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THE LAST TIME SHE HAD had a date was two months before her mother had died. It had been with Thomas Jacobi, a nice boy a few years older than her then twenty. He’d married a girl two counties over six months later. They already had four kids, and she’d heard there was another on the way.
Thomas had never made her feel like this.
And it wasn’t even a real date.
To be honest, she didn’t know what she was doing. Or why she had gone to the trouble of borrowing a dress from Phoebe.
Phoebe, who had attended several events with her husband, had had far more appropriate clothing than Perci now.
She didn’t want to embarrass Nate, or the hospital, by arriving in any of her well-worn dress clothes. She usually only wore them to church. And they were starting to show their age and abuse from the multiple washings they’d endured.
But the blue dress she’d borrowed from her sister—that was cut way lower than anything Perci had ever worn before—was perfect for an evening at the Masterson Country Club.
Country clubs weren’t exactly where Tylers belonged. Unless they were on staff. She thought her cousin Maggie had worked at the country club for about a month a few years ago—before Maggie’s brothers had shown up and gotten her fired.
Perci had never been at the country club before. The mere idea of it had her feeling a bit more nervous than she wanted to admit.
Even if her sister had done just fine the times she’d been there with Joel.
She finished her hair and makeup and stepped out of the room she’d been using.
Nate waited in the kitchen with his mother and Ivy.
Perci stepped closer and brushed a kiss against Ivy’s blond hair. The little girl had jelly on her fingers. Nate scooped Ivy up before that jelly could get on Perci’s dress. “Hang on, kiddo. Let’s clean you up. We don’t want to mess up that pretty dress.”
“Bootibul.”
“Yes, she is.” Nate shot a look at her out of those Masterson green eyes of his. A look filled with more heat than Perci wanted to think about. “Very nice.”
“Not so bad yourself.” Talk about understatement. Nate filled out his tux in ways made to cause a woman to lose her breath. She’d seen him in a tux before.
Each time he’d looked better than the last.
“You are going to be the most stunning couple there.”
Perci had forgotten his mother was there while she was staring at Nate. Heat hit her cheeks. She’d just ogled the man, in front of his mother. Pitiful. “Thank you.”
His mother smiled. “You two had better go. The guest of honor can’t be late.”
Perci just felt like an idiot when she nodded. There really wasn’t anything else to say.
***
NATE’S EVENING WAS tedious, and he knew it. The only bright spot at all was the woman at his side. Perci had been greeted by many that he knew she didn’t know, but she’d held her own. Charmed the lot of them.
Probably a bit too much. Nate scowled when an obviously tipsy relative of the mayor tried to look down that blue dress.
He recognized it, of course. Her sister had worn it before. But never had he drooled over Phoebe because of it.
On the slightly taller Perci, it was just a bit shorter and a bit more daringly cut. Perfect.
He wanted to ditch this event and take her somewhere where he could explain to her what that dress did to a man like him.
What would she do if he did just that?
He was still watching her when she excused herself and headed to the restroom. She sent him a look and a smile, and held up her hand, indicating she would be with him again in five minutes.
He smiled back.
It was so much nicer when they weren’t fighting each other.
He watched her cross the room, her red hair easy to spot in the crowd.