Trying It All

by Christi Barth

  “Cut it out.” Riley yanked off the scarf. Thought about stuffing it in Griff’s mouth to shut him up. But then he’d have to buy the damned thing, once it was covered in spit, and then he’d be stuck with a souvenir of this humiliating visit. “I’m not a cross-dresser.”

  “Really? Sure you don’t have on a silky little chemise under that suit? Maybe I should check.” Griff tried to loosen his tie. Riley gave him an elbow to the jaw for the attempt. Which led to a very satisfactory wrestling scuffle. He’d just about won, with Griff flat on his stomach and Ry holding him in a crossface cradle pin, when water sprayed onto his cheek.

  He froze. With the added bonus of that pushing all of his weight onto Griff’s middle back. Couldn’t be comfortable for his friend. Which served him right. Riley tilted his head up to see the girl with the green hair staring at him, Chloe giggling wildly, and Summer with her dark eyes snapping like a hellhound.

  “What’s going on?” Her words sprayed out, crisper than fall leaves under a rake.

  “Griff was being a jackass. I’ve learned that giving him a reminder of how I’ve beaten him in every fight we’ve ever had is a good way to shut him up.” Riley flicked the back of his friend’s head as he stood.

  Picking his no-longer-entirely-white cap off the floor, Griffin rebutted with, “You only got so good from all those extra hours you had to put in training Knox.”

  “Which makes me stronger than you and more compassionate to my fellow humans. Ladies love that double dip of goodness.”

  “Not this lady.” Summer punctuated her remark with another spritz of water.

  “Hey. Enough.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking.” She thrust the bottle at the clerk. “Elisa, please go use that on the ferns in the display windows.”

  “We got a little carried away, Summer.” Griff dipped his head before resettling his cap. “Sorry about that.”

  All the brittle anger stiffening her body vanished as she turned to Griff. Summer tossed her hair flirtatiously. Then she lavished a wide, forgiving smile on him that Riley didn’t buy for a single second. “Lieutenant, if you boys want to wrestle in my store, that’s fine. I just require two things: three days’ advance notice to sell tickets, and both of you to strip to your shorts.”

  Damn it. Now she had him thinking about stripping. How was Riley supposed to avoid kissing this woman if she kept turning things all sexual on him?

  Chloe threw her arms around Griffin. “This is a nice surprise. But you didn’t even know I’d be here. How’d you track me down?”

  He hooked a thumb in Riley’s direction. “This guy asked me to grab a beer after work. Which sounded fun. Until we ended up here. I’m guessing that beverages around the merchandise are forbidden. Unless this is the secret entrance to one of those pop-up speakeasies?”

  Summer put her hand to the side of her mouth and whispered to Griffin, “There’s a bottle of Southern Comfort hidden in the back room, but it’s for emergencies only.”

  “Since when are you in the market for a little black sheath dress, Riley?” Chloe giggled as she tilted her head back to accept Griff’s kiss.

  He should’ve known there was no way to casually pull this off. Suddenly the idea of them commentating on this conversation was worse than possibly kissing Summer again. “I don’t—for God’s sake, you two are clearly perfect for each other.” Riley pointed to a white wicker chair in the farthest corner. “How about you take your lowbrow humor up front and give me five damn minutes?”

  “Nah, I’ll take the back room with the booze,” Griff said.

  But they didn’t go. They just kept kissing. And then the clerk returned.

  Riley looked at her, at Summer, and then at the back room. “Can I talk to you? Alone?”

  “You mean as though you’d taken the time to schedule an appointment? In advance? At a mutually convenient location, instead of ambushing me in my very public place of business?”

  Shit. “Yes.”

  He’d thought doing it at her work would be easier than asking her to go someplace. Had thought dropping in would keep it short and, yes, casual. Low-key. In other words, everything Riley thought, the way he approached it, was the opposite of how Summer did. Exactly like, oh, every single other conversation they’d ever had.

  At least kissing appeared to be off the table. Which was a relief.

  Mostly.

