Page 79 of Unwillingly His

“Pink.”

“Pink highlights? Like a rose gold?” He tilted his head like he was trying to envision it.

“No, bright pink. All over.”

“The new you is coming out bold, strong, and fierce.” He looked at me in the mirror, meeting my gaze, and he lowered his face just above mine. “I love it.”

After talking to Emma for a while, I’d ended up calling the event planner that I had always used to see if she was looking for any help.

I’d passed on Emma’s information, explaining that she came from the same world I did but had had a recent lifestyle adjustment. I explained that she knew exactly what was expected at high society events and the proper way to behave and set a table.

She was also a hard worker and determined to work her way up. The event planner I used gladly took her name, and I was reminded that sometimes it wasn’t what you knew. It was who you knew. And that even without my family’s money, I still had something to offer.

Even if that was just sheer stubbornness.

Lucian Manwarring treated me like a trophy wife, like a good little girl, because that was what I was acting like.

That was what I was bred to be.

I wasn’t so sure that was what I wanted to be anymore. Maybe if I became too much for him, too much work, too much effort, then he would drop it.

Maybe I would still have to live with him for the three years, maybe he’d still even insist on sleeping together, but maybe my sentence could be commuted to just the three years instead of till death do us part.

Ideally, I would create a look that was so far from what he wanted that he moved me into Charlotte’s old room, forgot me, and left me there until I became of age. From what I’d heard, that was pretty much what he had done with his daughters. Why couldn’t I get the same treatment?

When my hair was all said and done, it looked fantastic.

And just for a nice little perk, some kid going through the hardest battle that they would ever face was going to get a wig with some very long, expensive hair.

I looked at myself in the mirror, and I loved the hair.

I even loved how it made my cheekbones seem sharper, but it still wasn’t right. The hair was perfect, but I looked like the backup dancer for a bubblegum pop band.

It wasn’t enough. I needed more.

After giving my stylist a generous tip and leaving the Upper East Side salon with its fabulous ‘70s vibe and absolutely brilliant stylist, I headed somewhere a little bit more daring: the Maria Tash Broadway flagship piercing salon. It was where I’d gone to get my ears pierced, including the three piercings in the upper part of my ear that almost gave my mother a heart attack when I was thirteen.

Now I was going back and getting something far more daring.

I walked into the upscale piercing salon, praying they had a walk-in appointment available, and just my luck, they did. Some days, it felt like the entire world was on your side, and I was going to take advantage of every second of it.

I walked out of the salon an hour later with a few more ear piercings, and more importantly, a gorgeous diamond hoop in my nose. The piercings added the edge I wanted for my look.

Now the pink bob didn’t look like bubblegum pop. It looked like punk rock fierceness.

The only thing left to do now was to destroy what was left of the old Stella.

Old Stella did what she was told.

She was a good girl who dressed in the finest clothes, had the nicest hair, and had a gorgeous face that was only ever decorated with the most natural makeup.

The new Stella had style and edge and took the entire world by the balls—or at least tried to. I might still have a lot to learn before I was the new Stella, but I knew one thing the new Stella would absolutely never do: she would never let a man dictate what she wore.

I headed back to the Manwarring estate, again ignoring the butler as he yelled about who knows what.

He was demanding that I stop, turn around, and explain myself as if I somehow owed him an explanation for my whereabouts. Apparently, I was a teenage girl whose whereabouts needed to be accounted for every single minute, not a grown woman who could do as she pleased.

The old Stella would have stopped and tried to be reasonable, but the new Stella was done with reasonableness.

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