Hope Entangles: A New Adult Romantic Comedy (Book 2 of 3) (12 page)

Played with them? I felt the blood rush
to my face as I was sure I changed all kinds of shades of
red.

Bette gave the straps another jiggle,
and then, tongue bit between her teeth, she smooshed them up and
together with her hands.

Oh god, she was playing with my boobs
now…

Bette backed up and all three women’s
jaws dropped, expressions of awe and delight making their faces
glow.

Okay, I had to see this.

I shouldered past them and out into the
mirror room. I halted and stared at myself.

Wow…

I turned.

And wow…

I looked freaking gorgeous. The brown
and caramel silk made my skin look cool and creamy, and the length
made my hips look good, and my legs look long and elegant.
Actually, the whole dress practically glistened with
elegance.

And, oh jeez, look at my girls! They
were lifted up and bunched into an alluring, creamy looking display
of cleavage… that I never knew I had.

Bette whistled low. “I think I might
just rethink my strictly dick-ly policy.”

I looked back at her,
aghast.

She smiled wickedly. “Just kidding. I
have my eye on a new prospect already.”

“
You do look amazing,” Darla
said, coming forward and giving my nearly bare shoulders a friendly
squeeze, and then gave me a stern look. “Just don’t wear this get
up anywhere near Drew. I don’t want him getting any
ideas.”

“
What?”

Darla’s smile matched Bette perfectly.
She was messing with me.

I smiled back and then looked back to
the looking glass.

“
Girls, I can’t make any
promises.”

They even scowled at me in
unison.

“
In this dress, men might
just start following me around.” I tossed my head like a super
model at a Sports Illustrated photo shoot. “I can’t be held
accountable for what might happen.”

Bette caught on first and sneered at
me. Darla glared and was about to say something when Bette reached
over and touched her arm, and then rolled her eyes at
me.

We all broke out into giggles and
laughter as they helped me out of the dress. Modesty still made me
turn my back until I had my bra on, but this time I wasn’t really
nervous. I was giggling too much to be nervous.

Before we left we stopped and tried on
a couple pairs of high heels, and found a pair that looked good,
matched the dress, and didn’t make my feet feel like they were
being bound like in imperialistic China.

The instant we walked out of the
boutique and the afternoon baked San Antonio air hit us, my stomach
roared like a caged beast ready to rip its way out of me to pounce
on the next edible thing passing by.

“
I’m starving!”

“
Me too,” Darla
cooed.

Bette shook her head. “That’s all you
two do is eat. I have never seen two grown women put away as much
food as you two.”

Darla raised an eyebrow. Damn, I wished
I could do that!

“
So you won’t be joining us
as we raid the Sheetz Made to Order shop two blocks
over?”

Bette eyed us for a beat. “I could eat
a little something.”

Darla held up her hands in triumph—I
snatched the car keys out of her hand.

“
I’m driving.”

Chapter 11

Driving Bette’s luxury liner of a car
was a new experience. It rode so smooth, its high horse power
engine growled gamely as I took it up to the speed limit… and
stayed there. But good god the bucket seats were comfy. It was way,
way more comfortable than my couch.

Maybe I’d could troll a junk yard and
find a Cadillac bucket seat and install it in my living
room?

I ignored both Bette and Darla’s
grousing that I drove like a grandma and that we were going to get
pulled over by the police for GOING TOO SLOW!

I didn’t care. I’d driven all over San
Antonio with these two speed demons driving me to nausea, it was my
turn to drive!

We pulled into the Sheetz parking lot
and the girls fell in behind me as I led the way in the building
and up to the ordering stations. I knew exactly what I wanted and
raced through the touch-screen menu.

Thirty seconds later I had an order
slip for a six inch turkey sub with all the trimmings, an order of
cheese sticks, and a medium frozen strawberry lemonade smoothie. I
left Bette and Darla in the dust and headed for the registers to
pay. There I hit traffic of the human variety: a line long enough
to stretch to the doors.

The girls fell in behind me about
thirty seconds later.

Drat…

We got through line without adding too
much more to our orders… okay, I got a Milky Way and some gum.
After the chocolate dress, who could blame me?

We swung around the corner to grab our
hopefully not cold already bags of greasy, deliciousness and came
right up behind a tall, dark, broad shouldered hunk-a-hunk of
burning manhood standing at the pick-up counter.

I stopped to eye up the long lean, jean
clad legs, and a wondrously firm butt. But then I noticed he had
some tattoos on his arm… familiar tattoos…

Raphael Morales turned around with a
frozen drink in his hand.

Oh crap!

He smiled down at me evilly, as if he
knew exactly what I’d been doing and the lusty thoughts that had
been going through my mind.

I looked down at the drink
in his hand. Large, swirled with pink and orange and white, and
topped off with whipped cream and…
and
sprinkles!

“
Sprinkles?” I chided, and
then fell into a slow belly laugh. Behind me Bette and Darla
started to snicker and giggle along with me.

Raphael scowled, his dark
eyes turning stormy. “It’s
Birthday
Cake
.”

I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to
say anything else.

Raphael’s broad shoulders tensed, as
did his beautifully muscled arms, and he stalked on around us as we
erupted into even louder peals of laughter.

It was just too damn funny.

That was until my gaze followed him out
the front doors and to his shiny red sports car—a Barracuda… and
one of his sisters sitting in the passenger seat. Stiffly he handed
her the drink, which she immediately started to suck
down.

He turned and glared at me, and I
shrugged my shoulders.

Oops.

