How To Get Your Man

“Are you sure?”

He nodded. “No problem. I go in a couple of times a week anyhow.”

“All right. I’ll be right back.” She started to go, then stopped and turned back to him. “What should I wear?”

He looked blank. “Beats me. I’m no fashion expert. I just know what’s bad when I see it.”

“Do you know what’s good when you see it?”

“Sure.”

In for a penny, in for a pound. Bonnie decided to try this Dalton’s way, at least this week. She hurried over to him, took his arm and pulled him toward the stairwell. “Then come with me.”

He’d been in her apartment just two days ago, but he’d barely taken a glance at the place. He was in and out in a matter of half an hour, fixing the shower.

Dalton wasn’t the type to snoop around.

Now, with Bonnie in it, the whole apartment came vibrantly to life, making him wonder how he’d managed to miss so much. He hadn’t noticed the quirky little stone tabletop fountain in the foyer before. Or the cheap framed watercolors of Atlantic City on her bedroom walls. He knew the shop they’d come from. It had carried velvet black light posters in the early 1980s.

She stopped at the old-fashioned phone by the kitchen and called her friend Paula to tell her she wasn’t going to be meeting her at the bus, then she led Dalton into her bedroom.

“Okay, wait here a sec,” Bonnie told him, while she went into the walk-in closet. “I think I’ve got something you’ll approve of.”

He sat down on top of the embroidered spread on her bed, and thought immediately of being in it with her. He remembered what it felt like to have her in his arms. He remembered her kiss. It was a sweet thing. Something he’d had a hard time completely forgetting over the years. Not that he’d obsessed about it or anything, but Bonnie had lingered in his mind. Of course, that probably had more to do with the fact that they’d only been together the one time than because of any sort of woo-woo fate drawing them together.

So it made sense that he would help her find the man of her dreams. He cared about her, he wanted her to be happy, but it wasn’t as if he could be the one to make her happy. As a matter of fact, given her description of the guy she was interested in, they were complete opposites. Which made it his duty, as a friend and an upstanding guy, to help her move on. Even though, at the moment, it sort of irritated him.

“What do you think?” She emerged from the closet in a deep red body-hugging sweater dress with a low V in the front. Every curve was hugged by the knit, and she looked like a bombshell.

“You look awesome,” Dalton said, his mouth dry. He’d forgotten what an amazing body she had. How had he forgotten that? She must have been wearing those frumpy Nelly Malone clothes longer than he’d realized.

“Yeah?” She flushed.

He nodded. “A guy would have to be blind to overlook you in that.”

She stepped in front of a full-length mirror and looked at her reflection skeptically. “I’ve never worn it before.”

“So today’s probably not the day to start. You don’t want to look like you’re trying too hard.”

She looked relieved. “That’s what I thought. Let me find something else.”

“Make sure it doesn’t make you look like Mrs. Malone,” he cautioned. “You’ve got a lot of those outfits.”

She poked her head out of the closet. “Cute, Dalton.”

He shrugged. “Look, every three minutes a guy thinks about sex. So do you want him looking at you and thinking about sex with someone’s grandmother, or do you want him to look at you and think about—”

“Got it,” she called. “I want him to think about me. You don’t have to go into graphic detail.” A few minutes later she emerged again. “Okay, what about this?”

He looked up as Bonnie stepped out of the closet, wearing a tailored black skirt suit that revealed about a mile of leg and dipped tantalizingly low at the neck, showing a flash of skin. Skin he once knew the scent and taste of, skin he had run his hands over that hot summer night so long ago.

For just a moment, Dalton didn’t breathe.

“I suppose this is more what you had in mind.” She buttoned one of the buttons so the neckline wasn’t quite so low, then looked at him. “Yes? Sort of sexy but still businesslike.”

“Pretty good,” he understated. “I say go with that one.”

“That figures, because I’m really not comfortable in this.” She buttoned another button, covering more skin.

“And you won’t be until it makes you look like a nun,” Dalton commented. “Next you’ll be putting on long pants underneath it.”

“The thought did occur to me.”

“When did you become such a prude?”

“I’ve always been a prude, Dalton, you know that.”

“Well, you’re going to have to stop if you want to hijack this guy’s attention.”

She stopped buttoning and looked at him. “This might be a mistake.”

“Exactly. Unbutton at least one.” It wasn’t that he had personal reasons for wanting her to do it. He just wanted to make sure she’d look as hot as he was sure she would. For her own sake, of course.

“Not that, this.” She gestured between the two of them. “You and me doing this. Or, rather, me doing this.” She walked over to the bed and plopped down on the side of it, next to him. “Maybe I don’t want a guy I have to do this for.”

Dalton watched her and nodded. “Maybe you don’t want the guy you have to dress like an army man for either.”

She gave a dry laugh. “Well, Mark Ford isn’t a guy I have to dress like that for. He hated it.”

Even though he’d never met him, Dalton wasn’t feeling too lenient toward Mark Ford. “A guy should accept you for who you are.”

She gave him a dry look. “So says the guy who’s telling me to unbutton my shirt and hike up my skirt.”

“Hey, we did not talk about the worthiness of the guy you wanted to attract. Our deal was not to help you find the man of your dreams, whoever that might be, it was to help you get one guy, the one who doesn’t know you exist.” He shook his head. “I never said it would be worth it.”

She sighed and dropped her head into her hands. “But he would be worth it.” She stood up, pulled her skirt slightly lower, and gave a firm nod. “He would be worth it.”

“If you say so.”

“You sound skeptical.”

“Me? I’m always skeptical.”

She eyed him for a moment, then said, “Okay.”

“Let’s go. You don’t want to be late. We can talk about dinner in the car.”

“Dinner?”