Blushing Pink

  Blushing Pink

  by

  Jill Winters

  Without limiting the rights under copyright(s) reserved above and below, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  Please Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distributing of this book via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

  Copyright © 2003, 2011 by Jill Winters

  eBook design by eBook Prep www.ebookprep.com

  Thank You.

  This book is dedicated to Pepper—whose insight,

  patience, heart, and friendship made this story possible.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank my mom and dad for their constant support and kindness. Thanks to my sisters and brother-in-law, who keep me laughing, even through writer's block. Thanks to my BF, who makes things brighter, and a big thank-you to Jessica, who, every so often, fixes my life.

  Dear Reader,

  I am so excited to be able to reissue my earlier books to you! Blushing Pink was my second novel, originally published by Penguin Group in 2003, and for me, the emotions and soul of the book still ring true. My heroine, Reese Brock, is particularly close to my heart—a bookish Jersey girl (like me) with a loving but bossy mother (no offense, Mom), whose saving grace is her friendship with her sisters. I hope you will enjoy this fun love story, and also keep an eye out for my brand-new mystery series coming soon!

  I really value feedback from readers and I would love to hear from you. Please visit me on Facebook, or send me an email via my website: www.jillwinters.com.

  Happy reading!

  Jill Winters

  Chapter 1

  "I'm escaping a bubblegum-pink ball gown with a big bow on the butt, so everything else is gravy."

  Angela laughed. "You're exaggerating."

  "I believe it's called accentuating the positive," Reese replied, and gunned the gas a little more so she could pass the fifth fuel truck she'd seen in half an hour. She had a significant phobia of riding behind them or beside them... well, of them.

  "Speaking of our dresses," Angela said, "Mom was worried because Ally hasn't gotten money from Lane yet." As far as brides went, Reese and Angela's little sister, Ally, wasn't the most efficient. She'd bought the four bridesmaid dresses herself, on credit, and apparently had yet to be reimbursed from her friend Lane. On top of that, she hadn't even gotten her own dress yet.

  With her wedding only a month away, that was bad enough, but the fact that she'd ordered her dress off the Internet was sending their mother into a frenzied tailspin of nagging and "This is why..." speeches, while their father doled out unsolicited lectures about the Web being predatory ground for deviants and "confidence artists."

  Reese had the feeling she was in for an interesting vacation.

  "Hey," Angela said, "are you still there?"

  "Oh, yeah... sorry. I'm just trying to see if this prick is gonna let me go." Reese pressed her gas pedal down harder, and cut the wheel to slip in the far left lane of Route 80 while she still had a minuscule chance. But at the last second, the prick sped up and ruined her opportunity. "Damn!"

  "What?"

  "Oh... nothing. Sorry, I just hate these drives home; they're such a pain."

  "Yeah, a whole forty-five minutes. How do you do it every three months?"

  "Okay, okay," Reese said, and brushed some messy, honey-colored hair behind her ears so she could see.

  Her older sister was right, of course; the trip from New York City to Goldwood, New Jersey, wasn't all that unbearable. She just felt like whining because her winter break had officially begun, she had five nonschool weeks ahead of her, five weeks to do nothing but vegetate at her parents' house, and instead of taking full advantage, she had to work her usual weekly hours at Roland & Fisk, a large bookstore in Midtown Manhattan.

  But still, she was extremely grateful for the non-school part. She couldn't wait to set her bookbag aside, and not pick it up again for a month. Currently enrolled in a history Ph.D. program at Crewlyn College, Reese was on fellowship, which meant that her tuition was waived, but for all intents and purposes the school owned her. Crewlyn provided her with a graduate apartment, in exchange for her service as a professor's assistant.

  Of course, an assistantship meant different things depending on one's professor. In Reese's case, working for Professor Leopold Kimble merely entailed grading all his papers, enduring his passive-aggression, and ghostwriting massive sections of his latest book for no credit. She was also expected to attend faculty wine parties to "facilitate his evening," and attend his lectures to "get a buzz going." And somehow she was still supposed to find time to finish her own epically long dissertation.

  Speaking of her dissertation, technically Reese should use the winter break to work on it. But considering that it had yet to exist, she doubted it would happen. The truth was, she'd always dreamed of writing a novel, and lately she'd been thinking about it much more seriously. She hadn't told her parents or her sisters yet, who still mistakenly viewed her as the "academic" of the family. Anyway, they'd probably think the whole idea was an excuse to procrastinate, and they'd probably be half right.

  "Now what were you saying?" she asked Angela, and popped a Christmas compilation tape into the cassette player of her used, rose-colored sedan.

  "I was just saying that Ally never got the dress money from Lane. Of course, that's not surprising, since Ally is so oblivious to money."

  "And Lane's a mooch," Reese supplied.

  "I was going to say annoying phony."

  "Well, yeah."

  "Anyway, if Ally had gone with her first choice—you know, that big bubblegum thing—it would've been cheaper than the ones we have now."

