Page 37 of Mane Rival in Store by Milly Taiden

She pressed her palm flat against the wall. Held it there for three heartbeats.

Then she picked up her notepad and walked through the service door for the session, and the Catwoman stayed on her desk, and she did not mention it, and neither did he, and the silence between them on the subject carried more weight than any conversation she’d had in years.

FIFTEEN

LARK

The window display mock-up sat on the stockroom table between them like a treaty negotiation.

Breezy had drawn it up—a scaled floor plan of the joint window concept, the shared glass frontage between Sterling & Mane and Villainette converted into a single visual statement. The idea had been born from the investigation: the press coverage of their rivalry, the CultureVault article, the viral fan account that had turned their neighboring storefronts into a SoHo attraction. Lark’s marketing instincts had recognized the opportunity before her brain caught up. A joint display. Rare villain editions from Rune’s collection arranged alongside Villainette’s lifestyle merchandise. High art meets villain chic. The article’s premise turned into a retail event.

The concept was brilliant. Executing it required surviving an afternoon in the same room as Rune Sterling’s opinions about visual hierarchy.

“The editions need primary sight lines.” He stood on the opposite side of the table, arms crossed, studying the mock-up with the focused intensity of a general reviewing a battlefield. Sleeves down today—buttoned, cuffed, the full Scandinavian armor. “They’re the draw. The merchandise supports the narrative, not the other way around.”

“The merchandise IS the narrative.” Lark leaned over the floor plan. “The editions give credibility. The lifestyle products give context. Nobody walks into a window display for a comic behind glass. They walk in because the display tells a story they want to be part of.”

“The story is the editions.”

“The story is the EXPERIENCE. The editions are a chapter. A gorgeous, priceless chapter, but a chapter.”

He blinked. She watched him process the argument—the slight furrow, the millimeter shift in his jaw, the processing happening behind eyes that were doing the sharpened-focus thing they did when she challenged him. Not irritation. Evaluation. He weighed her ideas with the same thoroughness he gave to grading paperwork, and if that was the most backhanded compliment she’d ever given herself, she’d take it.

“Propose a layout.”

She pulled the mock-up toward her. Picked up a pencil. Drew fast—the way she designed all her store layouts, spatially, instinctively, the pencil moving before the concept fully formed in her head. “Center pedestal: one flagship edition. Your best villain first appearance. Lit from above, isolated, impossible to miss. That’s your anchor. Around it—” she sketched concentric zones—“lifestyle product arranged by color gradient. Dark at the center, lightening outward. The edition sits in the eye of a visual storm. People stop for the spectacle, stay for the story, buy what the story makes them want to own.”

She looked up. He was staring at the sketch. Not at her—at the layout. His arms had uncrossed. One hand rested on the table edge, fingers spread, and the other had moved to his jaw in the gesture she’d categorized as “genuine consideration” rather than “performative deliberation.” There were differences. She’d mapped them.

“The color gradient is sophisticated.”

“Thank you.”

“The product density in zone two is too high. You’ll lose the sight line to the anchor edition.”

“Then we thin zone two and add height variance. Tiered risers. Draws the eye upward, creates depth, and preserves the sight line.”

He picked up her pencil. Drew the tiered risers into the layout with three decisive strokes. His hand moved with the same gloved precision she’d watched in the vault, and the memory detonated in her chest—cotton gloves, old paper, his voice running low and unguarded. She redirected her attention to the mock-up with heroic discipline because she was not going to think about his hands in a professional setting.

She was absolutely going to think about his hands in a professional setting.

They argued for two more hours. Lighting angles. Edition placement. Whether the Villainette selfie wall could occupy the periphery (“Absolutely not” from him; “Absolutely yes” from her; compromise: a scaled-down photo moment integrated into the display’s exit flow). Font choices for the signage. The color temperature of the display lighting, which devolved into a fifteen-minute debate about Kelvin ratings that would have been boring from anyone else but became charged with the specific electricity of two people who both cared deeply about visual presentation and enjoyed dismantling each other’s arguments.

This is foreplay, watching him reject her third font suggestion with a one-sentence verdict that managed to be both lethal and correct. We are having foreplay about typefaces. I need to leave this room.

She did not leave the room.

By five o’clock, the layout was done. A compromise that looked better than either of their individual visions—his editorial eye tempering her maximalism, her instinct for accessibility softening his reverence into invitation. The center pedestal would hold a 1940 Catwoman first edition—not the one he’d left on her counter, a display copy from his inventory—surrounded by Villainette’s villain-themed beauty line in a gradient from black to gold, with tiered risers and an integrated photo moment at the exit.

They stood side by side, studying the finished mock-up. Close. Closer than the work required. His shoulder hovered near hers, and the late-afternoon sun through the stockroom window caught the gold in his hair and turned it incandescent, and she made the mistake of looking up at the same moment he looked down.

Three inches. His eyes. The light.

Her phone rang.

She stepped back. Answered. Her mother’s voice filled the gap between them with particular authority—her timing was either cosmic or weaponized.

“Baby, I’m confirming Sunday dinner. Your father is making pernil. Oliver is bringing Sybil. You are bringing⁠—”