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He never had. He never would. And it was a damn good thing. Because where would they be if either of them acted on an attraction between them?
Up shit creek without a paddle or a friendship.
No, thank you. She was never going to touch him. She’d made that decision a long time ago. For a lot of reasons that were as valid today as they had been the very first time he’d ever made her stomach jump when she looked at him.
She was never going to encourage or act on the attraction that she occasionally felt for Chase. But she would take his expertise in sexual politics and use it to her advantage.
Oh, but those panties.
The bra wasn’t really any less unsettling. Though at least it wasn’t missing large swathes of fabric.
Still, it was very thin. And she had a feeling that a cool ocean breeze would reveal the shape of her nipples to all and sundry.
Then again, maybe it was time all and sundry got a look at her nipples. Maybe if they had a better view, men would be a little more interested.
She scowled, wrenching the panties off the hanger and dragging them on as quickly as possible, followed closely by the bra. She was overthinking things. She was overthinking all of this. Had been from the moment Chase had walked into the barn. As evidenced by that lapse in the shower.
She had spent years honing her Chase Control. It was just this change in how they were interacting that was screwing with it. She was not letting this get inside her head, and she was not letting hot, unsettled feelings get inside her pants.
She pulled the garment bag away entirely, revealing a tight red dress slightly too reminiscent of what the woman he had been flirting with last night was wearing.
“Clearly you have a type, Chase McCormack,” she muttered, beginning to remove the slinky scrap of material from the hanger.
She tugged it up over her hips, having to do a pretty intense wiggle to get it up all the way before zipping it into place. She took a deep breath, turned around. She faced her reflection in the mirror full-on and felt nothing but deflated.
She looked...well, her hair was wet and straggly, and she looked half-drowned. She didn’t look curvy, or shimmery, or delightful.
This was the problem with tight clothes. They only made her more aware of her curve deficit.
Where the blonde last night had filled her dress out admirably, and in all the right places, on Anna this dress kind of looked like a piece of fabric stretched over an ironing board. Not really all that sexy.
She sighed heavily, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach.
Chase really was going to have to be a miracle worker in order to pull this off.
She didn’t really want to show him. Instead, she found the idea of putting the coveralls back on a lot less reprehensible. At least with the coveralls there would still be some mystery. He wouldn’t be confronted with just how big a task lay before him.
“Buck up,” she said to herself.
So what was one more moment of feeling inadequate? Honestly, in the broad tapestry of her life it would barely register. She was never quite what was expected. She never quite fit. So why’d she expect that she was going to put on a sexy dress and suddenly be transformed into the kind of sex kitten she didn’t even want to be?
She gritted her teeth, throwing open the bedroom door and walking out into the room. “I hope you’re happy,” she said, flinging her arms wide. “You get what you get.”
She caught a movement out of the corner of her eye and turned her head, then recoiled in horror. It was even worse out here. Out here, there was a full-length mirror. Out here, she had the chance to see that while her breasts remained stunningly average, her hips and behind had gotten rather wide. Which was easy to ignore when you wore loose attire most days. “I look like the woman symbol on the door of a public restroom.”
She looked over at Chase, who had been completely silent upon her entry into the room, and remained so. She glared at him. He wasn’t saying anything. He was only staring. “Well?”
“It’s nice,” he said.
His voice sounded rough, and kind of thin.
“You’re a liar.”
“I’m not a liar. Put the shoes on.”
“Do you even know what size I wear?”
“You’re a size ten, which I know because you complain about how your big feet make it impossible for you to find anything in your size. And you’re better off buying men’s work boots. So yes, I know.”
His words made her feel suddenly exposed. Well, his words in combination with the dress, she imagined. They knew each other a little bit too well. That was the problem. How could you impress a guy when you had spent a healthy amount of time bitching to him about your big feet?
“Fine. I will put on the shoes.” He held them up, and her jaw dropped. “I thought you were taking me out to dinner.”
“I am.”
“Do I have to pay for it by working the pole at the Naughty Mermaid?”
“These are nice shoes.”
“If you’re a five-foot-two-inch Barbie like that chick you were talking to last night. I’m like...an Amazon in comparison.”
“You’re not an Amazon.”
“I will be in those.”
“Maybe that would bother some men. But you want a man who knows how to handle a woman. Any guy with half a brain is going to lose his mind checking out your legs. He’s not going to care if you’re a little taller than he is.”
She tried her best to ignore the compliment about her legs. And tried even harder to keep from blushing.
“I care,” she muttered, snatching the shoes from his hand and pondering whether or not there was any truth to her words as she did.
She didn’t really date. So it was hard to say. But now that she was thinking about it, yeah. She was self-conscious about the fact that with pretty low heels she was eye level with half the men in town.
She finished putting the shoes on and straightened. It was like standing on a glittery pair of stilts. “Are you satisfied?” she asked.
