Page 5 of Hands off his Dudette

Chapter 3

Anna hadn't always felt comfortable hanging out with other women, like most gamers. There was a huge network of female gamers online, but statistically, it was rare to find more than one or two in any establishment. Growing up, the super studious girls had a tendency to make light of her pastimes, while the rest simply didn't share her interests. In college, things had been similar, and after, she'd been too much of a homebody to make an effort to change her ways. She did get along with a few people from work, men and women, but she'd never made an effort to get to know them outside of the office. Then, Lucy had bulldozed into her life.

Lucy Warner, soon to be Johnson, was a bundle of positive energy. She had a tendency to adopt people she liked, and she'd somehow decided she liked Anna. She'd dragged her along to shopping sprees, lunch, brunches, and to her fortnightly girls' night out. To her surprise, Anna found that she actually enjoyed it.

After her quick stop by Finn's office, she was the last to arrive, but the girls had kept a high red stool empty for her, at their round table near the bar.

"Hey! Loving the hair," said Piper Stone with a wink.

She was the one who'd suggested she should try to curl her dull blond hair. She'd been right, it suited her, but Anna wasn't going to go through that effort every day.

"Oh, good, given the fact that it took me a whole hour."

She kissed her cheek, before moving to Lucy, then Cassie, her sister Helen, Cali, Tori, Erin, and Amelia.

"So, no one has managed to convince Tessa to join us?"

Tessa Michaels had only joined their bar-hopping once since Anna had started hanging out with the group a year ago, but she asked after her at every outings, perhaps because Tessa had made her feel normal. If Anna was a homebody, Tessa was a true introvert. She liked them well enough, but it was obvious that she counted the seconds before she could be reunited with her comfortable couch.

Tessa was a good friend, however. She kept in touch online and always did her best to help when she could. Cassie wrote romance books and Tessa designed her covers, but it was just a part-time gig for the incredibly talented artist. A month ago, Anna had been panicking because one of her illustrators resigned toward the end of their deadlines. Anna had had a millions things on her plate and there simply weren't enough hours in the day to pick up the slack left by a critical artist at crunch time, so she'd reluctantly contacted Lucy, in her professional capacity this time. Lucy was the executive assistant of Carter Harris, CEO of Harry Toys, Cassie's fiancé.

"We aren't going to make the deadline. There's no time to go through recruitment, or explain the project to another artist; we have under one week and even if I don't sleep every day, I can't finish my interactive book and the series of dolls Bob was supposed to get done. Can you reschedule the focus meeting?"

"Hang on," Lucy had said, holding one finger up as she typed on the phone almost always attached to her hand.

A minute later, she had Tessa on the other end of the phone line and twenty minutes after that, the woman appeared, in dungarees, hair unbrushed, a pencil behind her pierced ear.

She saved their skins, and then some, in record time.

"Actually, she's out of her house, for once," Cassie replied with a laugh. "She's attending a book convention—fantasy books, mostly, or I would have gone with her.

Anna pouted. "I would have loved to go."

Cassie shrugged unapologetically. "Which is exactly why no one told you about it. Firstly, Tessa needs to learn to do stuff by herself like a grown-ass twenty-eight year old should. Secondly, we need you here."

Anna lifted a brow, raising her hand to catch a waitress's attention. "Oh?"

"Yes," Lucy stated firmly, nodding for emphasis. "So, as you know, Carter and Trick had a stupid bet going on."

Anna bobbed her head. "The last four percent of their business would go to the wife of the first of them who got hitched. I remember. They were drunk when they—"

"Well, we've found a workaround," said Lucy. "We'll get married at the same time, that way we'll get two percent each."

Anna beamed. "Congrats. When are you going to tie the knot?"

"On Christmas Day."

She nodded. "Not a bad date. It'll probably be rather expensive, but I'm sure you have the facts and figures. And you'll have a whole year to get ready."

Tori Brown laughed like it was the best joke she'd heard all year. "Come on, sweet. You know better than to think it's going to be this easy."

Anna blinked, confused.

"This year. They're getting married on Christmas this year."

Oh.

"You're fucking insane," she stated, pointing out the obvious.

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