not an Amazon.”
“I will be in those.”
“Maybe that would bother some men. But you want a man who knows how to handle a woman. Any guy with half a brain is going to lose his mind checking out your legs. He’s not going to care if you’re a little taller than he is.”
She tried her best to ignore the compliment about her legs. And tried even harder to keep from blushing.
“I care,” she muttered, snatching the shoes from his hand and pondering whether or not there was any truth to her words as she did.
She didn’t really date. So it was hard to say. But now that she was thinking about it, yeah. She was self-conscious about the fact that with pretty low heels she was eye level with half the men in town.
She finished putting the shoes on and straightened. It was like standing on a glittery pair of stilts. “Are you satisfied?” she asked.
“I guess you could say that.” He was regarding her closely, his jaw tense, a muscle in his cheek ticking.
She noticed that he was still a couple of inches taller than her. Even with the shoes. “I guess you still meet the height requirement to be my dinner date.”
“I didn’t have any doubt.”
“I don’t know how to walk in these,” she said.
“All right. Practice.”
“Are you out of your mind? I have to practice walking?”
“You said yourself, you don’t know how to walk in heels. So, go on. Walk the length of the room.”
She felt completely awash in humiliation. She doubted there was another woman on the planet that Chase had ever had to instruct on walking.
“This is ridiculous.”
“It’s not,” he said.
“All of women’s fashion is ridiculous,” she maintained. “Do you have to learn how to walk when you put on dress shoes? No, you do not. And yet, a full-scale lesson is required for me to go out if I want to wear something that’s considered feminine.”
“Yeah, it’s sexist. And a real pain in the ass, I’m sure. It’s also hot. Now walk.”
She scowled at him, then took her first step, wobbling a bit. “I don’t understand why women do this.”
She took another step, then another, wobbling a little less each time. But the shoes did force her hips to sway, much more than they normally would. “Do you have any pointers?” she asked.
“I date women in heels, Anna. I’ve never walked in them.”
“What happened to helping me be a woman?”
“You’ll get the hang of it. It’s like...I don’t know, water-skiing maybe?”
“How is this like water-skiing?”
“You have to learn how to do it and there’s a good likelihood you’ll fall on your face?”
“Well, I take it all back,” she said, deadpan. “These shoes aren’t silly at all.” She took another step, then another. “I feel like a newborn baby deer.”
“You look a little like one, too.”
She snorted. “You really need to up your game, Chase. If you use these lines on all the women you take out, you’re bound to start striking out sooner or later.”
“I haven’t struck out yet.”
“Well, you’re still young and pretty. Just wait. Just wait until time starts to claim your muscular forearms and chiseled jawline.”
“I figure by then maybe I’ll have gotten the ranch back to its former glory. At that point women will sleep with me for my money.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s nice to have goals.”
In her opinion, Chase should have better goals for himself. But then, who was she to talk? Her current goal was to show her brothers that they were idiots and she could too get a date. Hardly a lofty ambition.
“Yes, it is. And right now my goal is for us not to miss our reservation.”
“You made a...reservation?”
“I did.”
“It’s not like it’s Valentine’s Day or something. The restaurant isn’t going to be full.”
“Of course it won’t be. But I figured if I made a reservation for the two of us, we could start a rumor, too.”
“A rumor?”
“Yeah, because Ellie Matthews works at Beaches, and I believe she has been known to service your brother Mark.”
Anna winced at the terminology. “True.”
“I thought the news of our dining experience might make it back to him. Like I said, the more we can make this look organic, the better.”
“No one ever need know that our relationship is in fact grown in a lab. And in no way GMO free,” she said.
“Exactly.”
“I don’t have any makeup on.” She frowned. “I don’t have any makeup. At all.”
“Right,” he said. “I didn’t really think of that.”
She reached out and smacked him on the shoulder. “You’re supposed to be my coach. You’re failing me.”
He laughed, dodging her next blow. “You don’t need makeup.”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “You’re just saying that.”
“In fairness, you did threaten to castrate me with your car keys earlier.”
“I did.”
“And you hit me just now,” he pointed out.
“It didn’t hurt, you baby.”
He took a deep breath, and suddenly his expression turned sharp. “Believe me when I tell you you don’t need makeup.” He reached out, gripping her chin with his thumb and forefinger. His touch was like a branding iron, hot, altering. “As long as you believe it, everyone else will, too. You have to believe in yourself, Anna.”
He released his hold on her, straightening. “Now,” he said, his tone getting a little bit rougher, “let’s go to dinner.”
* * *
Chase felt like he had been tipped sideways and left walking on the walls from the moment that Anna had emerged from the bathroom at his house wearing that dress. Once she had put on those shoes, the feeling had only gotten
