Page 45 of Kissing Danger

Looking down, I realized he was right.

Fuck.

My hands were shaking.

There was no room for pockets on my skin-tight pants—which had been Kiki’s choice—so I crossed my arms and clenched my hands into fists.

“Yeah, it’s just nerve-wracking, you know? Everyone’s going to be looking at my work. What if they hate it? Nathan put all this together. What if he hates it?”

The prep room was large to accommodate all the models and staff, but most of the space was taken up by workstations. There were dozens of people clustered into the room, getting models into outfits, applying makeup, and styling hair. I was so used to doing all the work myself. Having an actual crew to handle the brunt of it was a foreign concept. Luckily, Kiki was perfectly happy to take over the job of manager and delegate tasks.

That left me standing uselessly in the corner, though, not sure what to do with myself. Oliver and Ashes joined me in my vigil. I’d asked Nathan about the nature of his work with D’Angelo only once and had been given a vague enough answer to make it clear that D’Angelo was also tied up with the mafia, and I didn’t want to know more than that. Oliver and Ashes were aware of things, and it was surprisingly helpful to have someone to talk to who understood my perspective. Suddenly being dropped into a world of criminal activity wasn’t an easy adjustment. I hadn’t even told Kiki about the true nature of our employment withFantaisiste,and that secret weighed heavily on me.

I’d have to tell her eventually.

Maybe after the show.

For now, it was just good to have someone to talk to that I didn’t need to hide the truth from.

Something came flying toward me, and I caught it just in time to keep it from smacking me in the face.

“What the hell?”

The thing I’d caught turned out to be a fidget spinner.

From the couch where they were lounging, Ashes grinned at me. “Use it to keep your hands busy. It always helps when I’m nervous.”

Oliver smacked his friend’s feet, forcing them to move so he could sit on the couch as well. “Since when are you ever nervous?”

Ashes stuck their tongue out at Oliver, which also showed off the barbell piercing that usually remained hidden behind their teeth. “Hey. I get nervous. I just don’t show it. That’s how you know the fidget spinner works.”

Although they hadn’t told me much about themselves, it was obvious that Oliver and Ashes were old friends. They reminded me of Kiki and myself in many ways. Neither of them were fashion designers, so I had been unsure how much help they would actually be. However, Oliver’s artistic eye and Ashes’s sense for aesthetic construction really helped get the whole project together. We’d finished the collection with a few days to spare, and I had to admit the designs were some of my best ever.

Ashes had made pieces of custom jewelry that matched perfectly to each outfit, and though they could be worn separately, it all fit so flawlessly together that the jewelry seemed like part of the clothing. The ensembles were stunning, in my opinion. I just hoped everyone else thought so, too.

Oliver had such a deft hand with a pencil and paper, I could describe some vague idea in my mind, and he would immediately sketch it to life. The collection definitely wouldn’t have been the same without both of them.

I was glad when I heard that Nathan had agreed to hire Ashes permanently, and wondered if we could bring Oliver on as well. They were both great artists on their own but worked best as a team. Although, I was pretty sure that D’Angelo and Oliver were an item, so that might not be possible.

Maybe I could hire Oliver as a freelance artist to work remotely.

Eventually, with less than an hour before the show, Kiki announced that everything was ready and all they needed was my final inspection. The models were lined up in the order they would appear in the show. I walked down the line, inspecting each one carefully, and made a few minor adjustments. One model’s belt wasn’t tied the right way, so it sat on her hips at an angle that didn’t align with the seams of the clothing, and another was wearing the wrong pair of earrings.

Overall, however, it was perfect.

Surely, Nathan was going to love it, and it was going to blow all our competition out of the water.

After what that woman, Caprice Vidales, had done to Kiki and tried to do to Nathan, I wanted to hit her where it would hurt.

Her bank account.

I’d learned that, for those raised in the Mafia, life was cheap. People like Caprice and Nathan were so used to death threats and murder, physical pain meant nothing. Even if they were killed, they would just see it as a failed business transaction. I didn’t blame them for that kind of skewed attitude. That was the world they lived in. Being too sensitive to death and danger would just get them killed faster.

Money, however, was a powerful motivator. The more money I could take from Caprice by stealing her business, the better.

It was almost time for the show. The models were ready. There was nothing left for me to do.

The prep room led to a makeshift backstage area. It almost looked like a traditional backstage, but when I looked up, I could see the open blue sky.

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