Nicki just smiled. She’d had plenty of dreams about what she’d do with Shane if she had any kind of chance.
“See?” Candace said, nudging her. “All you need is a push forward. Come on, admit it—if you had an opportunity with Shane, you’d…”
Nicki’s smile grew even bigger as she took a drink of beer, and Candace laughed again.
“Told you,” she said.
There wasn’t much use in talking about Shane, so Nicki rested her icy bottle against her neck, wallowing in the glass’s coolness. The ballroom’s ceiling fans were trying like the dickens to chase away the Indian summer, but they were hardly doing a good job of it.
Looking at all the other sexy costumes around the room, she thought that if Shane were to amble in here, he wouldn’t get past the door, where there was a shapely fairy lingering with a very un-Disney-ish princess whose Fantasylands were having a hard time staying in their bodices.
She officially changed the subject. “And here I thought the Halloween season is supposed to be scary. Isn’t it about ghouls and goblins rather than little French maid costumes?”
Candace sighed, obviously wanting to get back to the Shane conversation. “Halloween time is always a good time to show off what God gave a girl.” She held her champagne as if she was at some kind of rooftop shindig in downtown San Diego instead of tiny Pine Junction. “It’s a time when we can put the va in our voom and get away with it.”
Near the dance floor, Nicki couldn’t help but notice that a few hands from neighboring ranches were hanging out, eyeing Candace. And, if she didn’t know better, she’d say that they were taking her in, too, as if they’d just now noticed that she existed beyond the confines of the Square W+W Ranch.
And why not? She’d just about been a self-imposed prisoner there, working away in the office, burying herself in the account books and hardly ever going out until Candace had settled into the house on the ranch a week ago.
“See?” Candace said, noticing the cowpokes, too. “You’ve already been staked out, and those guys just walked into the room.”
Nicki’s skin flushed. Thing was, now that she’d been thinking of Shane, she’d lost all interest. Maybe it was a sign of laziness that she buried herself in the safety of her fantasies. Maybe she just didn’t have the energy, what with all the work waiting for her back in real life.
Still, she gave the guys a subtle yet thorough scan. She didn’t know these particular cowpokes—maybe they were new hires at one of the ranches in the area—but then again, she hadn’t socialized so much recently. Come to think of it, even before her parents had been killed in an auto accident out on the infamous Drop Curve on the highway a few years ago and left her with a failing ranch, she hadn’t been all that sociable. Her family had always lived hand-to-mouth, and to combat that, she’d grown up focused, devoting herself to the support of their always-wavering American Paint horse breeding operation. At the end of the day, she’d recline on the porch and read rummage-sale books until someone called her in for dinner.
Maybe she’d never given life a chance outside of her comfort zone, but, realistically, Nicki was pretty sure that one makeover wasn’t going to change everything in a single night. She wouldn’t suddenly not be a bookworm who’d had about one significant relationship in her life. And that man, Arthur, had dropped her without all that much fanfare after she’d really gotten in deep with her work at the ranch.
Even now, as she thought of the W+W, she got a little unsociable again.
What was she doing? She didn’t have time for silly games with men like these, anyway, not when tomorrow was a big day for the ranch.
The big day.
Candace said, “Would you just relax?”
“Can’t. Tomorrow keeps eating away at me.”
“You’re going to do fine. We’ll do fine. That ranch is a second home to me, and I’m not about to see it go under.” She drank her champagne. “It’ll be bad enough seeing it go dude.”
“I know.”
They’d heard through the grapevine that a corporate investment firm had been nosing around some property in these parts, asking about possibilities for a dude resort. Nicki had spent some sleepless nights working things out in her head. She’d already sold off most of the horse stock after her parents’ deaths, and she’d been doing everything possible to keep from laying off any of the employees, who were just like family.
Going dude seemed like the only option, as long as the investors agreed to keep the staff on. And at least it would maintain the ranch, which went back generations in her family.
So she’d contacted the Lyon Group and invited one of their representatives to the Square W+W so he could see how perfect it would be for the company’s purposes.
Candace was watching a mobile of flying ghoulies that dangled from the ceiling. “I shouldn’t get on your case about nerves. What you’re doing is important. There’re other families who’ve been working on the ranch for years, too, and they could lose a home just as much as you could, if you don’t turn everything around.”
“Thanks for understanding,” Nicki said.
“You know I’d do anything for you.” Candace slowly put down her nearly empty champagne flute. “And I’d do anything for your mom and dad, too.”
Candace’s voice was thick, and Nicki rested a hand over hers.
She didn’t say anything more, not until Candace put on a happier face, which Nicki knew was meant for her sake.
“To life,” Candace said, raising what was left of her champagne. “To things getting better from this point on.”
They toasted, as if it didn’t matter that life had spiraled downward for all of them recently. Candace herself had been going through hard times, laid off as a personal assistant at an electronics firm, where she’d been involved with a corporate internship program and riding her ambition toward a bright future…until the newest employees had fallen under the ax. Now, with her pocketbook nearly empty from the same hard times that were affecting everyone, she was staying with Nicki for a few months so she could save up enough money to go back out on her own again.
Out of the corner of her eye, Nicki saw one of the ranch hands glancing her way again.
As if looking for something positive to latch on to after the heavy moment, Candace said, “Ah. The saloon girl costume. It does it for a guy every single time.”
“How would you know?”
“Halloween isn’t the only time a girl can dress up.”
Candace just kept smiling, and Nicki got the feeling they weren’t talking about the upcoming holiday itself anymore.
“Candy…?”
Seeming mighty innocent, Candace ran a finger around the rim of her champagne glass, then smirked.
Nicki recognized the gesture from times gone by, such as the day Candace had instigated a “stakeout” in the old barn, where they knew Johnny Graystone and Jane Willens met every day to smooch. They’d giggled all through the make-out session until Johnny had discovered them and chased them out.
“I’m just telling you,” Candace said. “If you want, you could get a lot of mileage out of this costume. And don’t tell me it hasn’t crossed your mind, Miss Romance. There are guys out there who’d like a little taste of this in real life…or at least as real as fantasies can get.”
“Are you talking about…?”
“Taking the saloon girl out of the party and to the bedroom? You know I am.”
Nicki wasn’t as shocked by that as she thought she