“If you take me to the auction as your date, you’ll win your bet.”

“It violates the spirit of it.”

“It doesn’t have to,” Chase insisted. “Anyway, by the time I’m through with you, you’ll be able to get any date you want.”

She blinked. “Are you … are you Henry Higgins-ing me?”

He only had a vague knowledge of the old movie My Fair Lady, but he was pretty sure that was the reference. A man who took a grubby flower girl and turned her into the talk of the town.

“Yes,” he said finally. “Yes, I am. Take me up on this, Anna Brown, and I will turn you into a woman.”

* * *

Take Me, Cowboy is part of the Copper Ridge series from USA TODAY bestselling author Maisey Yates

Take Me, Cowboy

Maisey Yates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MAISEY YATES is a USA TODAY bestselling author of more than thirty romance novels. She has a coffee habit she has no interest in kicking and a slight Pinterest addiction. She lives with her husband and children in the Pacific Northwest. When Maisey isn’t writing she can be found singing in the grocery store, shopping for shoes online and probably not doing dishes. Check out her website, www.maiseyyates.com.

To Nicole Helm, for your friendship, profane texts and love of farm animals in sweaters. My life would be boring without you.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Extract

Copyright

One

When Anna Brown walked into Ace’s bar, she was contemplating whether or not she could get away with murdering her older brothers.

That’s really nice that the invitation includes a plus one. You know you can’t bring your socket wrench.

She wanted to punch Daniel in his smug face for that one. She had been flattered when she’d received her invitation to the community charity event that the West family hosted every year. A lot less so when Daniel and Mark had gotten ahold of it and decided it was the funniest thing in the world to imagine her trying to get a date to the coveted fund-raiser.

Because apparently the idea of her having a date at all was the pinnacle of comedic genius.

I can get a date, jackasses.

You want to make a bet?

Sure. It’s your money.

That exchange had seemed both enraging and empowering about an hour ago. Now she was feeling both humiliated and a little bit uncertain. The fact that she had bet on her dating prowess was...well, embarrassing didn’t even begin to describe it. But on top of that, she was a little concerned that she had no prowess to speak of.

It had been longer than she wanted to admit since she’d actually had a date. In fact, it was entirely possible that she had never technically been on one. That quick roll in the literal hay with Corbin Martin hadn’t exactly been a date per se.

And it hadn’t led to anything, either. Since she had done a wonderful job of smashing his ego with a hammer the next day at school when she’d told her best friend, Chase, about Corbin’s...limitations.

Yeah, her sexual debut had also been the final curtain.

But if men weren’t such whiny babies, maybe that wouldn’t have been the case. Also, maybe if Corbin had been able to prove to her that sex was worth the trouble, she would view it differently.

But he hadn’t. So she didn’t.

And now she needed a date.

She stalked across the room, heading toward the table that she and Chase, and often his brother, Sam, occupied on Friday nights. The lighting was dim, so she knew someone was sitting there but couldn’t make out which McCormack brother it was.

She hoped it was Chase. Because as long as she’d known Sam, she still had a hard time making conversation with him.

Talking wasn’t really his thing.

She moved closer, and the man at the table tilted his head up. Sam. Dammit. Drinking a beer and looking grumpy, which was pretty much par for the course with him. But Chase was nowhere to be seen.

“Hi,” she said, plopping down in the chair beside him. “Bad day?”

“A day.”

“Right.” At least when it came to Sam, she knew the difficult-conversation thing had nothing to do with her. That was all him.

She tapped the top of her knee, looking around the bar, trying to decide if she was going to get up and order a drink or wait for someone to come to the table. She allowed her gaze to drift across the bar, and her attention was caught by the figure of a man in the corner, black cowboy hat on his head, his face shrouded by the dim light. A woman was standing in front of him looking up at his face like he was her every birthday wish come true.

For a moment the sight of the man standing there struck her completely dumb. Broad shoulders, broad chest, strong-looking hands. The kind of hands that made her wonder if she needed to investigate the potential fuss of sex again.

He leaned up against the wall, his forearm above his head. He said something and the little blonde he was talking to practically shimmered with excitement. Anna wondered what that was like. To be the focus of a man’s attention like that. To have him look at you like a sex object instead of a drinking buddy.

For a moment she envied the woman standing there, who could absolutely get a date if she wanted one. Who would know what to wear and how to act if she were invited to a fancy gala whatever.

That woman would know what to do if the guy wanted to take her home after the date and get naked. She wouldn’t be awkward and make jokes and laugh when he got naked because there were all these feelings that were so...so weird she didn’t know how else to react.

With a man like that one...well, she doubted she would laugh. He would be all lean muscle and wicked smiles. He would look at her and she would... Okay, even in fantasy she didn’t know. But she felt hot. Very, very hot.

But in a flash, that hot feeling turned into utter horror. Because the man shifted, pushing his hat back on his head and angling slightly toward Anna, a light from above catching his angular features and illuminating his face. He changed then, from a fantasy to flesh and blood. And she realized exactly who she had just been checking out.

Chase McCormack. Her best friend in the entire world. The man she had spent years training herself to never, ever have feelings below the belt for.

She blinked rapidly, squeezing her hands into fists and trying to calm the fluttering in her stomach. “I’m going to get a drink,” she said, looking at Sam. And talk to Ace about the damn lighting in here. “Did you want something?”

He lifted his brow, and his bottle of beer. “I’m covered.”

Her heart was still pounding a little heavier than usual when she reached the bar and signaled Ace, the establishment’s owner, to ask for whatever pale ale he had on tap.

And her heart stopped altogether when she heard a deep voice from behind her.

“Why don’t you make that two.”

She whisked around and came face-to-chest with Chase. A man whose presence should be commonplace, and usually was. She was just in a weird place, thanks to high-pressure invitations and idiot brothers.

“Pale ale,” she said, taking a step back and looking up at his face. A face that should also be commonplace. But it was just so very symmetrical. Square jaw, straight nose, strong brows and dark eyes that were so direct they bordered on obscene. Like they were looking straight through your clothes or something. Not that he would ever want to look through hers. Not that she would want him to. She was too smart for that.

“That’s kind of an unusual order for you,” she continued, more to remind herself of who he was than to actually make commentary on his beverage choices. To remind herself that she knew him better than she knew herself. To do whatever she could to put that temporary moment of insanity when she’d spotted him in the corner out of her mind.

“I’m feeling adventurous,” he said, lifting one corner of his mouth, the lopsided grin disrupting the symmetry she had been admiring earlier and somehow making him look all the more compelling for it.

“Come on, McCormack. Adventurous is bungee jumping from Multnomah Falls. Adventurous is not trying a new beer.”

“Says the expert in adventure?”

“I’m an expert in a couple of things. Beer and motor oil being at the top of the list.”

“Then I won’t challenge you.”

“Probably for the best. I’m feeling a little bit bloodthirsty tonight.” She pressed her hands onto the bar top and leaned forward, watching as Ace went to get their drinks. “So. Why aren’t you still talking to short, blonde and stacked over there?”

He chuckled and it settled oddly inside her chest, rattling around before skittering down her spine. “Not really all that interested.”

“You seemed interested to me.”

“Well,” he said, “I’m not.”

“That’s inconsistent,” she said.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” he said, regarding her a little more closely than she would like. “Why are you in the mood to cause death and dismemberment?”

“Do I seem that feral?”

