“Yes, Miss Marina. Are you going to try everything on?”
“Not yet. I need to figure out accessories. I assume you’ve got lots of those, too, Jada?”
“What? Oh, yeah, I think so.”
“She does, Miss,” Elly answered. “They’re all in her vanity in the dressing room.”
“I think I’ve died and this is the heaven I was meant for,” Marina said. “Come on, Jada, help me pick out what to wear with this outfit. Elly, would you mind going and finding out if the masseuse ... what’s her name again?”
“Deb,” Elly answered.
“Thanks. Will you find Deb and ask her if she’ll have time this afternoon to give Jada and I the full royal treatment, massages, manicures, pedicures and so on before dinner?”
“I think Deb’s working on Miss Agatha down in the solarium. Not sure. I’ll find her.” Elly hung the silk dress up on a hook and brushed at the fabric. “This dress could use some work, too. A few wrinkles haven’t fallen out of it yet. I’ll take care of it when I come back, okay?”
Elly slipped away, quiet as usual, closing the bedroom door behind her with hardly a sound.
“I like her,” Marina declared. “I want one at home just like her.”
Jada rolled her eyes. “Dream on.”
“I think I will.”
They headed into the dressing room and Marina sat in front of the vanity mirror, pawing through the drawers and the big jewelry box. “Wow, look at all this stuff. I can’t believe he got all of this for you.”
“Well, technically, his assistant picked it all out.”
Marina held up a pair of dainty, cut crystal earrings. “These are gorgeous. I saw them in this month’s ‘Vogue.’”
“I’m not keeping it, Marina, once I leave. It’s all too much.”
Marina goggled at Jada in the mirror. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
Marina sighed and gently lay the earrings back on their tiny velvet cushion. “You’re not thinking about this in the right way. All this.” She waved at the dresser. “To a man with Ian’s kind of money, this is practically nothing. It would be like you and me going out and buying a cup of coffee. Actually, not even that. Not even close.”
“You can’t compare it that way. Give it up. I won’t change my mind.”
Marina shrugged and inspected a charm bracelet. “But you like him, don’t you? You like him a lot.”
“Maybe.”
“Puh-leeze. Admit it. I know this has been a crazy ordeal and some of it has been pretty bad, but getting to know Ian and being here on his estate has made it worth it, right? I mean, at least some of it?”
Jada was surprised at how intent Marina was, how she regarded Jada with unusual earnestness.
“I do like him,” Jada said. “As for it being worth it, no. I don’t think so. I’m trying not to think about it right now because there’s no point, and I’d like to keep having some fun while I can, but the truth is that I’m scared about what’s going to happen after the truth comes out and I return to my real life.”
“What are you scared of?”
“For one thing, will I still have a job? I don’t know. They’re conservative where I work, and I’m notorious now as a man-stealer and ... you saw it today, on CGTV. Everyone hates me. I can’t imagine going to the store, or the coffee shop at home right now because of what people might say to me. Oh, I don’t want to talk about it right now. I’m a little scared, that’s all.”
“They’re blowing it out of proportion on TV and making it seem worse than it is. I know it’s going to be okay, Jada,” Marina said. “It has to be.”
“Well, I’ll have to be satisfied that whoever forged that license and caused this mess won’t be let off the hook. They won’t if Ian has anything to say about it. He told me today that he’ll make them sorry they ever messed with him, and I believe him.”
Marina dropped the bracelet on the vanity top. “Um, what do you mean Ian will make them sorry?”
“I don’t know. That’s all he said. I imagine he’ll make sure the crime gets prosecuted.”
“Crime?”
“Well yeah. It’s a crime to forge people’s signatures. There are probably more crimes involved in this thing, too, but I don’t know what they are.”
Marina lowered her head, toyed with the tiny, jingling charms. “So you’re really mad, huh? Ian, too. I guess I can’t blame either of you.”
“Look how it’s affected you, too, Marina. You got run out of town and were stuck in that awful motel—”
“Yeah, but now that I’m here at this amazing place, it seems like it kind of worked out, didn’t it?”
“I’ll give you credit for looking on the bright side,” Jada said, smiling at her uncharacteristically serious sister.
“You don’t think it worked out, though, do you, not for you?”
“Like I said, I don’t want to talk about it, Marina. Truly. I’m so worried. And if I talk about it, I’m going to start crying.”
“Oh Jada. I don’t want you to cry. It’s just ... just ...”
“Just what?”
Marina swung around on the velvet stool and faced Jada. She clutched her knees and hunched her shoulders. “I can’t not tell you this. Not anymore. I’m sorry.”
“What’s going on?”
“Before the reporters found me, I did get a chance to talk to some of my contacts at the courthouse.”
“You did? Why didn’t you tell me? Did you learn anything?”
Marina swallowed audibly. “Oh Jada, I should have told you this before.”
“Well, tell me now.”
“I’m just going to come out and say it.”
“Okay,” Jada prompted.
“I think I know what happened. And I’m positive it’s going to make you very unhappy.”
Marina’s words landed on Jada like an eighteen wheeler. “You ... you know what happened?”
Marina nodded jerkily.
Jada’s heart thumped in her chest. “And I’m not going to like it?”
“No, you won’t. I have to tell you, though,” she said. “I don’t want to, but I have to. I can’t keep it back anymore.”
It was too much. Jada didn’t know what to think about Marina’s bombshell. What did it mean? Marina knew what happened? She knew that knowledge would make Jada unhappy? How unhappy?
After all of Jada’s playing at being a detective and trying to figure out whodunnit, here she was, on the brink of cracking the case and she suddenly had a terrible stomach ache and was pretty sure she’d rather not know whodunnit after all.
Unfortunately, from the desperate look on Marina’s face, Jada was going to learn what happened whether she wanted to or not.
Jada looked out the small window at the framed view of pristine lake and clear sky. Wait. Were there dark clouds building, right above the horizon beyond the tree line?
There definitely were figurative dark clouds in the dressing room with her and Marina. And Jada was positive those clouds didn’t herald anything good. Not for anyone.
So much for perfect.
Oh hell.
The story continues in Alpha Billionaire’s Bride, Part 3.