The Sure Thing

by Samantha Westlake

  I stopped that train of thought right there. Why did I care what he thought of my outfit? I had no need to impress Alex Hamilton, had no interest in him. If he was here to buy some used books, great. Otherwise, I wanted nothing to do with him.

  Suddenly, an idea occurred to me. It was a rather wicked idea, but that felt fitting. Grinning, I turned and headed out from my hiding place – not to the front to help Alex, but to the back of the store.

  "Hey, Uncle," I called, popping my head through the doorway in the back of the store and into the office.

  Behind his desk, wedged into the small space like an egg sitting in its little egg crate, my Uncle Ryland glanced up. He wore a frown on his broad, strong-featured face, but it instantly melted away into a smile as he saw me. "Ah, my favorite niece!"

  "I'm your only niece, Uncle," I pointed out, as I always did – but the words still put a smile on my face. "How's the accounting going?"

  "Bothersome, as always." The scowl reappeared on his face as he looked down at the books of hand-written figures spread out in front of him on the desk. "Blasted things never seem to want to add up properly. Why can't the IRS accept payment for sales taxes in the form of a poem, or a sonnet by one of the Old Masters? They're far more valuable, in my mind, than pure dollars."

  I laughed. "I'm sorry, Uncle. But do you want to take a break and help me out with something?"

  He set his pencil down, closed the ledger around it so that it marked his place. "Of course, Pax. What can I do for you?"

  I smiled at the affectation. My uncle had been the one who first suggested my name to my parents, and he'd given me the nickname of Pax when he first started babysitting me. "Named for peace, because that's the one thing that's in short supply when you're around," he'd tell me, sweeping me up off my feet into a bear hug. Even today, twenty years later, I still went for his arms when I needed comforting.

  "There's a guy out front," I said, pointing towards the store's entrance with a thumb. "He's a guy that I bumped into at the club last night, when I was out with Anna-Claire and her friends."

  My uncle's eyebrows, white and bushy, climbed higher on his broad forehead. "Met in what way, precisely?"

  "Take a breath, Uncle." Uncle Ryland was fiercely possessive of me – it made sense, I figured, given what happened to my parents. He'd never approved of a single man I brought back to the store to meet him – not that there were very many individuals in that category, anyway. "He was kind of a jerk, though, so I don't really want to go out and help him."

  "And you want me to scare him off, is that it?" Placing both his big hands on the desk, my uncle rose up to his feet. He wasn't a tall man, but he had shoulders so broad that he had to angle himself slightly to one side to get through most doorways. He claimed that he'd intentionally built the doorways in Davies Books wider than usual, so he didn't need to keep on turning sideways. "I think I can do that."

  I thought about warning him not to be too hard on Alex, but decided against it. Maybe Alex needed someone to take him down a peg or two. "Just don't resort to outright violence," I said.

  "That depends on what he did with you last night," Uncle Ryland countered, a hint of a growl in his normally jocular voice.

  I didn't tell my uncle about Sir Asshole's opening request that I show him my chest. If I said that out loud, my uncle really would fly out and strangle Alex with his bare hands. "He bought me food, but I think he had different intentions in mind than I did," I said instead, deciding on a milder tack. "And I don't want him to get the wrong idea. He's attractive..." wait a minute, where did that come from? "...but I'm not really interested in him in that way."

  "So you need me to firmly dissuade him from pursuing anything more." Uncle Ryland tapped the side of his nose knowingly, making me giggle at the mock seriousness of the gesture. "On it, commander."

  I followed a few steps behind my uncle as he headed out to greet Alex at the entrance to the store. I didn't make myself visible, but instead ducked back behind the bookshelves again, peering between a couple of encyclopedias to watch Alex get told off.

  Alex looked up as my uncle approached, and I once again noticed how tall the younger man stood. Leaner than my uncle, of course, but still almost painfully attractive. That just further strengthened my resolve. No man who looked that sexy would really have interest in me. It had to be a bet, or a dare, or he wanted something else from me that his normal supermodel girlfriends wouldn't give him. A guy like that wouldn't choose to go after a girl like me.