“Completely. Why?”

“The same reason I usually am,” she said.

“Your brothers.”

“You’re fast, I like that.”

Ace returned to their end of the bar and passed two pints toward them. “Do you want to open a tab?”

“Sure,” she said. “On him.” She gestured to Chase.

Ace smiled in return. “You look nice tonight, Anna.”

“I look...the same as I always do,” she said, glancing down at her worn gray T-shirt and no-fuss jeans.

He winked. “Exactly.”

She looked up at Chase, who was staring at the bartender, his expression unreadable. Then she looked back at Ace.

Ace was pretty hot, really. In that bearded, flannel-wearing way. Lumbersexual, or so she had overheard some college girls saying the other night as they giggled over him. Maybe he would want to be her date. Of course, easy compliments and charm aside, he also had his pick of any woman who turned up in his bar. And Anna was never anyone’s pick.

She let go of her fleeting Ace fantasy pretty quickly.

Chase grabbed the beer from the counter and handed one to her. She was careful not to let their fingers brush as she took it from him. That type of avoidance was second nature to her. Hazards of spending the years since adolescence feeling electricity when Chase got too close, and pretending she didn’t.

“We should go back and sit with Sam,” she suggested. “He looks lonely.”

Chase laughed. “You and I both know he’s no such thing. I think he would rather sit there alone.”

“Well, if he wants to be alone, then he can stay at home and drink.”

“He probably would if I didn’t force him to come out. But if I didn’t do that, he would fuse to the furniture and then I would have all of that to deal with.”

They walked back over to the table, and gradually, her heart rate returned to normal. She was relieved that the initial weirdness she had felt upon his arrival was receding.

“Hi, Sam,” Chase said, taking his seat beside his brother. Sam grunted in response. “We were just talking about the hazards of you turning into a hermit.”

“Am I not a convincing hermit already?” he asked. “Do I need to make my disdain for mankind a little less subtle?”

“That might help,” Chase said.

“I might just go play a game of darts instead. I’ll catch up with you in a minute.” Sam took a long drink of his beer and stood, leaving the bottle on the table as he made his way over to the dartboard across the bar.

Silence settled between Chase and herself. Why was this suddenly weird? Why was Anna suddenly conscious of the way his throat moved when he swallowed a sip of beer, of the shift in his forearms as he set the bottle back down on the table? Of just how masculine a sound he made when he cleared his throat?

She was suddenly even conscious of the way he breathed.

She leaned back in her chair, lifting her beer to her lips and surveying the scene around them.

It was Friday night, so most of the town of Copper Ridge, Oregon, was hanging out, drowning the last vestiges of the workweek in booze. It was not the end of the workweek for Anna. Farmers and ranchers didn’t take time off, so neither did she. She had to be on hand to make repairs when necessary, especially right now, since she was just getting her own garage off the ground.

She’d just recently quit her job at Jake’s in order to open her own shop specializing in heavy equipment, which really was how she found herself in the position she was in right now. Invited to the charity gala thing and embroiled in a bet on whether or not she could get a date.

“So why exactly do you want to kill your brothers today?” Chase asked, startling her out of her thoughts.

“Various reasons.” She didn’t know why, but something stopped her from wanting to tell him exactly what was going on. Maybe because it was humiliating. Yes, it was definitely humiliating.

“Sure. But that’s every day. Why specifically do you want to kill them today?”

She took a deep breath, keeping her eyes fixed on the fishing boat that was mounted to the wall opposite her, and very determinedly not looking at Chase. “Because. They bet that I couldn’t get a date to this thing I’m invited to and I bet them that I could.” She thought about the woman he’d been talking to a moment ago. A woman so different from herself they might as well be different species. “And right about now I’m afraid they’re right.”

* * *

Chase was doing his best to process his best friend’s statement. It was difficult, though. Daniel and Mark had solid asshole tendencies when it came to Anna—that much he knew—but this was pretty low even for them.

He studied Anna’s profile, her dark hair pulled back into a braid, her gray T-shirt that was streaked with oil. He watched as she raised her bottle of beer to her lips. She had oil on her hands, too. Beneath her fingernails. Anna wasn’t the kind of girl who attracted a lot of male attention. But he kind of figured that was her choice.

She wasn’t conventionally beautiful. Mostly because of the motor oil. But that didn’t mean that getting a date should be impossible for her.

“Why don’t you think you can get a date?”

She snorted, looking over at him, one dark brow raised. “Um.” She waved a hand up and down, indicating her body. “Because of all of this.”

He took a moment to look at all of that. Really look. Like he was a man and she was a woman. Which they were, but not in a conventional sense. Not to each other. He’d looked at her almost every day for the past fifteen years, so it was difficult to imagine seeing her for the first time. But just then, he tried.

She had a nice nose. And her lips were full, nicely shaped, her top lip a little fuller than her bottom lip, which was unique and sort of...not sexy, because it was Anna. But interesting.

“A little elbow grease and that cleans right off,” he said. “Anyway, men are pretty simple.”

She frowned. “What does that mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like. You don’t have to do much to get male attention if you want it. Give a guy what he’s after...”

“Okay, that’s just insulting. You’re saying that I can get a guy because men just want to get laid? So it doesn’t matter if I’m a wrench-toting troll?”

“You are not a wrench-toting troll. You’re a wrench-toting woman who could easily bludgeon me to death, and I am aware of that. Which means I need to choose my next words a little more carefully.”

Those full lips thinned into a dangerous line, her green eyes glittering dangerously. “Why don’t you do that, Chase.”

He cleared his throat. “I’m just saying, if you want a date, you can get one.”

“By unzipping my coveralls down to my belly button?”

He tipped his beer bottle back, taking a larger swallow than he intended to, coughing as it went down wrong. He did not need to picture the visual she had just handed to him. But he was a man, so he did.

It was damned unsettling. His best friend, bare beneath a pair of coveralls unfastened so that a very generous wedge of skin was revealed all the way down...

And he was done with that. He didn’t think of Anna that way. Not at all. They’d been friends since they were freshmen in high school and he’d navigated teenage boy hormones without lingering too long on thoughts of her breasts.

He was thirty years old, and he could have sex whenever he damn well pleased. Breasts were no longer mysterious to him. He wasn’t going to go pondering the mysteries of her breasts now.

“It couldn’t hurt, Anna,” he said, his words containing a little more bite than he would like them to. But he was unsettled.

“Okay, I’ll keep that in mind. But barring that, do you have any other suggestions? Because I think I’m going to be expected to wear something fancy, and I don’t own anything fancy. And it’s obvious that Mark and Daniel think I suck at being a girl.”

“That’s not true. And anyway, why do you care what they—or anyone else—think?”

“Because. I’ve got this new business...”

“And anyone who brings their heavy equipment to you for a tune-up won’t care whether or not you can walk in high heels.”

“But I don’t want to show up at these things looking...” She sighed. “Chase, the bottom line is I’ve spent a long time not fitting in. And people here are nice to me. I mean, now that I’m not in school. People in school sucked. But I get that I don’t fit. And I’m tired of it. Honestly, I wouldn’t care about my brothers if there wasn’t so much...truth to the teasing.”

“They do suck. They’re awful. So why does it matter what they think?”

“Because,” she said. “It just does. I’m that poor Anna Brown with no mom to teach her the right way to do things and I’m just...tired of it. I don’t want to be poor Anna Brown. I want to be Anna Brown, heavy equipment mechanic who can wear coveralls and walk in heels.”