  With a sigh, Summer braced her hands on the counter and leaned forward. “Elisa, I added another set of dresses to the photo shoot list. Possibilities, anyway. Before you leave tonight, please photograph and upload them all. Then send email reminders to the models who still need to send us their measurements. And also set up a poll to see which of those three dates works best for them to come by and do fittings.” Then she stalked to the front of the store, clearly not caring one iota if Riley followed her or not.

  He did. But slower. Taking it all in like he hadn’t when joking around with Griffin. It was bigger than he’d expected. The exposed brick walls kept the history of the neighborhood while giving it a hip feel. She’d capitalized on the sunlight pouring in the front wall of windows by painting everything white. Shelves, racks, even antique-looking armoires were whitewashed in a way that made him think of a beach house. It left the color of the clothes as the focal point. Smart; even Riley, with his basic navy, white, and black closet, could see that. It was in a prime location, right on Georgetown’s main shopping and restaurant street. Tourists, college students, and locals all undoubtedly strolled by at least a couple of times a week.

  Also smart. Smarter than he’d come close to giving her credit for being.

  Her skirt snapped against his leg, she whirled around so fast. “Well? You’ve got my attention. But you’re going to have to work pretty hard to keep it. I’m busy.”

  Riley finished his three-sixty scope of the store. The five of them were the only ones in there. Not a customer in sight. His eyebrows shot up. “Oh yeah, I can see that.”

  It was a total dick move. Riley knew it before his mouth closed on the last word. The wrong thing to say. The wrong time to say it. The worst part? He didn’t mean to be vicious. Poking at Summer had become…a habit. One he needed to, if not break, then at least take a break from. It was the whole reason he’d come here.

  Although she had every right to storm off, she held her ground. The only clue Summer was biting back annoyance was the way she lifted her chin. “We close in ten minutes. It’s the dog days of summer. And a Tuesday. Do I need to pull out my business plan to show you the graph of optimal clusters of days of the week, months, and times of day that people spend money in this store?”

  “Do you really have that?” Graphs were a weakness of Riley’s. Right up there with craft beer and Brazilian swimsuit models. Which, come to think of it, Summer kind of resembled, what with her big eyes, long dark hair, and endless legs. And…now he was picturing her in a bikini.

  Shit.

  Summer gaped at him as though he’d asked her if she’d ever seen the Jefferson Memorial. “Of course I do. There’s a lease that has to get paid on this space every month. Employees to pay—as well as taxes. Advertising. I don’t just play dress-up all day.”

  While not a multimillionaire business god like Knox, Riley could run some computations in his head. And he figured that the amount she had to pay in overhead for this prime spot, along with everything else she mentioned, proved that Summer had to be pulling in a nice profit. Which meant she had to be a pretty darned savvy businesswoman. It was a side of her he’d never even glimpsed before.

  It also meant he’d misjudged her. Judged at face value, anyway. Seeing as how it was an extraordinarily pretty face—that was usually frowning or glaring at him—yeah, he’d pitched the attitude right back without a second thought.

  Well, it was time for that second thought. And an apology.

  Riley unbuttoned his sport coat to shove his hands into his pockets. He didn’t enjoy eating crow. But he had the balls to do it when necessary. �
��Look, Summer, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made that dig.”

  A single dark eyebrow arched upward. “Which one?”

  Wouldn’t give him an inch, huh? Well, he’d do the same thing if someone hassled him in his office at the NTSB. Just because her job wasn’t life-and-death like his didn’t make it unimportant. “Let’s go with, oh, eighty-two percent of them.”

  She cocked her head. “Why not one hundred percent?”

  “Because the rest were, no doubt, either defensive from you sticking a verbal shiv in me or deserved.” Apologizing was one thing. Totally folding? No way.

  “So you’re sorry for calling me reckless?”

  “Nope. I stick by that one. You’re an admitted jaywalker, after all.”

  Her posture relaxed. Not all the way. But Riley could tell he was getting through to her. “Why don’t you give me an example of the eighty-two percent you regret?”

  Fair enough. “The comments about playing dress-up all day. Those were out of line.”

  Summer nodded her acknowledgment. Or agreement. Maybe both. “I’d call them mean-spirited, not out of line.” She ran a hand down a white skirt all poofed out and hanging in the window. “As it happens, I’ve got lots of experience playing with dresses.”

