Inspire (The Muse #1)(20)
Author: Cora Carmack

“I look forward to seeing those notes,” Lennox says before winking at me and heading off to presumably find more dresses for my sister.

I watch her go. She’s a little funkier than my usual type. She wears these odd converse shoes that are a cross between tennis shoes and boots. They lace all the way up to her knees. She’s got on tights beneath them, shorts and what appears to be two oversized sweaters. But she seems nice.

Not quite as …

I shake my head. I’ve been in an epic slump for the last month and a half since I’d woken up to find my bed empty of the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in real life. I shouldn’t still be thinking about Kalli, shouldn’t be comparing every girl I meet to her. It was one night, and she’d been skittish and emotional the whole time. I can’t say I’m surprised she ran out on me. She didn’t seem like the kind of girl for a one night stand, and I’ve definitely had my fair share of those to know the difference.

But that’s over too. No more wild life. I can’t live like that and put Mom and Gwen first.

No point dwelling on things I can’t have. My old life and Kalli both.

There’s a rustling from the direction of the dressing rooms, and I look up expecting to see Gwen’s first dress, but it’s the curtain next to hers that slides open.

“Hey Len! Is this how you wanted this dress to hang?”

My eyes snag on the girl’s hand as it tugs at a flowy section of fabric over her hips. And somehow I know … just from that voice and her slim hands … I know it’s her.

I’ve spent weeks thinking about her, obsessing over the things I said and did, wondering if it was my fault she felt the need to run away, trying to understand what might have happened to her that night to leave her so on edge. And now she’s here.

My eyes track up her body in slow motion. Smooth, olive-brown skin, generous hips and breasts, cinched in at the waist, dark curls spilling over her shoulders.

Then I get to her face. Kalli.

The sight of her hits me like a physical blow, and if I weren’t sitting down, I might have actually stumbled back. She seems just as surprised to see me sitting there, and she blinks, like maybe I’m part of her imagination, and I’ll disappear any moment.

I don’t disappear.

Neither does she.

We stare at each other, and I swear, the hold this girl has on me after just two meetings is unreal. Fucking scary, actually.

She sucks in a breath, wrapping an arm around her waist in a gesture that’s about either comfort or shock, maybe both. And I wonder if she feels it too. If she’s just as intrigued and freaked out as I am.

Neither of us has spoken by the time Lennox returns, stepping between us and severing the connection. She tilts her head to the side, surveying the dress that Kalli’s wearing. She tugs once at the dress, trying to get it fall in a different way, but nothing changes.

“Hmm …” she says. “I think I’ve put in too many pleats. If I do half as many and gather more fabric in each one, I think it will sit better.” She steps back, looking over Kalli from head-to-toe.

Guilty. I totally do it, too. She’s just as stunning as I remember her, and I don’t know what they’re talking about with the dress. It fits her perfectly. My mouth is actually watering looking at her, and Jesus, I’ve got to talk to her. Have to get her number. I can’t go another month thinking about her after another chance encounter.

Fuck chance. I’m not leaving it to luck again.

Chapter Ten

“You can go ahead and take that one off,” Lennox says. “I’ll make a note on what to fix. Try the purple one next.”

Lennox hangs two more little girl dresses outside Gwen’s dressing room and asks, “You doing okay, Gwen?”

Gwen calls out a yes, then Lennox is leaving, and Kalli is turning to go back to the dressing room. Before I really think it through, I’m standing.

“Hey.”

Her fingers tighten around the curtain, but she doesn’t retreat inside. She tosses her head a little, just enough to get her thick curls to swing over her shoulder, and then she looks at me over her shoulder.

“Hey.” Her voice is quiet, and I’m incredibly aware that my little sister is just a curtain away. All I want to do is push Kalli into that dressing room and press her against the wall and show her just what she missed when she snuck out of my apartment.

But I can’t.

“I didn’t realize this place has clothes for adults.”

“It doesn’t.” Her body is still turned away from me, like she’s going to bolt any second. “Lennox is studying fashion design. She’s part of a showcase coming up in a couple months, and I’m her …” She pauses, as if searching for the word. “I’m her friend. I just play mannequin for her on occasion.”

“Mannequin?” Lennox calls out from where she’s flipping through hangers on a nearby rack. “I heard that! Mannequins are plastic. Mannequins are scary life-size fake people with curiously absent genitalia. Mannequins might one day come to life and kill us all.”

The smile Kalli sends in her friend’s direction is small, but striking. It’s one of those moments where a picture is worth a thousand words. Ten thousand. I don’t even know that it’s something that could really be captured with anything other than the eye.

And there I go again. What is it about this girl that turns me into such a fool? Or maybe it’s not her at all. Maybe I’ve lost some confidence over the last year. When you used to spend your nights in bar after bar with just about any girl you wanted, and you suddenly shift to spending your nights babysitting … it wrecks your head a little.

But still … it feels like more than that with her.

I’ve never had to think about what to say to a girl. I like to think I’m fairly charming, and I’ve always been good at stringing words together. With Kalli … I’m scared that if I don’t reign myself in, I’ll frighten her off as I wax poetic about her eyebrows or whatever part of her has caught my attention at the time.

“You are not my mannequin,” Lennox says. “You’re my muse. Seriously. I was totally stuck on this collection until you came along.”

Kalli’s eyes flick to mine, and there’s something in them. Unease, maybe?

“I’m going to change,” she says. And I don’t know if she’s saying it to me or Lennox or both of us.

Her curtain closes, and I strain my ears to listen for her movements. I think I hear the glide of fabric over her skin before it thumps against the floor. I rest my elbows on my knees and shove my fingers into my hair because now I’m thinking about her body, how it had looked against my sheets. All that smooth, unblemished skin. Perfect. It doesn’t seem possible, but her body was the closest damn thing I’d ever seen to it. I remember the way her wet dress clung to her after our water fight in the shower.