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It was... well. It wasn't exactly a Telenova gown, but even so I suddenly realized why the assistant had made such a face.
I was swathed—nay, swaddled—in white, frothy fabric. My chest, never my greatest asset, was completely lost in the riot of fiddly flowers and glitz. My shoulders, always narrow, couldn't hold the weight of the neckline, and my body, which had always been a little more boyish than I'd wanted, was lost inside the excessive skirts. I looked like a kid trying on her mother's wedding dress. I wasn't womanly enough to carry it off.
Shouldn't have been a surprise, really. I still felt like a little girl, and never more so than now, with my whole life running away from me.
I stood in the boutique and felt the weight of the situation press down on me suddenly. I was wearing my dream gown, and it looked awful on me. The universe couldn't even give me this one little thing.
For some reason, that—not the fact that I was marrying a man I almost didn't even know, not the fact that my shithead father was getting a second chance after emotionally blackmailing me, not the fact that my mother was sick and she didn't even tell me—that was what made tears well in my eyes and my throat close. That was the last straw.
I was just so stupid. Sadie was right.
Swallowing my tears I turned and picked up the ridiculous skirt and hightailed it back into the dressing room.
Anton stood there, his brows raised. “You don't like it?” he asked me. My disappointment must have shown more on my face than I'd thought.
Bravely I shook my head. “You were right,” I said. “I should go for something more elegant.”
To his credit, he didn't say anything about how he was always right, which is what I would have done, because I'm an asshole. Instead I shut the door and rubbed at my eyes while he stood there, looking faintly bewildered.
“What is wrong?” he asked me.
I looked at him. He seemed genuinely concerned. So. Maybe he didn't like tears. I'd have to file that away, maybe, but right now I didn't want him to see my weakness.
“Nothing. I just...” My throat closed.
So much for not showing weakness. Record time from resolution to collapse.
I swallowed. “I just thought a dress like this would be great. And it's not. I've always wanted to wear one and look like a princess, but...” I shrugged helplessly. “Whatever. It's not important.”
He was quiet for a moment. “I think I understand,” he said. “Perhaps it could be altered?”
I shook my head. I didn't want to dwell on it. “No, it doesn't matter.” I started twisting and turning, trying to get at the zipper.
“You've wanted to wear a dress like that since you were a little girl,” he said, like he wasn't willing to just let it go.
I forced myself to laugh. “Yeah, but I'm not a little girl any more, even though I kind of look like one.”
He spread his hands and appeared to think for a moment. “I am sorry. The gap between fantasy and reality grows larger with time,” he told me, which was some serious Buddha shit that I was not at all prepared to be all zen about. I just wanted him to shut up.
“Whatever,” I said. Tears blurring my vision, I turned away and twisted, reaching around behind me to unfasten the dress. This wasn't what I wanted. I didn't want to wear his dumb elegant dress. I didn't want to do this without my mom and my girlfriends. And I definitely didn't want to marry Anton Waters.
“Felicia,” he said. My name. The first time he had said it. For a moment, I caught genuine concern in his voice.
A large, warm hand alighted on my shoulder. I wanted to shrug him off, but some pathetic need stopped me. Everything was so wrong. I just wanted someone to make it right again. Why wasn't I shopping for wedding dresses with my mother and Sadie? Why wasn't I getting married to a man I loved? Why did it have to be this way?
The comforting hand on my shoulder tensed. I felt him begin to pull away.
I reached up and grabbed his hand.
I didn't really know what to do with it when I had caught it, so I stayed there, struggling to maintain my composure.
I felt Anton's hesitance behind me. Then his fingers tightened, and again that incredible electric charge between us sparked.
“You look beautiful in white,” he whispered, and then he tugged his hand away and was undoing the dress, unhooking the fastenings and slowly, tortuously tugging the zipper down. Bit by bit, my back was bared to him, and he covered every inch revealed with a heated kiss.
Arousal heate
d in my belly. Sparks danced up and down my spine as my legs turned to jelly and I put my hands out to brace myself against the wall. My head was suddenly too heavy for my neck, and I bit my lip as his soft, warm lips teased sensations from my skin that I hadn't even known existed.
