Accidental Bride(8)
“Open up,” Peter demanded. “Let me see.”
With a sigh, she opened the door and stepped out, automatically pulling on the straps to hitch up the neckline.
She was too uncomfortable to look at Peter, so she stared at herself in the larger mirror at the end of the dressing room.
Except for the long brown braids she always wore, she looked like someone else.
“Well,” she demanded, when Peter didn’t say anything. “Is it too bad?”
She finally dared to look over at him, and she saw he was staring at her very strangely. Intense. His eyes moved up and down over her body.
She nervously tugged down the hemline.
“It’s not bad at all,” Peter said at last, his voice slightly hoarse. He raised his eyes to look at her face. “You should get it.”
“Are you sure? It’s not really me.”
“That was the point, wasn’t it? Get the dress.”
Of course it was. She was supposed to look sexy for once, and she’d found a dress to do that. She must look all right, or Peter wouldn’t keep staring at her the way he was.
She pushed aside her embarrassment and nodded. “Okay.” She went back into the stall and pulled the dress off. She checked the price one more time to verify she could afford it with the money Deanna had given her, and then she put her clothes back on.
When she and Peter went to pay for the dress, she said, “This feel very strange.”
“What does?”
“Buying a dress like that.”
“Why is it so strange?”
“Because I’ve never gotten something like that before.”
“Well, you should have. You need to do some more nice things for yourself.”
He sounded oddly defensive, which struck her as very sweet. He always looked out for her. Only her sisters had done that before Peter had come into her life. Feeling a swell of affection, she gave Peter a quick, one-armed hug.
He returned the hug with both of his arms, and it lasted longer than she’d expected. But it was nice. He was warm and hard and he smelled really good—like clean laundry and the outdoors. “What was that for?” he murmured.
She pulled away. “That’s to thank you for going shopping with me.”
“I didn’t have anything better to do.”
“I know. But I appreciate it. Are you sure I look okay in this?”
“Shit, Kelly,” he muttered. “Would you stop asking? You look like a wet dream in that dress. How can you not know that?”
She stared at him, completely shocked by the words, by the idea. He’d sounded grumpy and impatient—not like he was trying to make her feel better—so he must have really meant what he said.
She couldn’t believe he’d even had the thought—not in connection to her.
It immediately conjured up a question in her mind about what kind of wet dreams he really had.
But she wasn’t used to thinking about Peter in the context of sex, so she pushed the thought from her mind immediately.
“Okay,” she murmured, stepping up to put the dress on the counter, since the customer before them was finally finished. “I look good in it. We’ll go with that.”
When she’d put on the dress, she’d felt like a new person. There wasn’t anything wrong with the person she’d been all these years, but maybe it would be fun to branch out, try something else.
That was what she was going to do tonight.
After all, what bad could really happen? She’d have Peter with her the whole time, and she trusted him with her life.
Peter wouldn’t let her do anything truly stupid.
Two
Kelly felt strange and uncomfortable and half-naked as she, Heidi, and Veronica entered a glitzy bar, where they were going to begin their bachelorette celebration.
Both Heidi and Veronica had raved about her appearance—hair loose, new dress, high heels—telling her that she looked gorgeous and she looked nothing like herself.
She should have been pleased by the compliments, but they made it quite clear that she normally didn’t look gorgeous at all, which was true but wasn’t particularly encouraging.
“You should take your glasses off,” Heidi advised, heading toward the bar as if she knew what she was doing.
Kelly followed her friends up to the bar, prepared to order whatever they did, since she definitely didn’t know her way around mixed drinks. “Why?”
“It would complete the transformation.”
For most of her life, Kelly had worn glasses. Even in high school, when all her friends were changing to contacts, she’d kept her glasses. She was used to them. She didn’t look like herself without them. “I can’t see clearly without them.”