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you looking at?” Peri shoved in close, mashing
against Tessa and conking their heads. “Dammit. This is why I hate crowds.
Everyone pushes. Are you looking at someone in particular?”
    “No.” Tess averted her gaze. The guy she wanted to see
couldn’t possibly be at the concert. He liked jock jams and rap. Tessa rubbed
the tender spot on the side of her head from the collision with her sister.
“Let’s go.”
    Peri stepped into the relative silence of the bathroom and
rolled her shoulders. Tessa sidestepped Peri’s gymnastic display and headed to
the mirror. Waves of embarrassment washed over her anew. I am not falling
for a stupid crush on someone who doesn’t care about me that way. The
straps of the tunic displayed more of her skin than she wished to show and the
flow of the blouse accentuated her not-so-flat tummy. Bile rose in her throat.
Next time she’d get dressed without her sister’s fashion advice.
    “I hear you’ve got yourself a pal at the school. Why didn’t
you tell me?” Peri touched up her gloss, tapping the little brush against her
bottom lip. “Afraid you’d introduce him to the family and he’d bolt?”
    Tessa stared at her sister. Everything she’d yearned to be
stared right back at her. Blonde hair, perfect size-C boobs, chocolate-brown
eyes and an attention-grabbing hourglass figure.
    “Tess?”
    She closed her eyes and turned her back to the mirror.
“Peri.”
    Peri stepped in front of Tessa, hands on her hips. “You
don’t get it.”
    “Don’t get what?”
    “When you look at your reflection what do you see?”
    Tessa rolled her eyes.
    “You see everything you aren’t.” Peri grabbed her shoulders
and turned Tessa back to the mirror. “You’re so beautiful just the way you are.
Yeah, I’ve got blonde hair, but you’ve got such gorgeous, thick hair. Women
would kill to have their hair so naturally dark. And your eyes. I’d love to
have blue eyes. But no. I got Daddy’s brown eyes.”
    “Okay. Whatever.”
    “Wow, that sounded almost believable.” Peri rested her chin
on Tessa’s shoulder. “If your crush is any kind of real man, then he’s an idiot
if he passes you up. I doubt he will. But if he does, then there’s a whole room
of hunky men out there. Don’t sell yourself short. You’re a very beautiful
woman.”
    “Are you getting paid for this?” She knew her sister way too
well. Peri loved a challenge and getting Tessa a date always ranked high on her
to-do list.
    “Nope, just righting a wrong. I didn’t try to steal Dennis.
Sometimes I wish you two would’ve worked out, but he makes me happy. You need
to find your own happy.”
    A couple of women strolled into the bathroom, preventing a
retort. Tessa stared at herself a moment longer and ran her fingers through her
straightened locks. The deep brown did catch the light well. Maybe the blouse
wasn’t so bad. She bit her bottom lip to suppress the smile. If Graig wasn’t
interested, fine. Plenty of other fine-looking men populated the crowd.
    “That’s a smile any man would melt for.” Peri grabbed her
arm. “Come on. The music’s starting.”
    Chin held high and shoulders straight, Tessa marched through
the crowd. The first strains of the next Crush song whirled around her and sent
shivers down her spine. What was the saying, “dance like no one was watching”?
So maybe four hundred people were watching…who cared? Tessa threw her hands in
the air and bobbed her head to the beat.
    “That’s the ticket,” Peri shouted over the band.
    Tessa shook her hips and sang along with the song. Her
troubles melted away as the throbbing bass took over. She closed her eyes and
moved to the music.
    Someone behind her bumped her and she jerked her eyes open.
So much for getting into the feeling. When she turned around to see who’d
touched her, the breath ripped from her chest. Graig. He stared down at
her, his blue eyes gleaming from the lights on the stage. The shadows
accentuated the dark scruff on