Getting His Way: Sapphire Falls Book Seven (7 page)

Bryan pulled it out of her reach. “Hang on. I didn’t say I wasn’t interested.” Though
interested
was maybe not the right word to describe how he felt about seeing Cora Munson in a teddy. Cora was a lovely person. He had always liked her a lot. Cora was also eighty-six and used a walker. But, hey, if Cora wanted to wear a teddy, she should wear a teddy. Who was he to say she shouldn’t?

“Well, you signed up really late. This is the only thing we have left that we need someone for.” Tess almost succeeded in sounding apologetic about that.

But she didn’t
quite
get there.

“You’re trying to run me off,” he accused.

“What? No. Don’t be silly.” She reached for the papers, and he pulled them away again, causing her to lean over him slightly.

“Tess,” he said softly, and with definite warning in his tone. “Are you trying to get me to quit this committee?”

She braced her hand on the arm of the chair and looked him directly in the eye. “Yes.”

“Why?” Bryan was very proud of himself for not letting his gaze drop below her chin. Because her cleavage was
magnificent
. Thankfully, his peripheral vision worked perfectly.

“Because you’re only doing it to spend time with me.”

He nodded. “And do you know why
that
is?”

“Because you think you want to be my boyfriend.” She said it with a touch of annoyance.

That almost made him smile. He simply could not wrap his brain around the fact that Tessa Sheridan was annoyed by the idea of him being her boyfriend.

“I’m doing it because I’m
going to
convince you to be my girlfriend. If it’s not this, it will be some other way.”

“So me saying no doesn’t matter?” she asked.

“If I thought you meant it, it would,” he told her honestly.

She frowned at him. But she didn’t deny it. Instead, she straightened. “Are you ready?”

Bryan wasn’t so sure as he read the next words on the page. “Ruby Patterson” and “see-through nightie” should not be put in the same sentence. “Of course,” he told her. “I’m always up for a challenge. You should really start believing that.”

“Okay, ladies!” Tessa called instead of replying.

Bryan chuckled and sat back in his chair.

The first woman to walk onto the stage was Ruby. Ruby was probably sixty-six or seven, tall and thin, with bright white hair. She was wearing blue jeans and a Come Again Bar T-shirt.

“Hey, Ruby,” Bryan said with a grin as she came to the middle of the stage and put a hand on a hip. He glanced down at the paper in his hand. “Where’s your sheer pink nightie with the black bra and pantie set underneath?”

Stella Carson laughed from the side of the stage. “This is just rehearsal. You’re gonna have to be here for the show if you want to see the goods!” she called out.

Bryan relaxed. So they weren’t modeling the lingerie today. Got it. He nodded. “Sounds like I’ve got a front-row seat.”

Ruby gave him a wink. “Isn’t it nice that you’re special to Tess?”

Bryan looked up at Tess. She stubbornly refused to take her eyes off the stage.

“I can honestly say that being special to Tess makes me feel very…nice,” he said, a million other words than
nice
going through his mind. All of which would scandalize these nice ladies.

Okay, seventy percent of these ladies.

But he couldn’t say the things he was thinking to them, or to Tess.

“Okay, Dottie, you’re up!” Tess called, ignoring both Bryan and Ruby.

Dottie owned and did most of the cooking at Dottie’s Diner on Main. She was a lifelong Sapphire Falls resident and, though a bit gruff, was as sweet as her famous chocolate pie.

Dottie strutted to the middle of the gazebo and executed a one-eighty as Bryan read from the script. “Dottie is showing off her sass with this black and white polka dotted—” Bryan broke off and looked up. “
Dottie
is wearing polka dots?” he asked with a grin.

“Who better?” Dot asked.

“You got me there,” he agreed.

“Susan!” Tess hollered. “Your turn.”

Dottie moved off, and Susan Leonard made her way to center stage. But unlike Ruby and Dottie, Susan didn’t look like she was having fun with this.

She actually looked nervous.

