Page 44 of Tight Spot

The only reason I hadn’t been at work already was because Dawson told me he had a delivery scheduled for me and asked if I could be home to receive it.

I’d expected to have to sign for a box, not open the door to a woman who called herself Josephine and pushed that garment rack straight into my living room. She had no hesitation before she scanned me up and down, inspecting me, and spent the next hour having me try on a dozen dresses, even more shoes, and then after we declared the beach-blue dress I was currently wearing “the one,” spent more time sticking pins in it. She ran out to her car, hauled in a small sewing machine, and by the time I had to leave to open my store, Josephine had not only secured me such a gorgeous dress, she’d altered it and steamed it to perfection.

Thin, silky straps with a draped low-cut front. The tops of my rounded breasts showed, along with more than a mere hint of cleavage before it tucked in at my waist, made me look two sizes smaller which I appreciated on my size eight frame due to boning I could feel but was invisible through the thin, satiny fabric. It clung to my hips and then fell to the floor, leaving a whisper of a small train at the back even while I was in the three-inch open-toed gold shoes.

The back? Completely bare. It scooped down to just above my backside leaving me unable to wear a bra or underwear under normal circumstances but even with that, Josephine proved she was a miracle worker.

She’d provided me an open back corset type top that was one-piece, a thong at my butt, thin enough that somehow, even with the fabric of the dress, not a single line of it was visible when I swished and swayed in front of the mirror.

“I’m surprised he’s not coming to get you,” Meredith said.

“It’s not really adatedate.” I was convincing her as much as me. After the other night, a night I couldn’t stop thinking of, not to mention the fact he’d taken one of my books to see what kind of sex scenes I liked, I needed to continually remind myself that Dawson was only helping me out for his own reasons.

It was obvious we had chemistry, but that was as far as I would let my mind go.

“Besides, we have to drive downtown and he’s on the way. I don’t mind.”

“Hmmm.” She tapped her lips with her neon pink painted fingernails. “And do you have a bag packed?”

I held up my gold clutch. “Yes.”

She rolled her eyes and shoved off the bed. “Such a novice. Man like that is gonna spend the night seeing you in what you’re wearing, there’s no way you’re coming home tonight, Hails.”

As she spoke, Meredith helped herself into my closet. From inside, she continued, “If things are going the way I expect they are and with the little you’ve already told me, you’re going to at least need comfortable clothes and shoes to wear home in the morning.”

To prove her point, she walked out of my closet with a pair of slip-on sandals, a lightweight sweatshirt and cutoff sweat shorts. The sweatshirt was so old, the screen print on it was faded, but the fact she’d grabbed me a top that said, “I’ll ride that cowboy,” above Ripp’s face—a character from the showYellowstone—made me roll my eyes.

“Can you find me anything cuter?” Those shorts were what I wore to clean my house in.

Meredith smirked at me. “So picky.”

“Well, if I am spending the night with a guy, I don’t want to leave his house looking like some kind of scrub, do I?”

“You have a point. Grab your face wash and bathroom things. I’ll find something cute, but it won’t matter. After he catches sight of you in that dress and those shoes, he’s never gonna think of you in anything else, unless it’s thinking of you in nothing at all.”

She disappeared back into my closet.

I vanished into the bathroom and tried not to have a panic attack.

If she was right…could I finally be counting down the hours until I was no longer a virgin?

* * *

The twenty-minute drive from my house to Dawson’s should have given me all the time I needed to prepare to see him. I was doing pretty good until I reached his gated entrance neighborhood and was allowed entrance by the security guard manning the gate. The last half mile, I fell apart. By the time I pulled up his driveway, my hands were sweating, my heart was racing so fast there was no amount of deep breaths that could calm me down, and I was pretty certain that as soon as I stepped out of my car, I’d face-plant onto the cement from my trembling, quaking knees.

Nerves were a bitch, and I was experiencing the worst of them.

Worse, I hadn’t taken the time, not even a second, to consider that if Dawson went to all that effort to deck me out in a designer dress, he would take the same amount of time for himself.

I shoved my car into park facing his four-car garage, his large, double door and curved wooden front doors were to my left. It was still light enough out, but the sun was setting behind Dawson’s house, giving the white-painted brick and black-lined windows and shutters an ethereal glow from the shadows and fading light of the sun behind the house.

The front door opened.

My heart jumped straight into my throat. I tried swallowing, but I couldn’t over the growing ball of nerves and instead of smiling at Dawson as he appeared, I choked.

I bent over in my car and hacked up a lung.

Damn it. Damn it damn it. That was how I was going to die. Choking on my own spit in the front seat of my car. EMTs would have to pry me out.

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