“Stop that.”
Chessie continued zipping up the gown she’d just replaced on its hanger. “It’s all right, Marylou, I don’t mind. I know Missy is supposed to clean out the dressing rooms, but she’s still at lunch and I don’t have anything else to do.”
“Not the cleaning up. You can keep going on that. I’m talking about the humming. The humming has to stop. Or at least pick another tune. As it is, I’ll be hearing the lyrics in my head for the rest of the day anyway. ‘I saw you and the world went’—somewhere.”
“Away,” Chessie supplied as she carefully zipped up the protective bag, not wanting to snare any of the lace on the gown’s bodice. “The song is called ‘Tonight.’ ‘Somewhere’ is a different song.”
“And they’re both from the same show. But I can’t remember what show they’re from.”
“West Side Story,” Chessie supplied helpfully. “I watched it last night, or this morning I guess I should say, since it wasn’t over until almost four. It never ends happily, yet I keep watching, hoping for something glorious to happen. This time I just turned it off before the last scene. There, that’s the last of them.”
Marylou took the gown and held it up high by the hanger as Chessie grabbed three others and they headed for the stockroom. “You didn’t get to bed until four o’clock, and you’re humming this morning? So the blind date went a lot better than I thought it would?”
Chessie opened her mouth to tell her friend about Jace, how he’d been there when she got home, how they’d sat over cookies and milk and talked for hours. About how he’d kissed her good-night, and she’d wanted him to do more than that, but he didn’t, but that the promise was there. She’d felt that; and tonight was probably going to be the same as last night, but also so much more.
That promise had been in his eyes when he’d looked down at her as if she was somehow precious to him. Important. The promise was in his touch, the way he’d held her, but hadn’t tried to possess her. In the kiss itself, which was sweet, yet tinged with a whisper of passion.
Oh, he was good. He was so good.
And she was so weak…
“Toby was really nice,” she heard herself say instead. “We had a really good time.”
“Really? You really had a really good time? Huh,” Marylou said, looking confused. “Well, um…that’s nice.”
Tell a lie and it leads to more lies. Chessie heard the warning in her head, but she couldn’t help herself. All her friends, but most especially Marylou, had been trying for years to match her up with someone. But this time she’d found someone all on her own, and she wasn’t ready to share. It was too new, this feeling she had. Talking about it, about this thing she had with Jace might take some of the bloom off, while at the same time putting too much pressure on her.
Jace was her secret right now. She liked it that way. She was so weary of being told she had to think about her future. Right now she wanted to think about the present, or at least no more than eight or ten hours into the future. She was a grown-up, she was allowed to have…needs.
“Oh, yes. We didn’t do so well over dinner,” she said, not having to fake her blush at her fib, “so I’m guessing Elizabeth, if she reports in to you—”
“Elizabeth doesn’t report in to me,” Marylou objected.
“Sure she does. You all report to each other. Get Chessie a blind date and then have a strategy meeting afterward. Did she like him? Did he like her? The lawyer with the horn-rimmed glasses didn’t make the cut. Okay, so maybe next time we’ll try a dentist who plays golf?”
Marylou grinned that Cheshire Cat grin of hers that could mean anything—and usually did. “You make us all sound so conniving. We’ve only got your best interests at heart.”
Chessie gave her friend a quick hug. “I know you do. And, hey, look how it’s working out this time. You know, like hey, the forty-seventh time just might be the charm! Just please don’t tell Elizabeth and Will. Or anyone. Let’s just see where…where Toby and I go on our own.”
“You won’t even share with me?”
Chessie was getting into this now. “Nope. Not even with you. If I’m going to have a love life, I think I want to keep it to myself, at least for a while.”
“A love life?” If she’d been the Wicked Witch of the West, Marylou would probably be cackling and rubbing her hands together by now, but she managed to abstain. More than managed to abstain. In fact, although it seemed impossible to believe, Marylou was actually looking a little disappointed. Maybe because Toby hadn’t been her “find,” but Elizabeth’s.
“Well, maybe love life is a little strong,” Chessie said. “But certainly a sex life.”
Marylou’s eyes, expression-erasing injections or not, went wide at that one. “Are you sure? I mean, you don’t want to rush into anything.”
