly is otherwise engaged. If you need assistance please leave your name and number and we will get back to you.”

It was the most daring thing she had ever done. Normally she would have given her own cell phone number to field the calls, even if they came through from Sydney, Australia at 2am. But Emily was off for the weekend, and like her boss, was going definitely to be otherwise engaged.

Andrea filled up the car and stowed it safely back in Miranda’s garage. She had two cars down there, the second a rather raffish Porsche sports convertible, not at all practical for carrying children around. In fact Andy had never seen Miranda behind its wheel. Maybe they could take it out for a spin together one Sunday afternoon.

For work and commuting, Miranda normally used the Runway car with Roy as her driver, while she caught up with paperwork, but Andy knew she was a good driver herself. Andy, like nearly every American, had driven from the age of sixteen, but had no vehicle in NY. Parking problems made it quite impractical. But if they ever did get a house up the coast, then a little jaunty number kept up there for local use would be great.

Andy caught herself imagining this and realised that she was unconsciously making long, long term plans to be with Miranda, sharing a life for ever. This was such a shift from the way things were less than a month ago. Half of her brain hadn’t yet caught up with the other half.

The last two weeks since the Reception had gone in a whirlwind. She was learning to read Miranda better every day, discovering aspects of her she had not fully understood, but there was still a continent of mystery and depth to the woman. They intuitively connected at such a subterranean level, their affair had happened almost intuitively. They knew what each other liked, what they needed, but there was still so far to go, to explore each other’s personalities.

Andrea went through the front hall, into the small study to find Miranda curled up on a chair, biting her glasses frame and staring into a picture on the wall.

“What’s up? Are the twins OK? Look, I bought you a present from the filling station.” She passed over a chocolate covered ice-cream bar.

“Nothing, it’s nothing. Thank you darling. I was just wondering what the girls will really make of us, you and me, being together. I can’t bear the thought of us not being together, not sleeping together, but it will be such a turnaround for them. How will they understand?”

“Did you talk about it on the phone just now?”

“Not really. I chickened out. I said you were staying with us for a while because you’d lost your flat-mate, and might have to move out of your apartment.”

“That will be fine. We can work on that.”

Miranda turned to look at her, her eyes dark violet blue in the soft light from the table lamp.

“But don’t you see? How will I hide this?” Miranda’s voice trembled.

“This?” Andy knelt at her feet and put her head on Miranda’s lap. She felt a hand hesitate and then smooth her hair back from her cheek, and press her head close against the lap. She could feel the shape of Miranda’s thighs through her dress.

“Yes. This. That I am lost in you. That you are everything I ever wanted. That ,“

“Sshh. Eat your ice-cream and then let’s go to bed. We’ve got a long drive tomorrow.”

“Car filled up OK?” Miranda had steadied under Andy’s careful lowering of the intensity, and followed her lead.

“Yep. No probs. Packing done?”

“Yes. I remembered you said you wanted to go to the beach in a singlet and shorts, so in the end that’s all I put in for you.”

“You are my Queen. Your wish is my command.”

They climbed the stairs together for their last night together before the twins’ return. Miranda’s heart-rate rose as they entered her bed-room, and it beat even faster as she felt Andrea gently push her down on the bed, and methodically remove all her jewellery, all her clothes, and all her anxieties about their future, in a few swift movements.

“I need to take off my make-up . . .” was her final attempt at conversation.

“Don’t you worry about that. I’ll take it off for you. There’ll be none left by morning.”

Andrea gazed down at her lover and stripped off her own clothes before joining her. She took the lead in their lovemaking, pushing Miranda’s legs apart, and cupping her firmly as she started to groan and rise against her hand. It took only seconds for Miranda to come, she was so aroused before they had even climbed the stairs, and then Andy settled in for a lovely luxurious exploration of Miranda’s folds and hidden secret places. When she came herself, in the skilled hands and mouth of her lover, it felt like the end to a perfect day.

“Tomorrow,” she murmured, against Miranda’s breast. “We’re going to the seaside. How lovely . . . . Then out of the blue she remembered and thought, “Oh bother, I never deleted those pictures on the computer, damn it. . . . Oh never mind. No one knows my pass-word. I’ll sort it out on Monday.”

Miranda was already asleep, and Andy wrapped herself round her and nodded off as well. Neither of them had any idea of the posse already being assembled across town to track them up to Provincetown. Friday was going to be another very warm day.

Chapter 6 Summary:

Miranda and Andy take their road trip. They are not alone.

Chapter Text

Andy woke with the alarm on her phone she’d set dead on 5.30 on Friday morning. Still with her eyes shut, she fumbled around with one hand on the night stand and manage to stop the beeps.

“I’ll make us some coffee,” she said to the sleeping beauty beside her, and tried to unwrap herself from Miranda’s arms, both of which held her down against the bed.

