“How do we want to look tonight?” Linus mused, tapping a finger to his chin.
We were staring into the depths of Label’s Closet. Usually, I would be willing to take whatever would zip and hold in my boobs. But tonight I wanted something more.
“We want to feel beautiful and fierce,” I decided. “Have any miracles up your sleeve to accomplish that?” It would take one. A bright, shiny miracle given how I’d spent the past few months feeling like a garbage bag of a human being.
First I’d been a stripper, then I’d almost let my father get evicted from his nursing home, and finally I’d made a deal with the devil just to keep my little family afloat.
Linus looked me up and down and raised a skeptical, well-groomed eyebrow. “Would you settle for reasonably attractive and moderately assertive?”
“I would not.”
“Hmm.”
“Don’t do your hummy ‘it would take a miracle’ thing with me, Linus. I know you’ve got something up that fabulous sleeve of yours.”
With a wicked gleam in his eyes, he yanked a garment bag off a rack.
“Well, since you mentioned it…”
“What is it?”
“Don’t ask questions. Go get dressed because you know we’re going to need at least an hour on your makeup and that rat’s nest you call hair.”
Rolling my eyes, I took the bag and the criticism and headed into the restroom.
All uncharitable thoughts about how Linus must have been a mean sorority cheerleader kicked out of school for hazing in a past life evaporated when I unzipped the bag.
“Well, holy hell.” It was a miracle in a bag, and Linus Feldman was my fairy godfather.
I walked back into the room feeling like Cinder-freaking-rella. If Cinderella’s fairy godmother had given her a sexy, skin-hugging gown the color of crimson or, as I liked to think of it, Dominic Russo’s crushed heart.
“Not entirely hideous,” Linus said when I made a slow circle for him. He held out his hand. A pair of gold-dusted stilettos dangled by their straps from his fingers. “You’ll wear these, and you won’t whine about how much they hurt.”
I nodded dutifully. I was an obedient Cinderella.
A quick spin through the makeup lab, half an hour in the chair of a miracle-worker with a curling iron, and I looked like someone brand new. No more sad, poor, new girl lusting over her boss.
Nope. I was a breathtaking goddess deserving of tasteful lusting.
The dress. Oh, that damn dress. It was soft on my skin and a bold red. The skirt fell away from a split up my right leg. The fabric was light, airy layers of chiffon that billowed behind me like a cape when I walked—or stalked, as Linus instructed. The top ended an inch above my belly button offering a peek of stomach and pale, New York-winter skin. It had cap sleeves and zero cleavage. But the way it hugged my breasts was almost sinful. There was a silk tie at the back of my top that kept it cinched in under my breasts and when I moved, it felt like a caress.
And it wasn’t just the clothes. Or the sleek, smoky eyes. Or the bold lips and sex-tousled hair. I was remembering who I was underneath it all. Beneath the stress and the broken fingernails, the cheap clothes, and the just starting to catch up on sleep again. I was Ally Morales, and I had a value that went way deeper than what one man accepted or rejected.
“Well, hot damn,” Linus said.
Hot damn indeed. I nodded at my reflection.
“Where in the hell did you find this dress?” I asked.
He plucked a stray piece of fuzz off the cap sleeve. “It was a leftover from a shoot last year. We didn’t end up using it. None of the models could be pinned into it since it was made for someone with…” He gestured at my boobs. The dress had been made for them. “It’s Christian’s. He’ll like seeing you in it tonight.”
I thought I detected a hint of mischief in his tone.
“What are you up to, Linus?”
He spread his hands, the picture of innocence except for the smirk that played over his lips. “Your fairy godfather doesn’t need to have an ulterior motive.”
“Now I’m very suspicious.”
“Just go and don’t fall on your face,” he instructed.
“Aren’t you going?” I asked.
“Like this?” he scoffed, waving a hand over his impeccable black-on-black suit.
“Uh. Yeah.”
“Can’t. Kids have a school thing.”
“Kids? You have children?”
“Why is everyone so surprised by that?”
He pulled out his phone and gave me a five-minute slideshow of little Jasper, Adelaide, and Jean-Charles.
I was still reeling by the time I got downstairs. One thing that I really liked about this job was the car service. It wasn’t Nelson but a female driver who opened the back door for me. And the backseat was occupied by a very stylish Dalessandra.
“I thought we’d ride together and we could chat,” she said, patting the seat.
