Surprise Me.... Isabel Sharpe

was falling in love. For real.

      Yeah, she’d thought she was falling in love for real before. A dozen or so men had made the cut, but this time…this time it was for real. For one thing, she wasn’t telling anyone, and all the other times she couldn’t trumpet her passion loudly enough to enough people. And…well, she just knew.

      The thought scared her but excited her, too. Wasn’t it about time? She was twenty-six, with too many lovers in her past. Maybe all of them had led her to Stoner, all those disappointments made her more able to recognize the real thing when it smacked her.

      The terrifying possibility did remain that he wasn’t in love with her. How could he not be? Without words, everything he did had said it loud and clear all night long.

       I love you, Melanie.

      “You have got to be kidding me.”

      Melanie started and realized she was holding up an orange-and-green-striped blouse with ruffles, staring absently, not seeing a thing while she enjoyed her fantasy. Alana had busted her. “It’s beautiful! It will go perfectly with your orange eyes and green hair, sister dear.”

      “Ha-ha.”

      “Alana, how about this?” Tricia held up a soft pink sweater with a dipping neckline and diagonal, alternating smooth and pebbled-knit stripes. “You can dress it up for a foundation meeting or dress it down for a date. Sexy, but not provocative.”

      Silence while Alana contemplated whether nursing her hostility was worth passing up a gorgeous sweater. Melanie goosed her firmly.

      “Yeah, it’s nice.” She took the sweater from their mother and marched to the dressing room.

      Melanie gave her mom a thumbs-up and a weak grin. She didn’t want to get stuck in the middle of this battle. Tricia had been a terrible mother, but…she was trying to make amends. Second chances were important, so Melanie would swallow her anger and get to know Tricia as a friend at least. She hoped Alana would eventually do likewise.

      “Have you been in touch with Stoner yet?”

      “Uh…no.” She ran her hands over a rack of skirts, loving the feel of soft material under her fingers. “I’m letting him make the next move.”

      “Which he hasn’t done.”

      “Mom, it’s only been two days. I can’t crowd him.”

      “In my experience, when a man wants you, there is no mistaking it.”

      “He’s…busy.” Her fear ran deeper. He couldn’t disappear, not like the others. Maybe Melanie had been with too many men, but she knew when sex was more than just sex, because she’d had so much that was nothing more. Sometimes it was even less.

      “What’s up with this Edgar guy?”

      “Edgar?” She felt all jumbled up at the question. “Why do you ask that?”

      Tricia shrugged and pulled out a pair of soft gray dress pants, frowned, and put them back. “Just curious. You guys have been friends for a while, right?”

      “A couple of years.” She extracted a flowered sundress from the crowded sale rack, feeling light-headed and strange. Kind of how she’d felt when Edgar had made that completely bizarre joke about him being the one in bed with her two nights ago. She couldn’t imagine many things more unsettling than making love to one man, then finding out he’d been someone else. Added to that, there was no way she could connect the goofy, lovable guy that was Edgar with the sexual Adonis she’d been writhing all over the previous night.

      And yet…if it had been Ed? That’s where things got really unsettling. She’d felt panicky and disoriented, excited and terrified. The relief when he admitted he was joking had been as overwhelming as the complicated feelings she’d just been fighting through. “He’s a good guy.”

      “Seems like. Ever think of dating him?”

      “No. No.” The denial was quick and automatic, then Melanie laughed, realizing that wasn’t quite true. “Well, sort of. I mean I thought I should date him because he’s nice, but one look at his brother, boom, there went that idea. You know me.”

      “Hmm.”

      “Hmm?” Melanie had started perspiring. Did they turn off the air-conditioning in the store? “What, hmm?”

      “It’s that when you talk about him, you—”

      “What do you think?” Alana strutted over, modeling the sweater, which did all the right things in all the right places for her figure and brought out the color in her cheeks. Love-color.

      “You’re beautiful.” Melanie couldn’t help a wistful sigh. Even if Alana had been wearing the green-and-orange shirt she’d be beautiful. Melanie had never seen her happier than since she’d met Sawyer. Okay, maybe not at first. At that initial meeting, he’d just moved in with Melanie because he needed a place to stay, and Alana had barreled up from Chicago to “save” her baby sister from a guy she’d assumed was Melanie’s next user jerk boyfriend. And, yeah, maybe Melanie had sort of given her the idea that she and Sawyer were involved…um, actually…engaged. Matrimony had been Melanie’s goal, anyway, but she couldn’t summon anything for Sawyer other than sisterly affection. So poor Alana had first met him when Sawyer crawled into her bed in the middle of the night by mistake. At the time Alana had been more furious and outraged than happy. Not only because of that but because she’d thought he was dating Melanie and couldn’t understand why he kept coming on to her. Eventually, of course, she had fallen, and how.

      Melanie always fell first and became furious and outraged later. Maybe she needed to try it the other way around.

      Except Stoner…Stoner was different. She felt him in her heart, whereas most of her previous passions she felt mostly in her fantasies and, to put it bluntly, between her legs.

      “That’s a sale. You’re lovely, Alana.”

      “Thanks.” Alana managed a tight smile at her mother and strode back to the changing room.