“If I went any slower, Marylou, I might forget the moves. What’s the matter? I thought you’d be happy.”
“And I am—I am,” Marylou said quickly. “And this has nothing to do with Rick Peters being back in town? I mean, you aren’t just overreacting in some way, wanting to have somebody because it’s safer than thinking about running into the one that got away?”
Darn it. Chessie hadn’t thought about Rick a single time in the past twenty-four hours. Not that she’d thought of him all that much before then. But she had thought about him when she’d found out about his return to Allentown. Probably only because he’d been the one to do the leaving. It was easier to be the one that left than the one who got left. Left at the altar, no less.
She’d always thought it would be wonderful if he came crawling back, so then she could be the one who did the leaving. That would have given her closure on what had been a fairly terrible time in her life. After all, it wasn’t every woman who got to stand in her bedroom in her wedding gown an hour before her wedding and be handed a note that pretty much said, “Sorry, but I’ve made other plans.”
And not just Rick, but her supposed best friend, as well. How could she have been so wrong about what she believed to be the two best people in her life?
Rick and Diana had done a real number on Chessie’s self-confidence, her ability to trust, her confidence in her own judgment. It was, she’d thought more than once, like being robbed. It took a long time before you felt safe again, able to trust.
She’d spent a lot of time—a lot of time—wondering what she’d done wrong, where she’d come up short, how she’d been so blind. But then, eventually, she’d picked herself up, dusted herself off, opened her business and sold her bridal gown to a woman who still stopped by once in a while to thank Chessie for making her second wedding so wonderful. She even brought her four-year-old twins with her, which was nice.
And Leanna had been only the first of what were now hundreds of happy second-chance brides that had passed through Chessie’s life.
So something good had come from something bad. Chessie’s entire career, this wonderful Victorian house, her friendships with Marylou and Elizabeth and Claire and so many others—all had come from Rick’s defection.
And now, at long last, there was Jace. A man who excited her. A man who seemed to think she was desirable. A man who made her laugh, and get angry, and think about herself as someone who wasn’t lacking, wasn’t second-best.
Or did she just think that because Rick was back in town and she really, really needed to feel that way?
“Chessie?”
“Hmm?” she said, still lost in her thoughts.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Marylou said. “You were looking so happy, and then I brought up Rick’s name. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No, it’s all right. Do you think I should have said yes to that invitation to dinner?”
“I don’t know, Chess. What do you think?”
Chessie rolled her eyes. “Isn’t that how psychologists answer questions? What do you think? I don’t know what I think, Marylou. That’s why I’m asking you.”
Marylou sighed. “Yes, I was afraid of that. Why don’t you give it a few more days? Get to know— Toby’s his name, right? Get to know Toby better. And then make a decision.”
The sound of hammering began outside the stockroom, signaling the end of the crew’s lunch break, and Chessie had to fight the impulse to go running outside to say hello, or do something equally obvious and stupid. “All right. I’ll give it a few days. Get to know—” she gave a quick cough, having almost slipped and said Jace’s name “—get to know Toby better. I’m certainly smart enough to be able to judge the difference between real feelings and, um, you know.”
“Wild, unbridled lust?” Marylou suggested smoothly.
“Yeah,” Chessie said, thinking about what had happened—almost happened—yesterday. What had a very good chance of happening tonight. “That.”
Elizabeth put a protective hand to her baby belly as she slipped into the diner booth beside Claire, and the two of them looked across the table expectantly at Marylou.
“I really don’t get it,” Elizabeth said without preamble, as they’d all three had a conference call going an hour earlier, when Marylou had set up this strategy meeting. “It certainly didn’t look to either Will or me that the two of them were going to be more than a single date. They have nothing in common. But I was desperate, and Toby was the only unattached male I could think of who we hadn’t already set up with Chessie.” She ripped open her straw and stuck it in the lemonade Marylou had ordered for her. “I’m not very good at this. I wish I were, because if it weren’t for Chessie, Will and I would have never met. She deserves better than my paltry expertise.”
