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Chandeliers everywhere. And my god, mirrors. This was ugly. Really, truly, a lesson in what not to do when decorating.
I’d never been so glad to get upstairs as I was when that finally happened. The bedroom he led me to seemed much more like a hotel room than a statement in the history of the French monarchy that the downstairs had been.
“This can be your room.” It was the first time he’d spoken in a long time, and I was glad for the noise.
A man I’d not met rushed past us, putting my bags—the garbage bag and two thrown together suitcases—down in front of me.
“Thank you,” I said, and he nodded to me.
“Layla, this is Carel. He works for me with three other people. They know you’re going to be staying with me for a while, and they’re going to do their best to speak to you in English.”
Carel cleared his throat. “We’re glad to have you. My sister follows you.”
I smiled at him. “Thank you for helping me.”
He nodded and left. Zeke stood, watching me. “I didn’t realize today how famous you are. I guess I knew it, but I’d never focused on it. And having spoken to you today more than I ever have, you’re different than I would have imagined. Different from your sisters.”
I didn’t have the wherewithal right then to ask him in what ways I was different. I pretty much knew the answers. He’d worked with Hope and Bridget. He’d know how… I wasn’t even going there in my mind at the moment. I couldn’t. There was only so much self-flagellation I could take in one day. And it was… I looked at my phone. Only just about mid-day.
“I’m going to take myself into that bathroom and soak my feet before I wash off the rest of today.”
He put his hands in his jacket pockets. “Sounds like a good plan. I’ll order some food for dinner. I don’t assume you’ll want to go out.”
I absolutely didn’t. “We should talk about why you want me here, but before we do that, I have to ask you a favor.” And I hated having to do it like I hated pretty much everything right now.
“What’s that?” He lifted his dark eyebrows. Even knowing that he’d hired a terrible decorator to do up his house like somekind of monstrosity out of a horror movie, he was still absolutely the most physically beautiful man I’d ever seen.
I made myself look away, knowing that my cheeks were going to get really red in the way that happened to redheads. “I need you to get me out of my wedding dress. I can’t do it myself.”
He cleared his throat. “Get you out of the dress? Like undo the buttons and what not?”
“Frankly, I don’t care if you take scissors to it and slice it into strips that you then use to wash your windows. But I need to get out of this, and I can’t do it myself.”
One more humiliation on a day filled with them.
5
He stepped toward me. “Turn around.”
I pivoted, grabbing on to the top of my dress in front so that it didn’t fall down. “Do you see the buttons?” I’d been so out of it when they’d been putting me in it that I hadn’t focused on how long it had taken the woman who buttoned me in to do it. Not long, I didn’t think. But she’d been a stylist. They were amazingly adept at all things clothes.
The dress vibrated slightly as he undid one button and then another. There were probably about fifty of them for him to undo. He had big, strong hands with thick fingers. This might be hard for him, but he didn’t say a word of complaint.
“What would you have done when you wanted to get out of it after the wedding?”
I smiled. “Kit would have had to have done it.”
He was quiet for a long moment before he spoke again, in a low voice. “He’d never have been able to do this.”
I pictured Kit’s shaking hands. “No, he wouldn’t have.
Long night, I guess. Or I’d have had to call someone in the hotel to help me.”
“Or sleep, live, eat, and die in this dress for the rest of your life.”
This was like the flying car conversation. I liked when he did that. The idea that his mind sometimes fled from the present to the absurd like my own did was fun. And not something I ever imagined when I was touching myself and thinking of his hands on me. My cheeks heated up at the memory.
“Right,” I managed to get out. “Or I’d have to stay in this horrendous dress for the rest of my life.”
