CHAPTER SEVEN
“Sweet—J—” I breathed, as my words left me.
My mouth went as dry as sand as Bash stared back at me with blue eyes gone almost black and the hint of a smile still pulling at his lips. I may as well have been totally naked. His gaze slid from my face to my neck, to land and linger in more cleavage than he’d ever seen from me. Well, except for that one time. A hundred million years ago. And even then I wasn’t sure all our clothes made it off. It might have just been the important ones.
Suddenly it was like one of my dreams, and we were the only people in the room. Bash, looking messy and rumpled like someone had unbuttoned him that way, had me lightheaded. I could imagine his lips on every inch his eyes trailed over. My nipples hardened at the thought, and I watched his eyes notice that. I saw the fire in them dance, before it jumped the space between us and shot right through my belly.
Shit, shit, shit.
I crossed my arms nervously, the movement making him blink back up to my eyes.
“Don’t—”
“I—” I shook my head and covered my mouth, all while trying to cover my boobs unsuccessfully.
“Don’t hide,” he said, chuckling, his eyes dropping again. He moved his head back and forth slowly and let out a breath. “Don’t ever hide.”
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t speak as his eyes moved down the rest of my body. My hips. Where the skirt played with my thighs, all the way down to my naked unpainted toes. It was only a few seconds, and yet it could have been all friggin day.
“Allie, you look—”
“See?” a shrill voice said from somewhere, breaking the moment. “It’s split in half. Something for both—”
“Whoa.”
Bash turned instantly at the word, which was intoned just this side of a lusty catcall, coming face to face with a surprised Alan and Katrina Bowman. Alan had stopped cold to gape at me like I was a giant steak.
“Keep walking,” Bash said to him.
“What?” Alan said, glancing back at me. “I just—I mean, damn, who knew?”
I narrowed my eyes in repulsion. “Really?”
“Oh my God, I need a dress like that,” Katrina gushed, walking around Alan in apparent oblivion or disinterest with her husband’s gawking over me.
“Go change,” Bash said over his shoulder, his tone changed.
“Crap, she’s the competition,” Carmen said, grabbing my hand. “Come on.”
“What, she’s going to buy the same dress?” I said. “I don’t care.”
Bash whipped his suit jacket off and wrapped it around my shoulders, holding on to the lapels that covered my cleavage for a lingering moment that seemed to just float between us. Or maybe that was just me, confusing my nighttime activity with the fact that his chest was still bare and just inches from my reach. And maybe that his thumbs were nearly touching my boobies.
“Please go change,” he said softly. “Before I have to deck him.”
A surprised chuckle escaped my throat before Carmen pulled me toward the dressing room, Bash’s gaze heavy on me as the suit coat fell open.
“Sir?” a salesgirl called behind him. “Mr. Anderson? I need to finish measuring you.”
He blinked away. Away from me, away from Alan, and toward the woman calling his name, raking fingers through his hair. Messing it up. Squeezing my chest with that just-fucked-on-a-boardroom-table look.
I clapped a hand over my mouth to make sure I didn’t say that out loud. But oh my God, I just thought it. And worse. I wanted it.
“You don’t want her getting the same dress,” Carmen was saying, although her words just bounced off my brain. “She’ll find some way to upstage you.”
I found myself suddenly back in the dressing room, standing in front of the mirror, looking like an orphan with Bash’s suit jacket hanging on me. His behavior had my head spinning. Was he saying this dress wasn’t appropriate? Or was he jealous? Don’t ever hide. My eyes filled as I pulled it tighter around me and brought a section to my nose. Oh God, it smelled like him. Four minutes on his body and it already smelled like him, full of his warmth and his—
“Stop,” I whispered, dropping the fabric and bringing both hands to my face as two tears trickled over my fingers. “You can’t do this.”
Silly fantasies were one thing. This was getting too—too much like something neither of us messed with. Something we’d decided against a long time ago—sort of.
I took the coat off and hung it up, and my skin felt hot as I unhooked the clasp behind my neck and pulled the dress off. I sank onto a chair with the fabric wadded in my lap, staring back into the mirror. What was I doing? What was I playing with? Yes, I’d kissed him. Yes, I’d been having sex dreams about him. But none of that meant anything. Bash was my closest, most important friend. Why was I getting emotional over this shit? And what the hell just happened out there? I stood up quickly, as the memory set my whole body thrumming again. Since when did my crazy dream content move into real life, and more than that, when did he actively join that party?
Because it hadn’t just been me. The way Bash had looked at me. Oh my God. He’d never looked at me that way. No one had ever looked at me that way. I’d had serious boyfriends that never did that. I grabbed a promotional sign telling dressing room patrons to keep their underwear on, and fanned myself with it, trying to cool my face.
“Okay,” I whispered finally, putting down the sign to put my bra and T-shirt and jeans back on. There. I looked like boring me, again. No one would stop breathing or make lewd comments over this version. “Stop being an idiot,” I muttered. “This is silly. Stop acting like a brainless twit and go take care of business.”
