Page 13 of Too Good to Be True

I left my room, walked across the hall and down two doors, and knocked on the one I’d watched the maid lead Lou to before I’d entered mine so I’d know where she was.

My windows faced the lawns and forest at the front of the house.

Hers would face the wing that made the other strike of cross.

She opened the door with perfect hair and makeup, but still in her robe.

“Hey,” she greeted.

“I feel like I should leave a note on my door so our guide will know where to find me when they come up to get us,” I replied as she stepped back, and I entered her room.

I stopped a few feet in, closing the door behind me and making the decision to do everything in my power not to let her see my allocated space.

Hers was not as big and it was oppressively filled with furniture, all of it high quality, maybe even priceless, but it was still mismatched. Likely discards from other rooms, or pieces that were too valuable to throw away, but where they used to reside had been updated and they were no longer needed.

It was fashioned into a usable room, the colors and fabrics were all in lovely shades of pale green and blue, with a theme of flowers, but it seemed close, disorganized and suffocating, not airy, artful and appealing.

In other words, I was welcome.

Lou wasn’t.

“Rabidly private, as I said. I guess not a surprise,” Lou noted as she shrugged off her robe and tossed it on a flowered chintz chair to stand unabashed in her underwear like she was backstage at a fashion show.

She reached into the opened wardrobe, and I saw she was unpacked, as I found I’d been after we were escorted to our rooms.

We hadn’t asked them to do that, or not to do it as I’d have preferred.

I wondered what they thought when they put my vibrator into the top drawer of one of the nightstands.

It had been a wild idea to pack it, but I figured I’d need every avenue open to find ways to relax this week, so in it went.

And now the staff knew it did.

Fodder for discussion belowstairs.

“It’s good you’re here, you can zip me up,” she said. “We’re running out of time. They said they’d be here at six twenty to escort us down, yes?”

“Yes,” I confirmed as I watched her step into a column of sequins and pull it up her body.

It was a midi sheath dress, fully sequined in burgundy, except the twin bands of silver around the waist. It was high necked and sleeveless.

And totally not Lou.

She looked like the mother of the bride, not like she’d walked hundreds of runways wearing haute couture and wasn’t even forty years old yet.

I felt my heart warm and my temper flare, seeing yet again how badly Lou wanted Portia to like her. How badly she wanted to do what she could to make this go smoothly for her stepdaughter.

Lou looked the picture of appropriate, middle-aged-woman elegance when I didn’t even think she’d admitted to herself she’d hit middle age.

I, on the other hand, was wearing a dress I’d thrown in as a spare, not expecting I was going to wear it.

It was pine green, totally simple, except it was skintight, had a plunge V that showed cleavage down nearly to my midriff, which meant my breasts were swaddled in support tapes to give them the perfect curve at the expanse of skin that was showing.

It hit the floor in a trumpet skirt with a high slit up the right leg, and I’d paired it with the fan-shaped, Divas’ Dream Bulgari necklace of rose gold, diamonds and malachite Dad bought me, with its matching earrings, bracelet and ring.

My shoes were rose gold Sophia Websters with four-inch skinny stiletto heels and the requisite dramatic butterfly embossed with crystals at the heel. I’d likely have to take them off to walk back up to my room after dinner, but by damn, I was teetering in on those damned shoes.

And my hair was fashioned in a side bun that took four tries to make look nice.

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