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“That’s the one.” Ashleigh agreed, then motioned for Gina to turn.
When she did, she found herself captured by the stranger in the mirror. The garment nipped in places and tucked in others, and the shade—a combination of red and brown that the As had insisted on calling auburn—had made Gina’s plain old brown hair shine with streaks of gold.
“You wear that tomorrow,” Amberleigh said, “and no man is gonna be able to take his eyes offa you.”
Gina wasn’t sure how that would help; then again it probably couldn’t hurt.
“You can’t wear a dress like that without heels like this.” Ashleigh handed her a pair of ankle breakers the shade of a copper penny.
“Oh, I don’t think so.” Gina tried to return them, but Ashleigh put her hands behind her back and shook her head firmly.
“The whole effect’s gonna be ruined if you don’t wear the shoes.”
“The whole effect’s gonna be ruined when I fall on my face and break my nose,” Gina muttered.
“Even itty-bitty girls wear heels,” Ashleigh said.
“Especially itty-bitty girls,” Amberleigh agreed. “Makes their legs look lo-o-ong. Makes men wonder how those legs would feel naked and wrapped around—”
“I’ll wear the heels!” Gina interrupted, not only because if she heard the rest of that sentence her eardrums might go pop but also because she’d needed to put a stop to the image that had leaped into her own head.
Of her long legs, naked and wrapped around Teo Mecate’s—
“Thanks,” she told the As, feeling kind of fond of them for a minute.
Gina had never done anything like this before. No sharing of clothes and shoes, no discussions of men, no slumber parties. The few friends she’d had in school had never really felt like friends because they were always talking about all the fun things they did while Gina worked at the ranch.
Sure, she’d had Jase. She’d always have Jase. But there was something to be said for a girlfriend.
“Why are you helping me?” she asked.
Had she expected apologies for rudeness, perhaps an explanation of girl power, or a sudden profession of friendship, which in her current state she might have accepted, Gina would have been disappointed.
Because what she got was a yawn from Ashleigh. “We were bored.”
And a shrug from Amberleigh. “It’s not like you’re gonna come out ahead in any competition for a man. Not even in that dress.”
“Like there are any men left to compete for,” Ashleigh muttered, disgusted. “Two old guys, a dad, and a little kid.”
“What about Jase?” Gina asked, then bit her lip. Why on earth was she trying to sic these two on her best friend?
“He’d never leave here, and I’m certainly not stayin’,” Ashleigh answered as Amberleigh nodded in agreement.
Every once in a while the As said something that made Gina think they were smarter than they pretended. Because they were right. Jase would never leave Nahua Springs, and neither would she.
Gina was a bit disgusted with herself. For an instant after the As had declared she couldn’t beat them in a competition, she’d actually experienced a burst of competitiveness accompanied by the thought: I’ll show you!
Gina rubbed her forehead. The dress and the shoes and the brainless twits were getting to her. She wasn’t in a competition, for men or anything else. The outfit was supposed to make her feel good about herself, give her the confidence to slay the dragon ex-banker in his den.
And if Mr. Morris got distracted by her cleavage or her legs and gave her another sixty days before he sold the ranch … Gina gave a mental shrug. It was no more than he deserved for looking in the first place.
There was a wrench in her logic somewhere, but Gina decided not to look for it.
The As kept her up long past midnight—she’d had to wait for her nail polish to dry—and Gina overslept the next morning. Then the unfamiliar clothes, the needle-heeled shoes, which fit fine with the addition of some newspaper in the toes—Ashleigh had freakishly big feet—the styling of Gina’s hair, and the application of makeup so old she had to add water in order to smooth some of the dry cracked stuff onto her face meant she was parking the truck in front of Benjamin Morris’s office at 9:30 instead of the 8:45 she’d planned.
“Tough.” Gina slammed the door of the truck. It wasn’t as if Mr. Morris wasn’t going to be in his office on this fine May morning. He always had been in the past.
As before, Mr. Morris sat behind a desk that was much too large for him. Gina had to wonder if he’d inherited the furniture from an extremely tall previous owner of the building or the desk itself was the usual male compensation mechanism. She’d been around enough men to know what big cars, big hats, big boots, and big horses meant.
