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Out of the corner of her vision, Jessica saw Kade roll his eyes at the near religious fervor Holly apparently had for the shopping experience.
Undaunted, Holly went on. “They pick variations of the same thing for themselves over and over. Sometimes a fresh eye can be amazing. And then, you can model what I pick out for you for your extremely handsome boyfriend.”
“Husband,” Kade said. “Though I like the handsome part.”
“Oh, sorry. No rings,” Holly said. She squinted at him. “Though you look as though you’ve had one on recently.”
Jessica’s gaze flew to Kade’s ring finger. Sure enough, a white band of skin marked where his wedding ring had been. The band had been there recently, obviously, since such marks faded rather quickly. What did it mean that he had worn his ring so recently?
Stay in the moment, she ordered herself sternly. She had one mission today. To have fun. To let go. To be free. And if she ended up, with Holly’s help, looking a little bit better than she looked right now, she’d go with that, too.
For once, Jessica felt no desire at all to hide behind their upcoming divorce.
She followed Holly obediently to the back of the store. There was a classy sitting area there for Kade, complete with a comfy deep upholstered chair and a huge flat-screen TV. Holly handed him the remote, and then shooed Jessica into an opulent change room.
Minutes later, she was back. “I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but I brought you this.” She held up a bra. “Front closing.”
And sexy as all get out. Jessica took the bra with her good hand and suddenly ached to put it on. To give herself permission to be feminine and beautiful.
She had not felt like a beautiful woman since her husband had left her. Despite career success, somehow she carried loneliness and defeat within her.
A thought, unwelcome, came out of nowhere.
Had she been planning on using a child to combat her pervasive feeling of inadequacy? She shook off the shadow that passed over her. Today was just about fun. She had given herself over to introspection quite enough in the past year.
“You are a lifesaver,” Jessica told Holly, and then surrendered to the process. She allowed herself to be spoiled completely. Holly did have an exceptional eye for fashion, and along with the bra, she had soon provided Jessica with a stack of clothing topped by a filmy jade silk top.
None of it was anything Jessica would have chosen for herself. She had become the master of understated. Almost all her clothes were in neutrals, grays and taupes, as if, she realized with a start, she was trying to make herself invisible.
Jessica fingered the silk and felt a pure and simple longing. To be pretty.
It occurred to her she had not cared about being pretty since long before Kade had left her. Since she had lost the second baby.
“This will be amazing with your eyes. And look—Velcro fasteners!”
“You found a top with a Velcro closure? Is this really silk? Where’s the price tag?”
“Your Prince Charming out there told me to take the price tags off.”
“Humph,” she said, but she didn’t feel nearly as annoyed as she should have. She didn’t have to buy it, she reminded herself. She just had to have fun with it.
Soon, the ensemble was completed with an easy-to-pull-on skirt with a flirty hemline and a delicate pair of sandals that Jessica could just slip her feet into.
“You look awesome,” Holly said. “Go show him.”
Jessica stared at herself in the mirror. “Um, I think I look a bit too young.” Plus, the blouse was extremely sheer, which explained Holly bringing a sexy bra with it.
“Nonsense.”
“This looks like something a teenager would wear. Don’t you think the skirt is a little, um, short? Not to mention the blouse is a little, er, see-through.”
“When you have legs like that? Show them off, girlfriend. Same with your other assets. Now go show him! He’ll let you know how right that look is for you.”
Feeling strangely shy about sharing this oddly intimate moment with Kade, the same as she had felt this morning sharing space with him, Jessica exited the change room. Kade had found a football game on TV and didn’t even look impatient. He looked content.
And then he noticed her. He flipped off the sound. His eyes darkened. She suddenly didn’t care how short the skirt was or if the blouse was see-through. She did a saucy little spin.
“Wow,” he said, his voice hoarse. “You look incredible. Two thumbs-up to that one.”
Jessica didn’t just feel beautiful for the first time in a long time. She felt sexy. It felt unbelievably good to feel sexy with no agenda, no calendar lurking in the back of her mind, no temperature to take. It felt, well, fun. And after that, she just gave herself over to the experience completely.
It was fun, having Holly help her in and out of outfits, and then modeling them for Kade, who was a great audience. He raised his eyebrows, and did low wolf whistles and louder ones. He made her feel as if she was not only sexy and beautiful, but as if she was the only woman in the world he felt that way about.
