Page 75 of All Dressed Up

“Will, I need to talk to yo—” Her words slammed into the couple dancing in front of her.

*

“Rachel.” Will pulled out of Amber’s embrace.

Shit. This must look bad. He raked his hand through his hair. Of course, it did. Whatever would possess him to put his arms around Amber and risk the woman he loved walking in and misreading the situation? He moved over to Rachel still standing in the doorway with a bright pink bouquet in her arms. “You look beautiful today. Can I take those?” he offered.

“No” was all she said.

He shoved his hands in his pants pockets. “Rach, we were just dancing.”

“I can see that. Please, by all means, don’t let me interrupt you.”

“You weren’t. I was just helping Amber...” His sentence trailed. How was he going to explain this? “It’s funny really...”

“I wanted to see if I could dance in the dress.” Amber picked up his explanation where he pathetically left off. “I wasn’t convinced that I’d be able to do it,” she said. “There’s a lot of material back there.”

“It didn’t look like that was going to be a problem,” Rachel said flatly.

Amber gaze moved from Rachel to Will. “Um...” She hiked up the dress. “...I’m just going to go into the other room and change.”

Will took a deep breath. “It’s not what you think,” he said to Rachel after Amber closed the door.

“I don’t care what you do or whom you do it with. I was just coming up to tell you I’m taking this afternoon off. Jesse will close the shop.” Rachel stormed out of the room.

Oh, no you don’t.Will followed her out and down the stairs, back into Buttermilk Blooms. That’s not how today was going to end. He wasn’t going to let her leave thinking there was more to what she saw. “Rachel, hold up. This is all a misunderstanding. I was waiting foryouto get back.”

Rachel stopped suddenly in the middle of the floor, spinning around. “Yeah, right. Most men don’t wait for a woman in another one’s arms!”

He cracked a smile. Okay, true, but she was being dramatic. It wasn’t like anything was going on between him and Amber. “It was an innocent dance.”

Her intense glare burned through him. She was royally ticked. “I just thought after the other night...” she finally started.

“You thought what?” he asked.

Her eyes finally met his for a split second, but she looked away. “That we should probably talk.”

He took a few steps, closing the space between them. “So, let’s talk.”

“I don’t think we need to anymore.”

Disappointment shot through him. She did regret their sleeping together. Was this her way of admitting to him Saturday night wasn’t that big of a deal? He laced his fingers, giving his knuckles a frustrated crack. Well, if it was, she was going to have to be a little clearer. He straightened out his back, preparing for the hard-hitting truth. “Rachel, I think we should get it all out in the open.”

She nodded to the ceiling. “Did Amber tell you where she got the dress?”

“Yeah, in the trunk.” He really didn’t want to talk about Amber or her wedding dress. “So what?”

“So what?” Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t think it means something?”

“Why should it?” What was the big deal? “It has nothing to do with me.”

“She found it the night of your first date.” She sighed. “Mere minutes before, in fact.”

“I know,” he admitted.

“You do?”

“She filled me in.”

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