CHAPTER THREE
ANNA WAS REELING slightly by the time she walked up the front porch and into Chase’s house. The entire town was going to think that they were...lovers. She had never had a lover. At least, she would never characterize the guy she’d slept with as a lover. He was an unfortunate incident. But fortunately, her hymen was the only casualty. Her heart had remained intact, and she was otherwise uninjured. Or pleasured.
Lovers.
That word sounded...well, like it came from some old movie or something. Which under normal circumstances she was a big fan of. In this circumstance, it just made her feel...like her insides were vibrating. She didn’t like it.
Chase lived in the old family home on the property. It was a large, log cabin–style house with warm, honey-colored wood and a green metal roof designed to withstand all kinds of weather. Wrought-iron details on the porch and the door were a testament to his and Sam’s craftsmanship. There were people who would pay millions for a home like this. But Sam and Chase had made it this beautiful on their own.
Chase always kept the home admirably clean considering he was a bachelor. She imagined that the other house on the property, the smaller one inhabited by Sam, wasn’t quite as well kept. But she also imagined that Sam didn’t have the same amount of guests over that Chase did. And by guests, she meant female companions. Which he would be cut off from for the next few weeks.
Some small, mean part of her took a little bit of joy in that.
Because you don’t like the idea of other women touching him. It doesn’t matter how long it’s been going on, or how many women there are, you still don’t like it.
She sniffed, cutting off that line of thinking. She was just a crabby bitch who was enjoying the idea of him being celibate and suffering a bit. That was all.
“Okay, where are my...girlie things?”
“You aren’t even going to look at them until you scrub that grease off.”
“And how am I supposed to do that? Are you going to hose me off?”
He clenched his jaw. “No. You can use my shower.”
She took a deep breath, trying to dispel the slight fluttering in her stomach. She had never used Chase’s shower before. She assumed countless women before her had. When he brought them up here, took their clothes off for them. And probably joined them.
She wasn’t going to think about that.
“Okay.”
She knew where his shower was, of course. Because she had been inside his bedroom casually, countless times. It had never mattered before. Before, she had never been about to get naked.
She banished that thought as she walked up the stairs and down the hall to his room. His room was...well, it was very well-appointed, but then again, obviously designed to house guests of the female variety. The bed was large and full of plush pillows. A soft-looking green throw was folded up at the foot of it. An overstuffed chair was in the corner, another blanket draped over the back.
She doubted the explosion of comfort and cozy was for Chase’s benefit.
She tamped that thought down, continuing on through the bathroom door, then locking it for good measure. Not that he would walk in. And he was the only person in the house.
Still, she felt insecure without the lock flipped. She took a deep breath, stripped off her coveralls, then the clothes she had on beneath them, and started the shower. Speaking of things that were designed to be shared...
It was enclosed in glass, and she had a feeling that with the door open it was right in the line of sight from the bed. Inside was red tile, and a bench seat that... She wasn’t even going to think what that could be used for.
She turned and looked in the mirror. She was grubby. More than grubby. She had grease all over her face, all up under her fingernails.
Thankfully, Chase had some orange-and-pumice cleaner right there on his sink. So she was able to start scrubbing at her hands while the water warmed up.
Steam filled the air and she stepped inside the shower, letting the hot spray cascade over her skin.
It was a massaging showerhead. A nice one. She did not have a nice massaging showerhead in her little rental house down in town. Next on her list of Ways She Was Changing Her Life would be to get her own house. With one of these.
She rolled her shoulders beneath the spray and sighed. The water droplets almost felt like fingers moving over her tight muscles. And, suddenly, it was all too easy to imagine a man standing behind her, working at her muscles with his strong hands.
She closed her eyes, letting her head fall back, her mouth going slack. She didn’t even have the strength to fight the fantasy, God help her. She’d been edgy and aroused for the past twenty-four hours, no denying it. So this little moment to let herself fantasize...she just needed it.
Then she realized exactly whose hands she was picturing.
Chase’s. Tall and strong behind her, his hands moving over her skin, down lower to the slight dip in her spine, just above the curve of her behind...
She grabbed hold of the sponge hanging behind her and began to drag it ferociously over her skin, only belatedly realizing that this was probably what he used to wash himself.
“He uses it to wash his balls,” she said into the space. Hoping that that would disgust her. It really should disgust her.
It did not disgust her.
She put the scrubber back, taking a little shower gel and squeezing it into the palm of her hand. Okay, so she would smell like a playboy for a day. It wasn’t the end of the world. She started to rub the slick soap over her flesh, ignoring the images of Chase that were trying to intrude.
She was being a crazy person. She had showered at friends’ houses before, and never imagined that they were in the shower stall with her.
But ever since last night in the bar, her equilibrium had been off where Chase was concerned. Her control was being sorely tested. She was decidedly unstoked about it.
