“I timed you on your birthday,” Marion said. “Your quickest unwrap was three minutes.”
“If it bothers you so much, don’t watch next time.” Alice brushed her fingertips across the shoulder of the dress, picking off a piece of lint Hadley would have sworn didn’t really exist. “This dress was everything I wanted to be and couldn’t at the time. Then life happened and I forgot all about it. By the time I remembered, there was no way it would fit me anymore.”
She stepped back, crossed her arms over her rainbow-colored T-shirt, and let out a happy sigh. Hadley might be within the other woman’s line of sight, but it sure didn’t seem like Alice was seeing her.
“Are you sure you’re okay with letting me wear this?”
“Oh, honey.” Alice stepped forward and gave Hadley a quick, surprisingly solid hug. “Dreams are meant to be unwrapped and worn proudly—and I’m glad mine is finally getting its time on the dance floor.”
“Like she needs dreams when she has that tall drink of Cherry Coke,” Cat said with a wink directed at Hadley.
Alice rolled her eyes. “Not everything is about getting a man.”
“No, but it sure is nice to be able to warm your toes on those cold nights,” Cat countered as she threaded a belt through the loops on her tie-dyed shirtwaist dress.
Oh God. This was going somewhere she did not want to go, considering the person warming Cat’s *ahem* toes (along with Marion’s and Alice’s, going by how they’d been talking) was Hadley’s pawpaw. Could she sneak out the door without them noticing? Since they were standing in front of it, probably not, but it just might be worth the effort.
“Just use that electric blanket I got you for your last birthday,” Alice said, pulling on the light rainbow-colored cardigan.
“You are such a dear, but I wasn’t really talking about my toes.” Cat turned and must have seen the embarrassment on Hadley’s face. “Sorry. I lost my filter when I turned seventy-six. Best thing to ever happen.”
“Catherine,” Marion said with an indulgent sigh. “I’ve known you since you were twelve. You never had a filter.”
And Cat didn’t look the least bit upset about it. Hadley had to admit her pawpaw had great taste in girlfriends. These three were a riot, if more than a little TMI.
“Oh my gracious,” Alice said. “Look at the time. Time to hit the bricks, ladies.”
Hadley’s dress was short enough that she’d feel the breeze on her panties when she walked, but she had an extra spring to her step anyway as they walked along one of the paths to the clubhouse. One dance, then she was out of there. Maybe it was the dress and Alice’s sweet advice, but she couldn’t help but feel like everything was going to go perfectly according to plan.
And that lasted right up until they walked into the clubhouse and she spotted Will. If her dress was a bit small, since it was sized for a high-school-age Alice, the T-shirt PawPaw had given Will must have belonged to a middle-school version of her grandpa. “Tight” didn’t begin to cover it. The cotton clung to Will, from his broad shoulders, across the hard plane of his chest, and tapered down to his waist as if it were painted on. If she looked long enough, she’d probably be able to count each one of his six-pack abs.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, he was heading straight for her. They hadn’t spoken to each other since he’d gone all weird in the gas station / grocery / diner and now she wasn’t sure she could form words. Anticipation danced across her skin, and her breath caught when she saw the way he looked at her—as if he knew and totally endorsed every naughty thought she’d had about him during her shower this morning.
He tipped his cowboy hat at her fairy godmothers, which they answered with a set of harmonized giggles, then turned to Hadley. “Can I have this dance?”
If she could have said no at that moment, she would have. Instead, she took his hand and walked out onto the dance floor.
…
Will should have agreed to driving back to the ranch tonight.
Then he wouldn’t be wearing a ridiculously small T-shirt, holding Hadley in his arms, and swaying to “Lay, Lady, Lay” by Bob Dylan in the middle of a geriatric dance party. Her arms rested on his shoulders, her fingers twined loosely behind his neck, while his fingertips lay lightly on the small of her back.
Feeling her move against him as Dylan sang made it hard to remember why he was here in the first place. Other dancers around them chatted and smiled while they glided around the floor. Not them. They were like those big statues on Easter Island, silent and unsmiling.
