Annie chewed on her lip. Her gaze flickered up to Drew’s eyes. “So you don’t like the slacks and blouse.”
“I like them. Really.” Drew had never thought she would find conservative business suits sexy, but she did when Annie was wearing them. She also longed to see Annie—figuratively and literally—let her hair down and wear something that brought out her softer, more feminine side. “But this is kind of what you wear every day. If you want to send the message that you’re wearing something sexy for your new lover, then we need something else.”
“Like what?” Annie asked, her expression skeptical, as if she already suspected she wouldn’t like the answer.
“How about a dress? I’ve seen a few that would look great on you.” That was an understatement. Just imagining Annie in that burgundy dress in the front of the store made Drew’s heartbeat pick up.
Annie grimaced. “I don’t wear dresses.”
“Why not? You’ve got the figure for it.” Drew tried to make it sound like an objective compliment, given without a lot of emotion.
“I don’t know.” Annie shrugged. “They’re just not my style. I’d probably look like a scarecrow.”
“Scarecrow?” Drew echoed.
Damn, what happened to give her that kind of self-image?
She looked deeply into Annie’s eyes to let her know how sincere she was. “Annie, you couldn’t look like a scarecrow if you tried. Anyone with eyes in their head can see how ...” She stopped herself just in time before she told Annie how attractive she found her. “With your long legs, I bet you’d look great in a dress. Why don’t you try one on?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on. Just try it. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to buy it.”
Annie sighed. “All right. If you find me a nice one, I’ll try it. But just one.” She held up her index finger.
Okay. Just one. Make it count.
Drew took two steps toward the front of the store; then she stopped and turned. “What size do you wear?”
“No idea,” Annie said. “Last time I wore a dress, I was ten years old. Maybe try a size eight.”
Drew searched until she found the burgundy dress in that size. She carried it back to the fitting room.
The door was closed, and she heard Annie unzip her slacks. The thought of Annie undressing behind the slatted door and the slacks slipping down a pair of slender legs made Drew suck in a breath.
“Drew?” Annie called through the door. “Are you there? Did you find one?”
“Um ... yeah.” Drew’s voice was raspy.
When the door opened an inch, she passed the dress through the tiny gap and into Annie’s waiting hands.
Annie let the door swing closed.
Drew turned her back toward the fitting room.
Oh, yeah. Like that’s going to stop you from imagining what’s going on behind that door.
For a few seconds, all she heard was the rustling of fabric. Then Annie mumbled, “That’s why I don’t wear dresses.”
“Everything okay?” Drew called.
“Everything’s fine,” Annie answered. “Just this damn ... God, who invented this zipper?” She grunted as if she were wrestling with a grizzly.
“Um ...” Drew hesitated, but the sounds of the struggle with the zipper continued.
Come on. You’re her friend. You can do this.
“Do you need some help?”
The muttering and grunting stopped.
Shit. Now she thinks I want to ogle her.
Clothing rustled as if Annie was trying one more time to wrestle the stubborn zipper into submission. Then silence fell, and Annie finally said, “If you wouldn’t mind.”
Taking a deep breath, Drew straightened and opened the fitting room’s door.
Annie stood with her back toward Drew. Her hands held the front of the dress pressed against her chest.
Their gazes met in the mirror.
Drew paused, half in, half outside of the fitting room.
Annie cleared her throat. “D-do you like it?”
“Huh?”
“The dress?”
With Annie holding on to the front of the dress, Drew couldn’t see much of it, but the sight of Annie’s bare arms and shoulders took her breath away. “It looks spectacular.” Her chest felt tight as she stepped closer.
“I don’t know. I think I’ll get a pair of slacks instead.” Annie swept her critical gaze along her reflection in the mirror. “I don’t like how I look in dresses.”
“Nonsense,” Drew said, trying to sound casual. “You look great.” She struggled not to breathe too fast, afraid that Annie could hear. Her hands were steady as she lifted them to the small of Annie’s back, but on the inside, she was trembling.
Oh, come on. Don’t act like you’ve never seen a half-dressed woman. Or a naked one, for that matter.
She trailed her gaze up Annie’s bare back, from the point where the dress rested just above her hips, over vulnerable-looking shoulder blades, to the elegant curve of her neck. The burgundy color made the smooth, pale skin glow like the moonstone she had shown Annie on the beach.
God, she’s beautiful. And she’s not wearing a bra.
With fingers that felt too big for the dainty task, Drew reached for the zipper. Her fingertips grazed Annie’s skin.
A visible trail of goose bumps spread over Annie’s back, making Drew shiver in response.
“Cold?” Drew asked. She barely recognized her own voice.
Annie shook her head. The mirror showed a flush creeping up her neck.
To Drew, it made Annie look even lovelier.
Focus. Zip her up and get out of here before you do something stupid.
She lowered her gaze to the zipper.
A bit of fabric had gotten caught in the zipper, and Drew tugged it free. She felt Annie stop breathing and go still beneath her hands. Slowly, Drew pulled the zipper up until she encountered the golden-blond hair falling to just below Annie’s shoulders. “Can you lift your hair?”
Letting go of the dress with one hand, Annie reached back and swept her hair to the side.
The movement made the fine muscles of her back vibrate against Drew’s fingers.
Drew struggled against the urge to move forward and press her lips to Annie’s bare neck. When she wrenched her gaze away from the pale skin, their gazes connected in the mirror.
Heat rushed through her.
Was she just imagining the mix of hunger and fear in Annie’s darkened eyes?
“Drew ...” Annie’s tone sounded pleading, but Drew wasn’t sure for what.
