even begin to cover it, Maggie realized as she ducked back into the dressing room for the umpteenth time. It was as if she didn’t even exist in a personal sense. She tugged off the midnight blue cocktail dress Mr. Tanner and Paige had both agreed wasn’t her most flattering choice of the day and reached for a black sleeveless gown, pulling it over her head with a huff of frustration. Between the two of them she felt as if she were little more than a mannequin, right up until she shoved her feet in the matching high-heeled, black pumps that Paige had insisted she try on with the dress, and stepped outside the dressing room.
Her two torturers were sitting on the velvet-covered loveseat in the foyer of the dressing rooms, their heads together—each a perfect foil for the other—until they became aware she was standing waiting for their comment.
“Oh,” said Paige, for once seemingly at a complete loss for words.
Maggie looked at William’s face and her breath held fast in her lungs at the expression she saw there. The skin across his cheekbones tautened and his eyes widened and glowed in obvious appreciation.
“That’s a definite,” he said in a voice that sounded as if he struggled to force the words from his throat.
“Yes, it certainly is,” Paige agreed.
Will rose from the seat and walked across the thick carpet to where Maggie stood nervously.
“Here, why don’t we try this, just to soften things a little?”
He reached up to remove her dark-framed glasses from the bridge of her nose then folded them and tucked them in his breast pocket. He reached for Maggie’s hair and pulled the pins from her habitual tight knot. Maggie felt her scalp rejoice as he tousled her hair loose from its constriction.
“Oh, yes, that’s much better.”
There was a note to his words that forced her to look at him, to allow her eyes to connect with his and see, without a doubt, what he was thinking. Desire flamed like a living, breathing thing and her skin tightened in response. Her breasts felt full and heavy and ached for his touch. Maggie swallowed against the sudden dryness in her throat. She was imagining things, surely. He’d said “fake” fiancée, hadn’t he? But right now the expression on his face was anything but fake. His need for her was there in all honesty. A jolt of sheer lust shot through to her core, taking her breath completely away.
“Will you wear this for me tonight?” he asked.
“If you want me to,” she replied, the words stilted, near impossible to force through her lips as she acknowledged the depth of feeling he aroused in her.
“You look beautiful. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to escort you looking like this. I’ll be the envy of every man in the restaurant.”
He smiled then, and Maggie felt her lips curve in response.
It was not so much a smile of pleasure as it was of satisfaction. For once she really felt beautiful. The admiration so clear on Will’s face was a salve to her feminine soul. While she wasn’t quite ready to examine how that admiration affected her on a basic level, she had to answer to the sensualist who dwelled deep within her. To deny that was nigh on impossible.
The sound of someone clearing their throat dragged Maggie’s attention back to her surroundings.
“Okay, well we have a few more places to go before we’re done. We’ve barely scratched the surface, really.”
“I’ll get changed,” Maggie said and turned back into the dressing room.
“Here, you’d better take these,” Will said, removing her spectacles from his pocket and handing them back to her.
Maggie shoved them back on her face and closed the door behind her. Faced with her own reflection in the private cubicle, she caught her breath. With her hair a loose tumble around her ivory shoulders and with the low scoop of the gown exposing the swell of her breasts she could see why Will had reacted the way he had. She scoured her memory. He hadn’t dwelled on any one part of her, though. She hadn’t, not even for a split second, felt uncomfortable under his perusal. She turned slowly and eyed her reflection in the mirror.
The dress was cut to perfection. If it had been made for her it couldn’t have fit any better. The way it curved into her narrow waist and flared at her hips before finishing just above her knees made the most of her every attribute in a way she’d never dreamed. She skimmed her hand over the fabric before reaching for the invisible zipper sewn into the side seam. Her fingertips tingled as they slid over the fine weave. She’d never dreamed of having anything that made her feel as beautiful as this dress did. And there was still more to come.
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