Her eyes began to burn, but she blinked the sensation away. This was a really stupid thing to cry about.

There was a knock at the door. “Jamie, it’s Monique. Your young man suggested I check on you. How is everything?”

She opened her mouth to lie but instead blurted out the truth. “Horrible. I look like a geek.”

Monique opened the door and stepped inside with a surprisingly kind smile. “No geeks are allowed in the store. Didn’t you see the sign? Only beautiful women. If they aren’t beautiful when they come in, they’re beautiful when they leave.”

She motioned for Jamie to stand up, then walked around her in a slow circle. “This is all wrong for you.”

“I know.”

Monique wasn’t listening. “Very nice color, but the style, the shape. It hides what you should flaunt. This-” she touched the thick sleeve “-this is for the romantic type. The woman who is all soft lines and ruffles. Not you. Take off the dress and let me see what we’re working with.”

Jamie undressed quickly. Monique studied her for a second and sighed. “You work out, don’t you? You’re in fabulous shape. Flaunt it while you still have it.” She patted her own narrow hips. “Time and gravity are not our friends. Stay right here.”

She threw the tapestry jacket and filmy skirt over her arm and disappeared. Less than a minute later, she was back with a little black dress-little being the key word. It didn’t look big enough to fit a dress-up doll, let alone a grown woman.

“It’s too small,” Jamie said.

“It stretches,” Monique told her. “Trust me.”

She set the dress on the hook, then tossed Jamie a black teddy in silk. “The key to a good fit is the right foundation.”

Jamie stared at the teddy. It had an underwire bra built in that looked more like scraps of silk cloth than actual support. But Monique was the expert.

Jamie put on the teddy. It was a low cut, as she expected. The silk came up over her nipples and stopped. The design was different than she was used to, forcing her breasts together and up, giving her more cleavage than was legal. So much for not having support. The rest of the undergarment slipped over her torso like a lover’s touch.

“Are you sure about this?” Jamie stroked the soft fabric. It felt positively decadent. She loved it!

Monique just smiled.

Next came the dress. She pulled it on over her head. The stretch material clung to her like a wet shower curtain. She pulled the hem down and found it ended a good eight inches above her knees.

Monique stepped behind her and pulled up the zipper, then smoothed her hair down the center of her back. “You see. It’s perfect.”

Jamie stared at her reflection, not quite willing to believe what she saw.

The dress hugged every curve. She looked like a model, all long legs and cleavage. Her breasts threatened to spill out of the heart-shaped neckline. The black lace was see-through on her arms, but lined everywhere else. She looked like someone other people would turn to stare at.

“I’ll take it,” she said without thinking, then giggled.

“I thought you might. Do you have shoes?”

Jamie shook her head. “I don’t have stockings, either.”

Monique asked her shoe size and disappeared for a few minutes. Jamie stared at her reflection some more, unable to believe she’d actually found a dress she liked and that liked her. She turned around, admiring herself from every angle. She looked great and she couldn’t stop grinning like a fool.

When Monique returned, she had several packages of panty hose and three boxes of shoes. She set them in the chair. “These are what I would usually give customers to wear,” she said, pulling out black lace pumps with four-inch heels.

“No way.”

“That’s what I thought.” She opened the second box. These were also lace, but a two-inch heel. “Could you survive in these?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

“Put them on.” Monique set them on the floor.

Jamie stepped into the shoes. She wobbled a bit, but it wasn’t as bad as she thought. “I think I could manage.”

“Good. When was the last time you wore panty hose?”

Jamie tried to recall. It had been years. No doubt her parents had made her dress up to go to some formal event in high school, but she couldn’t put a date on it. “Um, I can’t really remember.”

Monique smiled. “I’ll send you home with three pairs,” she said. “In case you run the first couple putting them on. Now about your hair.”

“My hair?” She touched the long strands. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing. It’s beautiful. Curl it.”

Jamie stared blankly. “How?”

Monique was a professional. Not even by a flicker of a lash did she let on that the question was strange. “Electric curlers. The drugstore on the corner will have them.” She mentioned a brand to look for. “Don’t worry about getting fancy. Brush your hair, then start rolling it up. You’ll love the look, I promise. Do you wear makeup?”

