“Oh, please.” His sister glanced back at her. “You proved how much you need one today. You were supposed to go and relax for a while and instead you made a pie. A great pie, but come on. Baking is not relaxing.”
“It is for me,” Jillian said.
Lucy sighed dramatically. “Jillian, everyone needs fun once in a while. Even the great Stone Face here, right Jesse?”
“What’s a stone face?” Brody asked.
“Never mind,” Jesse said, giving his sister a look that he gave her every time she was after something. It had never worked, but he kept trying.
“I really don’t have anything to wear,” Jillian was saying as a last-ditch attempt to make Lucy drop it.
Jesse could have told her the attempt was futile.
“Oh, this year it’s called the Black and White Ball. We’ll go shopping.” Lucy whipped back around to look meaningfully at Jesse.
He got the message and for whatever reason, he found it didn’t bother him at all to say, “So, Jillian. Want to go to the ball with me?”
Jillian kissed Mac, glared at Lucy, then shifted her gaze to Jesse again. He knew when he saw the shine in her eyes that she was going to agree, but he liked hearing her say, “I’d love to.”
“Excellent,” Lucy announced and immediately launched into plans for shopping, getting Jillian’s hair and nails done, and while his sister talked, Jesse watched Jillian—the excitement in her eyes, the smile curving her mouth, the way her shirt clung to her breasts—and he fervently wished his sister was anywhere else.
* * *
The following day was Jillian’s day off and true to her word, Lucy showed up at the apartment to pick up her and Mac. They dropped the kids off at the TCC day care for a few hours and hit the Courtyard shops. Most of the stores were no more than booths sectioned off inside a huge red barn that used to be part of a working ranch. But the land was sold, and some enterprising soul had turned the barn and several outbuildings into an eclectic shopping center.
Jillian normally guarded her bank account like a miser. But going to this black-tie gala, she couldn’t exactly attend in jeans, so she was determined to treat herself. And the one dressy outfit she had with her had been fine for Will’s memorial, but would be completely out of place at a gala. How long had it been since she had been on an actual date? Not that this was a date, really. Jesse was just doing his sister a favor and Jillian wasn’t reading anything into it at all, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t look great, did it?
“It’s a black-and-white ball this year,” Lucy reminded her as they entered the boutique. “So no red dresses, which is a damn shame if you ask me, because you probably look great in red.”
The shop was in one of the outbuildings near the barn itself and it was pretty without being intimidating. Beautiful clothes hung in groups of color and style. The walls were a pale yellow and there were baskets of live plants and vases of flowers scattered throughout the room.
“My Valkyrie uniform was red,” Jillian told her, “so trust me when I say I’m okay with going for black or white.”
Lucy shook her head and her layered brown hair swung around her face with the motion. “I really want to see that uniform. But for now… Ooh. Look at that.”
Jillian followed in Lucy’s wake and she felt both eyebrows arch at first sight of the dress. “I don’t know,” she said warily. “There’s not a lot of fabric there.”
Lucy sighed dramatically. “What are you, eighty? You’ve got a great figure, why not flaunt it? Knock Jesse off his feet.”
Jillian eyed her friend suspiciously. “That’s not what this is about.”
“No, of course not,” her friend cooed, lifting the hanger off the rack to further admire the really tiny dress. “But it couldn’t hurt to make his eyeballs pop out, could it?”
Jillian thought about that for a second and if she was going to be honest with herself, she had to admit that it would be fun to make Jesse’s jaw drop when he saw her. So far, he’d only seen her in jeans, with Mac or with the other kids at the day care.
“You could at least try it on after all the trouble I went to find it,” Lucy urged, waving the dress back and forth as if trying to hypnotize her friend into submission.
Jillian laughed. “It’s the first store we’ve been to and the first dress you saw.”
“Oh, don’t be logical.” Lucy pushed the dress into Jillian’s hands. “Just try it on while I look for more.”
Sighing a little at the futility of actually winning an argument with her friend, Jillian carried the dress to the counter and a woman there opened a changing room for her. In a few minutes, she was wearing what little fabric there was and wondering if she could be arrested.