That was muscle, a cynical voice cautioned her, not a sign of a better man.
Something caught her eye. She took a deep breath, plucked the black cowboy hat from the rack and held it out to him in one last attempt to get him to come into her world, to see it all through her eyes.
“Here, try this on.”
Now and Zen was not like the other stores, but funky, laid-back, a place that encouraged the bohemian.
The whole atmosphere in the store said, Have fun!
He looked at her, shook his head, she thought in refusal. But then he said, “If I try that on, I get to pick something for you to try on.”
She felt the thrill of his surrender. So, formidable as his discipline was, she could entice him to play with her!
“That’s not fair,” Molly said. “You can clearly see what I want you to try on, but you’re asking me for carte blanche. I mean you could pick a bikini!”
“Did you see one?” he asked with such unabashed hopefulness that she laughed. It confirmed he did have a playful side. And she fully intended to coax it to the surface, even if she had to wear a bikini to do it.
Besides, the temptation to see him in the hat—as the gunslinger—proved too great to resist, even at the risk that he might turn up a bikini!
“Okay,” she said. “If you try this on, I’ll try something on that you pick.”
“Anything?” He grinned wickedly.
There was that grin again, without defenses, the kind of smile that could melt a heart.
And show a woman a soul.
He took the hat from her.
“Anything,” she said. The word took on new meaning as he set the hat on his head. It didn’t look corny, it didn’t even look like he was playing dress-up. He adjusted it, pulled the brim low over his brow. His eyes were shaded, sexy, silver.
She felt her mouth go dry. Anything. She had known that something else lurked between that oh so confident and composed exterior. Something dangerous. Something completely untamed. Could those things coexist with the better man that she was determined to see?
Or maybe what was dangerous and untamed was in her. In every woman, somewhere. Something that made a prim schoolteacher say to an outlaw, anything. Anywhere.
“My turn,” he said, and disappeared down the rows. While he looked she looked some more, too. And came up with a black leather vest.
He appeared at her side, a hanger in his hand.
A feather boa dangled from it, an impossible and exotic blend of colors.
“There’s Baldy’s missing feathers!” she exclaimed.
“Baldy?”
“My budgie. With hardly any feathers. His name is Baldy.” It was small talk. Nothing more. Why did it feel as if she was opening up her personal life, her world, to him?
“What happened to his feathers?”
“Stolen to make a boa. Kidding.” She flung the boa dramatically around her neck. “I don’t know what happened to his feathers. He was like that when I got him. If I didn’t take him…” She slid her finger dramatically over her throat.
“You saved him,” he said softly, but there was suspicion in his eyes, worthy of a gunslinger, don’t even think it about me.
No sense letting on she already was!
“It was worth it. He’s truly a hilarious little character, full of personality. People would be amazed by how loving he is.”
This could only happen to her: standing in the middle of a crazy store, a boa around her neck, discussing a bald budgie with a glorious man with eyes that saw something about her that it felt like no one had ever seen before.
And somehow the word love had slipped into the conversation.
Molly took the boa in her hand and spun the long tail of it, deliberately moving away from a moment that was somehow too intense, more real than what she was ready for.
He stood back, studied her, nodded his approval. “You could wear it to work,” he decided, taking the hint that something too intense—though delightful—had just passed between them.
“Depending where I worked!”
“Hey, if you can wear a wedding gown, you can wear that.”
“I think not. Second Chances is all about image now!”
“Are you saying that in a good way?”
“Don’t take it as I’m backing down on Prom Dreams, but yes, I suppose I could warm to the bigger picture at the office. Don’t get bigheaded about it.”
“It’s just the hat that’s making you make comments about my head size. I know it.”
She handed him the vest. “This goes with it.”
“Uh-uh,” he said. “No freebies. If I try on something else, I get to pick something else for you.”
“You didn’t bring me a bikini, so I’ll try to trust you.”
“I couldn’t find one, but I’ll keep looking.”
He slipped on the vest. She drew in her breath at the picture he was forming. Rather than looking funny, he looked coolly remote, as if he was stepping back in time, a man who could handle himself in difficult circumstances, who would step toward difficulty rather than away.
He turned away from her, went searching again, came back just as she was pulling faded jeans from a hanger.
He had a huge pair of pink glass clip-on earrings.
“Those look like chandeliers. Besides, pink looks terrible with my hair.”
“Ah, well, I’m not that fond of what the hat is doing to mine, either.”
She handed him the jeans.
“You’re asking for it, lady. That means I have one more choice, too.”
“You can’t do any worse than these earrings! My ears are growing by the second.”
His eyes fastened on her ears. For a moment it felt as if the air went out of the room. He hadn’t touched her. He hadn’t even leaned closer. How could she possibly have felt the heat of his lips on the tender flesh of her earlobe?
He spun away, headed across the store for one of the change rooms. She saw him stop and speak to Peggy for a moment, and then he disappeared into a change room.
Moments later, Peggy approached her with something. She held it out to Molly, reverently, across two arms. “He said he picks this,” she said, wide-eyed, and then in a lower tone, “that man is hotter than Hades, Molly.”
Peggy put her in the change room beside his. The dress fit her like a snakeskin. It dipped so low in the front V and an equally astonishing one at the back, that she had to take it off, remove her shoes and her underwear to do the dress justice. She put it back on and the lines between where she ended and the dress began were erased.
Now, that spectacular dress did her justice. It looked, not as if she was in a funky secondhand store, but ready to walk the red carpet. Molly recognized the intense over-the-top sensuality of the dress and tried to hide it by putting the feather boa back on.
It didn’t work.
She peeked out of the dressing room, suddenly