Page 55 of No Longer Safe

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Audrey

Wedding dress shoppingwithout a budget was incredible. I’d never seen so many gorgeous dresses. I’d never been treated like royalty before and I wasn’t even the bride. Emeline and I were both handed champagne flutes and were told to sit on massive white, velvet chairs while we waited for Carina to try on the first gown.

It was an incredible off-the-shoulder dress by a designer whose name I couldn’t even try to pronounce. Emeline sipped on her champagne and shot me a massive grin. She was over the moon that she got to do this with Carina. I vowed that I would take pictures of all of the dresses and send them to Carina’s mother. I hated that she was missing out on all of this, but she’d made her bed and now had to lie in it. But that didn’t mean thatIhad to.

Carina came out of the room and I was stunned speechless. The gown seemed to be made for her. It clung to all of her curves beautifully. Emeline sucked in a breath and practically swooned right there.

“Oh, honey, that’s just marvelous.”

Carina smiled at us both but it didn’t reach her eyes. I made a shooing motion with my hands. “Next! This is not the one!”

Emeline frowned at me. “How do you know?”

“I’ve known Carina almost all of my life, I know when she wants something. That wasn’t it.”

Carina stepped off of the white platform and shuffled back into the dressing room with the two attendants following right behind her.

Dress after dress, and not a single one sparked that look in her eye. Emeline and I were about ready to throw in the towel when Carina came back out in her jeans and sweater. She shrugged. “There are three other bridal boutiques in this square.”

Emeline clapped her hands, she could do this all day. I gave her a thumbs-up, and we carried on to the next.

Five bridal boutiques later and I thought I was going to pass out. Sheer will was the only thing fueling Carina to continue… and probably Emeline’s excitement. Her excitement would have fueled me too if I had eaten more than a muffin for breakfast and hadn’t skipped out on coffee. It also didn’t help that they pumped us full of champagne at every shop we stopped in and I was starting to feel it in my toes.

She’d found the dress that made her heart sing and I couldn’t wait to watch her walk down the aisle in it. She beamed at us from the pedestal. “This is the one!”

Emeline burst into tears and jumped from our elaborate seating situation. They were both a mess of tears and all I could do was smile while I swayed on my feet. My best friend did a little happy dance as the attendant was all smiles with us.

“When is the big day?” the attendant asked, pulling out her iPad and writing things down.

“We were thinking November.”

The woman paled. “That soon?”

Emeline became the stoic businesswoman I’d never seen before. “Is that going to be a problem?”

The woman stammered. “I don’t think we can get it done that quickly.”

Carina’s brows pinched but she didn’t get a word in. Emeline placed her hands on her hips. “I thought we needed to have a one-of-a-kind dress made. I only indulged in this because I thought it would be fun. I’ll call in a few favors to my friends.” She ticked off on her fingers. “Fashion week shouldn’t be an issue.”

Fashion week?

Sometimes I forgot just how rich the Cristofs were. I was so confused about how she allowed us to drag her to all these boutiques when they were obviously below her and her standards. Not that she was rude about it, she supported our whims and was going to sit through Carina picking what she wanted but now that the ball was in her court, I could see a new sparkle enter her eye.

Emeline made phone call after phone call to all of her friends in the fashion world. Only a few of them were willing to accommodate her but they weren’t happy with the timeline. She was willing to pay whatever it took but there still seemed to be some issues. I couldn’t tell you what as most of the time on the ride back to Ace’s penthouse, she was speaking French and then she switched to another language I couldn’t even recognize, and never before in my life had I felt like such uncultured swine than I did then. At that moment I wished I’d tried harder in school.

Ace’s penthousewas completly empty when we made it up. The grannies had thankfully gone home and Carina was back in her bed with her beloved. I rubbed my hands down my arms and closed my eyes when I closed the door to my bedroom. I’d been so focused on how we would pull off a wedding in so little timewithout a dress that I hadn’t noticed the smirking man lying in my bed.

“You look tense,” he said and I about jumped out of my skin. I let out a squeal and held my hands out like I could karate chop him to death. Alexei smirked from my pillows. At least this time he wasn’t covered in stripper glitter and cheap perfume.

“What do you want?” I held my hands to my racing heart.

“I just wanted to see how wedding dress shopping was going.”

“Since when?” I wanted to close my eyes again and take a deep breath but I knew I couldn’t take my eyes off of my enemy. It didn’t matter how much he’d cared for me after everything happened after Briann. I couldn’t stop thinking about everything that happened before Brian.

“Since now,” he shrugged as if that was the only explanation that made sense.

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