Warm flesh twitched beneath Drew’s hands, and she realized she had laid both of her hands on Annie’s back, fingers spread as if to connect with as much of Annie as she could. She wrenched her hands away. When she lifted her gaze back up, Annie’s face had lost the unguarded expression. Whatever she had felt was now hidden behind a mask of control.
“Sorry.” Drew pulled up the zipper the rest of the way and stepped back as far as the tiny fitting room allowed. “The zipper should work now. Think you can manage alone?”
Annie nodded. Even though the zipper was closed and held up the dress, she was still clutching the front.
“I’ll wait outside.” Not waiting for a reply, Drew stumbled from the fitting room and sank onto a bench.
* * *
Oh God, oh God, oh God. What was that?
Annie stared into the mirror without seeing the dress. Her skin burned as she remembered the heat in Drew’s gaze. She could still feel where Drew’s hands had rested against her back.
Shakily, she dropped onto the narrow bench in the fitting room.
Take a deep breath.
She sucked air into her lungs as if she were suffocating.
Nothing happened. No big deal. Okay, so you’re attracted to Drew. Just ignore it. Maybe it’ll go away once we stop pretending for Jake.
But the excuse had grown empty. Except for the time when Jake had been watching and at the Halloween party, she wasn’t playing a role when she was with Drew. Quite the opposite. She couldn’t remember when she had last shown another person so much of herself without fear of being judged.
Probably never.
What does that mean? Is this connection ... these feelings ... are they for real?
Too much was going through her mind to be sure of the answer.
She leaned against the mirrored wall of the fitting room and shivered as the cold seeped into her back. Despite the cramped space, she didn’t want to open the door and face Drew—or maybe it was her own feelings she didn’t want to face.
Sarah’s words echoed through her mind again.
Maybe your reaction isn’t about Drew and her sexual orientation. It’s about yours.
Annie stood and jerked down the zipper, nearly getting it caught on a piece of fabric again.
Stop.
If she damaged the zipper, she would have to call Drew for help. Heat shot through her at the thought of feeling Drew’s hands on her back again.
Annie struggled out of the dress. When she picked up her pants, something slipped out of her pocket and dropped onto the carpet. The milky-white moonstone twinkled in the glaring lights of the fitting room, looking as out of place as Annie felt.
For a moment, Annie considered leaving it behind, but then she again saw the carefree smile on Drew’s face when she had shown her the moonstone. She bent and touched the stone. It was still warm from her body heat. Sighing, she put it back into her pocket.
Chapter 16
The folder held tightly in her hand, Drew crossed Cargill & Jones’s parking lot. Her heartbeat picked up when she saw Annie’s car parked right in front of the entrance.
You’re not here to see Annie,
she reminded herself.
But maybe she could combine business with pleasure and see if Annie had time to go for lunch. They needed to talk about what had happened between them in the fitting room. When Annie had come out of the fitting room, dress in hand, she had mumbled something about not liking the fit of the dress. Soon after finding a pair of slacks, she had hurriedly said good-bye, saying that she needed to get some work done.
Drew hadn’t been able to think of anything else all weekend. At times, she had convinced herself that it was all just in her imagination, that she was just projecting her own feelings onto Annie. But there were moments when she was almost sure she had seen her longing reflected in Annie’s eyes when their gazes had met in the mirror.
She wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
When she entered the building, Mr. Hargrave, her accountant, stood in the hallway, talking to someone.
Drew craned her neck to see whether that someone was Annie.
A woman’s red hair peeked out from behind Mr. Hargrave.
Not Annie.
Drew slowed her steps.
Mr. Hargrave turned and frowned. “Ms. Corbin. Do we have an appointment?”
“No, I just thought I’d drop off the receipts you asked for.” Drew held out the folder.
“Oh. Thank you.” He took the folder, glanced inside, and nodded. “You didn’t need to drop it off in person.”
Drew shrugged and admitted to herself that it had just been a convenient excuse to see Annie. “I was in the neighborhood anyway.” She hesitated and glanced at the petite redhead next to Mr. Hargrave. Was she a colleague or a client? Not that it mattered. She turned back toward her accountant. “You wouldn’t happen to know if Annie Prideaux is with a client right now?”
“Annie Prideaux?” Hargrave’s eyebrows crept toward his thinning hairline. He probably wondered whether she was trying to replace him as her accountant.
Drew didn’t care. She wasn’t in the mood to soothe her accountant’s ruffled feathers, so she just nodded.
“I have no idea,” Mr. Hargrave answered.
“I think she went to lunch with Jonathan,” the redhead said.
Jonathan.
The name was like salt in an open wound for Drew. Maybe she had just imagined Annie’s reaction. If Annie was interested in anyone at all, it was Jonathan, not her. She unclenched her teeth, said “thank you,” and trudged back to her car.
* * *
“You barely touched your lunch,” Jonathan said as they made their way back to the office.
“I wasn’t very hungry.” Annie hadn’t eaten much in days. Her stomach felt like a churning sea of emotions. She couldn’t eat, she couldn’t sleep, she could barely hear herself think over the never-ending questions running through her mind. Even when they had talked about an account that Jonathan needed help with over lunch, her thoughts had repeatedly strayed from the topic at hand and returned to that moment in the fitting room.
“Wasn’t that your friend?” Jonathan asked. “The one from the restaurant?”
Drew?
Annie looked up sharply. “Where?”
Jonathan paused in the middle of the firm’s parking lot. “In that car.” He pointed over his shoulder.
When Annie turned, the car was already gone.
Had it really been Drew? And if yes, what had she been doing here? Had Drew wanted to talk to her?
What am I supposed to say if she asks me what’s going on with me?
Annie rubbed her forehead.
Calm down. She was probably just in the neighborhood and wanted to talk about Thanksgiving.