Jamie thought about her failed efforts at the cabin. “I’m not very good at it.”

Monique pulled a small pad from a pocket in her dress. She wrote for a few minutes, then tore off the sheet. “This will get you started. You’re going to knock his socks off.”

“I hope so.”

“Trust me.”

Jamie smiled. “I do.” Monique merely nodded as if this wasn’t unexpected, but for Jamie it was a moment of revelation. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been willing to trust a stranger. Okay, this was shopping and not a matter of life or death, but she felt as if she’d taken a giant step on the journey to normal. She turned back to her reflection and grinned. Why had she ever thought shopping was a problem? She hadn’t even needed her gun.

Jamie stared at herself in the mirror. She looked like one of those “before” pictures in the magazines. Curlers hung to her neck. The hot edges kept touching her skin. She’d finally had to drape a towel around her shoulders to protect herself from the heat. It had taken her about a dozen tries to get all the curlers to stay in her hair, but she’d finally managed.

She glanced at the bottle of foundation, then at the streaky mess on her face. Okay, so that wasn’t going to work. At least the color had been better than the one she’d bought on her own.

She wiped her face clean with a damp washcloth and figured Zach had seen her bare skin enough to not be offended by it. She picked up a smoky gray eye shadow. The label proclaimed it to be foolproof. She wasn’t convinced.

A diagram on the back showed where to apply the shadow. She closed her right eye and squinted with her left. The sponge applicator was made for small leprechauns with short fingers. She could barely hold on to it. But she managed to get a streak of the cosmetic across her eyelid, right at the crease. It looked a little stark, so she smudged it with her finger, then opened her eye.

Amazing. She couldn’t really see the shadow, but her right eye looked bigger and mysterious.

“Cool,” she said, then repeated the procedure on the other eye. She skipped the eyeliner. It looked way too dangerous. Next came mascara. She only clumped her lashes twice, but she’d bought a lash brush, which corrected the problem. She dabbed her nose, forehead and chin with face powder, then used a neutral shade of rosewood lipstick on her mouth.

She stared at her reflection. Not fashion-model beautiful, but not a half-bad job, either. She was quite pleased with herself. Next came the stockings. She got the first pair on with no mishaps. The teddy went over the stockings. The dress slipped on easily, although she had to shimmy to reach behind herself to zip it up. She pulled and tugged until it was in place. Last she uncoiled the curlers from her hair.

She’d never done anything but trim it or pull it back in a braid, so she wasn’t sure if it would even curl. Amazingly it did. Monique had told her to bend over at her waist and brush her hair from the underside, making that smooth but leaving the rest of it alone. The advice had sounded stupid, but Jamie did as she was told.

When she tossed her head back, curls tumbled onto her shoulders and down her back. Her eyes widened as she stared at herself. She looked great. She looked better than great. She looked fabulous.

Curls were everywhere. The slight disarray made her look sexy. The tight-fitting dress and abundance of curves added to the image.

Jamie fluffed her bangs, then grabbed the bottle of hair spray. She spritzed her curls in place, then slipped into her shoes. Where an inept thirty-year-old tomboy had been, stood a stunning, elegant woman. If Monique had been there, Jamie would have hugged her close and probably broken down in tears.

“Zach,” she said through the door, then had to clear her throat because her voice had gone all husky. She tried again. “Zach, I’m ready.”

She heard the rustling of plastic.

“Give me a second.”

Nerves fluttered in her stomach. She couldn’t believe what they were doing. When she’d come out of the dressing room prepared to buy the dress, Zach hadn’t been around. He’d shown up a few minutes later with a plastic garment bag over one shoulder. He’d told her if she was willing to get all dressed up for him, he was willing to do the same for her.

“Okay, come on out,” he said.

She put her hand on the doorknob, then paused as she fought a wave of shyness. She’d never gone to all this trouble with her appearance before. What if-?

Forget the “what ifs,” she told herself firmly. Just enjoy the moment. With that, she opened the door and stepped into the bedroom.

The sun had barely set. She could see the faint colors of the sky through the sheers at the window. Zach had already put on the lamps, so the room was flooded with light.

“Jamie, I got you-” he said, and turned toward her. He held a gold box in his hands.