Masks by Evangeline Anderson Page B

landed Chloe up on stage in front of her entire high school, trying to recite a monologue she’d never heard before. “Just think of it as a blind date,” Zoe said coaxingly.
    “That right there is enough to make me say no, let alone the dominatrix thing.” Chloe frowned. “Every blind date you set me up on winds up in disaster.”
    Zoe blew out a breath in frustration. “That’s because you’re such a stick in the mud! You never take chances, you never risk giving away even a little part of your heart. Admit it, Chloe—you’re stuck in a rut and maybe switching with me tonight is what you need to get you out of it.”
    Amazingly, Chloe actually felt herself weakening. It was true that she was too shy to make much of an impression on the handsome alpha male types that Zoe was always trying to set her up with. Every date ended with a chaste peck on the cheek, or worse, a handshake. She just couldn’t seem to overcome her shy, sensible nature long enough to really cut loose and get to know any of those men. They all seemed so arrogant and self-assured while she was…not.
    But wait a minute, what was she thinking? This wasn’t exactly like the usual date Zoe always set her up on. The evening her sister was proposing for her was more likely to end with a boot in the face than a kiss on the cheek. Specifically, her boot in some strange man’s face.
    “No. No, I can’t possibly.” Chloe shook her head, but her sister had sensed the moment of indecision. Now she moved in for the kill.
    “Yes you can! It’s so easy you won’t believe it—I’ll tell you everything you need to know,” she promised. “Besides, what else have you got going tonight? A juicy stack of spelling tests to grade?”
    Chloe wavered again. “It’s a grammar test, for your information,” she grumbled. “And I do need to get it graded before Monday.”
    “So you’ll do me this favor tonight and work on it tomorrow.” Zoe was already getting off the bed, moving surprisingly well for a woman with a twisted ankle. “Come on, let’s get you dressed.”
    Feeling like she’d been suddenly plunged into the middle of someone else’s dream, Chloe followed her sister to the large walk-in closet on one side of the room.
    * * * * *
    “Zoe, I just don’t know about this.” Chloe looked at herself doubtfully in her twin sister’s full-length mirror. Zoe was still wearing the black silk teddy she’d been lounging in all evening but Chole had lost her comfortingly bulky gray turtleneck. In its place she was wearing a black leather bustier that molded her medium-sized breasts into luscious milk-white scoops of vanilla wobbling on an exotic tray.
    The bustier laced up the front with a thick leather cord and dipped down almost to the top of the short black leather miniskirt she was currently wearing. The miniskirt had actually been Chloe’s idea. Zoe had wanted her to wear a brief pair of leather panties that barely covered her crotch along with the bustier and thigh-high leather boots, but Chloe had point-blank refused. “I don’t care how ‘dramatic’ the look is,” she’d snapped at her twin. “I want something else between me and this ‘client’ of yours besides a tiny leather thong.” Zoe had relented and the result was the skintight leather skirt that Zoe normally wouldn’t have been caught dead in.
    Now she stood in front of the mirror, staring at her “new look” and wondering where the tame and timid first grade teacher she knew so well had gone. “I look like a biker slut from hell,” she said blankly, watching the tops of her breasts jiggle like Jell-O as she wobbled in the spike-heeled boots.
    “You look like a dominatrix,” Zoe corrected her. “At least, from the neck down, you do. It’s the neck up we’ll have to do something about. You need makeup desperately and that hairstyle has got to go.”
    “What’s wrong with my hairstyle?” Chloe clutched nervously at the blonde ponytail that trailed down her