Every bride needs a wedding dress. Join me at the rooftop pool when
you’re awake.
She smiled down at the hard black angles of his handwriting. She’d thought she hadn’t wanted a dress, that she wanted to keep their wedding as dull and unromantic as possible. But now… how had he known the small gesture would mean so much?
Then she saw the dress’s tag. Chanel. Holy cow. Maybe the gesture wasn’t so small. For a moment, she was afraid to touch the fabric. Then she stroked the lace softly with her fingertips. It felt like a whisper. Like a dream.
Maybe everything really was going to be all right.
Josie exhaled, blinking back tears. She’d taken a huge gamble, using her last paycheck to come back to Honolulu, trusting Kasimir to help her. But it had paid off. For the first time in her life, she’d done something right.
It was a strangely intoxicating feeling.
Josie had always been the one who ruined things, not the one who saved them. She’d learned from a young age that the only way to make up for all the pain she’d caused everyone was just to take a book and go read quietly and invisibly in a corner, making as little trouble or fuss as possible.
But this time…
She tried to imagine her sister’s face when Josie burst in with Prince Kasimir and saved her. Wouldn’t Bree be surprised that her baby sister had done something important, something difficult, all by herself? Josie, her usually unflappable sister would blurt out, how did you do this? You’re such a genius!
Josie smiled to herself, picturing the sweetness of that moment. Then she looked down at her naked body, pink with heat from the shower. Time to do her part, but maybe it wouldn’t be so awful after all. How hard could it be, to get dressed in a fancy wedding gown, and marry a rich, handsome prince?
Pulling the white shift dress off the hanger, she stepped into it. Pulling it up her thighs, she gasped at the feel of the sensual fabric against her skin. It was a little short, though.
Josie frowned, looking down. It only reached to her mid-thigh. Maybe it would be all right, though. She reached back for the zipper. As long as it wasn’t…
Tight. She stopped. The zipper wouldn’t zip. Holding her breath, she sucked in her belly. Nervously, she moved the zipper up inch by inch, afraid she’d break it and ruin the expensive dress. Finally the zipper closed. She looked at herself in the mirror.
Her full breasts were pushed up by the tight dress, practically exploding out of the neckline. She looked way too grown-up and, well, busty. Bree would never have let her leave the house like this in a million years.
But it was either this or the dirty clothes. She decided she could live with tight. She’d just have to be careful not to bust a seam every time she moved.
Going to her backpack in mincing steps, she grabbed a brush and brushed her wet brown hair down her shoulders, leaving traces of dampness against the silk. She put on her pink flip-flops—it was either that or fuzzy slippers, and she was in Hawaii, after all—and some tinted lip balm. She left the bedroom with as much elegance as she could muster, her head held high.
Tottering down the stairs to the bottom floor of the penthouse, Josie went through the rooms until she finally found her way to the rooftop pool, with the help of the smiling housekeeper she’d found in the big kitchen. “That way, miss. Down the hall and through the salon.”
The salon?
Josie went through a large room with a grand piano, then through the sliding door to the rooftop pool. She saw Kasimir at a large table, still dressed in his severely black suit, leaning back in his chair. He was talking on the phone, but when he saw her, his eyes widened.
Nervously, Josie walked along the edge of the pool towards him. She had to sway her hips unnaturally to move forward, and she felt a bead of sweat suddenly form between her breasts. The sun felt hot against her skin.
Or maybe it was just the way her bridegroom was looking at her.
“I’ll talk to you later,” he breathed to the person on the phone, never looking away from Josie, and he rose to his feet. His gaze seemed shocked as it traveled up and down her body. “What are you wearing?”
“The wedding dress. That you gave me. Should I have not?”
“That—” his voice sounded strangled “—is the dress I left you?”
“Yeah, um, it’s a little tight,” she said, her cheeks burning. She wasn’t used to being the center of any man’s attention, let alone a man like Prince Kasimir Xendzov. Then she bit her lip, afraid she’d sounded like she was complaining. “But it was really thoughtful of you to get me a wedding dress,” she added quickly.
He slowly looked her up and down. “You look…”
She waited unhappily for his next word.
“… fine,” he finished huskily, and he pulled out a chair for her. “Please sit.”
Fine? She exhaled. Fine. She could live with fine. “Thanks.”