“Not at the same time, I wouldn’t think.”

She shot him a deadly glare. “I don’t fail,” she said, her eyes glinting in the dim bar light. “I won’t fail at this.”

“You’re not in remote danger of failing. Now, what’s the mystery event that has you thinking about high heels?” he asked.

Copper Ridge wasn’t exactly a societal epicenter. Nestled between the evergreen mountains and a steel-gray sea on the Oregon Coast, there were probably more deer than people in the small town. There were only so many events in existence. And there was a good chance she was making a mountain out of a small-town molehill, and none of it would be that big of a deal.

“That charity thing that the West family has every year,” she mumbled. “Gala Under the Stars or whatever.”

The West family’s annual fund-raising event for schools. It was a weekend event, with the town’s top earners coming to a small black-tie get-together on the West property.

The McCormacks had been founding members of the community of Copper Ridge back in the 1800s. Their forge had been used by everyone in town and in the neighboring communities. But as the economy had changed, so had the success of the business.

They’d been hanging on by their fingernails when Chase’s parents had been killed in an accident when he was in high school. They’d still gotten an invitation to the gala. But Chase had thrown it on top of the never-ending pile of mail and bills that he couldn’t bring himself to look through and forgotten about it.

Until some woman—probably an assistant to the West family—had called him one year when he hadn’t bothered to RSVP. He had been...well, he’d been less than polite.

Dealing with a damned crisis here, so sorry I can’t go to your party.

Unsurprisingly, he hadn’t gotten any invitations after that. And he hadn’t really thought much about it since.

Until now.

He and Sam had managed to keep the operation and properties afloat, but he wanted more. He needed it.

The ranch had animals, but that wasn’t the source of their income. The forge was the heart of the ranch, where they did premium custom metal-and leatherwork. On top of that, there were outbuildings on the property they rented out—including the shop they leased to Anna. They had built things back up since their parents had died, but it still wasn’t enough, not to Chase.

He had promised his father he would take an interest in the family legacy. That he would build for the McCormacks, not just for himself. Chase had promised he wouldn’t let his dad down. He’d had to make those promises at a grave site because before the accident he’d been a hotheaded jackass who’d thought he was too big for the family legacy.

But even if his father never knew, Chase had sworn it. And so he’d see it done.

In order to expand McCormack Iron Works, the heart and soul of their ranch, to bring it back to what it had been, they needed interest. Investments.

Chase had always had a good business mind, and early on he’d imagined he would go to school away from Copper Ridge. Get a degree. Find work in the city. Then everything had changed. Then it hadn’t been about Chase McCormack anymore. It had been about the McCormack legacy.

School had become out of the question. Leaving had been out of the question. But now he saw where he and Sam were failing, and he could see how to turn the tide.

He’d spent a lot of late nights figuring out exactly how to expand as the demand for handmade items had gone down. Finding ways to convince people that highly customized iron details for homes and businesses, and handmade leather bridles and saddles, were worth paying more for.

Finding ways to push harder, to innovate and modernize while staying true to the family name. While actively butting up against Sam and his refusal to go out and make that happen. Sam, who was so talented he didn’t have to pound horseshoe nails if he didn’t want to. Sam, who could forget gates and scrollwork on staircases and be selling his artwork for a small fortune. Sam, who resisted change like it was the black plague.

He would kill for an invitation to the Wests’ event. Well, not kill. But possibly engage in nefarious activities or the trading of sexual favors. And Anna had an invitation.

“You get to bring a date?” he asked.

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” she said. “Of course, it all depends on whether or not I can actually acquire one.”

Anna needed a date; he wanted to have a chance to talk to Nathan West. In the grand tradition of their friendship, they both filled the gaps in each other’s lives. This was—in his opinion—perfect.

“I’ll be your date,” he said.

She snorted. “Yeah, right. Daniel and Mark will never believe that.”

She had a point. The two of them had been friends forever. And with a bet on the table her brothers would never believe that he had suddenly decided to go out with her because his feelings had randomly changed.

“Okay. Maybe that’s true.” That frown was back. “Not because there’s something wrong with you,” he continued, trying to dig himself out of the pit he’d just thrown himself into, “but because it’s a little too convenient.”

“Okay, that’s better.”

“But what if we made it clear that things had changed between us?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean...what if...we built up the change? Showed people that our relationship was evolving.”

She gave him a fierce side-eye. “I’m not your type.” He thought back to the blonde he’d been talking to only twenty minutes earlier. Tight dress cut up to the tops of her thighs, long, wavy hair and the kind of smile that invited you right on in. Curves that had probably wrecked more men than windy Highway 101. She was his type.

And she wasn’t Anna. Barefaced, scowling with a figure that was slightly more...subtle. He cleared his throat. “You could be. A little less grease, a little more lipstick.”

Her top lip curled. “So the ninth circle of hell basically.”

“What were you planning on wearing to the fund-raiser?”

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I have black jeans. But...I mean, I guess I could go to the mall in Tolowa and get a dress.”

“That isn’t going to work.”

“Why not?”

“What kind of dress would you buy?” he asked.

“Something floral? Kind of...down to the knee?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re not Scarlett O’Hara,” he said, knowing that with her love of old movies, Anna would appreciate the reference. “You aren’t going dressed in the drapes.”

Anna scowled. “Why the hell do you know so much about women’s clothes?”

“Because I spend a lot of time taking them off my dates.”

That shut her up. Her pale cheeks flamed and she looked away from him, and that response stirred...well, it stirred something in his gut he wished would go the hell away.

“Why do you want to go anyway?” she asked, still not looking at him.

“I want to talk to Nathan West and the other businessmen there about investment opportunities. I want to prove that Sam and I are the kind of people that can move in their circles. The kind of people they want to do business with.”

“And you have to put on a suit and hobnob at a gala to do that?”

“The fact is, I don’t get chances like this very often, Anna. I didn’t get an invitation. And I need one. Plus, if you take me, you’ll win your bet.”

“Unless Dan and Mark tell me you don’t count.”

“Loophole. If they never said you couldn’t recruit a date, you’re fine.”

“It violates the spirit of the bet.”

“It doesn’t have to,” he insisted. “Anyway, by the time I’m through with you, you’ll be able to get any date you want.”

She blinked. “Are you... Are you Henry Higgins-ing me?”

He had only a vague knowledge of the old movie My Fair Lady, but he was pretty sure that was the reference. A man who took a grubby flower girl and turned her into the talk of the town. “Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “Yes, I am. Take me up on this, Anna Brown, and I will turn you into a woman.”

Two

Anna just about laughed herself off her chair. “You’re going to make me a...a...a woman?”

“Why is that funny?”

“What about it isn’t funny?”

“I’m offering to help you.”

“You’re offering to help me be something that I am by birth. I mean, Chase, I get that women are kind of your thing, but that’s pretty arrogant. Even with all things considered.”

“Okay, obviously I’m not going to make you a woman.” Something about the way he said the phrase this time hit her in an entirely different way. Made her think about other applications that phrase occasionally had. Things she needed to never, ever, ever, ever think about in connection with Chase.

If she valued her sanity and their friendship.

She cleared her throat, suddenly aware that it was dry and scratchy. “Obviously.”

“I just meant that you need help getting a date, and I need to go to this party. And you said that you were concerned about your appearance in the community.”

