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Matt looked up from his desk Monday morning and the sight that greeted him caused his breath to catch and his mouth to fall open in awe. Sarah walked up the aisle to her workstation, her head high, a smile on her lips.

Her long red hair had been cut and her braid had been replaced by a hairdo that could only be described as sensual. Fat locks of looping curls cascaded to her shoulders and bounced with every step she took.

Her cinnamon-colored suit looked like suede. The skirt was short and Matt could see enough of her legs to realize she hadn’t been hiding just a feminine woman beneath the bland skirts and jackets she usually wore. She had been hiding a goddess.

He rose from his seat and cautiously made his way to the workspace she shared with Sunny Robbins.

‘Sarah?’

“Oh, good morning, Matt.”

She greeted him as if there was nothing different about her appearance today, and for ten seconds Matt couldn’t decide if he should say something or let it alone. He knew he had been the one to tell her to change the way she dressed, but he hadn’t expected she would turn into a completely different person, and he wasn’t sure his real reaction to her new look would be appropriate. What he wanted to do was whistle.

She bent to toss her little brown purse into her desk drawer and Matt’s gaze traveled the curve created by her shapely derriere, down the long length of leg to brown high heels of stiletto proportions and he felt as if his heart stopped. His common sense, boss instincts and attraction all got jumbled and before he knew what was happening, he gasped, “What did you do to yourself?”

Sarah straightened quickly, a stricken look on her face. “You don’t like it?”

“Like it? Dear God. You’re going to give half the men on staff coronaries.”

Her face brightened. Her well-painted lips curved into a smile. “So, I did okay?”

“Okay? Sarah, you look like a totally different person.”

Her stricken expression returned. “I hope you mean that in a good way.” She paused and bit her bottom lip. “Because this is the real me.” She caught his gaze. “And I want my secret admirer to see the real me.”

The quivering that had set up residence in Matt’s abdomen turned to a rock of misery. He might have been the one to instruct Sarah to change a bit for her secret admirer, but, at the time, the guy had seemed more theory than a real person. With that comment, Sarah turned Matt’s “theory” into a living, breathing male. No longer a concept, but competition. “You did this for your secret admirer?”

“You said I needed to be more feminine.”

“I said feminine,” Matt argued, not because he didn’t like her look, but because he did. He really did. But he couldn’t have her. Some other guy would be the recipient of all this femininity. “I didn’t say…”

“Sexy?” Sarah said, interrupting him. Her enthusiasm returned and she smiled broadly. “That was my idea.”

“Why?”

Sarah walked around her desk and stood directly in front of him. “Because after talking to Carmella and Emily on Friday night, I realized that feminine for me would be sexy.”

Matt’s brow furrowed. “Carmella Lopez and Emily Winters?”

“Yes. After our discussion about the roses I decided I needed some help with my makeover, I called Carmella and she brought Emily. But we didn’t run to a store the minute they arrived at my apartment. We talked first, and they told me that feminine could mean a lot of things.”

Not at all willing to hand over this Sarah to another man, Matt said, “Yeah, like flowered dresses, little white purses and lace-trimmed gloves.”

“I’m sure there are proper ladies in the South who would agree with you.” She took a step closer and smiled the smile that made Matt’s knees weak. “But I’m not like one of those ladies and I believe my secret admirer needs to see the real me.”

“And this is the real you?”

Holding his gaze, she nodded.

Matt stifled the urge to tug at his shirt collar because with her standing about a foot in front of him, smiling her confident, positive, sexy smile, the room was suddenly very warm. “You’re sure?”

She nodded again. “Carmella says it’s all about confidence and this is the most confident I’ve felt in years. If I were in a dainty dress with little white gloves I would feel like a fake.”

She shifted away from Matt so she could hit the switch to turn on her computer monitor and Matt took the opportunity to loosen his collar so he could catch his breath.

“But the plain suits weren’t me, either,” she continued. “So we experimented with a few looks until we got to this one and, voil`a,” she said, facing him again. “Suddenly I felt like me.”

“Holy cow!” Sunny Robbins, paralegal to Grant Lawson, Wintersoft’s in-house counsel entered the office. Her chin-length sun-kissed brown hair had been tossed about by the September breeze and her black pantsuit was rain-splattered.

Matt quickly glanced back at Sarah. She hadn’t worn a coat or a rain hat. Yet her suit was dry and her hair was perfect.

Sunny stopped beside Sarah and ran her gaze from the top of her head to the tips of her perfectly dry, brown, high-heeled sandals.

“Holy cow!”

Sarah laughed. “Thanks. I think.”

“Oh, my ‘holy cow’ definitely deserved a thanks,” Sunny said as she rounded Sarah’s desk and tossed her purse onto her chair. “You look great.”

“I feel great! I feel terrific!”

Sunny laughed. “I would feel terrific, too, if I looked like that! What brought this on?”

Matt glanced at dry, perfectly coifed Sarah again. Something was wrong here. There was no way she got from the bus to this building without getting wet. She must have stopped somewhere and fixed herself up before stepping into the office. If he didn’t know better, Matt might think she had actually made an entrance.

His voice slow and cautious, Matt said, “Sarah has a secret admirer.”

Both of Sunny’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”

“Yeah, he sent me flowers late Friday afternoon,” Sarah said. Hearing the odd tone in Matt’s voice, she glanced at him, saw the confused expression on his face and decided that look was the final nail in the coffin. From the second she’d arrived, he’d been sputtering and arguing with her choices. Now his quiet voice and unhappy expression confirmed what she’d guessed all along. He didn’t like her new look.