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I shook my head in confusion. “Uh...do what for me?”
James opened his mouth to reply when I glanced at him for help, but she jumped between us, too excited to sit still, and blurted, “Handle the press, silly! What else?” In the blink of an eye, her face went from enthusiastic to impossibly serious, almost grave, as she made her pleading request. “It’s been so long since I’ve been allowed to handle anyone’s publicity. Everyone I used to work with in New York is more excited to hang out with me and Nick than they are to hear my proposals. I’ve become a social butterfly and a PR old maid,” she said with a fake pout, even crossing her arms and stomping her foot on the floor as she stuck her bottom lip out.
“Well, yeah, but I don’t—”
“Please, Della? You must let me help you!” Her eyebrows pulled up at the center as she reached for my hand. “I had to leave the profession at the height of my game, you know. I wouldn’t trade my marriage or motherhood for anything in the world, but... Well, I still find myself reaching for my phones in the middle of the night. You simply must give me this chance.”
Once again, I glanced at James for help, but he simply rolled his eyes and took another deep swig from the bottle. In desperation, I turned to Nick, but I had the feeling he would do literally anything on the planet to make his wife happy. “Um...okay then,” I said, realizing it was the least I could do for a friend. “Where do we start?”
In a blur of color, she leapt over to hug me and discreetly took my measurements at the same time. Before I even knew what was happening, her fingers were moving over the buttons on her phone at lightning-fast speed, and she was somehow simultaneously pulling me into the next room. “James,” she called over her shoulder, “do I still have some dresses here? The stuff I had shipped over from Tibet?”
“In the fourth closet next to the picture of Sean Connery,” he called back, “but you should know I’ve taken to wearing them myself. Forgive me if a few of the zippers are broken.”
We snorted with laughter, imagining him in satin evening gowns, his feet tripping in borrowed, too-small stilettos, then headed off down the hall. We vanished into one of the numerous guestrooms to begin the process of styling me for what Abby kept calling my “couple debut,” though it felt to me like all the pomp and circumstance of those high school proms.
I wasn’t sure what the trio had gotten up to in Tibet, but whatever it was, it had resulted in some rather fantastic shopping.
Abby had a little bit of everything: shirts, pants, dresses, and shoes. She also had three five-gallon buckets of that honey-scented shampoo I smelled on James the first night we met. She had everything from shawls, to sunglasses, to umbrellas, to a lethal-looking dagger she found stashed inside a shoe, which she explained away with a casual, “I completely forgot I had put that there.”
For an hour or so, the two of us acted our age while playing dress-up; no girl could pass up such an opportunity in such a magnificent house. We called a nearby caterer and requested fruit and champagne, then proceeded to parade in front of the mirror, having the time of our lives. It wasn’t until James called up to let us know that we had to depart for the opera in less than an hour that we put playtime away and actually got down to work.
When we emerged exactly sixty minutes later, we looked like a work of art.
Abby kept it simple, though nothing about it was remotely simple. Her slinky, floor-length gown of dark sapphire silk clung tightly to her skinny frame as it cascaded gracefully to the floor. Like some starlet out of Old Hollywood, she let her hair cascaded down in loose waves and swept half of it off her shoulders with an exquisite diamond clip. Her makeup was flawless, and her spiky shoes were their own footwear of mass description, but perhaps the brightest accessory that she wore was her smile, which was really only for her husband. “What do you think?” she asked as she glided gracefully down the stairs ahead of me and fell right into his waiting arms. “Am I...opera worthy?”
In that moment, shock of all shocks, Nick Hunter was actually speechless, perhaps for the first time in his life. He stared down at her with a sparkling smile that mirrored her own, looking like he was the luckiest man in the world. “Nice diamonds. You look fabulous, darling.”
She lifted a delicate hand to her hair, grinning all the while. “I’m glad you like it. I found it in one of the guest bathrooms. You don’t mind if I wear it, do you, James?”
“Keep it.” He shrugged dismissively, flashing her a brotherly smile. “It looks beautiful on you.” Then, with exaggerated impatience, he swiveled slowly back to the stairs and raised his voice to declare, “Now if my date would come down, maybe we can still catch the first act. At this rate, we’re never going to...”
The rest of his words stuck in his throat as I stepped onto the landing and froze like some kind of breathless statue on the checkered tile. Normally, I would have made some kind of joke, some horribly corny one-liner he would have teased me about later in bed, but at that moment, I was too lightheaded to speak, already too swept away in the magic of the night to do anything but robotically descend the stairs.
The dress Abby chose for me was absolutely perfect, in every way. Since we were headed to the royal opera, she dressed me like a princess, in a sweeping ball gown of amethyst silk. The hue expertly offset my hair and made my blue eyes pop like glittering jewels on my face. The bodice was lighter lilac than the train, weaving tightly across my body in crystal-encrusted patterns before darkening to a full skirt that fell all the way to the floor.
I didn
’t bother with any jewelry except the ruby pendant James gave me, safely stashed in my clutch. The heels were just as high as Abby’s, but somehow, they seemed to fit me like a glove. My makeup was intentionally sparse, save for smoky eyes, a blend of shadows with hints of purple shimmer, and my gaze smoldered wherever I cast it.
I made it all the way down the stairs before James could utter a single word, and his silence may have lasted longer than that if Nick didn’t elbow him in the back, not quite as discreetly as he intended. “You look...uh...” James said, then looked down at shiny tops of his black shoes like some timid schoolboy homecoming date, completely undone by the mere sight of me. “You look absolutely stunning.”
“Yes, you look beautiful,” Nick said.
I waved him off with a grin and turned back to James, who had yet to fully recover himself.
A faint grin swept across his face, but his eyes dilated, dark and hungry, as they looked me up and down. “Wait. You can’t wear that dress.”
I followed his gaze in surprise, smoothing the silk with my fingers. “Why not? Abby said it’s—”
“Because there is no way I can possibly keep my hands off you in that dress.” He cocked his head toward the stairs. “I’m serious. You have to change, Della. We can wait.”
A pleased blush spread across my cheeks, and I shrugged coyly before flouncing off to join the others by the elevator. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to get used to it...Boyfriend.”
That, too, stopped him cold, and he stood dead still for a moment, just staring after me, before a slow smile crept across his face. “Boyfriend, huh? Hmm. I think I’ll get used to that.”
Chapter 10
THE DRIVE TO THE ROYAL Opera House wasn’t a long one. Several hundred members of the press seemed to suffer cardiac episodes when we all exited the front of James’s building together, but aside from that, things proceeded in fine form.