  I heard my uncle talking, but I couldn't quite pick out the words. It just sounded like an indistinct rumble, the only warning that came before a volcano violently erupted.

  Alex, however, didn't step back or look intimidated at all, as far as I could see. He smiled, and replied immediately.

  Rumble. Lighter rumble. The two of them exchanged words back and forth, but there didn't seem to be any telling off happening here. Instead, if I was reading their body language correctly, it seemed like they were hitting it off together! That wasn't what was supposed to happen!

  I found myself gritting my teeth, my fingers curling until they dug into my palms. Stupid Alex, being so damn charming! How had he managed to convince my uncle to fall for his tricks? Uncle Ryland was usually pretty perceptive; why wasn't he seeing through Alex's lies and smarminess?

  A couple seconds later, to my growing horror, Uncle Ryland turned towards where I stood behind the bookshelf. "Pax, come out here!" he called, giving my hiding spot away.

  I squeezed my eyes tightly shut for a second, counted to three inside my head, and then opened them as I stepped out. "Hi," I said shortly, doing my best to shoot daggers at Alex from my eyes.

  They just bounced harmlessly off him. "Ah, Paxton!" he greeted me, as if we were great friends, not a couple strangers who bumped into each other once in a club and then intended never to see each other again. "I remembered that you worked here, and thought that I'd drop in!"

  "So, you're not here to buy any books? We don't need people hanging around the store if they aren't customers." I crossed my arms over my chest, realizing only as I started the motion that doing so would probably call attention to my inappropriate shirt. Oh well. I did my best to add a surly glare and distract him from looking down at my chest.

  It didn't work, of course. His eyes only flickered down, but the little quirking upwards of the corners of his mouth told me that he was laughing inside his head at the thought of grabbing some "knowledge". What an asshole.

  I looked over at Uncle Ryland, wondering why he wasn't kicking this guy out of his store. But my uncle was smiling up at Alex, as if he was the target of Alex's flirty and inappropriate attentions!

  "Some people do come in here without intending to buy a book, it's true," Ryland said, "but they often turn out to be looking for something after all – they just don't know it yet! Now, are you sure we can't offer you anything?"

  Alex turned his eyes back to me. "Your niece could help me out, actually," he said, those green eyes staring straight into mine. They were a piercing green, I thought distantly as they momentarily cleared my mind of all my previous thoughts. The color of money, practically.

  "What's that?" The words came from my mouth, and they didn't sound quite as adversarial as I'd intended.

  There was that smirk, making his whole face light up, like a movie star who'd stepped off the silver screen and out into real life without losing any of his Hollywood glamour. I knew that I ought to be on guard against this slick charmer, but dammit if he didn't just look so sexy that it scrambled my brains.

  "How about dinner?" he asked.

  My mouth dropped open. "What?" There was some sort of angle going on here, I knew it. I'd spot it, any second now. He couldn't be doing this because of real interest. He wanted something else from me, and he thought he could get it through charm.

  "Dinner," he repeated. "All I bought you last night were appetizers. Tonight, let me get you a real meal."

  I should say no. My bra
in screamed at me to tell him to get out, that I didn't want a thing to do with him. But a tiny little corner of my psyche pointed out that my fridge upstairs was totally empty except for some elderly peanut butter and a half jar of pickles. And besides, he really was heart-meltingly cute, and even if he did want something else from me, I could surely enjoy a free meal as I figured out what it might be, right?

  I looked over at my uncle, hoping that he'd rescue me. "I'd say yes, but I need to stay and help my uncle close up," I said, straining to get my uncle to telepathically agree with me.

  My uncle, however, just shook his head, unknowingly betraying me. "Nonsense! I can handle it myself." He smiled at me, my mental pleas apparently flying right over his bald head. "You go out and have fun, Pax. You deserve a night to relax and let your hair down."

  Who was this would-be suitor, and what had he done with my normal Uncle Ryland? Shocked, I turned back to Alex, who raised an eyebrow as he gave me another way-too-sexy-to-be-real smile.

