I lean forward and touch his hand. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Being so supportive.” I raise a shoulder and try to explain, “When I went to your shop, I needed a distraction. My mom isn’t so keen on what I write, so it’s good for my heart to know that I have a friend who thinks it’s cool enough to help me get through my writer’s block.”
That grin that I’ve come to adore graces his face.
“You know, you can totally pay me back by going home, wearing only your underwear the entire drive.”
I laugh at his joke, and yet my mind is reeling. The words to a new scene are fresh in my head, and my literary hero is more real than I ever imagined.
Chapter Eight
“Oh, this would look so cute on you,” Charisse says as she holds up a dress.
She asked me to join her on her lunch break to run to her favorite boutique that’s having a flash sale.
She’s right; it is nice, but I can’t think of an occasion where I’d actually wear it. It’s a glittery-gold shift dress with long sleeves, a low neckline, and short hemline.
“It’s very pretty, but I like casual slip-on dresses that can be dressed up or down, depending on what kind of shoes I slide on with it. This is definitely something you’d wear on a hot date … with a billionaire sexual dominant.”
She gives me a deadpan stare. “That’s where your mind goes?”
I laugh as I hold it up to her. “You and Melody could go out for a night on the town. I’ll watch Aubrey.”
“Nope, this is what a single girl in her twenties wears on a first date. You’re trying it on.”
Charisse takes the dress and spins me toward the mirror on the wall, holding the hanger to my neck to showcase how the dress would look on me.
The way the colors mix with the material brings out my skin tone. And I like how the flecks of gold dance under the store lighting.
When my eyes meet hers in the glass, she scrunches her nose at me. “You’re totally digging it.”
“Fine, I’ll try it on but no promises.”
We walk the clothes in our arms—the gold dress for me and a navy one for her—to the dressing rooms in the back, each taking a stall and placing the hanger on the knob on the wall.
I’m slipping out of my yoga pants as she calls over, “How many words did you get in? Are you making the end-of-the-week deadline that Wendy gave you?”
While I’m nowhere near ready to submit a story to my agent, I am feeling better. Last night, I came home and wrote the most intense love scene, where my hero laid the heroine down on a white sheet, painted her naked body from head to toe like she was a living canvas, and then ravaged her with passion. It was hot, sweet, angsty, and damn … it left me turned the hell on.
I might not know how my characters got to that moment, but at least now, I know where they need to get to.
“Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you! Remember how my neighbor, Jake, suggested making Tanner an artist? One of his friends runs this place where couples paint each other, and he took me there last night, so I could experience it firsthand. I finally have my character, and it all makes sense that he was such an enigma because he’s a moody artist.”
When she doesn’t respond, I pause and listen to see if she’s still in the dressing stall next to me.
“You okay in there?” I ask.
There’s some slight ruffling, and then the curtain to my dressing room is pushed open, making me cover my near-naked body with the gold dress. Charisse, on the other hand, is standing there like a madwoman in the navy-blue dress with a stunned expression and her mouth agape.
“You went body-painting with Jake?” she exclaims with wide eyes. “And you’re just telling me this now?”
I roll my eyes and go back to taking my dress off the hanger. “It was no big deal. His friend owns the place.”
“Yeah, but did he actually paint you?”
I try to fight the grin that instantly comes back from the memory because I know she’ll read more into it than it was. Shoot, even I started to read more into it, but how we stand was made very clear in the way he said good-bye at his door, like we had just happened to enter the building at the same time and didn’t just have our hands all over each other.
I close the curtain with a huff. “Yes, I let him paint me but only after I painted him.”
“And …” she says, her voice rising in anticipation.
“And what?” I step into the gold dress and slide my arms through the sleeves. “It was fun. You and Melody should definitely try it. I’ll watch Aubrey for you.”
“Because that’s a place where couples go.”
I slide the curtain open and give her my back to zip me up. “No, it’s where people of all relationships go to experience something new.”
When I turn toward her, she gives me her back, so I can zip her. “Great. You and I can go then.”
“I’m not painting you.”
With her dress fastened, she spins around with a grin. “Thank you for proving my point. So, is there something going on between you two?” Her shoulders shimmy back and forth as the grin grows on her face.
“You know nothing’s going on between Jake and me. That’s like Neighboring 101. The dos and don’ts of living next to each other. He was just helping since he knew I was stuck.”
“Okay, well, that’s actually good because we told Tommy you wanted to go on a date with him.”
Now, it’s my turn to look like a madwoman. “Charisse! You didn’t!”
She grabs my shoulders and pushes me toward the large three-paned mirror at the end of the room,
