3
“SO WHAT YOU and I need to do,” Patricia said as she pulled Jessica through her front door a week later, “is find you another man to have a wild fling with.”
As she was dragged toward Patricia’s bedroom, Jessica tried to protest. “I don’t want to find another guy.”
Patricia paused to prop her hands on her hips like a drill sergeant. “You want to do all the things on The List, don’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“There’s no ‘yes, but’ about it. If you want to complete the list, you need another guy. Which is why you and I are going clubbing.”
“Clubbing?” She narrowed her gaze suspiciously. “I thought you said we were just going to hang out.”
“We are just going to hang out. At a club.”
“Do we have to?”
“Yes, we have to. If we don’t go out, you can’t meet men.” Patricia ticked off her points on her fingers as she spoke. “If you don’t meet men, you’ll never be able to do all the things on that list.” Her voice dropped to a low growl. “You’re not giving up on The List are you? Are you?”
Feeling even more like a young recruit at boot camp, Jessica snapped to attention. “Sir, no, sir!”
Patricia eyed her shrewdly for a second before cracking a smile. “That’s more like it.” She clapped her hands together. “Now we just have to find something for you to wear.”
Jessica looked down at her clothes. “I can’t wear this?”
“Um…no. You look like you’re going to an English tea party.”
“But—”
“Trust me when I tell you that where we’re going, you’ll look out of place.” With that, Patricia disappeared into her closet. A few minutes later she peered around the door. “Do you trust me?”
Uh, oh. This didn’t sound good.
Jessica hesitated, but then she thought of The List and nodded firmly. “I trust you.”
“Great!” Patricia emerged, her arms laden with clothes, the fingers of one hand clutching a pair of knee-high, black patent-leather boots. They looked like something a superhero would wear along with a bright red spandex outfit.
Jessica eyed the boots warily. “Seriously?”
“You trust me, right?” Patricia’s lips curved in a mischievous smile. “You said you did.”
“Maybe.”
“The boots go with the outfit.” Patricia tossed the boots onto the bed and began sorting through the clothes. “You’re not weird about wearing other people’s shoes, are you?”
Other people’s shoes? Maybe a little weird. Other people’s superhero boots? That was a whole ’nother bag of Skittles.
“I’m not sure we wear the same size,” she pointed out.
Patricia planted her foot on the floor beside Jessica’s. “Close enough. Besides, they’re big on me. They should be perfect on you.”
Eyeing the boots with trepidation, she murmured, “Great.”
Patricia snorted with laughter. “Here, put this on.”
She tossed a tank top at Jessica, who caught it automatically then let it dangle by the straps from her fingers. “This? You want me to wear this?” She was a good four inches taller than Patricia. “This won’t fit me.”
“Yes, it will. It’s stretchy.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
Next, she tossed Jessica a skirt. A very tiny skirt.
“No. No way.”
“You said you trusted me.”
“I lied.”
“You’ll look hot. Besides, it’s leather.”
“So?”
“Wasn’t one of the things on The List something about wearing leather?”
Yes, but Jessica chose to ignore the question. “I can’t wear this. I’ll look ridiculous.”
Patricia thrust out her hand in a I-don’t-want-to-hear-it gesture. “When was the last time you went to a club?”
“Last weekend.”
“Not the country club. An actual club.”
“College,” she admitted.
“Okay, so you haven’t been to a club in ten years—”
“Seven.”
“Whatever.” Patricia waved her hand in exasperation, then rolled her eyes, in case the hand-waving wasn’t enough. “Think about why you’re doing the things on this list. You don’t want to settle for being plain, boring ol’ Jessica Sumners anymore, right? You want to be saucy. Like the magazine. Then be Saucy.”
“Okay. Be Saucy,” she repeated resolutely as she tugged on the clothes. The tank top fit better than she would have thought. The neck draped loosely, skimming the tops of her breasts. The hem just reached the low-slung skirt, teasing but not revealing.
She picked up one of the boots and studied it speculatively. “With a miniskirt? Really?”
“You’ll look hot.”
Still doubtful, but determined to be saucy, she tugged on the boots before standing and looking down at her outfit. The skirt was a good ten inches shorter than anything she’d ever worn. The tank top exposed glimpses of her midriff every time she moved. And the boots…Well, let’s just say, if her mother ever saw her wearing them, she’d faint dead away into her martini glass.
Patricia sighed. “Alex would be on his knees begging if he could see you now.”
“That would be nice,” she said with a chuckle.
Patricia came to stand beside her. Shoulder to shoulder, they stared at their reflections in the mirror.
“Well, forget about Alex,” Patricia said. “You look so good you’ll have to pry men off you with a paint scraper! And I say, we don’t leave that club alone. We’ll definitely find you the perfect guy for your fling.”
Despite Patricia’s bravado, Jessica had her doubts. What she wanted was someone who would:
A. Drop everything to have a wild passionate fling with her.
B. Want her so passionately, he forgot everything but her. And,
C. Make her forget all about Alex.
Yep, that about summed it up. In other words, she wanted a freakin’ miracle. She didn’t need superhero boots, she needed Dorothy’s red shoes.
ALEX HAD NEVER BEEN one to find redemption at the bottom of a bottle. Then again—he mused as he tipped the longneck back—he’d never really looked for it there.
He emptied the beer then set it down on the faux wood tabletop. The condensation and the slight tilt of the uneven table legs pulled the bottle closer to the edge, but his brother, Tomas, grabbed it before it could crash to the floor.
The table—like the rest of the decor—was a little too slick for his taste. Music blasted from the bar’s sound system and a mile-long row of bottles lined the mirrored wall on the other side of the gleaming, polished bar. This wasn’t a real bar, it was bar lite. Purified for the yuppies. But Tomas was buying and it was Alex’s first night out since he’d arrived back in town. Who was he to complain?
“What do you think?” Tomas gestured at the room with his beer.
Alex