Page 19 of This Time Around (The Can’t Have Hearts Club #3)

A llie stared at the little girl with the handsome man holding her hand, dimly aware she knew them both, though not quite in this context.

“Jack,” she croaked out, finding her voice at last. “Paige. It’s so good to see you two again. What brings you here?”

“School shopping!” Paige chirped. “Daddy says this is a smart place to buy stuff if you want to dress like a rich snob but not spend stupid amounts of money.”

“Those may not have been my exact words.” Jack stepped closer, looking as surprised to see her as Allie felt seeing him. Which was saying something. He nodded at the cluster of hangers gripped in her hand. “Doing some dress shopping?”

Allie looked down at the froth of dresses looped over her arm, the silky fabrics a little too bright now that she saw them with Jack standing this close. There was no point pretending she was shopping for someone else, so she shrugged like it was no big deal.

“Someone sprung a college reunion on me at the last minute, so I had to find something appropriate to wear.”

“Never figured you’d shop in a place like this.”

Allie blinked. “Like what? A high-end boutique thrift shop?”

He shrugged, and she wondered if he was baiting her. Trying to make her defensive or to imply how far the mighty had fallen.

Or maybe she was reading too much into it.

“Oh, this one’s pretty!” Paige gripped the hem of one of the dresses Allie held, a fluttery, silk chiffon Vera Wang number with a V-neck and a draped skirt. “It looks like the green part of a peacock feather.”

“It kinda does,” Allie agreed. “That’s the one I like best. I’m crossing my fingers it fits.”

Paige beamed at her. “My favorite color is green, too.”

Allie glanced at the dresses, every one of them a slightly different hue of green. Heat crept into her cheeks, and she could feel Jack’s eyes on her. “Yes, uh—they do all seem to be green, don’t they?”

“A green dress?” The teasing note in Jack’s voice made her look up at him, and she wasn’t surprised to see traces of a smirk on that obnoxiously handsome face.

Allie straightened her spine. “Yes. A green dress.”

He grinned wider. “Is that in honor of our song? The one by the Barenaked Ladies?”

“No, I just—I like this color, that’s all.”

But that wasn’t all. Jack was right. She knew the song well, the one that used to make her laugh each time it got to the part about the green dress.

The Barenaked Ladies had belted out their tune about the things they’d buy if they had a million dollars, and she and Jack used to sing along with them, twirling through the living room of their too-small apartment.

They’d substituted words like textbooks and phone bill in place of items the singer claimed he’d buy for his sweetheart in the event of a financial windfall.

Allie felt the smile starting slow in her belly and spreading over her face. She saw the corners of Jack’s mouth tug, too.

Then he stopped, a frown wiping out the smile before it even appeared.

Her memory zipped from the living room of their old apartment to the attic at her grandmother’s house. To the million dollars tucked in a trunk up there, and uncertainty of what to do about it. As Jack stared at her, she wished for the hundredth time he’d never been there when she opened that lid.

“So,” she said, brushing hair off her forehead. “I didn’t even realize they had kids’ stuff here.”

“I can wear women’s extra-small stuff now,” Paige boasted. “And size-six shoes.”

“Impressive!” Allie smiled at the little girl, who wasn’t actually that little. She came up to Allie’s shoulder, probably four-foot-seven or eight. Was that above average for a ten-year-old? “You must have inherited your dad’s height.”

The second the words left her mouth, Allie wanted to kick herself. Good Lord, the girl’s mom was dead, and might have been a pro basketball player for all Allie knew.

But Paige just smiled and looked up at her dad. “Can I go check out the jeans over there?”

“Sure. Looks like the smaller sizes are on this side. Remember what we talked about, okay?”

“I know, I know ... nothing skintight.”

“Right.”

Paige wandered toward the opposite side of the store, leaving Jack and Allie alone. Allie held the dresses aloft. “I guess I should try these on.”

“You should. For the record, the skintight rule doesn’t apply to you. In fact, I encourage it. The tighter the better.”

Allie rolled her eyes. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

“Yes, I have. I brought an umbrella. That makes me a responsible, upstanding citizen.” He held it up to show her, and Allie laughed in spite of herself.

“I stand corrected.”

She turned and headed into the dressing room, conscious of Jack’s gaze following her. Pulling the door closed behind her, she took a shaky breath and ordered herself to get it together.

The man saw you eating whipped cream from the can. Is it really a big deal if he sees you shopping in a thrift store?