Claire, still wearing her white medical coat, her stethoscope stuck in her pocket—they’d met at the diner next to the medical building where she worked as a physician’s assistant in her brother’s pediatric office—patted Elizabeth’s arm. “Don’t feel so bad. Remember Zane Fletcher? He was my last matchmaking effort. I just heard he’s been disbarred for stealing money from his client’s accounts. Besides, Marylou said Chessie likes your guy.”
“No,” Marylou corrected, “I said Chessie says she likes this guy. She also said I wasn’t to say anything to Elizabeth, because she and this Toby guy didn’t seem to hit it off at dinner, but only discovered that they liked each other after they left to go home. Now tell me neither of you smell something fishy about that.”
Elizabeth sat back against the pseudoleather booth. “It would have had to have been a small miracle. I mean, it was a really awkward evening. Toby seemed to be as glad when it was over as Chessie did. Will says I’m barred from ever fixing up Chessie again, Bride Plan or no Bride Plan.”
Claire looked at her watch. “I’ve got to get back to the office in a few minutes, so let’s cut to the chase, all right? What you’re saying, Marylou, is that you think Chessie is lying to you about this Toby guy. Why would she do that?”
Marylou leaned in closer, so that the other two women did, as well. “I hate to say this. I mean, I really, really hate to say this. But I think she’s seeing Rick Peters.”
“Why does that name sound familiar?”
“He’s her ex-fiancé,” Elizabeth told Claire, who then nodded, made a sort of uh-oh sound in her throat. “But doesn’t she hate him, Marylou? I’d hate him.”
“So would I. Detest might be a better word.”
“But neither of you are Chessie,” Marylou pointed out, pushing away the paper napkin she’d been nervously shredding. “She didn’t ask me if I agreed that she shouldn’t have accepted Rick’s invitation to dinner. She asked me if I thought she should have said yes. Like, maybe she was looking for some sort of justification for having already accepted Rick’s invitation to dinner. I think that’s what’s happening tonight, and she’s using this Toby guy as cover. I think she’s really meeting with Rick.”
“Maybe just to talk?” Elizabeth suggested weakly.
“She was humming, Elizabeth. Happy humming.”
“Oh.”
“I’d stake out the shop tonight and follow her if she goes out. Except that would be really disloyal.”
“Not to mention bordering on creepy,” Elizabeth said, smothering a grin.
“I know. Besides, Ted comes home tonight, so I’ll be busy anyway. I’m just so worried about her.”
“It is her life, Marylou,” Claire pointed out, once more looking at her watch. “Although I do feel badly that she’s hiding this from us. I guess she knows we wouldn’t approve. Still, what can we do? We can’t confront her. She’s not a child. Speaking of which, I’m due back to do an intake on a new patient. Gotta go. You two tell me what you decide, and whatever it is, pretend I’ve already agreed, no matter how off-the-wall it might be. You know I’d do anything for Chessie.”
Marylou put out a hand to stop them as Elizabeth went to slide from the booth to allow Claire to get out. “Just a second, Claire. Did you find somebody?” she asked her.
Claire motioned for Elizabeth to keep on moving. “Yes. A new doctor just took over the empty office suite on the third floor. Cardiologist. Nice guy, too. But if Chessie’s seeing her ex-fiancé, does that really matter? Oh, wait, I get it. You want us to keep tossing choices in her direction, keep The Bride Plan going. All right, I’ll set it up. But if she says no, there’s really nothing I can do about that. I’ll let you know.”
Once Claire was gone, Elizabeth looked across the table at Marylou. “You’re really worried, aren’t you?”
“I thought I’d finally found the— Well, it doesn’t matter what I thought, does it, since it didn’t work. I really, really thought it would work. Mostly, I hate that Chessie feels she has to lie to me. To us. That has to mean that she knows seeing Rick Peters again is wrong.” She sighed, and then wiped a tear from her eye with the part of the paper napkin she hadn’t shredded. “Maybe she’ll see him tonight and, well, do what she feels she needs to do, and then he’ll be out of her system.”
“The way you say that, Marylou, I could think that Chessie is planning to have sex tonight. Isn’t that a stretch, even for you?”
Marylou sniffed, shook her head. “No, I know the signs. It’s…it’s like senior-prom night in that shop today. She’s just wishing away the day so she can get to tonight and, you know—graduate.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Are you saying that all girls have sex after their senior prom?”