“I guess you could say that.” He was regarding her closely, his jaw tense, a muscle in his cheek ticking.
She noticed that he was still a couple of inches taller than her. Even with the shoes. “I guess you still meet the height requirement to be my dinner date.”
“I didn’t have any doubt.”
“I don’t know how to walk in these,” she said.
“All right. Practice.”
“Are you out of your mind? I have to practice walking?”
“You said yourself, you don’t know how to walk in heels. So, go on. Walk the length of the room.”
She felt completely awash in humiliation. She doubted there was another woman on the planet that Chase had ever had to instruct on walking.
“This is ridiculous.”
“It’s not,” he said.
“All of women’s fashion is ridiculous,” she maintained. “Do you have to learn how to walk when you put on dress shoes? No, you do not. And yet, a full-scale lesson is required for me to go out if I want to wear something that’s considered feminine.”
“Yeah, it’s sexist. And a real pain in the ass, I’m sure. It’s also hot. Now walk.”
She scowled at him, then took her first step, wobbling a bit. “I don’t understand why women do this.”
She took another step, then another, wobbling a little less each time. But the shoes did force her hips to sway, much more than they normally would. “Do you have any pointers?” she asked.
“I date women in heels, Anna. I’ve never walked in them.”
“What happened to helping me be a woman?”
“You’ll get the hang of it. It’s like...I don’t know, water-skiing maybe?”
“How is this like water-skiing?”
“You have to learn how to do it and there’s a good likelihood you’ll fall on your face?”
“Well, I take it all back,” she said, deadpan. “These shoes aren’t silly at all.” She took another step, then another. “I feel like a newborn baby deer.”
“You look a little like one, too.”
She snorted. “You really need to up your game, Chase. If you use these lines on all the women you take out, you’re bound to start striking out sooner or later.”
“I haven’t struck out yet.”
“Well, you’re still young and pretty. Just wait. Just wait until time starts to claim your muscular forearms and chiseled jawline.”
“I figure by then maybe I’ll have gotten the ranch back to its former glory. At that point women will sleep with me for my money.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s nice to have goals.”
In her opinion, Chase should have better goals for himself. But then, who was she to talk? Her current goal was to show her brothers that they were idiots and she could too get a date. Hardly a lofty ambition.
“Yes, it is. And right now my goal is for us not to miss our reservation.”
“You made a...reservation?”
“I did.”
“It’s not like it’s Valentine’s Day or something. The restaurant isn’t going to be full.”
“Of course it won’t be. But I figured if I made a reservation for the two of us, we could start a rumor, too.”
“A rumor?”
“Yeah, because Ellie Matthews works at Beaches, and I believe she has been known to service your brother Mark.”
Anna winced at the terminology. “True.”
“I thought the news of our dining experience might make it back to him. Like I said, the more we can make this look organic, the better.”
“No one ever need know that our relationship is in fact grown in a lab. And in no way GMO free,” she said.
“Exactly.”
“I don’t have any makeup on.” She frowned. “I don’t have any makeup. At all.”
“Right,” he said. “I didn’t really think of that.”
She reached out and smacked him on the shoulder. “You’re supposed to be my coach. You’re failing me.”
He laughed, dodging her next blow. “You don’t need makeup.”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “You’re just saying that.”
“In fairness, you did threaten to castrate me with your car keys earlier.”
“I did.”
“And you hit me just now,” he pointed out.
“It didn’t hurt, you baby.”
He took a deep breath, and suddenly his expression turned sharp. “Believe me when I tell you you don’t need makeup.” He reached out, gripping her chin with his thumb and forefinger. His touch was like a branding iron, hot, altering. “As long as you believe it, everyone else will, too. You have to believe in yourself, Anna.”
He released his hold on her, straightening. “Now,” he said, his tone getting a little bit rougher, “let’s go to dinner.”
* * *
Chase felt like he had been tipped sideways and left walking on the walls from the moment that Anna had emerged from the bathroom at his house wearing that dress. Once she had put on those shoes, the feeling had only gotten worse.
But who knew that underneath those coveralls his best friend looked like that?
She had been eyeing herself critically, and his brain had barely been working at all. Because he didn’t see anything to criticize. All he saw was the kind of figure that would make a man willingly submit to car key castration.
She was long and lean, toned from all the physical labor she did. Her breasts were small, but he imagined they would fit in a man’s hand nicely. And her hips...well, using the same measurement used for her breasts, they would be about perfect for holding on to while a man...
Holy hell. He was losing his mind.
She was Anna. Anna Brown, his best friend in the entire world. The one woman he had never even considered going there with. He didn’t want a relationship with the women he slept with. When your only criteria for being with a woman was orgasm, there were a lot of options available to you. For a little bit of satisfaction he could basically seek out any woman in the room.
Sex was easy. Connections were hard.
