Page 79 of I'm Not Yours
“Dance?”
“Yep.” He wrapped an arm around my waist, my hand in his, and pulled me close. His heat burned me, head to heart to toe, those bright eyes flirty, sexy . . . disastrous.
I should say no!Say yes, June!“Okay, cowboy. I’ll dare it.”
I put my hand on his huge shoulder, not an inch between our bodies . . .
I dared to dance in the arms of a singing cowboy, on the beach, in Oregon, on a summer day, my blond curls flying in the breeze, my white lace, ruffled skirt swirling around my knees.
Later I reminded myself,again, that I was not falling in love with Reece.
No, I was not.
I was not going to fall in love because I am not divorced and Grayson has turned my life into a relentless nightmare that he controls. I told myself it was lust, I was rebounding. I was passionate and needed attention.
I could not fall in love.
No, I couldn’t.
Heck no.
Reece twirled me through the sunshine, sand between our toes, singing a song about a butterfly girl.Baby, we can be together, if you’ll trust in me.
“This article is going to be huge for my career.”
“Good. Hopefully for mine, too,” I said. The reporter fromCouture Fashionand I clinked our glasses, filled high with pink lemonade. Her name was Virginia Bescotti, named after her grandmother. “All the girls in our family are named after grandmas, great-grandmas, or great-aunts. Tradition. Our other tradition is marrying bad men the first time around. We call them starter marriages. The second marriages always work out.”
She was about twenty-eight and wore red-rimmed glasses, her dark hair piled on top of her head, where it refused to stay.She had a toothy smile, a dimple, and had been divorced for a year.
We sure had a lot to talk about. By the end of the interview and photo shoot, after the photographer left, we were well into our sisterhood, my nerves calm, my laughter back. And I’d been so worried!
“My article on all your wedding dresses is going to get about six pages of coverage inCouture Fashion. It’s gonna set your business on fire. Flames flyin’. We’ve got a style-busting national audience, with a zillion international readers, plus we’re online, and this is gonna be big-ola. Big-ola. You need to get the snake to sign the divorce papers before it comes out.”
“Don’t I know it.” I thought of all the bills I’d paid during my marriage with the snake. The mortgage, food, utilities. How Grayson had always said, “I’ll write you a check, sugar, you don’t think your own husband is going to cheat you on that, do you?” I learned quickly that, yes, he would. He did.
When this article came out, he would realize I’d made it, instead of sensing there was success there, or would be there, and he’d hold on to our marriage with sharp claws, as Cherie predicted. Would he win in court? Probably not. Did I want to risk it? No.
“Get him to sign if you have to sit on him and prod him with a smokin’ hot cattle brand,” Virginia said. “I hijacked my husband’s boat until he signed.”
“I need a cattle brand,” I muttered.
She flipped through my wedding scrapbooks. “You are an out-of-this-orbit talented designer and that is a freakin’ awesome dress. A white wedding dress with feathered wings. Who would have thunk that up?”
“The bride worked at the Audubon Society. She loved birds. Her husband worked there, too. I made matching wings for his tux.”
“And this prancy-dancy one!” She pointed again. “The tutu effect. How long did it take you to sew the gauze?”
“The gauze was endless. See how it sparkles?” Think of Sleeping Beauty’s flying fairy godmothers in blue, purple, and pink and you have the dress.
“This is my favorite, this gold sheath, Cleopatra-y style, with the white veil and long train. Makes me want to climb a pyramid.”
“That was an Egyptologist. Studies Egypt. Has a doctorate. Her husband is a neurosurgeon. Better to make a dress from her studies than his.”
Virginia laughed. “You could have sewed a brain and cranium dress, but yuck. If I had known what was going to happen to me during my marriage, I would have walked down the aisle with my wedding dress on fire.” She tapped her forehead for a second. One of her quirks. The other quirk was cracking her gum. She’d chewed an entire pack while we were sitting together. She tapped her pen on my table. “Maybe an enflamed wedding dress would have gotten my attention.”
“Well,” I quipped, “then you might have danced a jig for Teresa Terrio’s dress. Within the folds we placed tiny white lights. It was a night wedding, all the lights were off, and she made quite a statement walking down the aisle.”
Virginia blinked at me. “You are so funky in the head. Make sure you forward me that photo, too.”
