“Trish had quit, maybe a week before, I don’t really remember. I was the only one in the office when she came in to pick up her last paycheck, except I had a little trouble finding it since Val had put it someplace ‘safe.’ Anyway, by the time I did, your cousin seemed very distraught. So … I asked her if she wanted to go get a drink.” His mouth pulled flat. “And things … took their course.”
She opened the dishwasher, started loading their dinner plates. “I see.”
“I’m not proud of it, Dana,” he finished softly. “It shouldn’t have happened. But I didn’t take advantage of her, if that’s what you’re thinking. Even if I did take advantage of … the situation. Just so you know, however,” he said, shifting the baby in his arms, “I don’t do that anymore. Start something I have no intention of finishing, I mean.” He smiled tiredly. “It gets old.”
“Yes,” Dana said carefully, once again all too aware of the warning in his words, no matter how mildly they’d been delivered. “I can see how it would. Well. Thanks. For being honest with me.”
“It’s the least I can do,” he said, and she thought, Geez, story of my life or what?
“Like hell you can wear that,” Mercy said, her face a study in horror.
Dana looked down at the black charmeuse tunic and ankle-length skirt, still in its transparent shroud from the cleaners, she was holding up to her front. They’d just locked up for the night, leaving only a couple of spotlights on in the front of the store, and Dana had—in a clearly misdirected moment—decided to show her partners what she was wearing. “What’s wrong with it?”
“You’ll look like a leech?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s even got sparklies. See?” She wiggled the bag in front of Mercy, who recoiled.
“Okay, a leech with a Cher fixation.”
Dana looked to Cass, who was also going to the shindig. Under duress, apparently. Blake had insisted it would “do her good” to get out and mingle, although, according to Cass, all she really wanted to do was stay home and sleep.
“What are you wearing?” Dana now asked the blonde.
“Some red jersey number I’ve had forever.”
Mercy blinked. “As in, the slinky little thing you wore to my sister’s wedding? The one with no back? And not a whole lot of front, either, as I recall?”
“That would be the one.”
Mercy gave Dana a pointed look.
“These hips don’t do slinky, Merce,” she said. “They do … softly draped.”
“Yeah, well, your hips need to break out of their rut. Hold on.” Mercy vanished into the back to return a second later with something … not softly draped. Or black. But not, at least, slinky, either. “Which is why I brought this. The color will go great with your hair, don’t you think?”
“Where did you get that?” Dana asked. “And why is it here?”
“From Anita, and because I consider it both an honor and my duty to save you from yourself. Anyway, ‘Nita’s more or less your size. But instead of hiding her body, she celebrates it.” She thrust the dress at Dana hard enough to make her lose her balance. “If that doesn’t work, there are others. And ditch the bra, there’s one built right into the dress.”
“You might as well humor her,” Cass said at Dana’s glare. “You know she’ll only make your life miserable otherwise.”
On a sigh, Dana snatched the dress out of Mercy’s hand and tromped to the bathroom to change. Five minutes later, upon glimpsing herself in the narrow, full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, she let out a shriek.
“Let us see, let us see!” she heard from the other side of the door.
“No way! For God’s sake, I’d put somebody’s eye out in this thing! No! Don’t open the door!”
Too late. There stood her partners, one grinning like a loon, the other gasping.
“Get your butt out here,” Mercy said, grabbing Dana’s wrist and yanking her through the door, “so we can get the full effect.”
“Yeah, full is right,” Dana mumbled, then swung a pleading glance in Cass’s direction. “Tell her I can’t possibly wear this.”
After a pause, during which Dana assumed Cass was working to get back her voice, the blonde said, “Honey, don’t take this the wrong way, but I have never, ever seen you look better.”
“See, Merce, what did I tell y—” Dana’s eyes cut back to Cass. “What did you say?”
“You look unbelievably gorgeous. I swear.”
“These go with it,” Mercy said, handing Dana—who was too busy gawking open-mouthed at Cass—a small silver box, already open. Inside lay a pair of outrageously ornate chandelier earrings that, sad to say, immediately made Dana’s mouth water.
“Ohhhh,” she said on a soft sigh, almost not caring when she caught Mercy conspiratorially poking Cass in the arm.
He couldn’t take his eyes off of her in that dress.
Neither could any other straight man in the room. Including Cass’s husband Blake, who’d been trying so hard all through dinner not to stare at Dana’s breasts. C.J. almost felt sorry for the poor bastard. But who could blame him? Dear God, they were magnificent.
She was magnificent. And if C. J. found himself occasionally battling the urge to deck every guy whose eyes lingered a little longer over that magnificence than he would have preferred …
Man, this protective business really packed a wallop.
Not that Dana needed protecting. Except, perhaps, from him.
His reaction, when she’d come out of her room, knocked him clear into next week. The dress, in some shiny fabric the same lush, deep blue of the sky just before nightfall, was truly a marvel of engineering, both lovingly and aggressively displaying Dana’s no-holds-barred curves to perfection. But it was the woman inside the dress who’d set his pulse rate off the charts, the tilt of her chin that said Yes, I know exactly how I look in this dress, warring with the remnants of insecurity in her eyes, that made him want to do things to her, for her, he had no right to do. That he’d told her as considerately as he could he wouldn’t do.
So, yes, he’d given her an appreciative whistle, but he’d otherwise played it cool. Careful. Not letting on how much he ached to trail his fingertips along the line of her jaw, down her neck, across the swells of those flawless, oh-God-just-kill-me-now breasts.
He tore his gaze away to scan the ballroom, recognizing probably half the people there. Including more than one woman he’d dated over the past decade. All of them beautiful, stylish, classy. Some of them at least momentarily intriguing. Or so he’d thought at the time. And yet, he couldn’t remember ever anticipating being with any of them the way he did with Dana, simply preparing a meal together, or giving Ethan