  "Fine." Whatever, just get him out of here! I felt like he'd invaded my inner sanctum – this bookshop, my uncle's bookshop, was my place. He had no right to come here. "Fine, just let me get back to work."

  His grin, through some miracle, managed to grow even more smug. "Pick you up here at seven?"

  I turned and stalked away, back into the shelter of the shelves. "I'll see you then!" he called after me, taking my silence as a yes.

  I headed back, leaned against the back of one of the walls, took a few deep breaths as I tried to steady myself. My brain, inside my head, wanted to know what the hell Alex was playing at, why Sir Asshole seemed to keep wanting to pursue me. He had to have some ulterior motive.

  But despite my conscious mind knowing that this was trouble, some tiny little part of me, traitor to the rest of my thoughts and feelings, kept on reminding me about his broad shoulders, that sexy smile, the way his arms flexed when he moved, the little whiffs of faint cologne that I caught when the breeze blew past him. It pointed out how long I'd been without a date, how all the romance novels that I devoured during my free time featured a sexy, dashing, handsome hero who swept the heroine off her feet.

  I knew better than to see myself as a heroine – and I didn't need any man trying to sweep me off my feet. I could stand on my own, thank you very much.

  But still... no harm in fantasizing, just a little bit...

  Chapter Nine

  PAXTON

  *

  "Oh, this is so exciting!" Anna-Claire dropped down on my creaky old bed, throwing her arms out dramatically. "My best friend, who I long believed to be a closet asexual-"

  "Hey!"

  "-has finally got a date, with a sexy, handsome, slightly rude man!" She rolled over to prop her head up on her hands, elbows on the bed, kicking up her feet behind her. One professional, dressy high heel dangled off her foot, the other already fallen into the narrow space between my bed and the wall. "This is the best news I've ever gotten from you!"

  "Settle down, now," I commanded. "And wait, why is 'slightly rude' a good thing?"

  She had an answer ready, of course. Anna-Claire always had an answer; unlike the chaos of my life, which I tried to minimize by staying in for as much of it as possible, she kept everything neatly ordered and under control. "Because you are the most uptight girl I've known," she answered immediately. "And if this guy can break you out of your shell a little, it will do you a world of good."

  "Great, now you're my psychologist as well as my money manager?"

  "What money?" she countered, raising her eyebrows. "You know that you're never going to turn this bookstore into anything other than a meager living at best, right? Have you given my advice any more thought-"

  I held up my hand. "Really, Anna-Claire, not now. I don't want to talk about this at all, especially not when I'm stressed over this stupid date." I dropped down onto the bed beside her, burying my head in my hands. "Why, oh why, did I say yes?"

  "Because it's good for you," she answered my rhetorical question. "Come on, Paxton. Just admit that this could turn out to be not entirely awful. You said yourself that he was attractive, didn't you?"

  "Too attractive," I repeated.

  "And what's that mean?"

  I gestured down at myself, standing in front of my closet in the same jeans and tee shirt that I'd been wearing before, looking at my meager selection of clothes and hating every single one of them. "I mean, look at me! Even if I try and make myself look nice, I wouldn't get a second glance normally from someone like him. He's totally out of my league, and he shouldn't be asking me out."

  "But he did," Anna-Claire observed.

  "Exactly." I flipped through a couple dresses hanging in the back of the closet, hoping that a better outfit would magically materialize behind them. Nothing did. "And that means that he's got some sort of ulterior motive, one that I probably will hate."

  She sprang up from the bed, walking up to gently but firmly push me aside. "You're always so pessimistic," she said as she flipped through my outfits, giving most of them barely more than a single glance.

  "Realistic," I muttered, but kept it too soft for her to hear.

  After scrolling through everything that my closet had to offer, Anna-Claire flipped back to select a couple different pieces. "Here, put one of these on," she commanded as she held them out to me.

  I winced. "Polka dots?" When did I ever decide to buy a white top with lots of little pink polka dots on it, and how drunk had I been? "Are you crazy?"

  "I think that I can make it work, with the right pairing and accessories." Anna-Claire turned away, but then glanced back at me over her shoulder. "Go on, change. It's not like you've got anything to show me that I haven't seen before."

