but he was pretty sure that was the reference. A man who took a grubby flower girl and turned her into the talk of the town. “Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “Yes, I am. Take me up on this, Anna Brown, and I will turn you into a woman.”
Anna just about laughed herself off her chair. “You’re going to make me a...a...a woman?”
“Why is that funny?”
“What about it isn’t funny?”
“I’m offering to help you.”
“You’re offering to help me be something that I am by birth. I mean, Chase, I get that women are kind of your thing, but that’s pretty arrogant. Even with all things considered.”
“Okay, obviously I’m not going to make you a woman.” Something about the way he said the phrase this time hit her in an entirely different way. Made her think about other applications that phrase occasionally had. Things she needed to never, ever, ever, ever think about in connection with Chase.
If she valued her sanity and their friendship.
She cleared her throat, suddenly aware that it was dry and scratchy. “Obviously.”
“I just meant that you need help getting a date, and I need to go to this party. And you said that you were concerned about your appearance in the community.”
“Right.” He wasn’t wrong. The thing was, she knew that whether or not she could blend in at an event like this didn’t matter at all to how well her business did. Nobody cared if their mechanic knew which shade of lipstick she should wear. But that wasn’t the point.
She—her family collectively—was the town charity case. Living on the edge of the community in a run-down house, raised by a single father who was in over his head, who spent his days at the mill. Her older brothers had been in charge of taking care of her, and they had done so. But, of course, they were also older brothers. Which meant they had tormented her while feeding and clothing her. Anyway, she didn’t exactly blame them.
It wasn’t like the two of them had wanted to raise a sister when they would rather be out raising hell.
Especially a sister who was committed to driving them crazy.
She loved her brothers. But that didn’t mean they always had an easy relationship. It didn’t mean they didn’t hurt her by accident when they teased her about things. She acted invulnerable, so they assumed that she was.
But now, beneath her coveralls and engine grease, she was starting to feel a little bit battered. It was difficult to walk around with a screw you attitude barely covering a raw wound. Because eventually that shield started to wear down. Especially when people were used to being able to lob pretty intense rocks at that shield.
That was her life. It was either pity or a kind of merciless camaraderie that had no softness to it. Her dad, her brothers, all the guy friends she had...
And she couldn’t really blame them. She had never behaved in a way that would demonstrate she needed any softness. In fact, a few months ago, a few weeks ago even, the idea would have been unthinkable to her.
But there was something about this invitation. Something about imagining herself in yet another situation where she was forced to deflect good-natured comments about her appearance, about the fact that she was more like a guy than the roughest cowboys in town. Yeah, there was something about that thought that had made her want to curl into a ball and never unfurl.
Then, even if it was unintentional, her brothers had piled on. It had hurt her feelings. Which meant she had reacted in anger, naturally. So now she had a bet. A bet, and her best friend looking at her with laser focus after having just promised he would make her a woman.
“Why do you care?” He was pressing, and she wanted to hit him now.
Which kind of summed up why she was in this position in the first place.
She swallowed hard. “Maybe I just want to surprise people. Isn’t that enough?”
“You came from nothing. You started your own business with no support from your father. You’re a female mechanic. I would say that you’re surprising as hell.”
“Well, I want to add another dimension to that. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said. “Multidimensional Anna. That seems like a good idea to me.”
“Where do we start?”
“With you not falling off your chair laughing at me because I’ve offered to make you a woman.”
A giggle rose in her throat again. Hysteria. She was verging on hysteria. Because this was uncomfortable and sincere. She hated both of those things. “I’m sorry. I can’t. You can’t say that to me and expect me not to choke.”
He looked at her again, his dark eyes intense. “Is it a problem, Anna? The idea that I might make you a woman.”
He purposefully made his voice deeper. Purposefully added a kind of provocative inflection to the words. She knew he was kidding. Still, it made her chest tighten. Made her heart flutter a little bit.
Wow. How annoying. She hadn’t had a relapse of Chase Underpants Feelings this bad in a long time.
Apparently she still hadn’t recovered from her earlier bit of mistaken identity. She really needed to recover. And he needed to stop being...Chase. If at all possible.
“Is it a problem for you?” she asked.
“What?”
“The idea that I might make you a soprano?”
He chuckled. “You probably want to hold off on threats of castration when you’re at a fancy party.”
“We aren’t at one right now.”
She was her own worst enemy. Everything that she had just been silently complaining about, she was doing right now. Throwing out barbs the moment she got uncomfortable, because it kept people from seeing what was actually happening inside of her.
Yes, but you really need to keep Chase from seeing that you fluttered internally over something he said.
Yes. Good point.
She noticed that he was looking past her now, and she followed his line of sight. He was looking at that blonde again. “Regrets, Chase?”
He winced, looking back at her. “No.”
“So. I assume that to get a guy to come up and hit on me in a bar, I have to put on a dress that is essentially a red ACE bandage sprinkled with glitter?”
He hesitated. “It’s more than that.”
“What?”
“Well, for a start, there’s not looking at a man like you want to dismember him.”
She
