“I just, uh … I mean, I wondered,” she stuttered, trying to work up the nerve to ask him if he’d want to go out with her sometime. He leaned in even closer, his mouth very, very near to hers.
“What are you wondering?” he asked, and she could feel his breath against her lips. He smelled so good. Sun and sweat and fresh laundry … the uniform was crisp and clean, and her hand came up reflexively to rest on his chest.
He was going to kiss her. Her eyes fluttered shut, waiting for contact as if her life depended on it.
“Josie! What’s going on? Tom?” Carol’s voice had Josie flying backward, tripping over a box and nearly falling, but Tom pitched forward, as well, grabbing her forearms and saving her.
“Oh, uh, Carol, sorry … I, um,” Jodie stammered again. Tom pushed his hand through thick, dark hair, looking at Carol with an apologetic smile.
“Sorry, ma’am … you caught me asking Josie out on a date.”
Josie’s eyes flew open. Date? What date? When?
“Well, listen, can you save the flirting for your private time? This is a business. I can’t have customers walking in and seeing … that.”
Josie frowned. Carol was miserable because she was superpregnant and not getting any herself. Whatever happened to being on bed rest?
“Sorry, Carol,” Josie said vaguely, looking at Tom sweetly. “Call me?”
“Absolutely.”
Josie finished prepping the package and handed it to him with a sexy smile as he left. Call me, she mouthed and he winked.
Only when she went around to check the computer she realized her mistake. Oh, no, she’d done it again. Carol would kill her if she found out. It wasn’t Josie’s fault though, not completely. She’d grabbed the wrong costume from the shelf. Josie flew around the counter, hoping to catch Tom in time, but the truck was already pulling into traffic.
Then her heart sank as she remembered a bigger botch-up.
He didn’t have her phone number.
1
“I MUST BE OUT OF MY MIND,” Gina Thomas muttered to herself as she drove down Gulf Boulevard, shivering although it was a balmy seventy-degree Halloween night in St. Petersburg, Florida. She stopped at a light, watching a horde of children dressed in costumes and toting orange pumpkins full of candy cross in front of her, safely escorted by harried-looking adults. The light turned green and she didn’t notice at first, earning a loud blast of the horn from the car behind her.
“Geez, take it easy,” she said to the bright headlights glaring in the rearview mirror and hitting the gas, though she wasn’t in any rush, that was for sure.
Nerves—or the fact that the outfit she had on barely covered anything—were the source of her jitters in the first place. It was like driving naked, which was nothing compared to what she was about to do.
The deep red, glittery bodysuit plunged so far up her hips and down her middle that it was more like wearing two halves of a whole suit. She’d intended for nothing to show—she’d ordered a very unspectacular ghost costume that would have covered her completely and allowed her to fade in the background.
When she’d opened the box, she’d found this instead—a scrap of shiny red with a sexy bow-tie collar, a velvet black bowler hat and cane. A pair of “do me” heels that she borrowed from her sister completed the outfit and made it a pain to drive. It was her luck that instead of a ghost costume, she’d been sent a cabaret singer outfit—a “barely there” one, at that.
It had been too late to get anything different, and her sister Tracy nearly had a meltdown when Gina tried to back out of the plan they’d hatched.
“You have to do this,” Tracy’s pleading voice echoed in her mind as Gina made her way carefully through the bustling streets of St. John’s Pass toward the quiet and upscale neighborhoods of Pass-A-Grille beach. That’s where she was about to crash the annual Halloween party given by attorney Mason Scott for his clients and colleagues.
Gina would have preferred to do so in a less eyecatching costume, but that turned out to be impossible. All of the local shops were picked over, and so the skimpy costume was her only choice.
Tracy was in trouble. Again.
Gina reminded herself of why she was about to do this, to keep from turning back around, going back to her comfy St. Petersburg apartment where she could slide into her favorite pair of jeans and hand out candy. She had work to do, articles to write, and she’d been in the middle of contemplating a job change. Though she’d thought about it a million times before, there was an ad for an investigative reporter position at one of the local papers.
It was a long way from her position as a restaurant critic. Gina had always fantasized about being a real reporter, getting out in the world, uncovering exciting stories. She had almost talked herself into applying when Hurricane Tracy swept in, needing yet another favor.
Technically half sisters, they’d been raised together. The difference in their paternity didn’t affect their closeness, but it made all the difference in their personalities. Their parents were living the good life as retirees in Palm Springs, and Gina made efforts to see them as much as possible. Tracy showed up at holidays, and her parents never seemed to mind.
Tracy was magazine-cover beautiful, adventurous and impulsive—the exact opposite of Gina. Tracy also landed herself in hot water on a regular basis, and she came running to big sister for help whenever she did.
Gina had been covering for Tracy since she could remember. When they were younger, it was for things like Tracy sneaking in the house drunk as a skunk in the middle of the night. More recently, Gina had helped her sibling extricate herself from one bad relationship after another, including her marriage to local bad boy Rio Alvarez. Rio was in the process of divorcing her sister at this very moment.
Gina had begged Tracy not to marry Rio, but her sister never listened. In fact, it had led to one of their more painful arguments, when Tracy pointed out that Gina’s dull love life hardly qualified her to hand out advice on romance. They hadn’t spoken for a while after that, but they were sisters, and Gina couldn’t hold a grudge forever.
Besides, Tracy was right.
Her love life was not just dull, it was dead. Gina had had one serious boyfriend in college, and then he’d taken off to focus on his career. He’d asked her to go, but she couldn’t take that risk.
Casual dates and unimpressive lovers had sparsely dotted her romantic landscape ever since. When she’d taken her freelance job as a restaurant reviewer, working from home, meeting eligible or interesting men became even more difficult. Tracy, however, met enough for both of them, and apparently that hadn’t stopped after she’d gotten married—or so Rio said.
He claimed that he had the pictures to prove it—pictures that would show Tracy had been unfaithful. Tracy admitted she’d had a one-night stand, and was sorry for it, but Rio had been cheating for most of their marriage. Using Tracy’s single, recent indiscretion to cut her off completely hardly seemed fair. Tracy had made a mistake, obviously, and one she was going to pay dearly for.
Tracy had invested her entire savings, including college money she needed to finish her degree now, into Rio’s charter boat business. Additionally, Tracy had worked with Rio for five years on the business, but everything was in his name.
Tracy could fight him, but proof of her infidelity made it harder, and the case could drag out forever, still leaving her with nothing but more legal expenses. Without the pictures, Rio’s claims were weakened considerably—it was his word against hers. Tracy at least stood a chance then.
Gina did believe that Tracy had loved Rio, which made the current situation all the more difficult. Tracy had made bad decisions from time