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fighting the heat creeping through his veins. Four weeks he’d be traipsing across the South to examine the Panache stores. How long would it take Jake Riley to put the moves on Clarise? Not that damn long. And Jake was a known player, breaking more than his share of female hearts, many of whom were Eubanks employees. Ethan would damn well kill him if he hurt Clarise.
    “She’s so prim and proper at the store that I’d never have picked her for one who didn’t mind getting her hands dirty, but she sure got them dirty all right. I was impressed with the three of them, though. When they realized Clarise’s perfect manicure was botched because of working on the tire, Rachel slid her white gloves off and gave them to her. Problem solved. You’ve got to admire a woman who is resourceful, like you said.”
    “Yeah,” Ethan said, definitely admiring. “Yeah, you do.”

Chapter 3
    F our weeks had passed since the company Christmas party, which meant four weeks had passed since Clarise had seen Ethan . . . and the way he looked at her in the red dress. She’d spoken to him twice in the interim, on Christmas and New Year’s, when he called to wish her holiday greetings, friend to friend, of course. Or at least she thought it was friend to friend. He always called her on holidays, so it shouldn’t have seemed odd that he remembered to pick up the phone while he was out of town, but for some reason, it did seem odd—oddly exhilarating. She’d never gotten nervous talking to Ethan on the phone before, but then again, she’d never aggressively planned to pursue her best friend romantically before. Then again, hadn’t he sounded
different
as well? As though the conversation was moving a bit awkwardly because, maybe, they didn’t quite know whether something had changed at that Christmas party, when he touched her smudged nose in front of the crowd and asked if she was okay, because something had definitely changed on her end; had it changed on his end too? And would she be able to tell when she saw him tomorrow at Gasparilla?
    Clarise had hoped he’d come home a day or two before the annual company trip, but his meetings with the Panache executives were running down to the wire, and he hadn’t been able to slice one day off of the four-week time period, which put him arriving back in Birmingham just in time to head back out. She’d wanted to see him prior to Gasparilla and to somehow prepare him for what she planned—to show him her wild and sexy side and see if he were interested at all in looking at her that way, all wild and sexy. Lord, could she even pull
wild and sexy
off?
    Yes, she could, Clarise realized,
if
she had the right clothes. While she knew in her heart that she wasn’t as confident as she’d like to be regarding several aspects of life (take men, for one example, and her body, for another), Clarise had a surplus of confidence when it came to fashion. She loved apparel of all types, putting odd pieces together to create a new look and helping other people do the same, and she relished the general feeling of pride that surged through her when she knew she’d hit the mark with a customer and that the woman would truly feel her best when wearing the outfit Clarise had recommended. It was a talent, and Clarise planned to nurture it and cultivate it until she reached her final, and currently, very private, goal as a fashion buyer.
    There were five main classifications of clothing, as Clarise saw them: 1) business conservative, 2) business casual, 3) formal, 4) casual fun and the last classification, which Clarise could only describe as 5) sexy-as-all-get-out, undeniably sassy and to-die-for hot. Unfortunately, she had complete ensembles for every classification except the last one, and that was what she needed for Gasparilla. Consequently, that was the only classification that she couldn’t purchase at Eubanks Elegant Apparel, which was the primary reason for her trip across town this afternoon. Tomorrow