  "Hey, dignity's priceless," Reese said, "or at least it should be." Sure, to an assistant fashion show coordinator like Ally, the original bridesmaid dress was "retro pink, nouveau poof." To Reese, it was merely an embarrassing exercise in gift-wrapping her butt.

  "Mom's also freaking out about your toast," Angela said.

  Reese sighed loudly, and slid her rosy sedan into the middle lane. "Would she get over it already? It's just a toast. Why do I have to prepare it twenty years in advance and submit it for copyediting?"

  Angela laughed. "She just doesn't want us to embarrass her."

  "What are we, savages?"

  "Don't act all innocent. Last time you were home you told Mom that in lieu of a toast, you were doing an improvisational dance to 'I Like Big Butts.'"

  She grinned, recalling the ludicrous panic on her mother's face; Joanna's eyes had bugged out, her jaw dropped open, until Reese had finally assured her that she was only joking. Sorry, but their mother just made it too easy. "So what's wrong with bringing back the old classics?" Reese said now.

  "Nothing, nothing," Angela said, with a smile in her voice.

  Making Joanna agonize over the toast for Ally's reception was really only fair, since, in Reese's absence, she'd elected Reese to give it. Her rationale, of course, was that toast giving was Reese's "thing." Suffice it to say, that was news.

  "So what's the deal
with that guy in your program?"

  "Kenneth?" Reese said. "Um... he's good."

  "Well, are you guys officially dating yet, or what?"

  "Not... really."

  "What does that mean? Translate for the maritally enhanced."

  Reese shrugged to herself, and ignored the middle finger she was just given by a clown car full of octogenarians. She also gave up on her perpetually tousled hair, which had flopped forward again. Blowing it a fraction, she said, "I don't know; things are sort of cooling off."

  "How come?"

  "I'm... I guess I'm just not that interested anymore. I don't know, the spark's kind of died out." What she failed to add was that she was looking for more than just one single, solitary, isolated spark, anyway. What she wanted was all-consuming desire—she wanted heat.

  But how could she explain to her older sister how passion-deprived her love life was and how much it had been bothering her lately? How could she simply blurt that she was feeling almost desperate to experience the kind of red-hot sex that other people did? Well, she supposed she could blurt it pretty easily, but not over the phone.

  So instead of getting into it, she said lightly, "Hey, not every guy's as great as Drew."

  Angela fell silent for a moment, then replied, "Yeah, I guess." Hmm... Considering that her sister had been married to Drew Emmett for the past three years, and in that time the two had existed as one of those blissful couples bitter people disliked being around, her hesitation about his greatness was odd. Although, ever since Drew's sudden heart attack six months ago, Reese had wondered if they were having problems, but since Angela hadn't specifically mentioned it, she hadn't pushed.

  Maybe now a little push wouldn't hurt. "Is everything okay?"

  "Yeah, fine," Angela replied immediately—and emphatically.

  So Reese let it drop—for now. "By the way, have you tried on your dress yet?" she asked.

  "Oh, yeah. Super tight. I'm putting myself on a crash diet before I go for my fitting."

  "That's ridiculous. You're gonna lose weight so the seamstress won't think less of you?"

  "Yes."

  "You're weird."

  "Valid," Angela said matter-of-factly, waiting for the larger point.

  "Well, I can't wait to stuff this apple-pear body into my dress," Reese said dryly, and veered to the right toward her exit ramp. "Plus the fact that with a high neck, I can't even get any cleavage action going to distract attention away from my potbelly and balloon butt."

  Angela laughed. "God, why do you exaggerate so much?"

  She wished she were. The Brock girls were all fairly short; but Angela and Ally managed to stay slim and narrow, too. Reese, on the other hand, had no clue about that—her curves always felt big and bouncy, and just a few pounds away from being not so cute anymore.

  "Anyway, at least you don't look like a soccer-mom yuppie, like me," Angela said.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Well..."

  "C'mon, what?"

  "I sort of got this haircut," Angela said, distinctly unenthused, which was probably to be expected, since she hadn't gotten more than a trim since junior high. Both she and Ally had the same long, dark hair, and intensely dark eyes, while Reese had inherited their mother's golden-brown "waves" and light green eyes that frequently required reading glasses.

  "You got a haircut? No way, what's it like?"

  "Like a geeky, PTA-woman's bob, that's what."

  Reese laughed. "So how come you decided to cut it?"

  "I don't know; I just... needed a change." She sounded almost wistful, and Reese vowed to find out, face-to-face, what was wrong. "Anyway, you'll see it when you get home."

  Angela and Drew lived in a condo fifteen minutes outside of Goldwood, while Ally still lived with their parents. Until the end of the month, anyway. After that, she'd be married to her longtime boyfriend, Ben Alderzon.

  Reese, however, remained undeniably single, despite the fact that she was the second child, which meant she really should've been married before the third, and despite the fact that her mother had recently started lying about her second daughter's age to acquaintances.