  “Still have a Barbie collection, hidden next to the SoCo?” He hooked a thumb toward the back room with a grin.

  “Never had a Barbie.” Summer sounded wistful. “No time for dolls when I was growing up. Or cartoons. Or really any of the fun things that are supposed to be childhood necessities.”

  Funny. He could totally relate. Who would’ve expected that? “Me neither. My parents always said that time spent playing could be time spent learning.”

  Summer snorted. “That sounds like something the Puritans would’ve cross-stitched onto a pillow.”

  “Wow.” Riley hinged forward to whisper, “Did you peek in my bedroom last time you were at the house?”

  “Very funny.”

  Barely funny, actually. But it’d smoothed things over. They were having what passed for a civil conversation. He’d take it. “How do no cartoons add up to playing with dresses?”

  “I did fashion shoots for department stores, catalogs. And I was on the pageant circuit.”

  It both did and didn’t surprise him. It didn’t, because Summer was stunningly beautiful. But it did surprise him because for all her obvious and annoying flightiness, he’d never doubted the intelligence at her core. Which wasn’t something he normally tacked on to the one-two punch of a model and beauty queen.

  “Sorry about that remark. I was wrong. What you did when you were younger? That was posing. This?” He gestured to the bright, airy expanse of the store. “This is persistence and planning.”

  Summer’s eyes assumed their habitual-when-aimed-at-him squint of disdain. It was about as sour as eating a slice of lime without a tequila-and-salt chaser. Which meant he’d somehow insulted her with his compliment. There was no pleasing this woman.

  Still, their civility had lasted at least four sentences longer than usual. Some progress.

  “Bite your tongue. I don’t plan.” She spat it out as though the word itself was poisoned.

  No. Riley wasn’t rolling over on this. Not when he’d busted his ass to both apologize and be fucking nice about it. “What the hell? I didn’t accuse you of turning tricks to pay the lease.”

  Closing her eyes, she turned her face to the lingering sun. Was she clamming up? Just shutting him out completely? For one, well-intentioned compliment? Just as Riley was about to go off on her, Summer dragged in a long breath.

  “That wasn’t aimed at you. Not entirely, anyway. I have, um, certain issues around planning for the future. Long-term goals. All that garbage. It ticks me off. Fate ticks me off. The way it randomly, almost whimsically destroys people’s lives and plans and hopes and dreams.”

  Okay. Clearly he’d stepped onto her personal land mine. One that kind of intrigued him. That was one hell of a rant. Had to be a big story behind it. An interesting one. But digging into her personal baggage probably wouldn’t get him what he wanted today. Riley was here on a mission. “Your store looks great,” he offered. Lamely.

  “Thank you.” Summer turned, opened her eyes, and smiled at him. A real smile. Something she’d never before aimed at him. Then she curved a hand around his elbow in a fleeting touch. “Truly. You just hit a sore spot. Plus, I get teased more often than not when people hear what I do. They assume I just try on dresses and smile at people all day. They don’t recognize the work it takes. Usually I don’t let it get to me. But it’d be nice to be recognized as brainy and not just a busty brunette for once, you know?”

  “Yeah.” There he went, feeling a connection again.

  Too many times to count, he’d wanted to be recognized as himself, and not one of the so-called heroes of the Alps. Because Riley wasn’t a hero. A survivor, sure. But pushing yourself to stay alive wasn’t heroic. Just selfish.

  Now, he worked every day to make a difference, to save people, to prevent accidents and injuries and death. That felt a whole lot more noteworthy than just not dying on some foreign mountaintop as a kid.

  “So why did you want to talk to me? Because, well, at least until two minutes ago”—she laughed self-deprecatingly—“that’s not something you and I do well at all.”

  “Right. You hit the nail on the head.” Riley pulled his hands out of his pockets. Didn’t know what to do with them to look nonthreatening. Peaceful. Approachable. Since usually all he wanted to do was wring her neck. Metaphorically, of course. He settled for rubbing a hand across the back of his own neck. “I want to call a truce.”