There are moments in everyone’s life when they stop, breathe, and wonder who the hell’s life they’re actually living. Cruising through Midtown in a limo with one of the fashion industry’s most influential icons next to me in a design that had obviously been made just for her was one of those moments.
“You look lovely,” she said. “That dress.”
“Me? Look at your dress.” Even seated and in the dim interior light, she stunned. The gown was layers and layers of silver and gray and cream arranged like swan feathers. Slouchy suede boots that I would have sold an ovary for peeked out from the hem.
“Perks of the job,” she said, waving away the compliment. “Now, how are things?”
“Things are fine,” I fibbed. My neck started to itch.
“Fine? Everyone you’ve met. Everyone you’ve talked to on staff. They’re all fine?”
I was not mentally prepared for this conversation. No, what I’d spent all day girding my loins for was seeing Dominic outside work.
I would not inappropriately touch my boss tonight.
I would not inappropriately touch my boss tonight.
I’d repeated the mantra all damn day.
The past two weeks had been an exquisite kind of torture. Every morning when he arrived and walked past my desk, I smelled that body wash of his and was immediately transported back to his home, his shower, the reason I’d been in his shower.
And then I had to remind myself why I was barely speaking to the man.
“What about Dominic?” Dalessandra asked, pursing her red, red lips together.
“What about him?” I hedged.
She slid a knowing gaze to me. “You two are close.”
I shook my head vehemently enough to have a hairpin fly out and land in my lap. “We’re really not.”
“You are,” she insisted. “Is he happy? Does he hate me for what I’ve asked of him?”
I cleared my throat and felt disloyal to a man who hadn’t officially earned my loyalty. “I don’t think anyone would say that Dominic is a happy man,” I ventured.
“But you see beneath all that bluster.” Dalessandra made the statement like it was a fact. “Is he really unhappy? Did I ask too much of him in stepping in to clean up his father’s mess?”
I considered gnawing my lipstick off but then decided it wasn’t worth the tongue lashing I’d get from Linus if he saw the pictures.
“I don’t know exactly what happened last year,” I said with a sigh. “Hell, nobody seems to except for you and Dom. And maybe that’s part of the problem. But no, he doesn’t hate you. Beneath all those sexy vests and grumpy snarls, he’s a caretaker. He wants you to be happy. He wants to make you happy. And I think you know that. I also think you should be having this conversation with him.”
“We Russos don’t have conversations,” Dalessandra said with a sad smile.
Tell me about it.
“Maybe you should give it a shot. Especially if you’re proud of the work your son is doing for you.”
“Dominic knows I’m proud of him,” she said stiffly.
“Just like everyone in the office knows that whatever mysterious thing that went down last year will never happen again because you have their backs and will never let anyone take advantage of position and power again?”
The emerald on Dalessandra’s hand winked as she tightened her fingers into a fist in her skirt.
“I have a reputation to protect,” she said coolly. “Airing dirty laundry isn’t how one survives in this world.”
“Reputations can’t be built on sweeping things under the rug,” I reminded her. “They’re built on stories. You’re in control of your story and how it’s told… or not told.”
“You’re not seriously suggesting that I bare my soul to the world about how I was stupid enough, blinded by ambition enough, to not notice what was going on in my own office, my own marriage?”
“Even if you were stupid or blind—which I certainly don’t think you were—you aren’t anymore. And that’s what your people deserve to know.”
“My people,” she repeated to herself. “What if my story isn’t only mine to tell? What if there are others who might not want their parts shared?”
“I think that’s where those conversations come in to play,” I said, patting myself on the back for the callback. I was nailing this sage advisor thing tonight. It was probably the dress.
“You certainly have a lot of opinions,” Dalessandra mused.
“So I’ve been told. By your son. On multiple occasions.”
“Speaking of my son, he likes you very much.”
“I feel like it’s more accurate to say I infuriate him very much,” I corrected her.
“I’ve asked a lot of him,” she said.
“You have.”
“I hope he doesn’t assume I’m asking him to put his life on hold for me, for this job.”
Tread carefully, I warned myself.
“I don’t think you’re the Russo who’s keeping Dom from living his best life,” I said cagily.
Dalessandra studied me quietly in the dark.
“Have you spelled out any more messages for him with his food?” she asked, changing the subject.
“As a matter of fact…” I pulled out my phone to show her the ass foam.