Marylou looked confused. “You didn’t?”
“Well, yes, but Jamie and I had been dating for a lot of years. It wasn’t as if we hadn’t—but that night was sort of special. So I guess I see what you mean. Seeing someone you loved enough to want to marry after six years of not seeing him could be thought of as sort of special. But for every girl who had a special night that night, there had to be an equal number who ended up really disappointed with the experience.”
“Then we can only hope the real thing doesn’t live up to the expectation,” Marylou said as she reached for her glass of diet soda. “Because if Chessie looked any more expectant today, she’d look like you.”
“Speaking of expectant me,” Elizabeth said, waving to the waitress. “I spied out what looks to be some scrumptious strawberry pie in the case as I walked in here. Would you mind?”
“If we can get whipped cream with it, absolutely not. I may just eat myself into a stupor, so that I don’t have to keep thinking about what might happen tonight.”
They installed the last window ten minutes before five, and Jace had a set of the keys to the double-wide metal entry doors in his pocket, ready to hand over to Chessie.
He’d really pushed his men today, eager to get the place locked up after that circular saw had grown legs and walked off the site, not because he hated losing equipment, although he did, but because it reminded him that Chessie lived alone in the apartment over the shop.
The woman didn’t even have an alarm system. Whether she was trusting or naive wasn’t the question. The question was how could he convince both Chessie and Marylou that the alarm system he’d just ordered installed throughout the building was worth the money it would add to the final bill. People who didn’t have alarm systems usually believed they didn’t need alarm systems, or they were too unreliable, or they didn’t want to have to bother with codes and setting and disarming the systems.
Well, tough. Chessie was not going to spend more than another two days without an alarm system. She’d just have to get used to working with the keypad, that’s all. She was an intelligent woman. She could do that. Because he needed her to be safe.
Jace blinked at that last thought. He was getting a little too involved here, wasn’t he? This was just another job. Chessie was just… He didn’t know what she was. He’d get her out of his head if he could. The problem was he’d yet to find a way to do that.
“What’s up, Jace? You’re looking at the job like it’s the enemy. We’re ahead of schedule thanks to the dry weather, and now it can rain whenever it wants to, and we’re still good. Well, except for the siding and the roof shingles and the rain gutters, but you know what I mean.”
Jace snapped back to the moment. “Yeah, Carl, I know. And nothing’s up. That’s probably what worries me. There’s always at least one problem, but we haven’t hit it yet. You’re all ready to head out? I’ll see you tomorrow.” He turned to give a wave to the rest of the crew. “Thanks for a great day, guys.”
When they were gone, Jace unlocked the doors and took one more look around the interior of what was to be a twenty-by-twenty-four-foot square glorified storeroom. About the size of an average two-car garage. Four walls, three windows, one double-width door wide enough for deliveries. Above it, the workroom, where Marylou and Chessie would do whatever it is people do with bits of lace and glue guns.
Jace looked at the ceiling. Looked at the door leading into the existing stockroom or whatever it was called; the place with the rows of gowns lined up inside clear plastic bags, the shelves stacked with boxes.
“From the back door, through this room, through the stockroom, down the hall, up the stairs, through the apartment, into the new workroom—and then through the apartment, down the stairs, back along the hall, through the stockroom, into the storage room. And, going either up or down, probably with both arms full of boxes and bags. That’s nuts!”
The client tells you what they want, and you give the client what he or she wants. But, damn, if they hadn’t seen this, he should have. Maybe it was all those gowns and veils and wedding stuff, spooking him so that he’d just wanted to take his necessary measurements and get the hell out of there.
Once more looking up at the ceiling, Jace mentally sketched out the plan of the upper room, how the enlarged bathroom was configured, the new doorway from bathroom to workroom, the small hallway he’d considered in order to provide more shelving space. Was there room for a set of stairs? He’d make room.
And he’d eat the expense on this one, because he should have seen it. He should have seen a lot of things he hadn’t seen because of those damn gowns he had to fight his way through every time he walked inside the place.
Not the gowns. He had to stop trying to say that he was this man’s man, rough and tumble, the sort of guy who just naturally developed a twitch when forced to be around delicate and white and frilly.