“Right.” He wasn’t wrong. The thing was, she knew that whether or not she could blend in at an event like this didn’t matter at all to how well her business did. Nobody cared if their mechanic knew which shade of lipstick she should wear. But that wasn’t the point.

She—her family collectively—was the town charity case. Living on the edge of the community in a run-down house, raised by a single father who was in over his head, who spent his days at the mill. Her older brothers had been in charge of taking care of her, and they had done so. But, of course, they were also older brothers. Which meant they had tormented her while feeding and clothing her. Anyway, she didn’t exactly blame them.

It wasn’t like the two of them had wanted to raise a sister when they would rather be out raising hell.

Especially a sister who was committed to driving them crazy.

She loved her brothers. But that didn’t mean they always had an easy relationship. It didn’t mean they didn’t hurt her by accident when they teased her about things. She acted invulnerable, so they assumed that she was.

But now, beneath her coveralls and engine grease, she was starting to feel a little bit battered. It was difficult to walk around with a screw you attitude barely covering a raw wound. Because eventually that shield started to wear down. Especially when people were used to being able to lob pretty intense rocks at that shield.

That was her life. It was either pity or a kind of merciless camaraderie that had no softness to it. Her dad, her brothers, all the guy friends she had...

And she couldn’t really blame them. She had never behaved in a way that would demonstrate she needed any softness. In fact, a few months ago, a few weeks ago even, the idea would have been unthinkable to her.

But there was something about this invitation. Something about imagining herself in yet another situation where she was forced to deflect good-natured comments about her appearance, about the fact that she was more like a guy than the roughest cowboys in town. Yeah, there was something about that thought that had made her want to curl into a ball and never unfurl.

Then, even if it was unintentional, her brothers had piled on. It had hurt her feelings. Which meant she had reacted in anger, naturally. So now she had a bet. A bet, and her best friend looking at her with laser focus after having just promised he would make her a woman.

“Why do you care?” He was pressing, and she wanted to hit him now.

Which kind of summed up why she was in this position in the first place.

She swallowed hard. “Maybe I just want to surprise people. Isn’t that enough?”

“You came from nothing. You started your own business with no support from your father. You’re a female mechanic. I would say that you’re surprising as hell.”

“Well, I want to add another dimension to that. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said. “Multidimensional Anna. That seems like a good idea to me.”

“Where do we start?”

“With you not falling off your chair laughing at me because I’ve offered to make you a woman.”

A giggle rose in her throat again. Hysteria. She was verging on hysteria. Because this was uncomfortable and sincere. She hated both of those things. “I’m sorry. I can’t. You can’t say that to me and expect me not to choke.”

He looked at her again, his dark eyes intense. “Is it a problem, Anna? The idea that I might make you a woman.”

He purposefully made his voice deeper. Purposefully added a kind of provocative inflection to the words. She knew he was kidding. Still, it made her chest tighten. Made her heart flutter a little bit.

Wow. How annoying. She hadn’t had a relapse of Chase Underpants Feelings this bad in a long time.

Apparently she still hadn’t recovered from her earlier bit of mistaken identity. She really needed to recover. And he needed to stop being...Chase. If at all possible.

“Is it a problem for you?” she asked.

“What?”

“The idea that I might make you a soprano?”

He chuckled. “You probably want to hold off on threats of castration when you’re at a fancy party.”

“We aren’t at one right now.”

She was her own worst enemy. Everything that she had just been silently complaining about, she was doing right now. Throwing out barbs the moment she got uncomfortable, because it kept people from seeing what was actually happening inside of her.

Yes, but you really need to keep Chase from seeing that you fluttered internally over something he said.

Yes. Good point.

She noticed that he was looking past her now, and she followed his line of sight. He was looking at that blonde again. “Regrets, Chase?”

He winced, looking back at her. “No.”

“So. I assume that to get a guy to come up and hit on me in a bar, I have to put on a dress that is essentially a red ACE bandage sprinkled with glitter?”

He hesitated. “It’s more than that.”

“What?”

“Well, for a start, there’s not looking at a man like you want to dismember him.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t.”

“You aren’t exactly approachable, Anna.”

“That isn’t true.” She liked to play darts, and hang out, and talk about sports. What wasn’t approachable about that?

“I’ve seen men try to talk to you,” Chase continued. “You shut them down pretty quick. For example—” he barreled on before she could interrupt him “—Ace Thompson paid you a compliment back at the bar.”

“Ace Thompson compliments everything with boobs.”

“And a couple of weeks ago there was a guy in here that tried to buy you a drink. You told him you could buy your own.”

“I can,” she said, “and he was a stranger.”

“He was flirting with you.”

She thought back on that night, that guy. Damn. He had been flirting. “Well, he should get better at it. I’m not going to reward mediocrity. If I can’t tell you’re flirting, you aren’t doing a very good job.”

“Part of the problem is you don’t think male attention is being directed at you when it actually is.”

She looked back over at the shimmery blonde. “Why would any male attention be directed at me when that’s over there?”

Chase leaned in, his expression taking on a conspiratorial quality that did...things to her insides. “Here’s the thing about a girl like that. She knows she looks good. She assumes that men are looking at her. She assumes that if a man talks to her, that means he wants her.”

She took a breath, trying to ease the tightness in her chest. “And that’s not...a turnoff?”

“No way.” He smiled, a sort of lazy half smile. “Confidence is sexy.”

He kind of proved that rule. The thought made her bristle.

“All right. So far with our lessons I’ve learned that I should unzip my coveralls and as long as I’m confident it will be okay.”

“You forgot not looking like you want to stab someone.”

“Okay. Confident, nonstabby, showing my boobs.”

Chase choked on his beer. “That’s a good place to start,” he said, setting the bottle down. “Do you want to go play darts? I want to go play darts.”

“I thought we were having female lessons.”

“Rain check,” he said. “How about tomorrow I come by the shop and we get started. I think I’m going to need a lesson plan.”

* * *

Chase hadn’t exactly excelled in school, unless it was at driving his teachers to drink. So why exactly he had decided he needed a lesson plan to teach Anna how to be a woman, he didn’t know.

All he knew was that somewhere around the time they started discussing her boobs last night he had become unable to process thoughts normally. He didn’t like that. He didn’t like it at all. He did not like the fact that he had been forced to consider her breasts more than once in a single hour. He did not like the fact that he was facing down the possibility of thinking about them a few more times over the next few weeks.

But then, that was the game.

Not only was he teaching her how to blend in at a function like this, he was pretending to be her date.

So there was more than one level of hell to deal with. Perfect.

He cleared his throat, walking down the front porch of the farmhouse that he shared with his brother, making his way across the property toward the shop that Anna was renting and using as her business.

It was after five, so she should be knocking off by now. A good time for the two of them to meet.

He looked down at the piece of lined yellow paper in his hand. His lesson plan.

Then he pressed on, his boots crunching on the gravel as he made his way to the rustic wood building. He inhaled deeply, the last gasp of winter riding over the top of the spring air, mixing with the salt from the sea, giving it a crisp bite unique to Copper Ridge.

He relished this. The small moment of clarity before he dived right into the craziness that was his current situation.

Chase McCormack was many things, but he wasn’t a coward. He was hardly going to get skittish over giving his best friend some seduction lessons.

He pushed the door open but didn’t see Anna anywhere.