Bryan looked down and read out loud, “Susan shows her stuff in this baby-blue ruffled camisole with French-cut panties.”

He saw Susan blush bright red and her shoulders slump.

“Susan proves that—”

Bryan broke off when Susan took a deep breath and blew it out, then another, and another. It looked like she was practicing Lamaze breathing.

“Uh, Tess?” he asked. Susan didn’t look so good.

“Yeah?”

He glanced up and saw that Tessa was watching Susan as well and looked concerned.

“I don’t—”

Suddenly Susan bolted off the stage.

Bryan watched where she’d disappeared with wide eyes.

Then he heard it. They
all
heard it. The distinct sound of someone throwing up.

“Oh, my God.” Tessa hurried off in that direction. “Just keep going,” she tossed over her shoulder to him.

Sure. Okay.

Bryan cleared his throat. “All right, that puts Cora up next.”

Cora came shuffling onto the stage. And the slow, almost hesitant steps didn’t seem to be because of her walker. She actually looked a little miserable.

Bryan gave her a big smile. “So you’re going to rock the leopard print, huh, Cora?”

She gave a big sigh. “What do you think?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m eighty-six, boy. Do you know how longs it’s been since I rocked anything?”

Bryan gave her a smile. “Oh, come on, Cora, rocking is all in the attitude.”

“My
attitude
is that eighty-six-year-old women shouldn’t wear leopard prints.”

Okay, so Cora wasn’t excited about this. She wasn’t nervous like Susan. Cora just seemed depressed about the whole thing. It was one thing to not want to do something. That was fine. But it was something else to think you
shouldn’t
do something.

Bryan pushed up from the chair and walked the short distance to the front of the stage. “Okay, ladies, gather ’round,” he said loudly.

All nine women came forward and formed a half circle in front of him.

“Here’s the deal,” he said. “Every single one of you should be wearing whatever you want to,” he told them. “You should all feel
good
up here. And far be it from me to talk anyone
out
of wearing lingerie—”

“Oh, I’m guessing you’ve talked lots of women out of their lingerie,” Linda Kelson said.

The women all laughed.

“And out of lots of other things,” Stella added.

Bryan felt his smile stretch wide. “Yeah, yeah, okay. Let me rephrase. Far be it from me to keep a woman from wearing lingerie, at least for a short period.”

They all loved that and laughed again.

“But,” he went on. “A woman’s beauty and sexiness isn’t about what she’s wearing.” “It’s about what she’s
not
wearing,” Stella said.

Bryan shook his head, though he was still grinning. What had he gotten into here? “The most beautiful thing a woman can wear is
happiness
,” he said. “Women are beautiful when they’re playing with their dogs, holding their children, laughing with their friends, dancing, cooking, yelling at a football game, reading a good book—whatever it is that gives them that soft look and that glow of happiness.”

Bryan looked around at the group, startled to find nine pairs of eyes staring at him. A few mouths were even open.

“So,” he went on, carefully. “If Ruby feels good in her lingerie, she’ll be beautiful in it. But if Cora doesn’t want to wear the leopard print, we need to find something she
will
feel good in. But, Cora, it’s not about your age or anything else. You can rock whatever you choose to wear, I promise.”

Cora seemed to be thinking about that. “The color green makes me happy.”

Bryan nodded. “Then you should definitely wear green.”

“I want it to cover my ass,” Cora added.

Bryan snorted. “Whatever you want.”

“And I should bring my cat,” Cora said. “She definitely makes me happy.”

Bryan nodded. “I think—”

“Oh! I’ll bring Pudding,” Linda said.

“Pudding?” Bryan asked.

“My dog. She’s so sweet. I could put
her
in a leopard print!”

They all laughed.

“That’s a fun idea,” Stella agreed. “I could make a little nightie for Cher that matches mine.”

“Cher?” Bryan asked.

“My black lab,” Stella told him.

Of course Cher was her black lab. Bryan got the inkling he was losing control. Then again, he
had
wanted to help the women relax and have fun with this.