Every day they played out the same little game they had started the first night they spent together, Miranda never wanted Andrea to get up, she didn’t want them to leave their nest. Miranda wanted to stay sleepily entwined with her lover. Sometimes she teased, sometimes she sulked, sometimes she forcibly held Andy back and smothered her with kisses.

Miranda who previously had always jumped straight out of bed at six on the dot, and headed for a blast from her power shower, now resembled a bear waking in the spring, moving, very, very slowly. It was partly because she loved the warmth and sexiness of Andy’s morning body, but partly because being in bed together with her was the most uncomplicated, purest part of her day. There needed to be no dissembling, no fear of being caught, no compromises with a world which still had very mixed feelings about gay relationships, and with certain individuals whose feelings weren’t mixed at all, but just hom*ophobic through and through.

This morning though, she knew they had to be up and off. Andy was excited.

“It’s a road-trip. One of my first fantasies was to take a road-trip with you.”

“It was? Why pray?” Miranda sat up and pushed her hair back from her eyes. She peered at the early morning sunbeams already trying to break in through the blinds.

“Because you have a wonderful profile, and if I’m sitting in the car, then I can look at it all the time.”

“No, not all the time. You’ll be driving for at least half our trip. I like being driven, and then I can sit and look at your profile instead. You’re not the only one who gets to appreciate the female form.”

Andy held out her hand. She had managed to get out of the bed, and now tugged Miranda, naked, into a standing position. Miranda stretched up like a cat, completely uninhibited, and then rolled her shoulders.

They gazed at each other, unclothed, rumpled and physically quite different, in colouring, age, and bone structure, but they complemented each other perfectly. There was nothing in each of their bodies that either would change in any way.

“I adore you, you know that?” sighed Andrea, pulling her lover into her arms. Miranda allowed herself to be held in a most compromising position with Andrea’s firm hands cupping each buttock and squeezing their breasts and abdomens together. “I could stay in bed with you for a month and not get bored, but, “

“I know. We want to hit the road soon to avoid the worst of the traffic on the turnpike. Go make me some nice coffee like a good girl, and I’ll take a shower.”

Andrea released her, and pulling on Miranda’s robe, left her to repair the ravages of the night with hot water and Chanel shower cream. She returned with two mugsful and then plunged under the shower herself. She dressed in shorts, a singlet, and light sandals. Miranda was equally out of uniform in pink shorts and a white lacy top. Only the immaculate finish to everything she wore indicated its price bracket.

Their cases were stowed in the car, and they were on the road within twenty minutes. Miranda took first shift as the driver. She knew the quirks of New York traffic flow like a professional taxi driver and managed to get them off Manhattan and heading North east within half an hour. The freeways twisted and turned but they made it on to the Connecticut turnpike, the 1-191 without any trouble, and had cleared the city by 7am.

“It’s a straight run. We should be there by 2pm, even with a short stop. The road runs close to the coast, but it’s a bit samey. You’ll have to keep me amused. “

“OK, sure, but I’ll drive after we stop somewhere in a couple of hours. “

The sun had come out to play in a cloudless sky. Andy looked at Miranda’s profile, which even in her sunglasses, was a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.

“Tell me about your childhood, your family. I don’t really know where you popped out into the world from.”

So as they bowled along, Andy gave Miranda an edited version of her pretty conventional life in Cincinnati. Dad was a lawyer, specialising in patents (Gee, so boring. I worked summers in his office while I was in High School. Put me off being a lawyer for good.), omitted she’d turned down a promised place at Stanford Law School, after a liberal arts degree at North Western, but talked about taking a Master’s in journalism instead. Mom was (still is) a social worker with Cincinnati’s children’s department, spending all her time trying to find homes for kids no-one wanted to foster. Both liberal Episcopalians, pro women priests, pro-gay rights, most likely would be fine with Andy taking Miranda home as her partner.

Miranda thought Andy was being very optimistic here. She chipped in with a question which had been burning the edges of her brain for some time

“Have you ever discussed being possibly gay, or bi-sexual, with them?”

“Not precisely, but Mom knew I had various “things” for several people growing up”

“Things? What things?”

“Well, there was Melanie Robertson in 6th grade. I had such a crush on her. She had just a way of tossing her head. We used to bike to school together. Then when we went to Junior High she wouldn’t talk to me anymore. She discovered boys and said I was no fun. I always had my head in a book. She married a guy who fixes roofs and dropped out of school at seventeen. She has four kids already.”

“Oh.” Miranda changed lanes and accelerated. Well, that early crush seemed safely in the past. She didn’t want to appear voyeuristic, but she needed more information.

“Who came next?”

“Miss Engels, High School Freshman English. She also taught drama, and so I joined the drama group. I loved her with a pure and noble passion for at least a year. She taught me to love Shakespeare, and to learn the sonnets off by heart.

““Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” . . . You know.”