It wasn’t suspicious at all.
He dipped his head down, bringing his mouth close to her ear. “If you don’t at least pretend to be having fun, everyone is going to know that this whole thing is fake.”
“Oh really?” She tensed in his arms. “I hadn’t considered that at all.”
“So what are you going to do about it?” he asked as he spun them through the crowded dance floor.
Hadley lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “Develop a headache that means I have to go to bed.”
The mention of the word “bed” filled his brain with enough bad ideas to make him miss the beat. She looked up at him, her eyebrows raised in question, and the futility of the situation hit him hard. Despite it all, he wanted Hadley. Why? Because he was the king of fucking bad ideas at the moment.
“Oh yeah,” he said, laying on the sarcasm thick. “That won’t be weird at all.”
“Why are you like this?” She let out a huff of frustration. “From the day Web introduced us, you’ve either ignored me or insulted me. And don’t throw that gold-digger ridiculousness at me again. We both know that’s not really it.”
The only answer he had to that was too close to the truth to be comfortable, which was exactly why he kept his mouth shut. It didn’t help, though, because with each inhale, he got the scent of the daisies in her hair and a hint of something sharper, much like the woman herself—delicate on the outside with an inner mettle that everyone else seemed to overlook.
But not him. He’d noticed it from the beginning, as obvious as a flash in the dark.
From that first moment, he’d kept his distance and watched, waiting for the real her to make an appearance, just like it had with Mia. He hadn’t been vigilant before. He was now.
“One, who in the hell could ignore you?” He sure as fuck couldn’t. She all but haunted him no matter what he did. For the past year, she’d squeezed her way between any two thoughts in his head until she was the constant undercurrent of his day. “Two, I never insulted you. I just pointed out all the ways you were wrong about how the Holt Foundation should be awarding its grants.”
“Really?” She came in closer so their bodies were touching, from the insanely short hem of her dress to her mouth right up against his neck, so every word became a touch. “So in addition to graduating at the top of your business class, having three masters, and being the CEO voted most eligible bachelor in Harbor City, you had time to double major in nonprofit management and philanthropic studies like I did, plus gain more than five years of real-world experience? Wow. Impressive.”
“So you looked into me?” Yeah, that was pretty much his big takeaway from her dressing down, and he wasn’t even sorry about it.
“Yes, I cracked open the Harbor City Post. You’re in it multiple times a week.”
He opened his mouth before he realized he didn’t have a retort for that. She wasn’t wrong. Then again, it made for a convenient cover story for why she knew so much about him and Web.
“You always make assumptions about people,” she said, sliding her truth shiv home right between his ribs. “You might want to rethink that practice.”
He gritted his teeth, annoyance at how well she thought she knew him making his muscles tense. “My gut instinct is what helped turn Holt Enterprises around.”
The entire board thought he was nuts to invest in an app that provided real-time parking information. They’d called it niche. However, unlike the rest of the board, he didn’t have a driver and had to fight for parking spots himself and knew it was a winner. Thanks to Holt Enterprises’ investment, the app changed how every driver in Harbor City thought about parking. That had been his first foray into technology but not his last. They’d picked up the dating app Bramble, invested in a few other start-ups, and were neck deep in beta testing for the next big dating app for dog lovers called Bark Up.
“It might serve you well in business, but people aren’t the same,” she said. “You have to give them a chance. Of course, you’re just going to ignore that advice, aren’t you?”
Okay, maybe she did know him a little bit. “It does seem a little biased—especially coming from someone who can’t even trust her family enough not to lie to them.”
Hadley flinched in his arms. “It’s complicated.”
“When isn’t that the case?” Which was exactly why he liked the numbers side of business—spreadsheets, actuary tables, business valuations—that were logical and followed an unbiased formula.
“It’s not complicated with us.” Hadley looked up at him, her chin set at a stubborn angle and her gaze filled with 98 percent certainty. “We don’t get along, end of story.”