He looked around the room, and the dismembered tractors whose various parts weren’t in any order that he could possibly define. Though he knew that it must make sense to Anna.

“Hello?”

“Just up here.”

He turned, looked up and saw Anna leaning over what used to be a hayloft, looking down at him, a long dark braid hanging down.

“What exactly are you doing up there?”

“I stashed a tool up here, and now I need it. It’s good storage. Of course, then I end up climbing the walls a little more often than I would like. Literally. Not figuratively.”

“I figured you would be finished for the day by now.”

“No. I have to get this tractor fixed for Connor Garrett. And it’s been a bigger job than I thought.” She disappeared from view for a moment. “But I would like a reputation as someone who makes miracles. So I better make miracles.”

She planted her boot hard on the first rung of the ladder and began to climb down. She was covered from head to toe in motor oil and dust. Probably from crawling around in this space, and beneath tractors.

She jumped down past the last three rungs, brushing dirt off her thighs and leaving more behind, since her hands were coated, too. “You don’t exactly look like a miracle,” he said, looking her over.

She held up her hand, then displayed her middle finger. “Consider it a miracle that I don’t punch you.”

“Remember what we talked about? Not looking at a guy like you want to stab him? Much less threatening actual bodily harm.”

“Hey, I don’t think you would tell a woman that you actually wanted to hook up with that she didn’t look like a miracle.”

“Most women I want to hook up with aren’t quite this disheveled. Before we start anyway.”

Much to his surprise, color flooded her cheeks.

“Well,” she said, her voice betraying nothing, “I’m not most women, Chase McCormack. I thought you would’ve known that by now.”

Then she sauntered past him, wearing those ridiculous baggy coveralls, head held high like she was queen of the dust bowl.

“Oh, I’m well aware of that,” he said. “That’s part of the problem.”

“And now it’s your problem to fix.”

“That’s right. And I have the lesson plan. As promised.”

She whipped around to face him, one dark brow lifted. “Oh, really?”

“Yes, really.” He held up the lined notepaper.

“That’s very professional.”

“It’s as professional as you’re gonna get. Now, the first order of business is to plant the seed that we’re more than friends.”

She looked as though he had just suggested she eat a handful of bees. “Do we really need to do that?”

“Yeah, we really need to do that. You won’t just have a date for the charity event. You’re going to have a date every so often until then.”

She looked skeptical. “That seems...excessive.”

“You want people to believe this. You don’t want people to think I’m going because of a bet. You don’t want your brothers to think for one moment that they might be right.”

“Well, they’re going to think it for a few moments at least.”

“True. I mean, they are going to be suspicious. But we can make this look real. It isn’t going to be that hard. We already hang out most weekends.”

“Sure,” she said, “but you go home with other girls at the end of the night.”

Those words struck him down. “Yes, I guess I do.”

“You won’t be able to do that now,” she pointed out.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because if I were with you and you went home with another woman, I would castrate you with nothing but my car keys and a bottle of whiskey.”

He had no doubt about that. “At least you’d give me some whiskey.”

“Hell no. The whiskey would be for me.”

“But we’re not really together,” he said.

“Sure, Chase, but the entire town knows that if any man were to cheat on me, I would castrate him with my car keys, because I don’t take crap from anyone. So if they’re going to believe that we’re together, you’re going to have to look like you’re being faithful to me.”

“That’s fine.” It wasn’t all that fine. He didn’t do celibacy. Never had. Not from the moment he’d discovered that women were God’s greatest invention.

“No booty calls,” she said, her tone stern.

“Wait a second. I can’t even call a woman to hook up in private?”

“No. You can’t. Because then she would know. I have pride. I mean, right now, standing here in this garage taking lessons from you on how to conform to my own gender’s beauty standards, it’s definitely marginal, but I have it.”

“It isn’t like you really know any of the girls that I...”

“Neither do you,” she said.

“This isn’t about me. It’s about you. Now, I got you some things. But I left them in the house. And you are going to have to...hose off before you put them on.”

She blinked, her expression almost comical. “Did you buy me clothes?”

He’d taken a long lunch and gone down to Main Street, popping into one of the ridiculously expensive shops that—in his mind—were mostly for tourists, and had found her a dress he thought would work.

“Yeah, I bought you clothes. Because we both know you can’t actually wear this out tonight.”

“We’re going out tonight?”

“Hell yeah. I’m taking you somewhere fancy.”

“My fancy threshold is very low. If I have to go eat tiny food on a stick sometime next month, I’m going to need actual sustenance in every other meal until then.”

He chuckled, trying to imagine Anna coping with miniature food. “Beaches. I’m taking you to Beaches.”

She screwed up her face slightly. “We don’t go there.”

“No, we haven’t gone there. We go to Ace’s. We shoot pool, we order fried crap and we split the tab. Because we’re friends. And that’s what friends do. Friends don’t go out to Beaches, not just the two of them. But lovers do.”

She looked at him owlishly. “Right. I suppose they do.”

“And when all this is finished, the entire town of Copper Ridge is going to think that we’re lovers.”

Three

Anna was reeling slightly by the time she walked up the front porch and into Chase’s house. The entire town was going to think that they were...lovers. She had never had a lover. At least, she would never characterize the guy she’d slept with as a lover. He was an unfortunate incident. But fortunately, her hymen was the only casualty. Her heart had remained intact, and she was otherwise uninjured. Or pleasured.

Lovers.

That word sounded...well, like it came from some old movie or something. Which under normal circumstances she was a big fan of. In this circumstance, it just made her feel...like her insides were vibrating. She didn’t like it.

Chase lived in the old family home on the property. It was a large, log cabin–style house with warm, honey-colored wood and a green metal roof designed to withstand all kinds of weather. Wrought-iron details on the porch and the door were a testament to his and Sam’s craftsmanship. There were people who would pay millions for a home like this. But Sam and Chase had made it this beautiful on their own.

Chase always kept the home admirably clean considering he was a bachelor. She imagined that the other house on the property, the smaller one inhabited by Sam, wasn’t quite as well kept. But she also imagined that Sam didn’t have the same amount of guests over that Chase did. And by guests, she meant female companions. Which he would be cut off from for the next few weeks.

Some small, mean part of her took a little bit of joy in that.

Because you don’t like the idea of other women touching him. It doesn’t matter how long it’s been going on, or how many women there are, you still don’t like it.

She sniffed, cutting off that line of thinking. She was just a crabby bitch who was enjoying the idea of him being celibate and suffering a bit. That was all.

“Okay, where are my...girlie things?”

“You aren’t even going to look at them until you scrub that grease off.”

“And how am I supposed to do that? Are you going to hose me off?”

He clenched his jaw. “No. You can use my shower.”

She took a deep breath, trying to dispel the slight fluttering in her stomach. She had never used Chase’s shower before. She assumed countless women before her had. When he brought them up here, took their clothes off for them. And probably joined them.

She wasn’t going to think about that.

“Okay.”

She knew where his shower was, of course. Because she had been inside his bedroom casually, countless times. It had never mattered before. Before, she had never been about to get naked.

She banished that thought as she walked up the stairs and down the hall to his room. His room was...well, it was very well-appointed, but then again, obviously designed to house guests of the female variety. The bed was large and full of plush pillows. A soft-looking green throw was folded up at the foot of it. An overstuffed chair was in the corner, another blanket draped over the back.

She doubted the explosion of comfort and cozy was for Chase’s benefit.