“So what happened to her?”

“She married Mr Chan who taught economics and they moved to Milwaukee.

Mom comforted me when I cried for a week over her.”

“Did you date many boys?”

“Well yes, first base, you know. School proms, blah, blah. “

Andrea was getting bored recounting her school days. Maybe she should just let Miranda read all her year-books if she wanted to do a research project. The traffic was getting quite busy, so cars in parallel lanes kept alongside each other for several minutes. They were cruising at 65mph, and making good progress. Then, as Andrea looked idly around at the other vehicles heading up the freeway with them, she saw a truly astonishing sight.

In the far left lane, doing at least 70mph, so smoothly inching ahead, a pale blue Merc soft-top two seater was overtaking them. Andy recognised it at once. It was Serena’s car, and the driver was, yes, undoubtedly Serena! Even more extraordinary, her passenger, in dark glasses and a silk headscarf like a wannabe film star was Emily Charlton!

“Miranda,”

“Hmm . . “

“Don’t look now, but you’ll never guess who’s sharing the same road as us.”

Miranda looked left. She took off her sunglasses and looked again.

“Well, I’ll be . . .”

“Jiggered . . Yes, isn’t it crazy? What do you supposed they’re up to?”

“Asking to be fired, that’s what. I precisely told Emily to take full responsibility for the Book. That meant of course, not lifting her backside from the office chair all day today, and here she is, with Serena . . . “

“Doing what we’re doing, bunking off! But why are they heading in this direction? Better keep back, we don’t want them to see us!”

“I know what they’re doing, I am sure Emily is tailing me up to Provincetown. That minx! “

Miranda laughed. “She’s got some bottle, that’s for sure. She must know she’s for the high jump if I catch her.”

Andy didn’t want Miranda to fire Emily, not on her account. “I don’t think they’ve seen us. Does Emily know you drive a Gold Lexus?”

“No, I don’t think so. Anyway with the tinted windows, it’s hard to see who’s inside. I think they’re heading for the Inn she booked me into. There’s all this nonsense flying round Runway about me dating someone, and obviously your games with the camera didn’t satisfy her. She is determined to discover us. It’s like an old comedy film from the 1930s. “

“So what are we going to do?”

“Have some fun, darling. Let’s stalk them instead. Call up the place we booked into and cancel the booking, but book us in somewhere else comparable. It needs to be near the beach and have a hot-tub, that’s all.”

Andy took out her phone, picked up the paperwork on their Inn resting in Miranda’s purse, and made the changes. The new place looked even more romantic, off the beaten track and close to the sands. She secured one of their best rooms. As she told Miranda about this, she could see Miranda tucking their car in six cars behind Serena so she could keep her in view, but remain pretty anonymous.

So things carried on for the next two hundred miles, by which time, Miranda wanted a coffee, and Andy wanted to stretch her legs. The girls up ahead obviously had the same idea, for at the nearest service area, they pulled off. Miranda did the same, and parked up the far end of the lot from them. They left their car, and Miranda saw Emily holding the precious Book, and then stow it away in a bag in the trunk of the two-seater.

“My Book, my precious Book! She brought it with her!”

“It shows how much she cares about it. Why shouldn’t The Book come to the seaside as well, poor thing? All it does is move between Run-way and your house all the time. I bet it gets bored.”

Miranda looked for a moment as though she might run over to Emily, grab the book and punch her on the nose. Andy wondered just how violent she might be if so provoked. But Miranda did nothing but give one of her wry half smiles.

She touched Andy’s shoulder and pulled her round to look more closely at their colleagues, oblivious of their presence in the same parking lot. Serena was leaning against the car and had pulled Emily in for a deep and obviously sexual kiss. Emily, prudish, up-tight, obsessive Emily, was reciprocating. Her arms were round Serena’s neck. If the hug had been any tighter ribs might have been broken.

Miranda and Andy looked at each other and laughed.

“Did you have any idea, things had got to that stage?”

“No, I knew Emily had a crush. She always protests too much about not being gay, and she and Serena hang around together all the time. I have a hunch they have actually moved into a shared apartment, but nothing’s been said.”

“I should have realised. I pride myself on knowing everything about my staff.”

“But you never seem . . . interested. You never ask.”

“The art of management, my darling. Be everywhere, see everything, but say nothing until it’s the right time to act. But I admit I did miss Serena and Emily. Probably too caught up in my own soap opera. Hmm.”

“Don’t be hard on them, please. I know they are wicked to follow you, if that’s what Emily’s doing,”

“I’m dead certain of it.”

“But they are obviously in love. Booking you in to the first Inn probably made Emily jealous, and I bet Serena encouraged her. She keeps talking about how she misses Brazil and all the lovely beaches. Who are we to judge them for being as happy as us?”

“No-one can be as happy as us. I won’t allow it, and certainly not on company time!”

