Maggie Moves On(33)
She was frowning but didn’t pull away from his touch. “Considering I don’t know what a finger steak is, that probably won’t be difficult.”
Then she slipped her arm around his waist, and Silas decided life was pretty damn perfect.
“Do you put fry sauce on finger steaks?” Maggie asked.
Maggie Nichols: Finger steaks and fry sauce with a lakefront view! Have you tried them?
12
It was stupid to be nervous. This wasn’t an actual, real date. Was it?
Maggie surveyed her limited wardrobe and wondered exactly what the hell she was supposed to wear. T-shirts, tank tops, work pants, and gym shorts mocked her. The meager space required to house everything she wore on a regular basis made the bedroom closet seem cavernous.
She used to own date clothes. She used to be a person who went places, did things, saw people. Those clothes were most likely packed away in the storage unit in Seattle along with the furniture from the condo she’d sold…God. Had it really been two years ago already?
After flipping properties in Seattle for a few years, she’d decided to take the show on the road, literally. She’d planned on finding another home base, then forgotten, finding it easier to shorten the time between projects instead. Time spent not working was time spent not bringing in money.
Had she been “homeless” for two years? Just a storage unit and a post office box that one of her—or more accurately, Dean’s—friends checked once a month.
She unearthed a pair of clean jeans and committed on the spot. Remembering the ivory, off-the-shoulder sweater that she hadn’t been able to resist in Portland, she pounced on her suitcase. Behind it was a mangled men’s sneaker, a pink bandanna, and a sandwich wrapper. Kevin the therapy school dropout dog had been foraging again. Yesterday on the third floor, she’d discovered the bottom drawer of a heavy dresser open. Tucked inside was the dog’s new squeaky toy hammer and three pencils.
She found the sweater still inside her suitcase, on top of her only matching bra-and-underwear set that she absolutely was not wearing on this nondate.
Dressing quickly, she decided on the stacked heel ankle boots over sneakers. She debated texting Dean to ask if she should cuff or not cuff but then remembered she was mad at him—or herself and him—and decided to roll the denim to the top of the boots.
Earrings, dangly.
Lip gloss, dark rose.
She stepped back, trying to see more of herself in the tiny mirror mounted above the bathroom vanity. But she could only see her face or her chest.
“I really need to move up the timeline in here,” she muttered to herself before jogging out into the hall. There she found the heavy, gilt frame mirror angled against the wall between two of the back bedrooms and—after a quick cleaning with toilet paper—surveyed her efforts.
“Huh,” she said.
She looked…not bad.
Strong and soft, she decided, running a hand over the sweater. Fun without trying too hard. A belt would have worked, but she didn’t have one on hand. A curling iron would have been even better, but she’d been without one since she’d left hers in a motel between the Charming Cape Cod and the Beach Bungalow projects.
Still, this was the most effort she’d put into her appearance in…a while. She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and snapped a picture in the mirror.
“Showered and on the hunt for finger steaks,” she said as she typed up the caption. “Annnnnd, post.”
Duty to her followers performed, she hustled back into her bedroom.
“What do you guys think?” she asked the portrait. The oil-painted Campbells eyed her impassively as she grabbed a small clutch and tucked her license, cash, and lip gloss inside. “You should have seen me a few years ago. I would have dazzled you in a dress and heels,” she told her roommates.
She felt like the spark-eyed Mrs. Campbell was curious about what had happened to that version of Maggie.
Ignoring the judgmental vibe from inanimate objects, she headed into town for her first nondate in her new temporary town.
She parked her truck a block away and strolled toward the restaurant, glancing in shop windows as she passed. Every gift shop in town seemed to have a treasure chest of fake gold coins and bars in their displays.
Decked Out was a one-story building with gray cedar shakes that backed up to the lake. She remembered it from before. Remembered her mom sitting out on the deck, eyes closed, face to the sun. Basking.
As she approached, a long-legged man in jeans and with a charming smirk pushed away from the wall. Silas. There was something about the way he looked at her. Proprietary. Appreciative. Dangerous.
“Uh-oh,” she murmured as her stomach did a funny nosedive when he gave her a sinful once-over. She felt like she had as a flat-chested ninth grader when dreamy senior Javier Cooper winked at her in the hall between classes.
But if teenage Javier had been dreamy, adult Silas was downright edible.
His jeans were worn and fitted so perfectly to his body that she guessed it had to be from years of wear. The long-sleeve T-shirt hugged his broad chest and shoulders. He looked as good in clothes as he did out of them.
No hat tonight. His hair was…ugh. Damn delicious. Those golden curls should have made him look boyish, but there was nothing immature about the delectable man in front of her.