Page 23 of Rescuing Brinley

When they failed to get a response…Callista weighed in again.

“You’re the kind of bitch men fuck just to get off. Not someone anyone would honestly want to spend their life with. How could they? Looking at you across a table or in bed would literally turn their stomach. Not even plastic surgery could help you. You’re just too damn hideous.”

Okay, now those words hurt a little more. The one thing she’d always wanted was a partner who would stand by her no matter what. Who wouldn’t care about her uneven features. Who could see beyond her looks to the person underneath the awkward skin she’d been born into. And her sister obviously knew it—and was using her deepest wish against her.

But again, Brinley refused to react. To give her family what they wanted—proof that their cruel words were hitting home.

“You should be helping your sister, not her competitors. I raised you better than this, Brinley.”

Actually, she hadn’t, but Brinley continued to keep her face blank of all emotion. She just wanted this over with. She made a mental note to check to see if her sister would be at the competitions before she accepted any future invitations to attend on behalf of a client.

“You aren’t going to say anything? You’re just going to stand there?”

Brinley looked at her mother, and sighed. “I already know exactly what the two of you think about me. Nothing you’re saying now is new or a surprise. You both know I’m not doing anything wrong by being here at the request of paying clients. If you weren’t so cheap, you could’ve done the same thing, brought along someone who could help make sure Callista looked her best onstage.” She switched her gaze to her sister. “Except you’re too conceited, you think all you have to do is show up and you’ll win. That might’ve worked when you were six, and ten, and fifteen, but you’re in the big leagues now, Callista. And judges pick women who are not only beautiful, but good people to boot.

“You might be able to pull the wool over some people’s eyes, but I know firsthand how awful you really are. I feel sorry for any man you end up with. He’ll learn soon enough, though, how selfish and catty you are, and if he’s smart, he’ll run away from you as fast as he can before you infect him from the inside out.” Then, she looked back to her mom. “As for you? The best thing that ever could’ve happened to my father was being dumped.”

She took a moment to enjoy the stunned looks on their faces before turning to walk away. But she stopped and looked back briefly for one last parting shot.

“Callista, I’d take a good hard look at our mother—because that’s what you have to look forward to looking like in the not-so-distant future. Pageants are a young woman’s game, and at twenty-six, you’re already over the hill. I hope you have a plan for what you’re going to do next…but you’d probably make a lot of money in a strip club. You can always fall back on that.”

And having said her piece, she walked away, pleased with how she’d managed to get the last word in. She wasn’t proud of stooping to her mom and sister’s level, but whatever. After years of insults and slights, they’d deserved it. And she hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true, she’d simply been brutally honest.

She headed around the back of the temporary platform to the other side, where her client from Mexico was getting ready to take her turn onstage. There weren’t any adjustments needed on the gown, it looked fantastic against her skin and was modest and sexy at the same time. Brinley was especially proud of the design and thrilled with how it looked on the woman.

Instead of going out into the ballroom to watch from the front, she stayed where she was backstage. Even though she didn’t especially like to be around so many women who were stressed out and nervous, it was preferable to risking another confrontation with her family, who she knew would head back out to the ballroom to study Callista’s competitors carefully.

She did her best to forget what her sister had said about men only wanting to be with her for sex. But she’d hit her mark…and Brinley was having second thoughts about Dash. Yes, he’d asked her out on a date. But she’d also seen the desire in his eyes when he talked about seeing if her freckles went beyond her face.

Did he just see her as an easy lay, since she lived in Fairbanks? Did he think she was desperate for a guy? Would he dump her after he convinced her to sleep with him?

She didn’t want to think so. Wanted to believe the look in his eyes when he was with her was genuine, but a lifetime of being told she was weird-looking, that no one would ever want to be with her, and hearing the insults her own family hurled at her, made her second-guess herself.

If her own mother didn’t love her, couldn’t even stand to look at her, how could anyone else?

Intellectually, she understood that it was her mom’s issue, not hers. That there were plenty of people who weren’t classically beautiful who got married, had families, and lived happily ever after. But interactions with her mom and sister rarely failed to make her revert back to the sad, confused child she’d been years earlier.

The longer she stood there and thought about Dash, however, the more she was sure he hadn’t asked her out just to screw her over. She remembered how pissed he’d looked and sounded when she’d told him about the Homecoming dance incident. How happy he’d seemed to find her on that beach last night, and how pleased he looked when she’d invited him to sit. How surprised and thrilled he’d been when he discovered they lived in the same city.

She’d learned to be a good judge of character, to be able to see through people’s lies when they were trying to be polite. And Dash Carlson wasn’t faking his reactions. When he’d touched her face so gently, he wasn’t seeing a woman whose features didn’t quite line up, whose nose was too big for her face and whose freckles had always been the bane of her existence. The honesty in Dash’s eyes had taken away some of the shame she’d always felt about her looks.

Slowly, the excitement she’d felt over being asked out returned, and she pushed the awful interaction with her family to the back of her mind. Deciding she needed to network a little more, she headed into the ballroom to chat with some of the people who’d come to Fiji with the contestants.

After about an hour, when the last of the competitors were finishing up, and after she’d given her card to at least a dozen more interested potential clients, Brinley was lost in her head, thinking about some designs she wanted to get down on paper as soon as she got home, and as a result…she missed the first indication of trouble brewing in the ballroom.

When she did realize what was happening, it was too late to do anything other than attempt to get as far away as possible from whatever was going on near the doors. The same idea as those who were standing closest to her.

Five masked and armed men had entered the space and were shouting orders for everyone to stand against the wall opposite from where Brinley huddled. Suddenly, one of the men shot off several rounds from his automatic rifle into the air, and panic immediately ensued.

People were screaming and crying and pleading for their lives. Brinley didn’t think, she simply acted on instinct, moving not with the crowd of people near her, who were now trying to climb onto the stage to get away from the men with the guns, but toward the single door at the back of the room—the same one the gunmen had entered.

She figured, correctly, that the men would focus on where the bulk of the audience and competitors were now contained, and not in the direction they’d come from.

Brinley felt as if she were in a dream. She didn’t really even remember getting to the door—but if she’d thought the danger would be over and she could easily escape, she was wrong. Outside the ballroom were two more armed men, covered from head to toe in black, their faces masked.

She made eye contact with one, and he yelled at her to stop. But that wasn’t happening.

Thankful she’d opted for comfortable shoes today, instead of something less practical to run for her life in, she bolted to the right, hoping like hell the man wouldn’t simply shoot her in the back.