“Oh don’t be a poop. What shall we do now, confront them in the road-house?”

“No, you’re right. I mustn’t spoil their fun, anyway not quite yet. Let them depart thinking they are following us, and then we’ll go inside for a comfort break. We don’t have far to go now. Anyway, there’s something I haven’t told you about yet.”

“Oh yes?” Andy might have known Miranda would have had some secrets up her sleeve.

“I’ve made an appointment for 2pm to look round a little beach cottage. You may not care for it, but if you do, I think we could buy it. I’m so bored with the Hamptons, and the children love the beach. Their father spoils them too much with vacations in exotic resorts, far beyond what is suitable for ten year olds, and he always has some bimbo girlfriend trailing along as well, not a good role model.”

“Hey, aren’t I your bimbo girlfriend? Better not throw stones if we’re sitting in a glasshouse.”

“You, my precious, could never be a bimbo. By definition, bimbos have no brains, and you have way too many for your own good.”

Andy turned back to the main point of Miranda’s tale. “A beach cottage! How wonderful. Only someone raised in Ohio who never went to the coast until she was fourteen, can know how wonderful those words sound! A beach cottage! With Miranda Priestly! Wow.”

“Don’t get carried away. We may not like it, but it would be a start. We’ll get our eye in on the local real estate anyway. It’s a good place to invest. Prices up here are bound to rise.”

Andy knew Miranda had a very good head for business. She felt a little out of her league though.

“You know, I wouldn’t be able to afford to put anything in to it, don’t you? What with all my student loans to pay off. “

Miranda laughed. “My dearest. One thing I am not short of is ready money. What I am desperately short of is someone to share it with. So don’t worry about the finances. They need be no concern of yours. Now then, look, our private detective truants are returning to their car.”

Emily and Serena came down the steps to the parking lot, holding large diet co*kes. Serena had a bag which looked as though it contained hamburgers and fries. Good luck to her if she can get Emily to eat those, thought Andy. The two looked, well, definitely intimate. They got into the Mercedes sports car, and this time Emily took the driver’s position.

“Are we just going to let them go then?” Andy asked.

“For now. Let’s leave it to fate. Maybe we’ll bump into them in Provincetown. Won’t that be fun? If not, I will have a little interview with them on Monday, if they deign to return to work at all.”

Andy put a hand on her arm, “Please!”

“Oh no, I won’t fire anybody. I will just make them slightly frightened. That will be very enjoyable.”

“But surely you don’t want them seeing us together?”

“You know, in a funny way part of me hopes they do. I know it will be difficult for you, especially, and I’m sorry for it. But I love you, Andy. You are the sunshine of my life, you really are. I don’t think I can keep it hidden much longer even if I wanted to.”

“OK then, let’s go grab ourselves some junk food to keep up our blood sugar. Oh, I am so excited about seeing this cottage!”

And they ran across to the service station and road house for an early lunch.

Chapter 7 Chapter Text

Twenty miles further up the 1-191, Emily was thoroughly enjoying driving Serena’s beautiful Mercedes Sports Car. She imagined she was Grace Kelly in an old 1950s film driving along the French Riviera coast road. She loved the car, she definitely loved her companion and she loved her job. She had invented a little justification for this escapade to settle her conscience. She was doing it all to protect Miranda from an unworthy liaison with another Stephen. Her boss needing saving from herself. Hadn’t it already been proved by now, beyond all reasonable doubt, that she had terrible taste in men?

Emily would be the one to discover who the villain was, and then set about revealing his deadly deeds, so Miranda could be saved. Serena’s stated suspicion that Miranda was gay, she had decided to discount. Andy’s pictures had just shown Miranda dancing and enjoying feminine company, not really anything more, and Emily shied away from thinking that her own hidden sexuality, still such a tender subject to herself, could ever be the same as her boss. She put her thoughts on Miranda’s mystery lover to Serena, who was sitting beside her and enjoying her profile.

Serena wasn’t convinced at all by Emily saying they were looking for a male companion. She knew Emily’s gaydar wasn’t the smartest. It had taken her ages before she even realised Serena was relentlessly chatting her up over their endless mini-lunches, and coffee breaks. Then it had taken all Serena’s guile and skills at seduction to push Emily into accepting her own gayness, which to the Brazilian, was as clear as the nose on Emily’s cute face.

She had been doing her own thought processing over Miranda’s mystery lover, and had come up with a possible scenario so outlandish, so unbelievable, that it could in fact be the truth. But it was crazy. Serena knew Emily had a weak nervous system, and she didn’t want to risk her crashing her precious Merc, so she buried the thought in the back of her mind and didn’t discourage Emily’s pontificating, about the awfulness of unsuitable men in general, and their tendency to gather round Miranda in particular.

“Turn off next out,” she reminded Emily, looking at the GPS screen. “What do you want to do now? Do you think Miranda will have booked into her accommodation yet, or be in the centre of P-town?”

