“I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”
“Put them on.” Monique set them on the floor.
Jamie stepped into the shoes. She wobbled a bit, but it wasn’t as bad as she thought. “I think I could manage.”
“Good. When was the last time you wore panty hose?”
Jamie tried to recall. It had been years. No doubt her parents had made her dress up to go to some formal event in high school, but she couldn’t put a date on it. “Um, I can’t really remember.”
Monique smiled. “I’ll send you home with three pairs,” she said. “In case you run the first couple putting them on. Now about your hair.”
“My hair?” She touched the long strands. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing. It’s beautiful. Curl it.”
Jamie stared blankly. “How?”
Monique was a professional. Not even by a flicker of a lash did she let on that the question was strange. “Electric curlers. The drugstore on the corner will have them.” She mentioned a brand to look for. “Don’t worry about getting fancy. Brush your hair, then start rolling it up. You’ll love the look, I promise. Do you wear makeup?”
Jamie thought about her failed efforts at the cabin. “I’m not very good at it.”
Monique pulled a small pad from a pocket in her dress. She wrote for a few minutes, then tore off the sheet. “This will get you started. You’re going to knock his socks off.”
“I hope so.”
“Trust me.”
Jamie smiled. “I do.” Monique merely nodded as if this wasn’t unexpected, but for Jamie it was a moment of revelation. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been willing to trust a stranger. Okay, this was shopping and not a matter of life or death, but she felt as if she’d taken a giant step on the journey to normal. She turned back to her reflection and grinned. Why had she ever thought shopping was a problem? She hadn’t even needed her gun.
Jamie stared at herself in the mirror. She looked like one of those “before” pictures in the magazines. Curlers hung to her neck. The hot edges kept touching her skin. She’d finally had to drape a towel around her shoulders to protect herself from the heat. It had taken her about a dozen tries to get all the curlers to stay in her hair, but she’d finally managed.
She glanced at the bottle of foundation, then at the streaky mess on her face. Okay, so that wasn’t going to work. At least the color had been better than the one she’d bought on her own.
She wiped her face clean with a damp washcloth and figured Zach had seen her bare skin enough to not be offended by it. She picked up a smoky gray eye shadow. The label proclaimed it to be foolproof. She wasn’t convinced.
A diagram on the back showed where to apply the shadow. She closed her right eye and squinted with her left. The sponge applicator was made for small leprechauns with short fingers. She could barely hold on to it. But she managed to get a streak of the cosmetic across her eyelid, right at the crease. It looked a little stark, so she smudged it with her finger, then opened her eye.
Amazing. She couldn’t really see the shadow, but her right eye looked bigger and mysterious.
“Cool,” she said, then repeated the procedure on the other eye. She skipped the eyeliner. It looked way too dangerous. Next came mascara. She only clumped her lashes twice, but she’d bought a lash brush, which corrected the problem. She dabbed her nose, forehead and chin with face powder, then used a neutral shade of rosewood lipstick on her mouth.
She stared at her reflection. Not fashion-model beautiful, but not a half-bad job, either. She was quite pleased with herself. Next came the stockings. She got the first pair on with no mishaps. The teddy went over the stockings. The dress slipped on easily, although she had to shimmy to reach behind herself to zip it up. She pulled and tugged until it was in place. Last she uncoiled the curlers from her hair.
She’d never done anything but trim it or pull it back in a braid, so she wasn’t sure if it would even curl. Amazingly it did. Monique had told her to bend over at her waist and brush her hair from the underside, making that smooth but leaving the rest of it alone. The advice had sounded stupid, but Jamie did as she was told.
When she tossed her head back, curls tumbled onto her shoulders and down her back. Her eyes widened as she stared at herself. She looked great. She looked better than great. She looked fabulous.
Curls were everywhere. The slight disarray made her look sexy. The tight-fitting dress and abundance of curves added to the image.
Jamie fluffed her bangs, then grabbed the bottle of hair spray. She spritzed her curls in place, then slipped into her shoes. Where an inept thirty-year-old tomboy had been, stood a stunning, elegant woman. If Monique had been there, Jamie would have hugged her close and probably broken down in tears.
“Zach,” she said through the door, then had to clear her throat because her voice had gone all husky. She tried again. “Zach, I’m ready.”
She heard the rustling of plastic.
“Give me a second.”
Nerves fluttered in her stomach. She couldn’t believe what they were doing. When she’d come out of the dressing room prepared to buy the dress, Zach hadn’t been around. He’d shown up a few minutes later with a plastic garment bag over one shoulder. He’d told her if she was willing to get all dressed up for him, he was willing to do the same for her.
“Okay, come on out,” he said.
She put her hand on the doorknob, then paused as she fought a wave of shyness. She’d never gone to all this trouble with her appearance before. What if-?
Forget the “what ifs,” she told herself firmly. Just enjoy the moment. With that, she opened the door and stepped into the bedroom.
The sun had barely set. She could see the faint colors of the sky through the sheers at the window. Zach had already put on the lamps, so the room was flooded with light.
“Jamie, I got you-” he said, and turned toward her. He held a gold box in his hands.
But it wasn’t the present that captured her attention. It was the stunned silence and the look on his face. His eyes widened in shock, and his mouth dropped open, just like in the movies. He stared at her as if he’d never seen her before. As if he really liked what he was seeing this time.
“You’re incredible,” he said as his gaze dropped to her feet, then made a leisurely journey back to her face. “I always knew you were beautiful, but this-” He motioned to her dress, then her legs.
“You like it?”
His eyes got smoky with desire. “I like it a lot.”
She did a little looking of her own. He’d rented a black tux with a plain white shirt. His cummerbund emphasized his trim waist, while the cut of his jacket made him look even broader across the shoulders.
“You look great, too,” she said.
“Yeah?” He grinned. “Here’s the first surprise.”
He opened the top of the gold box and pulled out a delicate corsage. Baby red roses formed an elongated diamond pattern. He slipped the flowers over her hand and settled them on her wrist. Then he leaned forward and kissed her cheek.
“What are these for?” she asked, equally touched and confused by the gift.
“For all those proms and dances you never went to. Tonight is going to make up for them.”
“I don’t understand. I really don’t mind that I missed them.” The lie was automatic. Zach knew her too well to believe it.
“Of course you mind. But you’re about to go to your first dance.”
The tightness in her chest made it hard to breathe. Love filled her, warming her from the inside out. This was the reason she cared for this man. He was so in tune with her-he knew what she was thinking almost before she did. He understood about the hurts of the past and cared enough to do something about them.
A confession of her feelings hovered on the tip of her tongue, but she held it back. She didn’t want to tell him before he was ready. For a long time, she thought he might never want to hear a declaration from her. But after this, she was starting to hope.