Or maybe that wasn’t what bothered her. Maybe it was the fact that he’d called her out on choosing a dress in a hue that held a special memory for both of them.

She’d figured he wouldn’t remember. That it would just be her little inside joke, or a hat-tip to nostalgia.

Obviously, she’d been wrong. She’d been wrong about a lot of things.

She stripped off her red jersey-knit dress and kicked her sandals under the bench, grateful at least that she hadn’t gone shopping in old sweatpants. Her underwear wasn’t great—gray cotton, not remotely sexy—but it’s not like he was going to be seeing it.

“Hey, Allie?”

She froze at the sound of his voice so close to her ear, then covered her boobs with her forearm. “Yes?”

“You planning to show me those?”

“My boobs?”

“What?”

The dresses, of course he meant the dresses.

“Um, I wasn’t planning on it.” She yanked the first one off the hanger and pulled it on, struggling in the taffeta for a few moments before realizing she had it on backwards. She righted the dress, then reached behind her to do up the zipper.

Crap! She couldn’t reach. Since when had her arms gotten too short to do up a damn zipper? She wriggled and stretched, wishing like hell she’d made a better effort to do Pilates more regularly. She just didn’t have time and?—

“Need help with any zippers?”

“Dammit, are you spying on me?”

His laugh bounced through the small dressing room space, and Allie felt her cheeks grow hot. “It’s a solid door, Allie. Floor to ceiling, and no keyhole. No, I’m not spying on you. Paranoid much?”

She tossed her hair, not sure whether to be more flustered with herself or with him. She tried the zipper again. Dammit to hell.

“Fine,” she said, yanking open the door. “I could use help with the zipper.”

“Funny, I didn’t hear a please in there.”

“Please.” Allie sighed and turned to present her back to him.

He didn’t say anything, and she glanced in the mirror to see his eyes cast downward toward her ass.

Embarrassment bubbled in her gut, but she tried to cover.

“Yes, I’m wearing granny panties, okay? Sue me.

I haven’t had time to do laundry all week and?—”

“I wasn’t judging your underwear, Allie. Just admiring the tattoo.”

“Oh.”

“When did you get it?”

She bit her lip. “A year after college.”

His fingers grazed the small of her back, and for an instant, she thought he was touching the tip of one of the small, orange flames.

Then she realized he was reaching for the zipper.

He dragged it slowly up her spine, and Allie focused hard on keeping her stomach pulled in, wondering if her muffin top was showing over the top of her awful gray panties.

“It’s very nice. The tattoo, I mean.”

“Thank you.” His hand stayed on the zipper, even though she was pretty sure he had it all the way up. The heat of his hand made her shiver.

“What does it mean?”

“The tattoo?” She shrugged, trying to look casual as she smoothed down the front of the dress in the mirror in front of her. She didn’t look up, not wanting to see Jack’s eyes. “It doesn’t mean anything. Just a pretty, fiery design, that’s all.”

“I know you, Allie.” His voice was low in her ear, so close she could feel his breath ruffling her hair. She let her gaze stray up, and she locked eyes with him in the mirror. “You wouldn’t permanently ink something on your body if it didn’t have meaning.”

She stood frozen with her gaze locked on his, not daring to speak.

Desperate to break the spell, she turned to face him with an expression she made as blank as possible.

“Maybe I would get a meaningless tattoo. You knew the nineteen-year-old version of Allie, not the twenty-three-year-old one I was when I got the ink.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Or the thirty-six-year-old one, apparently.” He studied her for a long while, gaze locked with hers, and Allie found she couldn’t look away.

She nodded. “A lot’s changed.”

“That it has.” He was standing close, too close. He was practically touching her. She wanted him to touch her. Just a tiny step forward and?—

“Oh, wow! That’s super pretty!”

Allie blinked and took a step back as Paige peered out from under her father’s arm. She smiled up at Allie and reached out to touch the hem of the dress. “You look nice.”

“Thank you.” It occurred to Allie that she’d barely looked in the mirror yet, so she turned to study herself in the full-length one behind her.

Not bad. Not bad at all. A little snug around the chest, but it was probably supposed to be.

There was a little armpit fat poking out at the top, but the hemline made her legs look good, and fluttered nicely when she turned back to face Jack and Paige.

“Looks like you got lucky on the first try.”

Allie shifted from one foot to the other, not trusting herself to meet his eyes again. “Looks like it.”

“Who was your first boyfriend that you loved?”

Allie blinked and looked at Paige. “Wow. That’s kind of random.”