“I don’t think she’ll be there yet. One can’t normally book in to inns before 3pm, though of course, what Miranda wants, Miranda always gets. Let’s mooch about and enjoy the beaches first. Then we can go into the centre and look at the art galleries and dress shops. I thought I might just call the reception at her hotel later and check she’s arrived safely. Even she finds out, she’ll think I’m calling from the office, being efficient, you know. We can then work out our strategy for detecting her.”

So that is what the two young women did. Emily finally got to feel the sand under her toes, and fulfilled her dream of walking along the shoreline, hand–in –hand with Serena. There were also some athletics practice in the dunes, and the collecting of seashells.

Provincetown was certainly a very gay friendly place. Women in couples were everywhere, sitting out in the warm sunshine, enjoying drinks at the many cafes and bars. The air was so much fresher than in New York, and the temperature, in the low 80s, felt almost brisk compared to what they had endured for the last three weeks in the Big Apple.

Then, out of the blue, Emily felt a frisson of adrenalin as she saw Miranda, as large as life, wearing shorts and shades and not much else, talking to a guy in front of a real estate office across the street. He was quite a bit younger than her, very tanned, and with a Colgate smile. He was waving his arms about and seemed super enthusiastic. Miranda was her usual impassive self, but she seemed positive. They walked off together down the street, and round the corner.
“I told you!” she squeaked at Serena. “It’s a toy-boy! I knew it. “

Serena chuckled. The guy looked like a realtor to her. “OK honey, you win. Now let’s go do some serious shopping. I have an American Express Card just itching to be used. If I spend $ 12000 on it, I will get to take a companion with me on a flight to Rio for free. Now we know she’s in town, and who she’s with, we can relax.”

Miranda and the realtor, who said his name was Karl (with a K, not Junior.), reached Andy, who was waiting for them with the car parked in a side street. Karl (waknj) was giving Miranda instructions on how to follow him out of town, and then left them so he could pull his own Toyota Prius out of the parking lot and lead them off to the cottage on the beach.

“It’s a little difficult to locate if you don’t know, it’s super secluded.”

“Gay couple, just ‘married’, looking for a love-nest,” he thought to himself as soon as he saw Andy’s long tanned legs, and come-hither bedroom eyes. It was going to be an easy sale. And in fact he was right. So it proved to be.

The house sold itself to them really. It was the last in a line of properties along a lane running just behind the high-tide mark, but there was a good fifty yards between it and its nearest neighbour. It had the classic beach cottage look, painted blue and white, with hardwood floors, three beds, two baths, and a wide porch running along its entire length, just crying out for a swinging seat on which to read, make love and watch the waves. The air-con was newly installed. The large refrigerator, and other white goods were included in the price. There was parking for two cars, (and a boat), and a large open-plan kitchen lounge with windows on three sides. Access to the beach was just beside the house. The scent of sea-thrift, semi-wild carnations and salt pervaded the atmosphere.

Andy loved it. She loved the seagulls calling to each other across the roof-shingles, she loved the rainbow colored windsock flying from the flagpole. She loved that you could see and hear the sea from every room. She could write here. She might even write a novel. Miranda looked at her happy face, and was satisfied. She’d warmed to it too. The girls would love it as well.

She took the young man by the arm and walked him back to the cars. “What’s their lowest price?” “What’s your best offer?” “For cash and a quick completion.” Miranda named a figure. He said he’d call the owners. She gave him her cell phone number. By 4pm, the deal was finalised.

Karl drove away a happy man. He always loved romantics. They never fussed about things like mains drainage or re-wiring. But the women had actually done well. They’d snapped up one of the best beach front properties on his books. Another few days, and it would have been sold to someone else.

Miranda handed the car-keys to Andrea. “Now then, my darling girl, let’s find our Inn. I’ve done enough decision making for one day. You can choose the dinner menu, and what we do for the rest of the evening.”

Andrea smiled.

“That won’t be difficult,” she took Miranda’s hand, and kissed it as they returned to the car. “I wonder what Em and Serena are up to.”

Emily and Serena were busy booking into their Inn, “The Windhover”, at the far end of Provincetown. It looked dreamy, the gardens were delightful, and there were a row of individual chalets each with its own hot-tub and private outside space. The restaurant had loads of stars, so Serena dragged Emily through the challenging process of deciding to dine in. Whenever she had to think about dining, in or out, Emily began to hyperventilate, but she obeyed Serena. Surely they would have some salads on the menu. While Serena was pulling suitcases out of the trunk, Emily rang the Inn where she had booked a room for Miranda and guest and checked up that the arrangements were still all in place.

“Sorry, that booking was cancelled this morning.”

“What! Did they say why?”

“No, just change of plans apparently. Sorry, I can’t give out more details.”

Emily pondered on this. She asked Serena anxiously about it.

