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“So you chose a dress without even consulting us?” Molly groused good-naturedly.
“Yes.” Ginny winced. “Sorry, but fabric had to be ordered.”
Jessica said, “Oh! Special fabric!”
“It’s just a nice silk.”
“Listen to her,” Molly teased, nudging her shoulder. “A week away from the wedding and she’s already acting like a princess.”
“I am not!”
Jessica stepped away from the woman who had measured her for her dress. “It’s not a bad thing. I imagine that adjusting to being the most important woman in a country isn’t easy.”
“The most important woman in a country? Not hardly.”
Molly fell to a club chair. “Well, Dom’s mother is dead and he has no sisters. His dad doesn’t date and his brother is some kind of jet-setter. You are the only girl permanently in the mix.”
She hadn’t thought of that, but when she did, her stomach fluttered oddly. It meant something that they’d brought her into the family. True, she was pregnant with the heir to the throne, but there were so many ways they could have handled this other than marriage. On some level, she’d passed enough tests that they’d brought her in.
“If that makes you queasy,” Jessica said, “then you’d better toughen up.”
“I’m not queasy.”
Molly said, “Well, something’s up. You let Dom believe we don’t know about your situation. Almost as if you don’t trust what he’d say if he knew you’d confided in your friends.”
“That’s true, Gin,” Jessica agreed, slipping on her blue jeans and pretty peach T-shirt that showed off her Texas-girl tan. “If you don’t grow a pair with this guy pretty soon, he’s going to walk all over you.”
“What if I think I have a better way to handle the next two years?”
Jessica cautiously said, “Better?”
“Yeah.” She turned away, puttering around with picking up pins and tape measures, and putting them in the dressmaker’s tote.
Taking the cue that Ginny wanted her to leave, the dressmaker grabbed her tote and said, “Thanks. I’ll have dresses for you to try on tomorrow.”
When she closed the suite door behind her, Molly gasped. “Tomorrow?”
She shrugged. “That’s how it goes here in the palace.” She walked to the table by the window and busied herself with straightening stationery and pens. “I say I want something, somebody comes up and measures, and the next day it’s at my door.”
Shrewd, Jessica narrowed her eyes. “You never told us your better plan for how to handle your situation.”
Ginny looked up into the faces of her two trusted friends and decided it wasn’t out of line to want a second opinion. “Okay. Here’s the deal. You know how my dad sort of ruined my ability to trust?”
Molly nodded. Jessica crossed her arms on her chest.
“Well, I’ve been thinking that if Dom and I hadn’t accidentally gotten pregnant, I probably never would have trusted anyone enough to have had a child.”
Jessica said, “True. So I hope you’re not about to tell us you want to make your marriage real with Prince Gorgeous. The very fact that you can’t trust makes that just plain stupid.”
“Not really. Because I don’t want a permanent husband. But I do want this marriage.”
Molly tilted her head. “What does that mean?”
“Well, we’re stuck together for at least two years and he is gorgeous. Not only would I like the whole mother experience with my baby’s father, but I just don’t see why we can’t sleep together and maybe be a real husband and wife for a while.”
“How about because that’s not what he wants.”
“I’ll still divorce him two years after the baby’s born and gone through the initiation ceremony. That’s the deal. But it’s the very fact that I know we’re getting divorced that makes me comfortable enough to, you know—”
“Want to have sex?”
“It’s more than that. When he’s comfortable with me, we have fun. I think we could make very good parents. I think being a husband and wife for real for two years could pave the way for us to have a good relationship after we’re divorced and I think all that is nothing but good for our child.”
Molly mulled that over and suddenly said, “Actually, that makes sense.”
Jessica turned on her. “How can you say that? She’s going to get hurt.”
Molly shrugged. “Or not. The situation is weird, Jessica. And not everybody’s lucky enough to attract men like mosquitoes.”