  Summer sat on the polished wood lip of the display. Pursed her lips and looked up at him without any anger, just curiosity. Which was a nice change of pace. For the whole forty seconds it’d probably last, anyway. “Why?” she asked.

  “The trip to the beach house this weekend. Chloe said she’s bringing you along.”

  “Yes. Are you and the other guys okay with that? She said there was room.”

  He bit back a laugh. “Oh, there’s plenty. Knox’s beach house could hold the Redskins’ starting lineup. Along with all of the assistant coaches.” Knox worked hard to earn his shit ton of dollars. And he liked to play even harder with them. Private planes. Exotic trips. A beach house in Delaware that could be in a movie, as well as a condo out in Vail.

  “Okay. Good. Because I’ve gotten close with Madison now, too, and it sounded like fun. I haven’t been to the beach all summer.”

  It’d be a little weird going to Bethany Beach with all the girls for the first time. It was weird enough even acknowledging that Knox was engaged to Madison. Logan was bringing his girlfriend Brooke, too. Riley and Josh had joked last night about how it’d just be the two of them hitting the bars to find a hookup. And how that made their odds even better at walking out with the hottest babes on the beach. Things changed. Fast.

  He’d never thought anything would change with his friends. That it’d always be the five of them against the world.

  Safety in numbers, though, right? It could only be a good thing his friends fell in love and widened their circle. Or that’s what Riley kept trying to convince himself of…even though it just felt a little lonely now, sometimes.

  This time he slapped his hands together and then pointed them at her. “We—you and me—got off to a rocky start.”

  Summer’s laughter pealed out like he’d just told a dirty joke. “If those rocks are superheated lava destroying everything in its path, then yes. That’s the start we got.”

  Joking about it was good. They were on the same page. So far. “Yeah, well, that’ll make for a pretty shitty vacation if everyone’s waiting for us to go off at each other. No matter how big the house is, we’ll be on top of each other the whole weekend. So I want to ask for a truce.”

  “For Chloe’s sake?”

  “For Griff’s, is what I was thinking, but yeah, for Chloe, too. For everyone. Hel
l, we don’t know how or if it’ll even work. What with three of us coupled up.”

  “Don’t you like Madison and Brooke?” Summer wagged a finger at him. “Notice I don’t ask if you like Chloe, because she’s the sweetest person in the universe and impossible not to adore.”

  “Agreed. I’m just saying the dynamic’s changed. Fast. Yeah, I like all the girls.” More than he’d expected. Not minding at all these people who’d pushed into their airtight group. Well, not minding…much.

  “ ‘Women,’ ” she corrected archly.

  “Christ.” Riley huffed out a breath. Even with them trying to be polite, they still couldn’t go more than five sentences without nitpicking. Too bad there wasn’t a patch he could slap on both of them to weaken the urge to bicker. A snark-cessation tool. “Um, ‘significant others’— how’s that for politically correct?” Once she nodded, he rolled on to the meat of it. “Trips are a big deal with the ACSs.”

  “The who?”

  Shit. He’d let it slip because he assumed Chloe had told her BFF everything about them. Wasn’t that what women did? Riley never talked about this to anyone besides his roommates. None of them did—until, apparently, they fell in love, and then the whole fucking story came spilling out.

  Griff, Knox, and Logan had all, and equally sheepishly, admitted sharing the deets with their women. Like it was some rite of passage. Except they’d never discussed doing that. It felt weird to know that the story they’d kept on lockdown from everyone, from parents to therapists to the press, wasn’t only theirs anymore.

  Riley jerked one shoulder, to downplay it. “It’s a stupid group nickname we got years ago. Me, Griff, Knox, Josh, and Logan. We use it because it’s faster than saying all our names. No big deal.”

  “Weird nickname. What does it stand for?”

  Lying was an option. But Chloe would probably bring it up to Summer sooner or later. Oh, and the entire world knew about it already. One quick Web search would reveal the truth. Plus, it was wrong to kick off an official peace treaty by lying. “Americani Calcio Sopravvissuti. American Soccer Survivors. The Italian press gave it to us.”