She tamped that thought down, continuing on through the bathroom door, then locking it for good measure. Not that he would walk in. And he was the only person in the house.

Still, she felt insecure without the lock flipped. She took a deep breath, stripped off her coveralls, then the clothes she had on beneath them, and started the shower. Speaking of things that were designed to be shared...

It was enclosed in glass, and she had a feeling that with the door open it was right in the line of sight from the bed. Inside was red tile, and a bench seat that... She wasn’t even going to think what that could be used for.

She turned and looked in the mirror. She was grubby. More than grubby. She had grease all over her face, all up under her fingernails.

Thankfully, Chase had some orange-and-pumice cleaner right there on his sink. So she was able to start scrubbing at her hands while the water warmed up.

Steam filled the air and she stepped inside the shower, letting the hot spray cascade over her skin.

It was a massaging showerhead. A nice one. She did not have a nice massaging showerhead in her little rental house down in town. Next on her list of Ways She Was Changing Her Life would be to get her own house. With one of these.

She rolled her shoulders beneath the spray and sighed. The water droplets almost felt like fingers moving over her tight muscles. And, suddenly, it was all too easy to imagine a man standing behind her, working at her muscles with his strong hands.

She closed her eyes, letting her head fall back, her mouth going slack. She didn’t even have the strength to fight the fantasy, God help her. She’d been edgy and aroused for the past twenty-four hours, no denying it. So this little moment to let herself fantasize...she just needed it.

Then she realized exactly whose hands she was picturing.

Chase’s. Tall and strong behind her, his hands moving over her skin, down lower to the slight dip in her spine, just above the curve of her behind...

She grabbed hold of the sponge hanging behind her and began to drag it ferociously over her skin, only belatedly realizing that this was probably what he used to wash himself.

“He uses it to wash his balls,” she said into the space. Hoping that that would disgust her. It really should disgust her.

It did not disgust her.

She put the scrubber back, taking a little shower gel and squeezing it into the palm of her hand. Okay, so she would smell like a playboy for a day. It wasn’t the end of the world. She started to rub the slick soap over her flesh, ignoring the images of Chase that were trying to intrude.

She was being a crazy person. She had showered at friends’ houses before, and never imagined that they were in the shower stall with her.

But ever since last night in the bar, her equilibrium had been off where Chase was concerned. Her control was being sorely tested. She was decidedly unstoked about it.

She shut the water off and got out of the shower, grabbing a towel off the rack and drying her skin with more ferocity than was strictly necessary. Almost as though she was trying to punish her wicked, wicked skin for imagining what it might be like to be touched by her best friend.

But that would be crazy.

Except she felt a little crazy.

She looked around the room. And realized that her stupid friend, who had not wanted her to touch the nice clothing he had bought her, had left her without anything to wear. She couldn’t put her sweaty, grease-covered clothes back on. That would negate the entire shower.

She let out an exasperated breath, not entirely certain what she should do.

“Chase?” she called.

She didn’t hear anything.

“Chase?” She raised the volume this time.

Still no answer.

“Butthead,” she muttered, walking over to the door and tapping the doorknob, trying to decide what her next move was.

She was being ridiculous. Just because she was having an increase of weird, borderline sexual thoughts about him, did not mean he was having them about her. She twisted the knob, undoing the lock as she did, and opened the door a crack. “Chase!”

The door to the bedroom swung open, and Chase walked in, carrying one of those plastic bags fancy dresses were stored in and a pair of shoes.

“I don’t have clothes,” she hissed through the crack in the door.

“Sorry,” he said, looking stricken. At least, she thought he looked stricken.

She opened the door slightly wider, extending her arm outside. “Give them to me.”

He crossed the room, walking over to the bathroom door. “You’re going to have to open the door wider than that.”

She already felt exposed. There was nothing between them. Nothing but some air and the towel she was clutching to her naked body. Well, and most of the door. But she still felt exposed.

Still, he was not going to fit that bag through the crack.

She opened the door slightly wider, then grabbed hold of the bag in his hand and jerked it back through. “I’ll get the shoes later,” she called through the door.

She dropped the towel and unzipped the bag, staring at the contents with no small amount of horror. There was...underwear inside of it. Underwear that Chase had purchased for her.

Which meant he had somehow managed to look at her breasts and evaluate their size. Not to mention her ass. And ass size.

She grabbed the pair of panties that were attached to a little hanger. Oh, they had no ass. So she supposed the size of hers didn’t matter much.

She swallowed hard, taking hold of the soft material and rubbing her thumb over it. He would know exactly what she was wearing beneath the dress. Would know just how little that was.

He isn’t going to think about it. Because he doesn’t think about you that way.

He never had. He never would. And it was a damn good thing. Because where would they be if either of them acted on an attraction between them?

Up shit creek without a paddle or a friendship.

No, thank you. She was never going to touch him. She’d made that decision a long time ago. For a lot of reasons that were as valid today as they had been the very first time he’d ever made her stomach jump when she looked at him.

She was never going to encourage or act on the attraction that she occasionally felt for Chase. But she would take his expertise in sexual politics and use it to her advantage.

Oh, but those panties.

The bra wasn’t really any less unsettling. Though at least it wasn’t missing large swathes of fabric.

Still, it was very thin. And she had a feeling that a cool ocean breeze would reveal the shape of her nipples to all and sundry.

Then again, maybe it was time all and sundry got a look at her nipples. Maybe if they had a better view, men would be a little more interested.

She scowled, wrenching the panties off the hanger and dragging them on as quickly as possible, followed closely by the bra. She was overthinking things. She was overthinking all of this. Had been from the moment Chase had walked into the barn. As evidenced by that lapse in the shower.

She had spent years honing her Chase Control. It was just this change in how they were interacting that was screwing with it. She was not letting this get inside her head, and she was not letting hot, unsettled feelings get inside her pants.

She pulled the garment bag away entirely, revealing a tight red dress slightly too reminiscent of what the woman he had been flirting with last night was wearing.

“Clearly you have a type, Chase McCormack,” she muttered, beginning to remove the slinky scrap of material from the hanger.

She tugged it up over her hips, having to do a pretty intense wiggle to get it up all the way before zipping it into place. She took a deep breath, turned around. She faced her reflection in the mirror full-on and felt nothing but deflated.

She looked...well, her hair was wet and straggly, and she looked half-drowned. She didn’t look curvy, or shimmery, or delightful.

This was the problem with tight clothes. They only made her more aware of her curve deficit.

Where the blonde last night had filled her dress out admirably, and in all the right places, on Anna this dress kind of looked like a piece of fabric stretched over an ironing board. Not really all that sexy.

She sighed heavily, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach.

Chase really was going to have to be a miracle worker in order to pull this off.

She didn’t really want to show him. Instead, she found the idea of putting the coveralls back on a lot less reprehensible. At least with the coveralls there would still be some mystery. He wouldn’t be confronted with just how big a task lay before him.

“Buck up,” she said to herself.

So what was one more moment of feeling inadequate? Honestly, in the broad tapestry of her life it would barely register. She was never quite what was expected. She never quite fit. So why’d she expect that she was going to put on a sexy dress and suddenly be transformed into the kind of sex kitten she didn’t even want to be?

She gritted her teeth, throwing open the bedroom door and walking out into the room. “I hope you’re happy,” she said, flinging her arms wide. “You get what you get.”

