“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