“Do you think Miranda decided not to stay after all?”

“Who knows? Maybe she’s moved on towards New Hampshire. Didn’t you say she was picking up her kids tomorrow? Anyway, stop worrying. It means she’ll be far, far away and she won’t catch us. You can stop jumping about like a cricket frightened of its own backside, and we can enjoy a lovely romantic weekend.”

The words lovely, romantic, and weekend, all thrilled Emily, and she followed the older girl through to the chalet which was to be their own little piece of heaven for the next two nights.

Exactly twenty minutes later, Miranda and Andy also pulled their car into the Windhover parking lot, and eased themselves out of the vehicle.

“It looks fine,” considered Andy, taking stock of the gardens, the smart exterior and the large swimming pool behind a rose trellis. Then she glanced up and down the line of cars beside them.

“Oh, no, you’ve got to be kidding!”

“What, sweetheart?”

“Look, the blue Merc! Emily and Serena are staying here!”

Miranda’s eyes crinkled with a genuine, broad grin.

“Well, ain’t that a thing? The fates have delivered them straight into my hands.”

“But it means we’ll be found out! All is lost!”

“I don’t think so. I think we can have quite a bit of fun here. Go ahead and book us in, and let’s relax for an hour or so. Then I’m going to pay those young ladies a little visit. “

Andrea had seen Miranda in full fury mode before, and it wasn’t a pretty sight, even when she was half pretending just for the heck of it. For Emily’s sake she hoped there were plenty of snacks available in their mini-bar she could feed to Miranda before she set off in search of the errant twosome. She booked them in, and managed to see from the ledger on the desk that their room was on a different pathway and round the corner from Serena’s and Emily’s. But the place wasn’t large, fifty guests maximum, so an encounter could pretty much guaranteed, even if Miranda didn’t go visiting.

For the next hour, Miranda and she unwound after their long trip, the house viewing, and hey, the house buying, and what had been an emotionally mind-blowing couple of weeks. They stripped off and sat back in their hot-tub, using the water jets to soothe tired muscles and ease away the tensions. Andy lay back against Miranda and let her explore her breasts and belly under the water. Miranda loved to play with her, and the water rippling around her intensified her responses. She began to whimper as Miranda followed her fingers with her mouth, and before long, grabbing a couple of towels, she pulled Miranda out of the tub, and back onto their bed.

“Take me now”, she pleaded, “Help me come, please.”

Miranda loved to see Andrea in this state, losing control, begging. It thrilled her that a person as beautiful, as fresh and pure as Andrea, could depend on her to reach org*sm, and had actually chosen to love her back so completely when she had pursued her. She felt a deep gratitude to the gods for making it happen.

She pushed Andrea up onto the pillows, gently widened the gap between those smooth golden legs, and lowered her mouth to kiss and lick her way deep inside her lover’s core. In the following half hour, she managed to bring Andy to org*sm not once, which happened almost immediately, not twice, but three times. They lay together afterwards, both panting somewhat to catch their breath. Then Andy turned the tables, and gave Miranda a ride across the moon as exciting as during their first night together.

“We’re both really good at this. Who would have known?”

“I knew you’d be good as soon as I observed your rear view sashaying out of my office that first day. You didn’t fool me. But you’re right. We are good at it, because we love each other and we want to give each other the best.”

They lay together in a state of post-coital contentment, and dozed off for an hour or so. The evening was drawing in, and Miranda looked at her watch, then stood up and went for a shower. She slipped into a red dinner dress and heels and brushed her hair up and back into a slightly severe style. She put on enough war paint to fight the Battle of Little Big Horn, and a slash of red lipstick which Andy nearly kissed off at once, it looked so scarily attractive.

Andy was wrapped in a bath towel and still lay on the bed.

“Oh, dearie me,” she said, “What are you up to?”

“I’m just going to rescue my Book,” said Miranda, “and invite our young friends down the way to join us for dinner. Do you think I look sufficiently dragon-like?

“Absolutely. Sure you’re not going to get them fried up as the dinner?”

“As if I would. As you so often tell me Andrea. I am just a puss*-cat at heart. But I won’t ask you to come along with me. I know you’re too tender hearted to watch Emily being eviscerated, and I’m not going to tell her who my companion is just yet. We’ll save that little surprise for later!”

“Should I wish you luck, or them?”

“Luck for me won’t be needed. Trust me.”

Emily and Serena had also enjoyed some late afternoon sex. It was quieter and gentler than Miranda and Andy had achieved. Emily still thought one org*sm a day was the national standard, and mostly she just liked to lie next to Serena and let her draw fantastic landscapes on her body with those exquisitely manicured nails. They were naked in bed, in the warmth of the setting sun, completely relaxed.

Then out of the blue there was a sharp double knock on their chalet door.