She shut the water off and got out of the shower, grabbing a towel off the rack and drying her skin with more ferocity than was strictly necessary. Almost as though she was trying to punish her wicked, wicked skin for imagining what it might be like to be touched by her best friend.
But that would be crazy.
Except she felt a little crazy.
She looked around the room. And realized that her stupid friend, who had not wanted her to touch the nice clothing he had bought her, had left her without anything to wear. She couldn’t put her sweaty, grease-covered clothes back on. That would negate the entire shower.
She let out an exasperated breath, not entirely certain what she should do.
“Chase?” she called.
She didn’t hear anything.
“Chase?” She raised the volume this time.
Still no answer.
“Butthead,” she muttered, walking over to the door and tapping the doorknob, trying to decide what her next move was.
She was being ridiculous. Just because she was having an increase of weird, borderline sexual thoughts about him, did not mean he was having them about her. She twisted the knob, undoing the lock as she did, and opened the door a crack. “Chase!”
The door to the bedroom swung open, and Chase walked in, carrying one of those plastic bags fancy dresses were stored in and a pair of shoes.
“I don’t have clothes,” she hissed through the crack in the door.
“Sorry,” he said, looking stricken. At least, she thought he looked stricken.
She opened the door slightly wider, extending her arm outside. “Give them to me.”
He crossed the room, walking over to the bathroom door. “You’re going to have to open the door wider than that.”
She already felt exposed. There was nothing between them. Nothing but some air and the towel she was clutching to her naked body. Well, and most of the door. But she still felt exposed.
Still, he was not going to fit that bag through the crack.
She opened the door slightly wider, then grabbed hold of the bag in his hand and jerked it back through. “I’ll get the shoes later,” she called through the door.
She dropped the towel and unzipped the bag, staring at the contents with no small amount of horror. There was...underwear inside of it. Underwear that Chase had purchased for her.
Which meant he had somehow managed to look at her breasts and evaluate their size. Not to mention her ass. And ass size.
She grabbed the pair of panties that were attached to a little hanger. Oh, they had no ass. So she supposed the size of hers didn’t matter much.
She swallowed hard, taking hold of the soft material and rubbing her thumb over it. He would know exactly what she was wearing beneath the dress. Would know just how little that was.
He isn’t going to think about it. Because he doesn’t think about you that way.
He never had. He never would. And it was a damn good thing. Because where would they be if either of them acted on an attraction between them?
Up shit creek without a paddle or a friendship.
No, thank you. She was never going to touch him. She’d made that decision a long time ago. For a lot of reasons that were as valid today as they had been the very first time he’d ever made her stomach jump when she looked at him.
She was never going to encourage or act on the attraction that she occasionally felt for Chase. But she would take his expertise in sexual politics and use it to her advantage.
Oh, but those panties.
The bra wasn’t really any less unsettling. Though at least it wasn’t missing large swathes of fabric.
Still, it was very thin. And she had a feeling that a cool ocean breeze would reveal the shape of her nipples to all and sundry.
Then again, maybe it was time all and sundry got a look at her nipples. Maybe if they had a better view, men would be a little more interested.
She scowled, wrenching the panties off the hanger and dragging them on as quickly as possible, followed closely by the bra. She was overthinking things. She was overthinking all of this. Had been from the moment Chase had walked into the barn. As evidenced by that lapse in the shower.
She had spent years honing her Chase Control. It was just this change in how they were interacting that was screwing with it. She was not letting this get inside her head, and she was not letting hot, unsettled feelings get inside her pants.
She pulled the garment bag away entirely, revealing a tight red dress slightly too reminiscent of what the woman he had been flirting with last night was wearing.
“Clearly you have a type, Chase McCormack,” she muttered, beginning to remove the slinky scrap of material from the hanger.
She tugged it up over her hips, having to do a pretty intense wiggle to get it up all the way before zipping it into place. She took a deep breath, turned around. She faced her reflection in the mirror full-on and felt nothing but deflated.
She looked...well, her hair was wet and straggly, and she looked half-drowned. She didn’t look curvy, or shimmery, or delightful.
This was the problem with tight clothes. They only made her more aware of her curve deficit.
Where the blonde last night had filled her dress out admirably, and in all the right places, on Anna this dress kind of looked like a piece of fabric stretched over an ironing board. Not really all that sexy.
She sighed heavily, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach.
Chase really was going to have to be a miracle worker in order to pull this off.
She didn’t really want to show him. Instead, she found the idea of putting the coveralls back on a lot less reprehensible. At least with the coveralls there would still be some mystery. He wouldn’t be confronted with just how big a task lay before him.
“Buck up,” she said to herself.
