Baby, It's You by Jane Graves Read Free Book Online

faster than that.”
    “I’m doing the best I can.”
    A minute later, he’d undone the second one. Had it been too long since he’d undressed a woman? Was that the problem? Use it or lose it? Or did he just need a magnifying glass for these damned buttons?
    Which brought him to another not-so-nice conclusion. Maybe his eyesight was going, too.
    “Please hurry,” she said, a tremor of panic in her voice. “I think it’s shrinking as it dries.”
    “Look, you’ve already said you can’t do this yourself. So right now I’m all you’ve got.”
    “I know. But that doesn’t make breathing any easier.”
    He fumbled with button number three, poking and pulling. “Can you suck in a little bit?”
    “If I could suck in,” she said pointedly, “I could breathe. And if I could breathe, this wouldn’t be a problem. How many more?”
    “Do you want me to count buttons or unbutton them?”
    She sighed. “Keep going.”
    “These buttons are just too small,” he said. “Hell, the dress is, too. Why are you wearing a dress that’s too small?”
    “You have to order a wedding dress months in advance. How am I supposed to know exactly what size I’ll be when it finally comes in?”
    “Isn’t that what tailors are for?”
    “You can let something out only so much.”
    He fumbled with button number four a little longer. It was hopeless. “Do you plan on wearing this dress again?”
    She looked down at herself with a sigh. “No. It’s ruined.”
    Marc reached into his pocket, pulled out a pocketknife, and flipped it open. He tucked the tip of the knife beneath one of the fabric button loops, gave it a flick, and the button came loose. He freed another one. And another.
    “How are you doing that?” she asked.
    “Pocketknife.”
    She spun around. “You’re cutting the button loops?”
    “Do you want out of this dress or not?”
    “This dress cost five thousand dollars!”
    Marc drew back. “For one dress ?”
    “It’s Vera Wang.”
    “Very what?”
    “No. Vera —oh, never mind.” She sighed. “Keep going.”
    He continued like that all the way down. As the sides of the dress parted, her body slowly relaxed. His gaze trailed down the indentation of her spine, which curved gently all the way to her waist, with skin that looked so soft and fragile he was sure one touch would leave a bruise. As she took a deep breath, her body shifted and the dress fell open a little more, revealing the top of her baby-pink panties. Marc’s heart beat faster. Something about that little scrap of fabric peeking out just about did him in. He’d been too long without a woman. That was the problem. When just the sight of a pair of panties made him hot, he had some serious catching up to do.
    Three more buttons, and the task was done. As he clicked his knife shut and returned it to his pocket, she turned around slowly, her hands clasping the bodice of the dress against her breasts to hold it up. As she stared up at him, for the first time he looked past the raccoon rings and the wet lashes and focused on her eyes. They were green. No, more than just green. He’d always prided himself on being a concrete thinker with no room in his ordered mind for metaphorical crap, but suddenly he had a mental picture of the shimmery color of dewdrops glittering on grape leaves in early autumn.
    Where the hell had that come from?
    He tried to look away, but away turned into down . From one of her shoulders to the other was an expanse of creamy skin sprinkled with raindrops that shimmered in the dim lamplight, complete with delicate collarbones overlaid with a dainty pearl necklace. He couldn’t stop staring at her. He couldn’t even blink. He swore he was staring so hard his eyeballs were turning to dust.
    As his gaze moved lower still, he zeroed in on the most beautiful thing he’d seen in ages—her breasts swelling above the lacy bodice of the dress she held against her. He didn’t get it. Brides were supposed to at least pretend