Emily, always Pavlovian when it came to answering phones, doors or the sound of Miranda’s voice, pulled on a white towelling robe which came with the room, and ventured to respond.

“Did we order room service?” she asked Serena over her shoulder, as she undid the lock and looked out.

Miranda stood there, resplendent in her scarlet lipstick and dress. In her heels she towered over Emily’s cowering nudity.

Emily fell backwards, “Oh God, Mir . . . Oh God. . . . Oh “

Miranda strode in, and automatically owned the room.

“Somewhat late to call on the Almighty, don’t you think, Emily?”

Serena pulled a sheet up over her naked body, and swore in Portuguese.

Miranda wasn’t going to make it easy for them. She stared straight at Emily, waiting.

“Well?”

“I’m so sorry, Miranda.”

“For what?”

“Well, for following you up here, for taking the day off, for not holding the fort, for the Book . . . . . I know I’ve let you down.”

“So why did you follow me all the way up here?”

“Because . . . “Emily could feel the tears coming. Being caught smoking behind the bike sheds at school by her headmistress when she was fourteen was nothing to this.

“Because I was worried about you, for you. I thought you might get hurt again . . . like with Stephen . . . I wanted to find out.”

Oh God, she was so dead. She had broken every single rule on Miranda’s book. She knew even mentioning Stephen’s name was a hanging offence.

Serena, wrapped in the sheet, rose up as Emily’s protector. “If you want to blame anyone Miranda, blame me. It was all my idea. Emily works so hard. She never gets a day off and the heatwave has been driving us all crazy. I just wanted to give her a little adventure.”

Miranda leaned back against their door frame.

“Where is the Book? I presume you have it tossed aside somewhere.”

“The Book, yes of course, the Book. I have been working on it. I am up to page 57. “

Emily rushed to her bag and extracted the precious portfolio, along with the post-it notes and pen.. Miranda held out her hands and Emily gave it over to her.

She started to cry, in a very British, keep calm and carry on fashion, although she knew she wouldn’t be carrying on after this. All her hopes and dreams, all her future in the fashion industry were going up in flames. Miranda was disappointed. Miranda was so cold, she must be completely furious, at being stalked, at being spied on, and now she knew Emily was gay, and untrustworthy, and . . . The tears stopped being British and under control . . . .

“Oh for goodness sake, girl. There’s no need to cry.”

Serena put her arms round Emily and stared defiantly at Miranda, well, as defiantly anyone in Runway ever had stared at her, (which was no-one.)

“You’re making her cry. She thinks you’re going to fire her. Fire me instead.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. No-one is going to fire anybody. I merely came to collect the book, and invite you both to have dinner with me here tonight”

“Whaat?”

“Emily, we may be in Cape Cod, but remember you are not a cod-fish. So dry your eyes and close your mouth. I was thinking of giving you a rollicking about the Book, but you obviously have worked hard on it, and haven’t lost it in the sand dunes, so there’s no real harm done, is there?

“I’ll see you in the restaurant, shall we say 7.30? And Emily, I know what you’ve been doing, tracking down clues, chasing around to see where I’ve been and with whom all week. That has to stop. And to make it stop, I’ll tell you the truth this evening. “

“Oh – ah – ee.”

“Stop that ridiculous imitation of Pavarotti.

“I just want both of you to give me your solemn assurance that I can trust you to keep this confidential, that what happens in Provincetown stays in Provincetown. Will you do that? Can I trust you?”

The girls both nodded. “Yes, Miranda”. “Of course Miranda.”

“How did you know we were here? How did you find us?” whispered Emily. She still felt like a small mouse having a conversation with a large cat.

“You passed me on the road this morning, and we saw you at the gas station, then saw your car parked here when we signed in. I also saw you on Main Street earlier this afternoon. I must say as private investigators you’re absolutely useless.”

“’We’ . . . ?”

“Oh yes, the person I’m dating is the person who drove up with me, the person staying here with me. As I said, we’ll see you at dinner later.”

And Miranda left with the Book back where it belonged, under her arm.

She made it back to her chalet without breaking into an audible laugh, but when Andy let her in, her shoulders were shaking.

“Classic. They were naked, had been in bed, obviously. Emily cried. Serena wanted to take a bullet for her. They looked so sweet together all my ire and venom disappeared. I’ve asked them to join us for dinner.”

“But, what about? Did you tell them about me?”

“No, I didn’t. I wanted to leave that until we sit down. But they have solemnly promised not to say anything about all of this.”

“And you believe them?”

“Yes. They are still too frightened of me to lie. And anyway, they’re not stupid. They know I could still fire them.”

Andy hurried to get herself ready for the evening meal. Despite her earlier teasing, she did hope Miranda had packed something formal for her to wear, and of course her Queen had not disappointed. She slipped into the summer weight dark green silk dress, and high heeled sandals.

“Sit.” Miranda pointed to the stool in front of the mirrored unit, and then began to brush out Andrea’s hair.