I turned back to the girls. They had
already grabbed our bags of goodies and we headed out the doors to
park our rumps at one of the little round metal tables with
matching metal umbrellas over them. We made it outside just in time
to wave goodbye to Raphael and his sister, and then to burst into
even more laughter when Raphael shook his head and gunned his shiny
sports car out of the parking lot.

Now that was worth all the trouble this
day had wrought.

Then something occurred to me. What if
I couldn’t find a date for the party?

After “Sprinkles” it might be kind of
hard to get him to do anything for me.

And what about more zucchini bread? Or
the banana nut bread he was baking for tomorrow?

Drat, drat, double drat.

***

Bette and Darla insisted we take a
detour and make a quick stop at the Yanni-Fell Mall, right off the
Route 88 expressway. They said I needed some nylons and sexy
panties (I said I had plenty of panties, and they crooned in
chorus, “Yeah, we saw!”) and some “natural looking
cosmetics.

Since Bette’s last foray into “making
me up” I wasn’t at all gung ho at the prospect. But Darla had said
she’d apply the makeup. I wasn’t sure she even knew how to use make
up. The teenaged beauty queen never wore any… didn’t need
any.

The mall was packed; all those who
didn’t want to melt from the heat were out at the mall. I didn’t
care if my central air didn’t work, I’d rather be at home. We went
in the west entrance, by the movie theater. It was the least packed
parking lot, seeing as matinees weren’t all that popular on a
weekday.

Bette and Darla took off at a manic
pace—I guess the thrill of so many shopping potentials gave them a
boost of adrenaline. Me, I barely kept up. Thank god Victoria’s
Secret was so close to that entrance, or I might’ve pulled
something keeping up.

I’d never been in a Victoria’s Secret
store before. I didn’t know what I had expected, but what I got was
this: perfume and body washes displayed in front, on the back
walls, on the counters, in the front windows, on the registers, and
hanging from the sales racks. Oh, and there were flimsy little silk
and velvet and lace doohickeys suspended from tiny little plastic
hangers on those sales racks.

I blinked a few times before I realized
it was all lingerie. Every stinking bit off it was sexy
barely-there teddies, barely there undies, almost nonexistent bras,
and itty-bitty lace garter belts and… even less there
thongs…

Oh, and toward the back were some super
short silk and lace robes that didn’t really cover anything up. But
I guess if you were going to put on a little show for whoever it
was you were buying the miniscule outfit for, you’d want some kind
of opening act.

Lord almighty, I was so never going to
buy any of this stuff. I was ready to die from embarrassment just
standing there.

“
Hope!” Bette called out
over the racks of lace doilies. She waved a hand at me to catch up.
They were back by one of the checkout counters. I gulped and looked
around. The place was teeming with shoppers… and not all of them
were women. There were about a half dozen red faced men angling
uncomfortably through the racks of stripper wear.

I moved stiffly through the crowd to
the back where Bette and Darla stood staring down at what was in
the glass countered case.

“
There are a lot of men in
here,” I whispered to Bette.

“
Yeah, they’re a bunch of
dopes,” Bette chortled.

Darla giggled.

“
What do you mean?” I
said.

She looked up and around at the
scattered men. “These men don’t get it. You don’t buy a woman
lingerie as a present. You let a woman buy her own.”

“
Yep,” Darla intoned. “When
a guy buys you something slutty to wear, it’s a present for him,
not you.”

Oh-h-h-h…

I turned and looked down at what was in
the glass case… and blinked.

Okay, granted I’m not the most sexually
daring woman on the planet, or the most worldly of shoppers, but I
just didn’t get it. There were some almost there panties (that
vibrated, or so it said on the box); a pink something or other that
looked like it had rabbit ears (that guaranteed a woman’s
pleasure); and some “self heating” lubricants (to enhance your
lovemaking).

I felt the blood flood to my
face.

“
What do ya say,” Bette
said, nudging me with an elbow. “Maybe you would be a little more
relaxed if you got yourself one of those?”

“
What?” I
croaked.

“
Yeah, yeah,” Darla said
helpfully. “That massager can turn any frown upside down—if you
know what I mean.”

“
And,” Bette added, “in case
you just want to lie there and be uninvolved,” she cleared her
throat suggestively, “uou can just slip on the vibrating panties,
turn the remote to orgasm and enjoy.”

Oh. My. Freaking. God.

“
I need to leave now,” I
said, trying to take in a breath, but failing.

I was past embarrassed, I was
mortified!

“
Okay, okay… this isn’t your
thing.” Bette took me by the shoulders and steered me over toward
perfumes and body washes. “Let’s start small and work our way
up.”

We found a fragrance that smelled like
berries and chocolate—which made me hungry again, and a light
strawberry scent that made me even hungrier.

From there we moved on to garter belts
and stockings, and I nixed that right away. I could deal with
pantyhose, but garters and clips and such were just too much for me
to fathom. Bette and Darla conceded my point, since they wouldn’t
be there to help me if I had a wardrobe malfunction at the
party.

From there we meandered into the bras
and panties. I didn’t need a bra, but they both insister I get “a
real one” while we were here. I had plenty of real bras. I just
didn’t have anything that lifted and separated, and was only made
up of flimsy, see-through lace.

I ended up getting one baby powder blue
lace bra, a black satin number, and an exotic looking red and
orange print job.

I balked when they breezed right past
the almost not there panties and went straight for the
thongs.

“
I am not wearing one of
those!” I said, planting my feet and crossing my arms under my
breasts.