3
“Spur Chappell?” Ginny said the moment Olli opened her front door.
“Shh.” Olli reached for her and ushered her inside, as if one of the other Chappell brothers would be standing there, watching. Eavesdropping. The Chappells also had dozens and dozens of cowboys and cowgirls who came to Bluegrass Ranch to work with the horses there. They had their own practice track and everything, and they seemed to have activity at the ranch from sunup to sundown.
“Shh?” Ginny repeated. “Their ranch is at least a mile from here.” She looked at Olli with her sharp, navy eyes. She’d learned her pointed look from her picture-perfect mother, and Olli hated being on the receiving end of it.
“I just don’t think you need to shout his name out here.” She stepped past her friend, ignoring the state of her kitchen and living room. She wasn’t the best housekeeper on the planet, but no one she lived with cared. Witcher, the hermit cat she shared the house with, probably liked the obstacles Olli left behind. “Now, come on. I need help with my outfit.”
“So you like him,” Ginny asked, following Olli past the couch where she’d slept last night, the dining room table filled with notebooks with ideas, bottles, boxes, and her business computer, and a basket of clean laundry Olli had been picking through for a week now.
“No,” Olli said with a scoff, though she heard a bit of a false note in her own voice. “I just want to dress to impress.” She indicated the three outfits she’d spent the last hour putting together.
“Because he’s rich.”
That was one reason, though Olli had never cared to impress Spur or any of the other Chappell men before. “Because I need this to work,” she said, really adding some bite to her words to drive home her point. “What if we fight all night? Or he decides I’m disgusting, and he can’t even pretend to be my boyfriend?” She shook her head. “I need this to work, Ginny.”
Ginny appraised her for another moment. “Okay, but let’s be clear. One, he is rich.”
“Fine,” Olli conceded. “He’s rich.”
“Two,” Ginny said, her eyes and voice growing more animated. “You want to look like the type of woman a man like him would have on his arm, which of course you are, because you’re not disgusting. Three, he’s drop-dead gorgeous. Even you can’t deny that. Four, you want this to work so you can win over the investor coming into town in a couple of weeks. Five, you haven’t had a boyfriend in a while and you’re nervous. Six—”
“Enough,” Olli finally said, adding a laugh to it. “Yes to all of that, and anything else you were going to say. He’s going to be here in thirty minutes. I need you to pick out the outfit and help me with my hair.”
“Your hair is already flawless.” Ginny stepped over to the bed and started examining the slacks, skirts, and blouses Olli had laid out. “You don’t even know what point six was going to be.”
“Probably something about how I’ll consider him for my real boyfriend if the date goes well,” Olli said, rolling her eyes. “You sometimes forget that I’ve known you for twenty years.”
“I do not,” Ginny said, picking up the black blouse with tiny white horses on it. She handed it to Olli with a dry spark in her eyes. “I’ve been picking out clothes for you for two decades, and it has been taxing.”
Olli laughed, and Ginny joined in as she went back to the bed. “If you hate it so much, then why do you keep coming over when I call?”
“Someone has to look like a million bucks when they go out.”
“You could have any man you wanted,” Olli said. “You just have to say yes when one of them asks.”
“No one asks,” Ginny said. She turned back with the denim pencil skirt in her hand. Olli had been secretly hoping she’d pick that, because she did think it showed off her curvy hips but skinny legs.
“You’re such a liar,” Olli said, taking the skirt. She started shimmying out of her leggings and into the skirt. “I know a man asked you out in Texas last week. You said no.”
“Yeah, because he lives in Texas,” Ginny said. “Not sure if you remember, Olls, but we live in Kentucky. The two states don’t even touch each other.”
“He was really cute,” Olli said. “You could’ve flown in or something.”
Ginny scoffed and went back to the apparel on the bed. “You need big hoops with that blouse. Silver. You should wear that black opal your mother gave you too.”
“Okay,” Olli said, switching out her gardening T-shirt for the blouse. “Front tuck? Back? All around?”
“Front,” Ginny said, stepping over to Olli and tucking in the blouse for her. She tugged some of it back out and stood back. “Amazing. Shoes.” She turned back to the bed, where Olli had laid no less than seven pairs of shoes and sandals, wedges and ankle boots. “None of these.”
“None of those?” Olli stepped over to her dresser and started rummaging for the ring and earrings Ginny had suggested. “Those are the best ones I have.”
“No, you have that pair of black sandals with the skinny straps.”
“Those are barely shoes,” Olli said. She hated them too, because they were completely flat, and her arches hurt after the first hour.
“They’re sexy,” Ginny said.