“I like my polka dots,” Dottie said. “But it
would
be funny to put Pepper in polka dots too. I’ll bet I could find a polka dotted sock or something.”

“A sock,” Bryan repeated. “Because Pepper is a…”

“Ferret,” Dottie said. “I think a ferret would look pretty funny in a nightie.”

Right. But a black lab would look totally normal in one.

“Well, I don’t have a pet, but if we’re talking about ways to make this happy for me, I’ll be wearing long johns and carrying a book and a cup of tea,” Mary Simpson said.

“Oh for Heaven’s sake!”

Everyone turned to find Tessa standing stage right.

“Tess—” Bryan started. She must have walked in late and didn’t know what was really going on here. A pet lingerie show would be… Yeah, okay, that was maybe a bad idea.

“You all know this isn’t really happening,” she said to the women. “No need to get all worked up.”

“But a pet fashion show, Tess,” Stella said. “That would be a lot of fun.”

Tessa took a deep breath. “Okay, we can think about that for next year. But we’ve already got everything set up for this one.”

Bryan tried to intervene. “I was just helping the women—”

“I know what you were doing,” Tess said, looking at him with a combination of exasperation and, if he wasn’t mistaken, affection. It was a tiny bit, but he was pretty sure it was there.

“You ladies can go. Thanks anyway,” Tess told them.

Bryan frowned as the women dispersed, still talking about pets in pajamas. “We weren’t finished.”

Tess crossed to the edge of the stage and jumped to the floor. “There’s not going to be a lingerie show, Bryan. I talked the ladies into playing along for this. They got caught up—in you, big shock—and kind of forgot.”

He wasn’t sure what to say to that. Actually, he wasn’t sure he should say anything to that. “There’s no show? But I thought you did this every year.”

“There’s going to be a show, just not a
lingerie
show.”

Ah, he suddenly got it. “You were trying to scare me off.”

“Yep.”

She was clearly unapologetic, and that almost made Bryan smile. He wasn’t used to Tessa being anything but completely accommodating.

Well, they’d already established that she’d been trying to get him to quit, but the rest didn’t make sense. “The show is off? Because Susan got sick and Cora doesn’t want to do it? I really think I talked them into it.”

“Of course you did,” she said, crossing to his chair where he’d left the script.

“What’s going on?” He made his way to where she was standing.

She handed him his crutch. “We’re having a fashion show, but it’s summer wear—shorts, tees, summer dresses. All the women are in it and more than happy about it.”

He narrowed his eyes even as he felt like smiling. He liked Tessa. She was funny and maybe just a bit sassy. He didn’t know she could be sassy.

The other night when she’d stood up on the stool at the Come Again and announced to the town that he wasn’t in charge of her love life, and then in his office when she’d faced him about the whole situation and turned down his boyfriend offer, it had been the first time he’d really ever seen Tessa raise her voice or be spunky. And he’d liked it. A lot.

He loved her sweetness. He’d been counting on that sweetness. But he really liked this spark too. He dated sassy women. He liked them and was very attracted to that type of confidence.

Of course, that had been when he was a pretty confident himself. Cocky even. For a guy like him, a woman needed more than a little self-confidence to not get rolled over by his own. He liked women who would tell him to shut up and fuck off when needed.

But he wasn’t that cocky guy anymore. He was confident. He was sure of himself and what he wanted and could do. But the cockiness had been knocked out of him on that mountainside. He wasn’t invincible after all. So now he liked to think of it as a softer, deeper confidence than he’d had before.

Before the accident and rehab, his confidence had come from the things he could
do
and the way he could push the people he coached to do more. Now, he’d learned that sometimes
he
needed to be pushed, and that he couldn’t
do
everything just because he wanted to. He couldn’t run a 5k now no matter how much he wanted to. He couldn’t mountain climb like he did before no matter how much he wanted to. He had most definitely gotten a lesson in humility during his hospitalization and rehab, and now his confidence came from somewhere even deeper than it had before. Because now he didn’t just know and believe in his strengths, he knew his weaknesses too.