  The whole "single" thing was damn annoying, of course, but what could she do? She couldn't accelerate the Mr. Right process (not that she completely believed in it), and after all, she was only twenty-seven (and a half). She still had plenty of time... right?

  Up until recently, she'd had something going with Professor Kimble's other graduate assistant, Kenneth Peel. The problem was, she had no idea what they had going. Whatever it was, was lukewarm at best. It had started two months ago, when Kenneth had hinted that he wanted to go to the movies. After that, they had met for lunch almost every day, and done date-like things on the weekends. But Kenneth had a naturally formal demeanor that was hard to relax, and so far they'd only kissed a handful of times—each encounter consisting of barely-there things that had left Reese totally unsatisfied.

  Actually, they left her feeling cheated. She'd been trying so hard to make things work with Kenneth, and for what? Just to have a boyfriend? Please—what good was a boyfriend if he didn't want to rip your clothes off (yet didn't, of course, because of his respect for you and all women)?

  Really... was she being so unreasonable?

  At first, Reese had been totally enamored of Kenneth's intellect, and had rationalized that it was because of his intellect that he wasn't very good at dating. The poor boy just lacked normal social skills, she had decided. And as long as Reese had been chalking up his weirdness to inhibition, she had remained sure that it would pass. But now she didn't care all that much if it did or not. She was tired of putting forth the effort to loosen Kenneth up—tired of trying to get blood from a stone.

  It was only logical. Yet for some reason it seemed too complicated to explain to her older sister at the moment. "Listen, I'm gonna go; my battery's dying. But I'll call you tomorrow."

  "Okay, no problem," Angela said.

  After Reese hung up, she tossed her pink-and-silver cell into the backseat, and cranked the volume up on George Michael's "Last Christmas." Speeding down the highway was giving her the same nostalgic feeling it always did. The same stores, the same restaurants, the same construction projects that still weren't finished. It seemed like nothing changed in or around Goldwood and, as far as she was concerned, that was a good thing.

  Thinking about what Angela had said about the dresses, Reese found herself squirming a little in the worn upholstery. She'd put on a few pounds during finals week, and even before that, she was a snug size eight. And not one of those streamlined, statuesque snug eights, but a five-foot-three snug eight, which was a whole different kind of thing.

  Despite her worries about the upcoming fitting, she found herself, five minutes later, sliding into the parking lot of a familiar fast-food restaurant. As she wound her car into the drive-through line, she fast-forwarded her tape to the Sinead O'Connor track, and started chewing on her lower lip.

  She couldn't believe Ally's wedding was only a few weeks away. It would be strange to see her baby sister married. Granted, she was only a year and a half younger than Reese, and granted, she was keeping her name. But still, it seemed like an enormous change.

  The ceremony itself also promised to be fairly weird; their mother had invited half the town because she'd "felt bad," and now was freaking out because Ally and Ben were so disorganized. She'd made it clear that she expected Reese to mingle with all of the guests, so no one would feel uncomfortable (except Reese, of course—mingling with virtual strangers was apparently her thing, as well).

  On top of that, Ben's best man was Brian Doren—someone Reese had shared a long, soulful, tongue-tangling kiss with two years ago, and had never seen since. (And speaking of red-hot passion, that kiss was probably the closest she'd ever come.) Seeing Brian again might be very uncomfortable, but Reese had already devised a plan: When she ran into him at the wedding, she was simply going to play it cool and act like they'd never met. How cou
ld she possibly go wrong?

  Inching forward in her car, she smelled the heavenly aroma of fatty grease and fried, processed meat. She figured she might as well have one more really great meal before she got to her mother's house. That was when junk food would cease being fun. Not that her mother meant to be annoying—she just couldn't help herself—and she had this maddening habit of interrogating the family about their diet, always wanting to know what they were eating and why. Reese had already exhausted every conceivable answer, even: "Junk—because I'm using food for love." Still, her mother never got the hint.

  Basically, Joanna Brock was a slave to her own high culinary standards. She'd been a French chef for twenty years, and now that she was retired, she was running a French dessert business out of her home, and had French food on the brain twenty-four-seven, even though the entire family was Irish (with just a splash of Italian).

  The last Reese had heard, though, Joanna had expanded her obsessions. According to Ally, their mom was now completely addicted to The Wedding Story, a TV show on the cable station TLC. What had apparently started as a reference for planning Ally's wedding had turned into an extensive recorded collection with verbal annotations. (Their mother was sort of a strange little woman.)

  "W'ome to Bur'ing; can I ta'order," an annoyed-sounding voice grumbled through the call box.

  "Oh, yes, hi!" Reese chirped eagerly—a habit she'd formed years ago because fast food servers always seemed just a little too misanthropic. Her hope, of course, was that if she laid on enough obsequious gratitude, no one would tamper with her food. "May I please, please have a double cheeseburger with extra pickles—"

  "Val'ml!" the voice barked.

  "No, no thank you. Not the value meal—but thanks for asking!"

  "An'thng else?"

  "Yes, please. May I also have a medium Diet Coke, not too much ice—but only if it's no trouble!"