8. Austen
EIGHT
AUSTEN
“This is all your fault.”
I glared at my traitorous cat from the middle of my disaster of a closet.
Blithely unconcerned, Cliff licked one of his massive paws and began to groom his ears.
“Seriously, I knew where I stood before last night. I understood the logic of this sort-of fake dating thing. Then he comes over and literally wines and dines me for no reason than to—what? Hang out? Enjoy my scintillating company? Teach me to dance? Which would have been vaguely confusing but totally fine.” I grabbed another dress from the rod with far more force than necessary. “Except then he nearly kissed me. And courtesy of the fact that you are an asshole, I don’t know if he was just getting carried away with the moment and the mood and this thing we’re pretending to be, or if he really wanted to kiss me.”
Unapologetic, Cliff simply blinked big golden eyes as if to say, Are you done with your histrionics yet?
“Now, I don’t know what to wear or how to act. Because I want to kiss him, damn it. I’ve wanted to kiss him for years. Which you are more than aware of since you’re my furry little confidant. But I want him to kiss me , so there’s no confusion. Because I am not about to put myself out there and ruin our friendship if he’s not actually into me. If you’d just had my back last night and not intervened, I think he would have done it. And if he regretted it, or if it was just because of this fake dating thing, I could wave it away and say it was no big deal. I mean, obviously it would’ve been a big deal because teenage me would be having the world’s biggest squee and then broken heart, but at least I’d have had an excuse to cover up how much it would hurt. But noooo, you had to go be a fucking furry cock blocker, and he’s going to be here in less than two hours, and I have no idea what to do.”
The torrent of words ran out with a wheeze. On a yawn, Cliff lifted his back leg and began licking his butt. Because that was apparently where I ranked in his world when not being the profferer of catnip and salmon treats. Little jerk.
I looked down at the pile of clothes I’d tried and discarded on the closet floor. “This is bad. Like… really bad. I need reinforcements.”
Pulling out my phone, I typed out a text.
Austen:
I need you. It’s a fashion emergency.
I added a photo of the mound of clothes around my feet.
The reply came back almost immediately.
Pepper:
Good God. I’ll be there in fifteen.
My former sister-in-law, God bless her, made it in ten.
It had been three years since the divorce that had rocked the whole family. I still didn’t know the full details of what had happened between Pepper and Rhett. She wasn’t the type to badmouth him as her ex. But I knew she wouldn’t have ended things if she’d felt she had any choice. The move had blindsided my brother. I think she hoped it would be a wake-up call for him. It hadn’t worked, and we’d all had to figure out how to go along with life in our small town where she owned the diner that was the center of everything. For my part, I’d refused to take sides. Pepper had been the sister I’d always wanted, and we’d stayed close, despite Rhett’s idiocy. Though we didn’t spend as much time together as we used to.
I caught her in a fierce hug. “I love you. Thank you for coming.”
She hugged me back and set her purse down in the entryway. “What is the emergency?”
“We’re running short on time, so I’m giving you the abbreviated version. Tonight is Gretchen’s wedding. Trevor’s gonna be there with his new girlfriend, and I need to look incredible.”
“So you need a Rue The Day outfit. To the closet.” Striding past me, she waded straight into the mess. “Girl, this is a disaster.”
I covered my face with both hands and groaned. “I know! I had something picked out, and then I started overthinking, and now I can’t make a decision at all.”
“Uh-huh.” Pepper arched a brow. “And does that have something to do with a certain soldier who just got home, whom you’ve been seen hanging around with quite a lot over the past couple of weeks?”
As Rhett’s high school sweetheart, Pepper had been around for all the years of awkward crushing, and she wasn’t anywhere near as blind as the boys. Maybe that was why I’d really called her. I needed her to talk me off the ledge.
“He volunteered to be my date for the wedding, so I didn’t have to go solo and suffer the indignities of matchmaking from Aunt Maureen and her ilk.”
She began pulling dresses from another section of the closet. “Why do I feel like there’s more to this story?”