I took a deep breath as I draped the dress over my arm and grabbed his suit jacket and walked out, holding my chin up. Alan was nowhere to be seen, thank God. Katrina already had a load of dresses hanging on her arm, and Bash was over on his side with his arms stretched out as a young girl measured him and tried not to blush as he talked to her.
“Well, I think that answered that question,” Carmen said, pulling my attention back.
“I think that’s the dress,” Lanie said with a knowing look. “Fix your hair down, maybe over one shoulder. Very sexy. What do you think, Bash?” she called out with a chuckle and making me want to duck back into the safe haven of the dressing room. “Is this the dress?”
I looked back to where he had just turned to face us, arms still outstretched and grinning lazily like the world hadn’t just been rocked. How was that? How did he do that? Ugh—men!
He cleared his throat and chuckled, smiling his trademark woman-killer smile at Lanie. At Lanie. Not the woman wearing the damn dress. For him. That thought slapped me around a little. It was true. The second his eyes were on me, looking at me like that, I’d known without a doubt that I wanted that dress for him.
“I think so,” he said, sliding his gaze to me as I walked up holding out the jacket. “Is this the suit?”
Fuck, yes. Please wear it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
“I think it works,” I said.
He looked at me for a long moment before blinking and changing course.
“I got an e-mail about essays,” he said.
“Essays?”
“We have to write one,” he said. “One, not two.”
“Oh, good lord,” I said.
“Can we work on that?” he asked. “I kind of need us to win this thing.”
I backed up a step, his adamant tone taking me off guard. “Okay, when’s the next time you and Angel are driving?”
“Tomorrow,” he said. “So after that?”
I shrugged. “That’s fine.”
“It’s a date, then,” he said as I turned to go.
I stopped in my tracks and looked over my shoulder, hating myself for doing that. Four months ago, I would have rolled with that without another thought, and now every word was under scrutiny.
“Yeah, okay,” I said.
“I mean—” he said awkwardly.
“No, it’s all good,” I said, holding up a hand and smiling as I walked back to the girls, but closing my eyes and shaking my head by the time I reached them. “Please shoot me now and put me out of my misery.”
“You’re getting that, right?” Red said, morphing at my side.
I nodded. “I am.”
“What about some accessories?” she asked, pointing toward the purses.
“I’m good,” I said. “We aren’t going on a date.” Nope. No fucking date. “We’re just strutting around a stage like prize cattle.”
Carmen held up a brochure with bright and glossy pictures of the town. Our town.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Something I picked up on a rack by the door,” Lanie said. “As they were setting up the rack by the door.”
“Why is there—oh,” I said. “Please tell me it’s not about this silly contest.”
“Not per se,” Carmen said, flipping through hers. “But it is mentioned as one of the Make a Charming Charmed new events.” She turned it around so I could see the list and the glossy photos of the pond front and gazebo built a few months ago.
I took the brochure from her and looked at all the photos, from the front picture of the Ferris wheel at the Lucky Charm, to pictures of jars of honey on a table. Not Bash’s honey—just random generic jars. It sported a photo of one of the Honey Wars from this past summer, with Katrina Bowman and Lanie’s husband Nick climbing a knotted rope. She was climbing him like a tree. I showed her.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice sounding sour. “Just what I wanted saved for posterity. Of course they didn’t get one of me stepping on her husband’s face or Nick punching him.”
“Well, you know, that wouldn’t have shown a charming Charmed,” I said, turning the rest of the pages. “They didn’t get Bash’s apiary either, or the Blue Banana. What the hell?”
Anderson’s Apiary was the driving source of Charmed’s wax and honey supply, and my diner—my family’s diner—what used to be my family’s diner—it was the centerpiece of town.
“What a crock of shit,” I said, flipping to the back, where a piece of colored paper was stapled.
“It’s advertising the Honey King and Queen competition with all the sponsors and the prizes,” Carmen read. “Oh wow.”
I read what she was wow’ing. Almost twenty grand in cash prizes. Ten apiece. Bash’s comment about needing to win made a little more sense.
Once upon a time, that would have sounded motivating. Ten thousand dollars could help us out tremendously. Pay for a couple of semesters of college or get Angel a good used car. Now all I could see was that it wasn’t eighty-seven grand.
Still. Who was I to thumb my nose up at free money? Or who was I kidding—after today, none of it felt anything close to free. And the grin Lanie was giving me told me that was just about to get worse.
“What?” I asked.
“Did you feel that chemistry?” Lanie asked, brows lifted high.
“Did you notice he stopped breathing?” Carmen added, looking up.
Did they notice that neither of us appeared happy about it?
“You two are so going to win,” Lanie said. “You have nothing to worry about.”
I shoved my fist into the ball of churning fire burning in my belly. She was so wrong. I had everything to worry about.