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And then it was just me and Trudy in this stupid hall of mirrors.
Trudy touched my back, trying to be comforting, but if I had armor around myself, my weak spot was Beatrice. I would have left this house a long time ago if it hadn’t meant leaving Beatrice here. Sabrina, too, for that matter.
Someone had to take care of them.
“Don’t let her get to you. Tonight is too special,” Trudy said.
Right. I was twenty-two. Sabrina a year out of high school. I could have this life. The orgasms and Clayton.
The whole fairy tale.
“You deserve to be happy.” Trudy eyed me sideways, a smile on her face. She was married to Oscar, who ran my father’s stables, and while not employed officially by the King family, she’d stepped in when my mom died and has always been really good to me and Bea. A motherly buffer between us and our stepmother.
We hugged and Trudy left to change her clothes. Her hair was already done, with the white mock-orange flowers from the shrubs behind the house tucked into her curls. I had the same in mine. Well, sort of. They were already slipping out. I turned in the mirror so I could try and tuck them back in, but it wasn’t much help. My brown hair was so straight it was impossible to get things to stay. I was doing my best with the bobby pins, but I didn’t have my glasses and my fingers looked like pink blurs in a bigger brown blur.
“Hello, Veronica.”
Oh, God. A tide of heat rolled over my body and the bobby pin dropped from my suddenly numb fingers.
It was Clayton. And, just like that, I was breathless. Hot.
He stood in the doorway, a black blur that became clear as he walked toward me. My God, that man in a tux. It shouldn’t be legal. He was handsome enough without the bespoke black coat and crisp white shirt, but with them he was nearly unbearable. His dark hair was swept back from his face. And I didn’t know if you could call a face dangerous, but if you could, his was. His nose was maybe too big, his cheekbones too sharp. His resting face was utterly unreadable with perhaps a hint of disdain. His eyes were a penetrating dark brown. Nearly the color of his hair. But his lips. His lips were the rudest thing I’d ever seen. Thick and full. Slow, painfully slow, to smile.
And they tasted so good.
He looked like one of those intense Irish actors. Broody and dark. And the way he watched me; it was like he couldn’t wait to take me apart with his teeth and put me back together with poetry.
He was the brightest thing I’d ever seen and I had to look away. Look away or go blind. Or go crazy. Or strip this damn dress off and ask him to do what he did to me in his office last week.
“Let me help you.”
“With what?”
“The flower?” He crossed the dressing room and crouched at my feet. I stared up at the ceiling and prayed for strength. For calm.
Just…be cool, Ronnie.
He stood holding the mock-orange blossom in his fingers. The smell, thanks to my crushing of the delicate thing, filled the small space between us. It was heady. Like champagne on an empty stomach.
“Where does it go?” he asked.
“My hair…but I can’t—”
“You’re not wearing your glasses.”
I used to think he never smiled. When I met him four years ago, he was humorless. Stern. None of the Irish poet, only the businessman Dad had hired to manage the amalgamation of some of his companies.
But in the last six months, as we started dating he smiled more.
And I knew that was because of me.
He brought me orgasms. I brought him smiles.
Not sure if it was fair, but it was real.
“Why aren’t you wearing your glasses, Veronica?”
“They don’t go with the dress.”
He put his hands to my waist and I swallowed a moan low in my throat.
Kiss me, I thought. Please, just kiss me. Let’s not go downstairs. Let’s not do this whole party. Let’s shut the door and take off these clothes…
He turned me until I faced the mirror and it was everything I could do not to close my eyes. I hadn’t looked in the mirror while Trudy was sewing me into my dress, or earlier, when Sabrina was helping me with my makeup.
I didn’t know myself in this moment, so instead I looked at Clayton.
I couldn’t say I knew him any better, but he was so damn fun to look at.
“You’re nervous?” he asked. His fingers found my bobby pin and tucked the flower back into the elaborate twist that was my hair.
“A little.”
“Me, too.”
I laughed. “I don’t believe you.”
“Why?” he asked. Our eyes met in the mirror and it was a strange, diffused connection. Painfully intimate.