I dropped onto the bed hard enough that Cliff bounced. Yowling, he shot off and disappeared into the front of the apartment. “Because… I don’t know… there maybe is? He’s the one who decided it would be a good idea if we got seen together before the wedding, so when he showed up with me, people would think he’s my boyfriend, not just a pinch hitter of a date. He takes a weird amount of pleasure in the idea of making Trevor jealous and regret what he let go of.”
The other brow winged up. “Do you want Trevor back?”
“I absolutely do not . But, I mean, I’m the one who got dumped. Of course, I like the idea of making him think I’ve moved on and am blissfully happy with someone else.”
“Except you’d like to be actually blissfully happy with Clint. And from the reports I’ve been hearing, y’all are doing a pretty good job of putting on that show. Which makes me question whether it is actually a show or if there’s something real there.”
Though the idea of that made my heart pound, I spread my hands and shrugged. “I don’t know. We’re friends. We’ve always been friends. But something changed during this deployment. We wrote, and we got closer, I guess. Then he came back and offered to do this, and I jumped at it because I sure as shit don’t want to show up at this wedding solo. And now he’s being all sweet and attentive, and some of it was out in public and on purpose. But some of it’s not. I don’t know what to think.”
“Try the classic black with the frill.” She thrust a dress at me, and I dutifully began to strip.
Before I’d even done more than shimmy into it, she shook her head. “Nope, not that. Try this one.”
Tossing the first dress, I took the second while she began to dig in the closet for shoes.
“So what is the complication here? If you like him, and he likes you, then date.”
“You know what the complication is. You were married to him. Neither of us has any idea how Rhett would react.”
Pepper snorted and balled both hands on her hips. “First off, your love life is none of your brother’s business.”
“Agreed. However, Clint is one of his best friends. I don’t want to fuck up their friendship.”
“Rhett fucks up his own relationships with no help whatsoever. Clint is a good guy. If Rhett legit has a problem with his friend dating his sister, then that’s a him problem and it doesn’t make him much of a friend to Clint. Put on these shoes.”
I slid on the silver peep-toe sling-backs. “This may all be a moot point. I don’t even know if he’s interested in me like that.”
But my brain helpfully conjured up how he’d looked in those heady moments before my cat had ruined everything.
“Well, I don’t think he’d do this for just anyone.” She moved around behind me and began fiddling with my hair. “I get that you’re scared, and this could be a big change, but it could also be pretty wonderful. Play it by ear. See how it goes. And if he gives you some kind of sign, then go for it.”
Even the idea of that had my belly swooping like a drunk seagull. “I don’t know if I’m brave enough for that.”
“Bullshit. You’re Austen Christie MacAvoy. You can do anything you put your mind to.”
“But what if I take a shot and fall flat on my face because it turns out this whole thing was just an act?”
“Sure, it’s a risk. But great risk leads to great rewards, as you well know, since you managed to open and make a total success of a small town bookstore at a time when bookstores everywhere are struggling. But either way, this is the dress and the look.”
She turned me toward the full-length mirror on the closet door.
I hardly recognized the woman looking back at me. Pepper had worked some kind of magic, transforming my usually wild waves into something soft and romantic that tumbled over one shoulder. The dress was one I remembered she’d insisted I buy on one of our shopping trips to Birmingham a few years ago. The deep midnight blue hugged every curve I usually hid behind cozy sweaters and jeans. It hit just above my knee, showing off legs that actually looked amazing in the shoes. The neckline dipped just low enough to be interesting without making me feel exposed, and the back… the back plunged low in a way that somehow said sex and class.
“I look…”
“Hot,” Pepper declared with a satisfied smirk. “The kind of hot that’s going to make your ex choke on his champagne, and Clint forget how to speak English.”
She was right. I did look hot. But more than that, I looked like one of the take-charge heroines in the romance novels I loved—the ones who walked into a room and owned it. The ones who not only expected their happily ever after, they demanded it.
Could I do that? Could I be that brave? In this outfit, I thought maybe I could.
Turning to Pepper, I wrapped her in a tight hug. “Oh my God, I love you so much.”
She squeezed me back. “I love you too. Now take your last half hour to at least get the mess out of the floor in case you see some action later.”
“Pepper!”
“I’m just sayin’. It doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”
I looked at the disaster of my bedroom. Maybe I had just enough time to change the sheets.