But even so, Jessica had to draw the line somewhere, and she drew it at an evening dress Holly hauled in.
“I have absolutely nowhere to wear such a thing,” she said. Still, she touched it wistfully. Like everything in Chrysalis, the cut and the fabric were mouthwatering. “I won’t be able to get it on over my arm.”
“Sure you will,” Holly said. “It’s back fastening, so I’ll just drop it over your head, like this, and poof. Ooh, butterfly.”
It took a bit more work for them to get her arm out the sleeve, but then she was standing there looking at herself, stunned.
Her hair was flyaway from all the in-and-out of trying on clothes, but somehow that added to the sense of electricity in the air. The dress, the color of licking flame, fit her like a glove, then flared out at the bottom in a mermaid hemline.
“Here.” Holly crouched at her feet. “Let me slip these on you.”
As if in a dream, Jessica lifted one foot and then the other. She stared at herself in the mirror. The heels had added three inches to her height. The cast and sling on her arm might as well have disappeared, the outfit was so attention grabbing, especially with a very deep, plunging neckline.
Holly stood back and looked at her with satisfaction. “This is exactly what I envisioned from the moment you walked through the door. Go show him.”
Should she? What was the point? It didn’t feel fun anymore. It felt strangely intense, almost like the moment she had walked toward him down that long aisle in her wedding dress.
She was going to protest, but when Holly held open the door for her, Jessica sucked in her breath and walked out. Holly slid away.
Kade didn’t look right away. “Don’t drop it!” he yelled at the TV. And then he turned and saw her. Without taking his eyes off her, he turned off the remote. The television screen went blank. He stood up. His mouth fell open and then he shut it, and rocked back on his heels, looking at her with eyes narrowed with passion.
This was what she had missed when that moment she had glided down the aisle toward him had been replaced by the pressures of everyday living, by disappointments, by hurts, by misunderstandings.
“Jessie,” he whispered.
This was what she had missed. She leaned toward him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#u3e8dc4ab-89bf-5f1e-8782-ac9193400ecf)
JESSIE LEANED TOWARD HIM, looking at him with heavy-lidded eyes.
Pretty woman...walking down the street... The music seemed to explode into the small dressing room and waiting area. Jessica gasped and put her hand to her throat, wobbled on the high heels.
Kade was in front of her instantly, looking down at her with concern.
“Sorry,” she said. “I keep startling from loud noises.”
He cocked his head at her. The room flooded with Roy Orbison’s distinctive vocals. Kade took one step closer to her. He held out his hand, and she didn’t hesitate, not for one second. She took his hand. Kade drew her to him and rocked her against him.
And then, as if they had planned it, as if they had never stopped dancing with each other, they were moving together. Even though the tempo of the song was fast, they did not dance that way.
They slow danced around the waiting area, their bodies clinging to each other, their gazes locked. The music faded, but they didn’t let go, but stood very still, drinking each other in, as if they could make up for a whole year lost.
Holly burst in. “How cool was that, that I found—” She stopped. “Whoa. You two are hot.”
Kade’s arms slid away from Jessica. He stepped back. He swept a hand through his hair. “We’ll take it,” he said.
“That dress?” Holly said.
“No. Everything. Every single thing she tried on.”
Jessica’s mouth opened, but the protest was stuck somewhere in her throat, and not a single sound came out. She turned and went back into the change cubicle.
“Wear this one,” Holly suggested, following her in. She dug through the pile of clothing to the very first outfit Jessica had tired on, the jade top and skirt.
But she didn’t want to wear that one. Her world felt totally rattled by what had just happened, by how spontaneously she and Kade had gone into each other’s arms. She wanted to feel safe again.
“Where’s the dress I came in here with?”
Holly giggled. “He told me to throw it away.”
“What?”
“Yeah, he said to grab it at my first opportunity and dispose of it.”
“And you just listened to him? That’s outrageous.”
“He’s very masterful,” Holly said with an unapologetic sigh. “Besides—” she winked “—he’s the one with the credit card.”
Jessica thought of the frank male appreciation in his eyes as she had modeled her new outfits, and she contemplated how she was feeling right now.
Alive. One hundred percent in the land of the living, the life force tingling along the surface of her skin. Did she really want to go back to safety? To reclaim that familiar wooden feeling she had lived with for so long?