She caught a movement out of the corner of her eye and turned her head, then recoiled in horror. It was even worse out here. Out here, there was a full-length mirror. Out here, she had the chance to see that while her breasts remained stunningly average, her hips and behind had gotten rather wide. Which was easy to ignore when you wore loose attire most days. “I look like the woman symbol on the door of a public restroom.”

She looked over at Chase, who had been completely silent upon her entry into the room, and remained so. She glared at him. He wasn’t saying anything. He was only staring. “Well?”

“It’s nice,” he said.

His voice sounded rough, and kind of thin.

“You’re a liar.”

“I’m not a liar. Put the shoes on.”

“Do you even know what size I wear?”

“You’re a size ten, which I know because you complain about how your big feet make it impossible for you to find anything in your size. And you’re better off buying men’s work boots. So yes, I know.”

His words made her feel suddenly exposed. Well, his words in combination with the dress, she imagined. They knew each other a little bit too well. That was the problem. How could you impress a guy when you had spent a healthy amount of time bitching to him about your big feet?

“Fine. I will put on the shoes.” He held them up, and her jaw dropped. “I thought you were taking me out to dinner.”

“I am.”

“Do I have to pay for it by working the pole at the Naughty Mermaid?”

“These are nice shoes.”

“If you’re a five-foot-two-inch Barbie like that chick you were talking to last night. I’m like...an Amazon in comparison.”

“You’re not an Amazon.”

“I will be in those.”

“Maybe that would bother some men. But you want a man who knows how to handle a woman. Any guy with half a brain is going to lose his mind checking out your legs. He’s not going to care if you’re a little taller than he is.”

She tried her best to ignore the compliment about her legs. And tried even harder to keep from blushing.

“I care,” she muttered, snatching the shoes from his hand and pondering whether or not there was any truth to her words as she did.

She didn’t really date. So it was hard to say. But now that she was thinking about it, yeah. She was self-conscious about the fact that with pretty low heels she was eye level with half the men in town.

She finished putting the shoes on and straightened. It was like standing on a glittery pair of stilts. “Are you satisfied?” she asked.

“I guess you could say that.” He was regarding her closely, his jaw tense, a muscle in his cheek ticking.

She noticed that he was still a couple of inches taller than her. Even with the shoes. “I guess you still meet the height requirement to be my dinner date.”

“I didn’t have any doubt.”

“I don’t know how to walk in these,” she said.

“All right. Practice.”

“Are you out of your mind? I have to practice walking?”

“You said yourself, you don’t know how to walk in heels. So, go on. Walk the length of the room.”

She felt completely awash in humiliation. She doubted there was another woman on the planet that Chase had ever had to instruct on walking.

“This is ridiculous.”

“It’s not,” he said.

“All of women’s fashion is ridiculous,” she maintained. “Do you have to learn how to walk when you put on dress shoes? No, you do not. And yet, a full-scale lesson is required for me to go out if I want to wear something that’s considered feminine.”

“Yeah, it’s sexist. And a real pain in the ass, I’m sure. It’s also hot. Now walk.”

She scowled at him, then took her first step, wobbling a bit. “I don’t understand why women do this.”

She took another step, then another, wobbling a little less each time. But the shoes did force her hips to sway, much more than they normally would. “Do you have any pointers?” she asked.

“I date women in heels, Anna. I’ve never walked in them.”

“What happened to helping me be a woman?”

“You’ll get the hang of it. It’s like...I don’t know, water-skiing maybe?”

“How is this like water-skiing?”

“You have to learn how to do it and there’s a good likelihood you’ll fall on your face?”

“Well, I take it all back,” she said, deadpan. “These shoes aren’t silly at all.” She took another step, then another. “I feel like a newborn baby deer.”

“You look a little like one, too.”

She snorted. “You really need to up your game, Chase. If you use these lines on all the women you take out, you’re bound to start striking out sooner or later.”

“I haven’t struck out yet.”

“Well, you’re still young and pretty. Just wait. Just wait until time starts to claim your muscular forearms and chiseled jawline.”

“I figure by then maybe I’ll have gotten the ranch back to its former glory. At that point women will sleep with me for my money.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s nice to have goals.”

In her opinion, Chase should have better goals for himself. But then, who was she to talk? Her current goal was to show her brothers that they were idiots and she could too get a date. Hardly a lofty ambition.

“Yes, it is. And right now my goal is for us not to miss our reservation.”

“You made a...reservation?”

“I did.”

“It’s not like it’s Valentine’s Day or something. The restaurant isn’t going to be full.”

“Of course it won’t be. But I figured if I made a reservation for the two of us, we could start a rumor, too.”

“A rumor?”

“Yeah, because Ellie Matthews works at Beaches, and I believe she has been known to service your brother Mark.”

Anna winced at the terminology. “True.”

“I thought the news of our dining experience might make it back to him. Like I said, the more we can make this look organic, the better.”

“No one ever need know that our relationship is in fact grown in a lab. And in no way GMO free,” she said.

“Exactly.”

“I don’t have any makeup on.” She frowned. “I don’t have any makeup. At all.”

“Right,” he said. “I didn’t really think of that.”

She reached out and smacked him on the shoulder. “You’re supposed to be my coach. You’re failing me.”

He laughed, dodging her next blow. “You don’t need makeup.”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “You’re just saying that.”

“In fairness, you did threaten to castrate me with your car keys earlier.”

“I did.”

“And you hit me just now,” he pointed out.

“It didn’t hurt, you baby.”

He took a deep breath, and suddenly his expression turned sharp. “Believe me when I tell you you don’t need makeup.” He reached out, gripping her chin with his thumb and forefinger. His touch was like a branding iron, hot, altering. “As long as you believe it, everyone else will, too. You have to believe in yourself, Anna.”

He released his hold on her, straightening. “Now,” he said, his tone getting a little bit rougher, “let’s go to dinner.”

* * *

Chase felt like he had been tipped sideways and left walking on the walls from the moment that Anna had emerged from the bathroom at his house wearing that dress. Once she had put on those shoes, the feeling had only gotten worse.

But who knew that underneath those coveralls his best friend looked like that?

She had been eyeing herself critically, and his brain had barely been working at all. Because he didn’t see anything to criticize. All he saw was the kind of figure that would make a man willingly submit to car key castration.

She was long and lean, toned from all the physical labor she did. Her breasts were small, but he imagined they would fit in a man’s hand nicely. And her hips...well, using the same measurement used for her breasts, they would be about perfect for holding on to while a man...

Holy hell. He was losing his mind.

She was Anna. Anna Brown, his best friend in the entire world. The one woman he had never even considered going there with. He didn’t want a relationship with the women he slept with. When your only criteria for being with a woman was orgasm, there were a lot of options available to you. For a little bit of satisfaction he could basically seek out any woman in the room.

Sex was easy. Connections were hard.

And so Anna had been placed firmly off-limits from day one. He’d had a vague awareness of her for most of his life. That was how growing up in a small town worked. You went to the same school from the beginning. But they had separate classes, plus at the time he’d been pretty convinced girls had cooties.

But that had changed their first year of high school. He’d ended up in metal shop with the prickly teen and had liked her right away. There weren’t very many girls who cursed as much as the boys and had a more comprehensive understanding of the inner workings of engines than the teachers at the school. But Anna did.

She hadn’t fit in with any of the girls, and so Chase and Sam had been quick to bring her into their group. Over the years, people had rotated in and out, moved, gone their separate ways. But Chase and Anna had remained close.

