Did your license get suspended for driving all these guys crazy?
—TENNAYA B.
“Awww. Look how cute they are.” That was Aggie.
“See? I told you this was a good idea. They got to have a little alone time.” That was Millie.
“Somehow I doubt they’re going to see it that way,” Betsy said.
“Go away,” Chris mumbled. His arm tightened around my waist.
I cracked an eye open and just as quickly shut it against the sunlight streaming in through the open door. We were free. But I didn’t want to move from this spot where I was warm and comfortable. That had been the best sleep I’d had, maybe ever.
“Yeah, well, Mom might kill us if she finds out,” Aggie said.
Ellie nudged the bed. “Get up. Piper’s been trying to get ahold of you. She finally called Mom. Now Mom’s frantic because she can’t find you.”
Chris rolled over on his back, taking away my human blanket. I kept my eyes closed. “Go. Away.”
“Sure thing. I’ll leave Mae’s phone right here on the bed,” Aggie said. “Because I happened to find it. Mae, you should be careful about leaving your phone lying around. But don’t worry, I kept it safe. I even charged it for you. Remember that when you’re picking a maid of honor.”
Chris growled. “Put down the phone and leave.”
“For the record,” Betsy said, “I knew nothing about this scheme. I am innocent.”
Aggie gasped. “Did you just throw Millie and me under the bus?”
“No. I removed myself from the road entirely. You know the revenge for this will be…” Betsy’s voice drifted off and the door slammed shut.
A moment later, Chris rolled back over and dangled my phone in front of my face. “You can stop pretending. They’re gone.”
“I wasn’t pretending.” I took the phone just as a text notification came through.
I blinked the sleep from my eyes and asked Chris to hand me my glasses. When I saw how many missed calls and texts I had, I gasped. All of them were from Piper.
Piper: Hey, give me a call. A great opportunity just opened and I wanted to make sure you were on board.
A half-hour and two missed calls later:
Piper: Really need to talk to you for a quick minute.
Two hours, five text messages, and seven calls later:
Piper: Where the hell are you two? I can’t get anyone to respond.
The last text from just before midnight:
Piper: Fine. A decision was made for you. Be at Chris’s parents’ house by noon tomorrow. You’re taking engagement pictures.
Oh, crap.
Chris and I grabbed all our stuff and hightailed it back to his house. He left me to take a shower, which gave me plenty of time to panic about the photos.
It was one thing to lie about being engaged or wear the ring or be cute and cuddly in public, or even the couple of cell phone pictures Piper had taken of the “actual” engagement. But professional photos?
There was something so very real about the idea. If we were engaged, one of those photos would end up on a Save-the-Date card and we’d have another framed because it would be our very favorite, that one photo that captured just how we felt about each other.
But this was not, I repeat, not real.
“How is this my life?” I said to no one at all. I dragged on a pair of shorts and a tank top and walked over to the main house, my mind spinning.
The second I opened the front door, I was overcome by the sheer amount of people and stuff in the house. Racks of clothes greeted me in the living room. The dining room table had been pushed aside and an entire shoe store was laid out by size and color. When I made it to the kitchen, I saw Margot chatting it up with a pretty woman in jeans and a t-shirt. Sitting at the table were Betsy and Millie and yet another woman I didn’t recognize.
“Mae.” Margot waved, face bright with excitement. “Isn’t this all something else? When Piper told me the whole family got to be in the photos, I couldn’t believe it. It’s been so long since we’ve had a family portrait. I only wish Ellie was here. But, you’ll get to be in them.”
My heart sank. Family photos too? This had all gone too far. “Do you happen to know where Chris is?”
“He went off with Piper.” She clapped her hands like a giddy three-year-old with an unlimited supply of cupcakes and no parental supervision. “Let’s go find Sergio.”
“Who’s Sergio?”
Margot put her palms on her cheeks. “Oh, he’s amazing. He’s the stylist. Did you see all those racks of clothes? They’re for us.”
“A stylist?”
“You’ll see.” She hooked her arm in mine and pulled me along to a bedroom. She knocked. “It’s Margot and Mae.”
The door flew open and a man held his arms out. “It is Mae? She’s here.”
“Mae, this is Sergio,” Margot said.
He was a slight man who wore a black kimono-style dress over black leggings. His bleached-blond hair swooped over one eye. With the eye I could see, he was inspecting me carefully. He held a finger up and indicated I should twirl. So, I did. With the same finger, he tapped his mouth, clearly deep in contemplation. Every now and then, he hummed or muttered under his breath.
After a solid minute of this, he smiled widely. “Yes, you will do very nicely. So lovely and soft. Between you and me, those thin models are like hangers for the clothes. If I wanted to work with hangers, I would have a job at the Gap. But you”—he put his fingers to his mouth and kissed them—“you will make the clothes sing with your curves. Perfection.”
“G-great.”
“Come, come. No time for talking. We have work to do. Let us go find you the perfect outfit.”
That turned out to be more complicated than I expected. I counted five racks of clothes in the living room, but Sergio pointed out two specifically. “These are for you, my love. No one told me you were a redhead.” More tapping of his mouth. “For you, we will look for yellow, or maybe…”
He wandered off to one of the racks and began flipping through them. When he noticed I hadn’t moved, he waved me to the other rack. “Go on. Look through it. There is a dress that would be beautiful on you, I think. It is aqua green and long and very dreamy. You will look like a seductive wood nymph.”
I was pawing through a rack of dresses when Piper found me. “There you are. Are you all caught up?”
“I’m currently looking for a dress that will make me look like a seductive wood nymph. That’s all I got right now.” I held up a dress. “Is this the one, Sergio?”
He scowled. “That is not aqua green; that is turquoise.”
“Right. Silly me.” I put the dress back.
“I know this is all sudden,” Piper said. “But we were able to get Charles Thackery to take your photos.”
“Should I know who Charles Thackery is?” I pulled another dress off the rack. It was green and it had a lovely flowy feel to it. “This one?”
Sergio shook his head in disgust. “That is seafoam green. Did you not learn your colors as a child?”
“Not that one, then.” I turned to Piper. “How exactly did you find a Sergio on such short notice in the middle of Oklahoma?”
“Honey, I can work miracles even Moses would think twice about.” Piper grinned. “Charles Thackery is a hotshot wedding photographer. He happened to be shooting a wedding in Oklahoma City yesterday for some richy-rich oil baron’s kid. But I was able to talk him into doing this for us.”
I glanced around the room and moved closer to Piper, dropping my voice. “But doesn’t this seem like a lot for a fake engagement? These pictures are going to be useless.”
She shook her head. “No, they’re not. They’ll help us get some great press out there. That anonymous jackass has not shut up yet. At this point, he’s making stuff up just to piss me off.”
“You still haven’t figured out who he is?”
Piper’s eyes got hard. “Not yet. But when I do, I swear I’m going to punch him right in his lying mouth.”
“Here it is, darling. Here it is.” Sergio held up a green dress. “This is aqua green, and it will be perfect on you. I know these things. I am a style magician. Come. Come. It is time for magic.”