He got twitchy around marriage, that’s where he got nervous. It even smelled like a wedding inside the building. All flowery and fragile and feminine. Every time he went inside he felt like the proverbial bull in a china shop.
Or like a onetime loser in no hurry to make a second mistake.
Maybe he should stay away. Get the job done and move on. Stop looking at Chessie Burton as some sort of challenge, maybe a test he had to pass, or something, to prove that sex was sex and there didn’t need to be any consideration other than mutual pleasure.
She turned him on. He turned her on. That’s the way it was for men and women. Sometimes. An instant sexual connection. There was no rhyme or reason for why that happened. It just did.
The trick was not to talk to her too much. Not to get to know her. Last night had been a mistake. A big one. The minute he’d loaded the tools into the basement he should have taken off, gone home, opened a cold one and then another and maybe another, until he stopped thinking about Tennis Anyone being alone upstairs with Chessie in her apartment, planning his next serve, his next volley, all while hoping to get to the final set and the winner’s trophy.
And then, probably because she’d already had one move made on her that night, and one was probably more than enough, he’d decided to be the good guy. He hadn’t decided that immediately; he’d certainly had other ideas. But she’d had that fragile look about her again, the same one he’d seen when he’d walked in on her and Marylou and Marylou had been talking about some guy named Rick.
He didn’t know who Rick was. He just knew he didn’t like him.
So he’d stuck around, thinking he could be the handy shoulder she could lean on, and he’d ended up sharing milk and cookies and conversation that had somehow lasted until close to two o’clock in the morning.
Without him ever once looking at the clock above the stove and thinking he had better things to do.
He’d kissed her good-night after she’d walked him to the side door, and he handed her the keys…and that had been it. That and the drive home and the second-guessing he’d gone through until exhaustion finally put an end to it.
Chessie Burton kissed like a woman who knew what she wanted.
But those big blue eyes told another story.
She was vulnerable. Yes, that was it. Vulnerable. Jace didn’t know why she was, but he was sure he was right. The question was, what was he going to do about it?
Walking away was one option, but it didn’t much appeal to him. Taking advantage of that vulnerability would brand him the worst sort of loser. Which left one other option. He could be her friend.
Damn. Couldn’t there be a fourth option there somewhere?
“Hi. You’re still here? Wow, look at this. Doors and windows and everything.”
Jace shook his head slightly, trying to rid his brain of thoughts that didn’t make him much of a hero. “Hi, Chessie,” he said, slowly turning to face her. “I was just checking out a few things before bringing you the keys.” He held them out to her. “There you go. Keys.”
She took them, slid them into the pocket of her skirt, the one that ended just above her knees, and left the rest of those long, incredibly straight legs bare to the tips of her painted toes.
“You shouldn’t be barefoot out here,” he told her, readjusting his gaze to her face, but taking the leisurely way all the way up her body. “You could step on something sharp.”
She lifted the shoes she was holding. “I know, but I didn’t want to risk my heels trying to climb in here. Is there going to be a step down from the doors to the driveway?”
“No, we still need to fill in around the foundation. Then it’ll be a straight shot into here. You wouldn’t want to have to navigate steps when you’re loaded down with…whatever you’ll be loaded down with. Speaking of which, you should have a staircase to the second floor in here. It would make your life a lot easier.”
Chessie frowned as she looked up at the ceiling—just as he had done. “You know, you’re right. Is it too late?”
Too late, too soon. Too fast, too slow. To stay or to go, that’s the question. It wasn’t Shakespeare, but it was honest.
“Why don’t you sleep on it,” Jace heard himself say.
“That’s probably a good idea,” she agreed, bracing one hand against him as she slipped her shoes back on. “Thanks.”
The two of them headed for the open doors. “Here, let me help,” he said, and then scooped her up and carried her so that she didn’t have to try to navigate the two-foot drop down to the jumble of dirt and stones and probably nails and staples that were mixed in with the rest of the debris.
She put her arms around his neck, not fighting him, and laughed. “Leave it to me,” she said, “to be carried over the threshold on the way out instead of in. Thank you again, kind sir.”
He carried her until he reached the cement pathway leading to the side door of the salon and then reluctantly put her down. Very reluctantly.