So what was one more moment of feeling inadequate? Honestly, in the broad tapestry of her life it would barely register. She was never quite what was expected. She never quite fit. So why’d she expect that she was going to put on a sexy dress and suddenly be transformed into the kind of sex kitten she didn’t even want to be?
She gritted her teeth, throwing open the bedroom door and walking out into the room. “I hope you’re happy,” she said, flinging her arms wide. “You get what you get.”
She caught a movement out of the corner of her eye and turned her head, then recoiled in horror. It was even worse out here. Out here, there was a full-length mirror. Out here, she had the chance to see that while her breasts remained stunningly average, her hips and behind had gotten rather wide. Which was easy to ignore when you wore loose attire most days. “I look like the woman symbol on the door of a public restroom.”
She looked over at Chase, who had been completely silent upon her entry into the room, and remained so. She glared at him. He wasn’t saying anything. He was only staring. “Well?”
“It’s nice,” he said.
His voice sounded rough, and kind of thin.
“You’re a liar.”
“I’m not a liar. Put the shoes on.”
“Do you even know what size I wear?”
“You’re a size ten, which I know because you complain about how your big feet make it impossible for you to find anything in your size. And you’re better off buying men’s work boots. So yes, I know.”
His words made her feel suddenly exposed. Well, his words in combination with the dress, she imagined. They knew each other a little bit too well. That was the problem. How could you impress a guy when you had spent a healthy amount of time bitching to him about your big feet?
“Fine. I will put on the shoes.” He held them up, and her jaw dropped. “I thought you were taking me out to dinner.”
“I am.”
“Do I have to pay for it by working the pole at the Naughty Mermaid?”
“These are nice shoes.”
“If you’re a five-foot-two-inch Barbie like that chick you were talking to last night. I’m like...an Amazon in comparison.”
“You’re 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 worse.
But who knew that underneath those coveralls his best friend looked like that?
She had been eyeing herself critically, and his brain had barely been working at all. Because he didn’t see anything to criticize. All he saw was the kind of figure that would make a man willingly submit to car key castration.
She was long and lean, toned from all the physical labor she did. Her breasts were small, but he imagined they would fit in a man’s hand nicely. And her hips...well, using the same measurement used for her breasts, they would be about perfect for holding on to while a man...
Holy hell. He was losing his mind.
She was Anna. Anna Brown, his best friend in the entire world. The one woman he had never even considered going there with. He didn’t want a relationship with the women he slept with. When your only criteria for being with a woman was orgasm, there were a lot of options available to you. For a little bit of satisfaction he could basically seek out any woman in the room.
Sex was easy. Connections were hard.
And so Anna had been placed firmly off-limits from day one. He’d had a vague awareness of her for most of his life. That was how growing up in a small town worked. You went to the same school from the beginning. But they had separate classes, plus at the time he’d been pretty convinced girls had cooties.
But that had changed their first year of high school. He’d ended up in metal shop with the prickly teen and had liked her right away. There weren’t very many girls who cursed as much as the boys and had a more comprehensive understanding of the inner workings of engines than the teachers at the school. But Anna did.
She hadn’t fit in with any of the girls, and so Chase and Sam had been quick to bring her into their group. Over the years, people had rotated in and out, moved, gone their separate ways. But Chase and Anna had remained close.
In part because he had kept his dick out of the equation.
As they walked up the path toward Beaches, he considered putting his hand on her lower back. Really, he should. Except it was potentially problematic at the moment. Was he this shallow? Stick her in a tight-fitting dress and suddenly he couldn’t control himself? It was a sobering realization, but not really all that surprising.
This was what happened when you spent a lot of time practicing no restraint when it came to sex.
He gritted his teeth, lifting his hand for a moment before placing it gently on her back. Because it was what he would do with any other date, so it was what he needed to do with Anna.
She went stiff beneath his touch. “Relax,” he said, keeping his voice low. “This is supposed to look like a date, remember?”
“I should have worn a white tank top and a pair of jeans,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because this looks... It looks like I’m trying too hard.”
“No, it looks like you put on a nice outfit to please me.”
She turned to face him, her brow furrowed. “Which is part of the problem. If I had to do this to please you, we both know that I would tell you to please yourself.”
He laughed, the moment so classically Anna, so familiar, it was at odds with the other feelings that were buzzing through his blood. With how soft she felt beneath his touch. With just how much she was affecting him in this figure-hugging dress.
“I have no doubt you would.”
They walked up the steps that led into the large white restaurant, and he opened the door, holding it for her. She looked at him like he’d just caught fire. He stared her down, and then she looked away from him, walking through the door.
He moved up next to her once they were inside. “You’re going to have to seem a little more at ease with this change in our relationship.”
“You’re being weird.”
“I’m not being weird. I’m treating you like a lady.”