Why not, just for today, embrace this? That she was alive? And that her life was alight with the unexpected element of fun? And with the unexpected sizzle of attraction between her and the man she had married.
They left the store with Kade’s arms loaded with parcels, and with her feeling fresh and flirty and like a breath of spring in the first outfit she had tried on. He had paid for everything.
“I’ll pay you back,” she said. He had insisted on buying every single thing she had donned, even the evening gown.
Since the theme of the day was fun, she’d given in. But buying the gown? That was just silly. She had nowhere to wear an evening gown. Her future plans did not involve anything that would require formal wear. In fact, she needed to be stocking up on comfy pants and sweatshirts that could hold up to baby puke and other fluids associated with the delights of motherhood.
But she had been so caught up in the moment, and the dress had made her feel so uncharacteristically glamorous—sexy, even—that she had actually wanted to be silly. She had wanted to purchase that piece of silk and gossamer that had made her feel better than a movie star.
She should have protested more—she knew that when the bill was totaled—but the look in his eyes when he had seen her had sold every single outfit to her. She’d had a ridiculous sense of needing those clothes, though in her heart, she knew what she wanted was the look in his eyes. “Once we sell the house, I’ll pay you back,” she said firmly.
“Whatever. Hey, this stuff is already heavy. Look. There’s one of those rickshaw things being pulled by a bike. Have you ever been in one of those?”
“No.”
He juggled the packages to his left arm, put his two fingers to his lips and let out a piercing whistle. The driver, a fit-looking twentysomething guy, pulled over.
“Where to?”
“Ah, we aren’t sure yet. I think we need you for the day. Have you got a day rate?”
“I do now!”
Jessica knew she should have protested when the driver named his rate, but somehow she just couldn’t. She and Kade piled into the narrow seat of the rickshaw, squished together, all their packages bunched in with them.
“Where to?”
“We need a picnic lunch,” Kade decided. “And a bottle of wine. And a forest. Maybe Yan’s for the lunch. Do you feel like Szechuan?”
She thought of all those menus she had sorted through yesterday, each one representing a memory. She loved Szechuan-style Chinese food. “Two orders of ginger beef,” she reminded him.
Their driver took off across the downtown, darting in and out of traffic, getting them honked at, shaking his fist and yelling obscenities at drivers of vehicles.
It was hysterically funny, and she could not stop laughing. That wondrous feeling of being alive continued to tingle along the surface of her skin.
“You’re going to get us killed,” she said with a laugh as a cab they had cut off laid on the horn. She clung to Kade’s arm as the rickshaw swayed violently, and then their driver bumped up on a curb. “Or get my other arm broken.”
He twirled an imaginary moustache. “Ah, getting you right where I want you. Helpless. And then I can ply my lethal charms against you.”
* * *
Kade flopped down on the blanket that he had purchased. The driver had found them a quiet spot on Prince’s Island, and had managed to make himself scarce while Kade and Jessica enjoyed their picnic under a leafy tree, with the sound of the river in the background. Now, after too much food, and most of a bottle of wine, Kade felt sleepy and relaxed.
“Two orders of ginger beef,” he moaned. “It’s masochistic.”
“Nobody was forcing you to eat it.”
“You know why we always have to buy two, though.” Always, as if there was not a yearlong blank spot in their relationship, as if they could just pick up where they had left off. He considered where they had left off, and thought, despite his current level of comfort with Jessica, why would they want to?
“Yes, we always have to buy two because you eat the first one by yourself, and most of the second one.”
“Guilty,” he moaned. “My tummy hurts, Jessie.”
“And three spring rolls,” she reminded him. “And most of the sizzling rice.” Despite the sternness in her tone, when he opened one eye, she was smiling. She looked as utterly content as he could remember her looking in a long, long time.
He lifted up his shirt and showed her his tummy. She sighed, and scooted over beside him, that teeny-tiny skirt hitching way up her legs, and rubbed his stomach with gentle hands.
“Ah,” he said, and closed his eyes. Maybe it was because he had not slept well last night, or maybe it was because he had eaten too much, or maybe it was because his world felt right for the first time in over a year, but with a sigh of contentment, he went to sleep.
When he woke up, she was sleeping curled up beside him. He slid his arm around her shoulders and pulled her into his side, being careful of her arm.