He kept his hands at her waist.
She didn’t remove her hands from his shoulders.
Their combined posture wasn’t awkward. But it was tense. And intense.
“I probably should tell you,” he said, taking option number four, the one that had just occurred to him: honesty. “I’m not looking for a long-term relationship.”
“So I’m up one on you. I’m not looking for any kind of relationship,” Chessie replied, her huge blue eyes looking so open and honest he knew he had to believe her. “I don’t know what happened—almost happened—yesterday in my bedroom. I really don’t. And I don’t think I want to dissect it, either.”
“Last night was easier,” Jace said, rubbing his hands up and down her long, slim back, then settling against her waist once more, his fingertips aware of the small central dip near the base of her spine. If he just moved his hands a little lower…
“It was nice,” Chessie agreed, her voice sounding a bit breathless. “Talking.”
“And dipping,” he added, smiling. “Those were great cookies.”
“I’ll tell Berthe, and she’ll make some just for you. But I still have half a tin upstairs.”
“I am still hungry, Chess. But not for cookies.”
And with that admission, tense and intense began the slide toward inevitable….
“Yes…I know.” She was sort of kneading at his shoulders now. “It’s not as if we planned…”
“Hell, no,” he said, maybe taking honesty too far. “I mean, that is—I don’t know what I mean. I was half joking yesterday. Being stupid. I never thought stealing one kiss would lead to—”
“Almost lead to. We’re not there yet,” she corrected, still with her hands on his shoulders. “It’s all right, I understand. We don’t have to do anything else about it if you don’t want to.”
“Are you trying to let me down easy, or save yourself?” Now where the hell had that come from?
Her mouth dropped open. “I wasn’t trying to do anything, Jace Edwards. You started this. Yesterday, and again just now. Of the two days, I have to say I liked yesterday a lot better. Does that answer your stupid question?”
He had to swallow before he could speak again, hope his dry mouth would even open, yet alone be able to form words. Not giving a damn if someone might be watching, he stepped closer, pushed up against her. “You want this? To happen, I mean. No strings, no…no nothing? Just to happen? Just tonight. One crazy, stupid night, and then we can get it out of our systems, move on with our lives.”
She just looked at him, her eyes nearly black, her pupils had gone so wide. Didn’t say a word. Didn’t move, didn’t draw away. But her breathing suddenly became shallow, almost labored.
“I want it to happen,” he said at last. “I don’t know what it is, I don’t know why I can’t get you out of my head. But I can’t. I need to see you naked. I need to touch you…everywhere. Not want, Chess. Need. All I can think about is the way we’d be together. I know it would be good. We’d be so good.”
At last she closed her eyes. But then she opened them once more, those huge blue windows to her soul. What did he see there? What would he see there when he was deep inside her, taking them both to the conclusion that was so obvious he could nearly see it all inside his head now?
He watched as a tantalizing hint of color appeared on her bare upper chest, a flush of desire that fueled his own.
“I can almost feel you inside me now,” she said, her voice low, husky. “It’s sex, Jace. I’ve heard that it happens this way sometimes. It’s just never happened to me. I want it to happen to me. I want to be wild, and free, and maybe even dangerous. Like you said. One night. I wouldn’t ask anything else. I don’t want anything else. I just want to…let go. Let go of everything inside me, every inhibition, any fears, any thought of shame or right or wrong. I’ve never thought I could, or even wanted to. But now I just need to let it all go. One night.”
“One night only,” he agreed, even as something inside him revolted at the thought. He pushed the reluctance behind a door in his mind and shut it. She was right, she had to be right. It was sex, that’s all. There was nothing more there, nothing else between them. “When? Don’t say tomorrow, Chess. I don’t want to give you time to change your mind.”
“Or you. We close at seven. You could stop by around nine.”
“For dinner?” he asked, watching the corners of her mouth turning up into a smile that should be illegal, it was that blatantly provocative. Just looking into those eyes, seeing that small smile, had him so hard he was nearly in pain.
Finally, she stepped away from him, almost dancing as she turned toward the shop. “Find your own dinner, Jace Edwards. I thought we were discussing dessert. I’ll leave the side door open, so just come on up.”