“Thanks. “

“You know how much I like to look after your hair. Well, someone has to.”

“I love you to brush it. It gives me goose-bumps.”

By the end of Miranda’s hair-dressing session, Andy’s hair fell in a luxuriant main over one shoulder, and her face was delicately but beautifully made up, so her eyes looked like stars and her mouth had a hungry deep red curve to it. Miranda gave her a puff of hair spray, and then a longer application of her own perfume. It turned Andy’s head.

“It’s a little different on you than on me, but it works. I want you to wear it often. And finally, I have a little present for you, I brought it from New York. “

Miranda opened a Tiffany’s small square box and took out two drop ear-rings, with tiny gold filigree holding two sparkling emeralds.

“Oh, Miranda. They’re gorgeous. How can I thank you?”

“Here, let me,” and Miranda hung the flashing green stones from Andy’s ears. It was the same fantasy she had had two weeks before, and the look exceeded her expectations.

“Come on, we need to go over to the restaurant.”

They left the room together.

To say Emily was gobsmacked, was putting it crudely, but pretty accurate. When she saw Andy come to the table behind Miranda, she went red in the face with a whole co*cktail of emotions, disbelief, fury at Andy, disbelief, embarrassment at how dense she had been, disbelief again, fury again, and then finally a huge feeling of relief.

Miranda wasn’t with some sweaty man who would break her heart, and make Emily’s job impossible. Andy, as she had always known underneath, was a truly nice and good person, and if Miranda wanted to be in bed with a person with zero fashion sense and zero style, then so be it. The clues she had thought were leading one way, had actually all been leading in quite another.

“I guess I wasn’t such a good detective after all. I never had a real clue.”

They ordered food. Miranda suggested a fish platter to share, and quietly kept passing Emily small pieces of battered this and that delicacy which she was too intimidated not to eat. The four ate and drank excellent sea-food, and white wine, and eventually they got onto the subject of being gay women in a straight world.

Andy followed Miranda’s lead, and told them the next instalment of her “coming out to Mother saga” she had begun in the car. Serena was so grateful, for they were helping her smooth out some of Emily’s self-hatred and fear of being outed.

“Andrea and I have to leave early tomorrow, but you enjoy the rest of the weekend. You know, we bought a place here this afternoon, so we can come again for longer, when work permits. You might even join us.”

“What happens in Provincetown stays in Provincetown” murmured Serena. “When we go back, I promise we’ll stop all the rumors about your affair. I can do it.”

“Thank you, it would be a help. I haven’t even told my girls yet, so I don’t really appreciate the idea of Irv getting to know before they do.”

Emily and Serena stood politely when Miranda rose to leave the table. They watched Andy and her pass out of the room, and saw Miranda’s hand slide down Andy’s back to the curve of her hip as she went out the door.

“Well!”

“Yes. I was right then, wasn’t I?”

“What about?”

“Oh, I never told you. I thought it might be Andy. I thought about it coming up. I just didn’t want you to crash my car, so I never told you. “

The following Monday there was a new rumor spreading through all the Runway offices, emanating from the First Assistant’s desk, (and she should surely know,) that Miranda was definitely not having an Affair after all. Serena, the Beauty Editor passed it on with great confidence, so it quickly gained purchase on the tables in the editorial offices, the art department and the post room. The walls of the washroom sucked it up and admitted they might have misheard before. It bounced through the swinging doors of their reception and even down the elevators to the foyer. Everyone accepted it as true.

Only six people knew this to be as trustworthy an idea as spindrift floating on the Providence sand-dunes. They were, of course Miranda and Andy, Roy, who saw everything but said nothing, Nigel who had known Miranda for twenty years or more, and was her main confidant, Serena and Emily. Emily guarded the secret as closely as she held the Book. Her loyalty to Miranda was now even more copper-bottomed than before, and she would die rather than tell another soul.

(But she still rather hoped Andy would continue to forget about deleting her picture file, oh, and not bother to change her password. Those evenings waiting for the Book could get very long and boring.)

Epilogue:
Andy and Miranda were grateful for the breathing space, to establish their relationship as a couple. Miranda broadened her repertoire of songs, but she never stopped singing, and Andy taught the twins all about the finer points of soft-ball, even if she no longer had time to play in the lower Bronx Ladies League herself.

She still scared Miranda to death by running between the traffic to fetch coffee, until a coffee machine was installed on the 23rd floor. They both gravitated to their home in Cape Cod, more and more, walking the beaches of Provincetown, looking for sea shells, and flat pebbles to skim across the shining water. They remain, to this day, and always will be, very much in love.

The End.

Clued Up (Millgirl Mirandy Story 2) - Millgirl (2024)

Chapter 1

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Chapter 2

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Chapter 3

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Chapter 4

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Chapter 5

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Chapter 6

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Chapter 7

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