In part because he had kept his dick out of the equation.

As they walked up the path toward Beaches, he considered putting his hand on her lower back. Really, he should. Except it was potentially problematic at the moment. Was he this shallow? Stick her in a tight-fitting dress and suddenly he couldn’t control himself? It was a sobering realization, but not really all that surprising.

This was what happened when you spent a lot of time practicing no restraint when it came to sex.

He gritted his teeth, lifting his hand for a moment before placing it gently on her back. Because it was what he would do with any other date, so it was what he needed to do with Anna.

She went stiff beneath his touch. “Relax,” he said, keeping his voice low. “This is supposed to look like a date, remember?”

“I should have worn a white tank top and a pair of jeans,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because this looks... It looks like I’m trying too hard.”

“No, it looks like you put on a nice outfit to please me.”

She turned to face him, her brow furrowed. “Which is part of the problem. If I had to do this to please you, we both know that I would tell you to please yourself.”

He laughed, the moment so classically Anna, so familiar, it was at odds with the other feelings that were buzzing through his blood. With how soft she felt beneath his touch. With just how much she was affecting him in this figure-hugging dress.

“I have no doubt you would.”

They walked up the steps that led into the large white restaurant, and he opened the door, holding it for her. She looked at him like he’d just caught fire. He stared her down, and then she looked away from him, walking through the door.

He moved up next to her once they were inside. “You’re going to have to seem a little more at ease with this change in our relationship.”

“You’re being weird.”

“I’m not being weird. I’m treating you like a lady.”

“What have you been treating me like for the past fifteen years?” she asked.

“A...bro.”

She snorted, shaking her head and walking toward the front of the house where Ellie Matthews was standing, waiting for guests. “I believe we have a reservation,” Anna said.

He let out a long-suffering sigh. “Yes,” he confirmed. “Under my name.”

Ellie’s eyebrow shot upward. “Yes. You do.”

“Under Chase McCormack and Anna Brown,” Chase clarified.

“I know,” she said.

Ellie needed to work on her people skills. “It was difficult for me to tell, since you look so surprised,” Chase said.

“Well, I knew you were reserving the table for the two of you, but I didn’t realize you were...reserving the table for the two of you.” She was looking at Anna’s dress, her expression meaningful.

“Well, I was,” he said. “Did. So, is the table ready?”

She looked around the half-full dining area. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we can seat you now.”

Ellie walked them over to one of the tables by a side window that looked out over the Skokomish River where it fed into the ocean. The sun was dipping low over the water, the rays sparkling off the still surface of the slow-moving river. There were people milling along the wooden boardwalk that was bordered by docks on one side and storefronts on the other, before being split by the highway and starting again, leading down to the beach.

He looked away from the scenery, back at Anna. They had shared countless meals together, but this was different. Normally, they didn’t sit across from each other at a tiny table complete with a freaking candle in the middle. Mood lighting.

“Your server will be with you shortly,” Ellie said as she walked away, leaving them there with menus and each other.

“I want a burger,” Anna said, not looking at the menu at all.

“You could get something fancier.”

“I’ll get it with a cheese I can’t pronounce.”

“I’m getting salmon.”

“Am I paying?” she asked, an impish smile playing around the corners of her lips. “Because if so, you better be putting out at the end of this.”

Her words were like a punch in the gut. And he did his best to ignore them. He swallowed hard. “No, I’m paying.”

“I’ll pay you back after. You’re doing me a favor.”

“The favor’s mutual. I want to go to the fund-raiser. It’s important to me.”

“You still aren’t buying my dinner.”

“I’m not taking your money.”

“Then I’m going to overpay for rent on the shop next month,” she said, her tone uncompromising.

“Half of that goes to Sam.”

“Then he gets half of it. But I’m not going to let you buy my dinner.”

“You’re being stubborn.”

She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms and treating him to that hard glare of hers. “Yep.”

A few moments later the waiter came over, and Anna ordered her hamburger, and the cheeses she wanted, by pointing at the menu.

“Which cheese did you get?” he asked, attempting to move on from their earlier standoff.

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I can’t pronounce it.”

They made about ten minutes of awkward conversation while they waited for their dinner to come. Which was weird, because conversation was never awkward with Anna. It was that dress. And those shoes. And his penis. That was part of the problem. Because, suddenly, it was actually interested in his best friend.

No, it is not. A moment of checking her out does not mean that you want to...do anything with her.

Exactly. It wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t anything to get worked up about. Not at all.

When their dinner was placed in front of them, Anna attacked her sweet potato fries, probably using them as a displacement activity.

“Chase?”

Chase looked up and inwardly groaned when he saw Wendy Maxwell headed toward the table. They’d all gone to high school together. And he had, regrettably, slept with Wendy once or twice over the years after drinking too much at Ace’s.

She was hot. But what she had in looks had been deducted from her personality. Which didn’t matter when you were only having sex, but mattered later when you had to interact in public.

“Hi, Wendy,” he said, taking a bite of his salmon.

Anna had gone very still across from him; she wasn’t even eating her fries anymore.

“Are you... Are you on a date?” Wendy asked, tilting her head to the side, her expression incredulous.

Wendy wasn’t very smart in addition to being not very nice. A really bad combination.

“Yes,” he said, “I am.”

“With Anna?”

“Yeah,” Anna said, looking up. “The person sitting across from him. Like you do on a date.”

“I’m just surprised.”

He could see color mounting in Anna’s cheeks, could see her losing her hold on her temper.

“Are you here by yourself?” Anna asked.

Wendy laughed, the sound like broken crystal being pushed beneath his skin. “No. Of course not. We’re having a girls’ night out.” She eyed Chase. “Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m going home with the girls.”

Suddenly, Anna was standing, and he was a little bit afraid she was about to deck Wendy. Who deserved it. But he didn’t really want to be at the center of a girl fight in the middle of Beaches.

That only worked in fantasies. Less so in real life.

But it wasn’t Wendy whom Anna moved toward.

She took two steps, came to a stop in front of Chase and then leaned forward, grabbing hold of the back of his chair and resting her knee next to his thigh. Then she pressed her hand to his cheek and took a deep breath, making determined eye contact with him just before she let her lids flutter closed. Just before she closed the distance between them and kissed him.

Four

She was kissing Chase McCormack. Beyond that, she had no idea what the flying F-bomb she was doing. If there was another person in the room, she didn’t see them. If there was a reason she’d started this, she didn’t remember it.

There was nothing. Nothing more than the hot press of Chase’s lips against hers. Nothing more than still, leashed power beneath her touch. She could feel his tension, could feel his strength frozen beneath her.

It was...intoxicating. Empowering.

So damn hot.

Like she was about to melt the soles of her shoes hot. About to come without his hands ever touching her body hot.

And that was unheard-of for her.

She’d kissed a couple of guys, and slept with one, and orgasm had never been in the cards. When it came to climaxes, she was her own hero. But damn if Chase wasn’t about to be her hero in under thirty seconds, and with nothing more than a little dry lip-to-lip contact.

Except it didn’t stay dry.

Suddenly, he reached up, curling his fingers around the back of her head, angling his own and kissing her hard, deep. With tongue.

She whimpered, the leg that was supporting her body melting, only the firm hold he had on her face, and the support of his chair, keeping her from sliding onto the ground.

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