“What have you been treating me like for the past fifteen years?” she asked.
“A...bro.”
She snorted, shaking her head and walking toward the front of the house where Ellie Matthews was standing, waiting for guests. “I believe we have a reservation,” Anna said.
He let out a long-suffering sigh. “Yes,” he confirmed. “Under my name.”
Ellie’s eyebrow shot upward. “Yes. You do.”
“Under Chase McCormack and Anna Brown,” Chase clarified.
“I know,” she said.
Ellie needed to work on her people skills. “It was difficult for me to tell, since you look so surprised,” Chase said.
“Well, I knew you were reserving the table for the two of you, but I didn’t realize you were...reserving the table for the two of you.” She was looking at Anna’s dress, her expression meaningful.
“Well, I was,” he said. “Did. So, is the table ready?”
She looked around the half-full dining area. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we can seat you now.”
Ellie walked them over to one of the tables by a side window that looked out over the Skokomish River where it fed into the ocean. The sun was dipping low over the water, the rays sparkling off the still surface of the slow-moving river. There were people milling along the wooden boardwalk that was bordered by docks on one side and storefronts on the other, before being split by the highway and starting again, leading down to the beach.
He looked away from the scenery, back at Anna. They had shared countless meals together, but this was different. Normally, they didn’t sit across from each other at a tiny table complete with a freaking candle in the middle. Mood lighting.
“Your server will be with you shortly,” Ellie said as she walked away, leaving them there with menus and each other.
“I want a burger,” Anna said, not looking at the menu at all.
“You could get something fancier.”
“I’ll get it with a cheese I can’t pronounce.”
“I’m getting salmon.”
“Am I paying?” she asked, an impish smile playing around the corners of her lips. “Because if so, you better be putting out at the end of this.”
Her words were like a punch in the gut. And he did his best to ignore them. He swallowed hard. “No, I’m paying.”
“I’ll pay you back after. You’re doing me a favor.”
“The favor’s mutual. I want to go to the fund-raiser. It’s important to me.”
“You still aren’t buying my dinner.”
“I’m not taking your money.”
“Then I’m going to overpay for rent on the shop next month,” she said, her tone uncompromising.
“Half of that goes to Sam.”
“Then he gets half of it. But I’m not going to let you buy my dinner.”
“You’re being stubborn.”
She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms and treating him to that hard glare of hers. “Yep.”
A few moments later the waiter came over, and Anna ordered her hamburger, and the cheeses she wanted, by pointing at the menu.
“Which cheese did you get?” he asked, attempting to move on from their earlier standoff.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I can’t pronounce it.”
They made about ten minutes of awkward conversation while they waited for their dinner to come. Which was weird, because conversation was never awkward with Anna. It was that dress. And those shoes. And his penis. That was part of the problem. Because, suddenly, it was actually interested in his best friend.
No, it is not. A moment of checking her out does not mean that you want to...do anything with her.
Exactly. It wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t anything to get worked up about. Not at all.
When their dinner was placed in front of them, Anna attacked her sweet potato fries, probably using them as a displacement activity.
“Chase?”
Chase looked up and inwardly groaned when he saw Wendy Maxwell headed toward the table. They’d all gone to high school together. And he had, regrettably, slept with Wendy once or twice over the years after drinking too much at Ace’s.
She was hot. But what she had in looks had been deducted from her personality. Which didn’t matter when you were only having sex, but mattered later when you had to interact in public.
“Hi, Wendy,” he said, taking a bite of his salmon.
Anna had gone very still across from him; she wasn’t even eating her fries anymore.
“Are you... Are you on a date?” Wendy asked, tilting her head to the side, her expression incredulous.
Wendy wasn’t very smart in addition to being not very nice. A really bad combination.
“Yes,” he said, “I am.”
“With Anna?”
“Yeah,” Anna said, looking up. “The person sitting across from him. Like you do on a date.”
“I’m just surprised.”
He could see color mounting in Anna’s cheeks, could see her losing her hold on her temper.
“Are you here by yourself?” Anna asked.
Wendy laughed, the sound like broken crystal being pushed beneath his skin. “No. Of course not. We’re having a girls’ night out.” She eyed Chase. “Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m going home with the girls.”
Suddenly, Anna was standing, and he was a little bit afraid she was about to deck Wendy. Who deserved it. But he didn’t really want to be at the center of a girl fight in the middle of Beaches.
That only worked in fantasies. Less so in real life.
But it wasn’t Wendy whom Anna moved toward.
She took two steps, came to a stop in front of Chase and then leaned forward, grabbing hold of the back of his chair and resting her knee next to his thigh. Then she pressed her hand to his cheek and took a deep breath, making determined eye contact with him just before she let her lids flutter closed. Just before she closed the distance between them and kissed him.