  All well and good for her to say that; I was pretty sure that she hadn't seen the most recent couple of faint but still present stretch marks on my thighs and sides. I did my best to limit the indulgences craved by my sweet tooth, but I still carried around the stubborn extra pounds regardless. Especially next to Anna-Claire's Pilates and elliptical-trained, toned body, I felt like a sack of lumpy potatoes.

  I wasn't going to win an argument against her, however, and at least she'd have me looking more composed and put together than I'd ever be able to manage on my own. I turned away from her and shrugged off the tee shirt, replacing it with the blouse.

  When I turned back around, Anna-Claire had her hands on her hips and her head tilted slightly to one side, looking at me with a critical eye. "We can work with this," she nodded.

  "Really?" I looked at myself in the mirror attached to the back of my bedroom door. "I look like I've got chicken pox again." Polka dots weren't my look, although I'd never really found any pattern that worked any better.

  "Hush, would you?" Anna-Claire bent to tug at my pants, shaking her head at my poor fashion choices. "Why are your pants so baggy?"

  "Because if I buy ones that are tight, it makes me feel even worse when I can't squeeze into them."

  "Yes, but buying baggy stuff just makes you look shapeless." She waved a hand. "Oh well. I can't fix that now, not when this guy's coming in less than an hour."

  I jumped glancing at the little clock on my bedside table. She was right! How had the time flown by so quickly?

  "So instead," Anna-Claire continued, "we're going to have to boost your image using accessories!"

  "Is one of them a full-face helmet?" I asked hopefully.

  It didn't even get a laugh from her. She brushed my hair back behind my ears, frowned at it, then gathered it into a ponytail. "I think we can go for a cross between sporty and fresh. Like you just changed after a workout at the gym, but haven't hit the showers quite yet."

  I thought of the last time I'd come back from a workout – okay, it had been quite a while in the past. I could think of a few words to describe my appearance, but "fresh" wasn't one of them. Hell, I didn't even think that I could manage "sporty". "Huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf" seemed more appropriate.

  Anna
-Claire, however, was already dancing around me, a whirlwind of digging through my jewelry box, holding up various bits of cheap jewelry to my ears or neck, and then darting back to try a different combination. "Okay, go with these ones," she finally said, holding out a pair of small diamond studs and a thin little gold necklace with a tiny heart locket threaded on it.

  I blinked down at the diamond studs. "These aren't mine, are they?"

  "Nope, they're mine." Anna-Claire reached up to tug at one of her own bare earlobes. I hadn't even noticed her removing them. "But they're going to look great on you, and you can return them to me whenever. I've got more at home."

  I stepped up to the mirror, added the little sparkling earrings and the necklace. Okay, I admitted, they helped a little. Still, I just looked like a chubby girl squeezed into a spotted blouse. I didn't see any of that "fresh and sporty" look that Anna-Claire had suggested.

  "Well, we aren't done yet!" she pointed out when I remarked on this. "We still have to get to the girl's best friend!"

  "Diamonds?"

  "Makeup," she said firmly. She glanced at the little bits of assorted makeup on the bathroom counter, sighed, and dug out her own compact from her purse. "Sit," she commanded, pointing at the toilet.

  I grimaced as she opened up the compact. "Really, Anna-Claire, do I need to bother with the makeup? I hate putting it on, and then worrying about accidentally touching my face and screwing it all up..."

  "It's worth the hassle," she cut me off. "Just hold still for a minute, and I'll show you the face that's going to make this guy realize that he picked the right girl, after all."

  I obediently, if slightly impatiently, sat still while Anna-Claire plucked hairs, tugged at my face, and swiped across it with different brushes. She stepped back several times, giving me a critical look-over before diving back in to make a few more adjustments. I sat with barely contained impatience through it all, until I finally couldn't take another plucked hair or soft frowning murmur from my friend.

  "Enough!" I batted away her hand as she tried to pat my cheek with a little sponge, standing up and moving over to look at myself in front of the mirror-