Page 62 of I Need You Tonight
I grinned until my face hurt. “And buying sexy lingerie is adventurous?” Okay, maybe the one she had picked out for me was on the adventurous side.
She shook her head. “No, but taking a chance on Mason is. What do you have to lose? You’ve only got a few more weeks left with the band before you’ll be heading home. Live life. You never know when it will be your last chance.” A brief look of pain flashed over her face, but it vanished in a heartbeat. “My sister and parents taught me that the night they died.”
My heart squeezed in on itself, knowing the pain of losing a parent. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“It’s okay. It happened almost five years ago. I’m better now.”
We grabbed a few more items to try on and started heading for the fitting rooms, browsing as we went.
“It doesn’t matter if I’m in love with Mason or not,” I said. “He doesn’t fit the list of what makes a perfect husband.”
“There’s a list?”
I explained the purpose of the list and the criteria I had painstakingly come up with. “And he can’t have any piercings or tattoos,” I added at the end, although the part about tattoos might have come out more mumbled than clearly enunciated.
Callie laughed. “You do realize a lot of professional men have tattoos these days, so you’ve just reduced your list of possibilities by a large amount?”
I guess she was right about that. For all I knew, my last two dates had been heavily tattooed under their dress shirts.
“And based on your criteria, Jared would fail as perfect-husband material, but I can tell you that he’s an amazing husband and father. I wouldn’t change a single thing about him.”
She did have a point there too.
While we were searching through a rack of teddies, Callie’s phone pinged in her hand. “Jared,” she said, smiling softly, reading the text. “He and Mason will meet us in Central Park in an hour for lunch.”
The saleswoman unlocked the fitting rooms. I stepped into mine and changed into the baby doll Callie had found for me. It was sexy as sin and made me look equally sexy. But when on earth would I get a chance to wear it?
A persistent voice in the back of my head told me I deserved something feminine and pretty, especially after spending so much time on the bus with a bunch of men. Not that any of said men would ever see it.
I tried on the other outfits, but none appealed to me the same way the first one had.
Once I was finished changing back into my jeans and sweater, I came out of my room at the same moment Callie stepped out of hers. “So?” she asked.
“I’m getting this one.” I lifted up the raspberry baby-doll outfit.
The way Callie’s face lit up, you’d have thought I had announced that Jared was taking the next year off from touring. “It’s perfect. I guarantee you won’t regret it.”
I just hoped she was right.
