Sunsets at Seaside(91)

I suck at this whole seduction thing.

“I’m a big girl, Tony. I think I know what I can handle.” And I don’t want to handle my liquor tonight. I have plans. Big plans.

Tony rose to his feet with a perturbed look on his face and rubbed his stubbly jaw. “You sure?”

“Mm-hm.” Even as she said it, she considered saying, Water’s good. Just get me water. She watched him walk up to the bar. At heart, Amy was a good girl. Her courage faltered and she tried to hang on to a shred of it. She needed to know if there was even the slightest chance that she and Tony might end up together. The problem was, she wasn’t a seductress. She didn’t even know where to begin. That was Jenna’s forte, with her hourglass figure and sassy personality. Even Bella, who was as brash as she was loving, had pulled off being seductive with Caden. The sexy-kitten pictures on Amy’s pajamas were more seductive than she was.

“Oh my gosh. I thought he’d never leave the table.” Jenna glanced at Caden, Kurt, and Jamie, still enthralled with their fiancées at the other end of the table. She pulled Amy across the table and whispered, “This is your night. I can feel it!” She sat back and swayed to the music in her tight green spaghetti-strap dress with a neckline cut so low Pete could probably get lost in there.

Amy looked down at the slinky black dress the girls had put her in earlier that evening. They were always trying to tart her up. One look at you in this dress with these take-me heels and Tony’s gonna be all over you, Jenna had said while Jessica and Bella shimmied the dress down Amy’s pin-thin body. Fits like a glove. A sexy, slither-me-out-of-this glove, Leanna had added. They’d pushed her into a chair, plied her with wine, and sometime later—Amy had no idea how long, because the alcohol had not only made her body go all loose and soft, but it had turned her brain to mush—they were in the bar with the men, and with her friends’ confidence, she’d actually begun to believe that she might be able to pull off being übersexy for a night. Her mind might be foggy, but she’d caught a few words while the girls primped her into a hot, racy woman she didn’t recognize. Her friends had thrown out words like sexy, hot, take him as if they were handing out doses of confidence.

Now she tugged at the hemline of the dress that barely covered the thong they’d also bought for her and insisted she wear. She wiggled in her seat, uncomfortable in the lacy butt floss. She should probably give up even trying and just let the new job change her life. Move to Australia, where she’d be too far for any relationship with Tony, and be done with it, but every time she looked at Tony, her stomach got all fluttery. It had done that since she was six years old, so she was pretty sure it wasn’t going to change.

Caden, Pete, Jamie, and Kurt must have taken Jenna’s whispers and hot stares as a cue, because they headed up to the bar, and Jessica, Bella, and Leanna scooted closer to Amy and Jenna.

“How about you put those puppies away before the guys over at that table drool into their drinks,” Leanna said to Jenna while glaring at the three handsome, leering men sitting at the next table. They finally looked away when Bella shot them a threatening stare.

Jenna wrestled her boobs into submission with an annoyed look on her face. She always acted annoyed about her boobs, but Amy knew it was a love-hate annoyance. Jenna wouldn’t be Jenna without her boobs always trying to break free.

“Look at our men up there at the bar.” Bella wiggled her fingers at Caden. “Pete has his eyes on the drooling men. Kurt and Jamie are eyeing Leanna and Jessica like they’re on the menu, and Tony…”

“Your men,” Amy corrected her. “Tony’s not mine, and he looks mad, doesn’t he?”

“Sexually frustrated, maybe. Not mad.” Bella took a sip of her drink. “But you’ll fix that tonight. I mean, be real, Amy. Who tells a girl to behave and be careful whenever she goes out if he’s not interested? Why would he care? And not just that—he always adds that you can text him if you need him and he’ll come running. Just. Like. Always.”

Amy couldn’t stop the exasperated sound that left her lips. “You read my texts?” That was the only way she could have known that Tony always offered to be there if she needed him.

“Duh. Of course I did. Consider it a recon mission. I had to know what we were dealing with here from his side.” Bella had been pulling for Amy and Tony to get together as long as Amy had been in love with him, which was just about forever. She stood and dragged Amy toward the dance floor. “Come on, sweetie. Time to have some fun.”