“Do you think that she’s okay?”
Flicka was staring at the excuses from the napkin supplier and ready to choke the man. “She keeps saying that she’s going to disappear, to escape everyone who’s after her, everyone who has been hounding her. It must be nice to think that you are so inconsequential that you can just run away like that.”
“But she’s not inconsequential,” Rae said. “She has people who love her.”
“Maybe it’s the best option for her.”
Flicka didn’t think. The pain poured out of her. Her phone in her hands blurred. “Maybe she’s afraid that the people who are after her will kill her friends if the bullets miss her. They have been hunting her for her whole life, ever since her father swindled those criminals, anyway.”
Flicka couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see.
Somehow, she kept her voice light and a little irritated as she blurted, “Maybe her life is so miserable and shallow and wrong and imprisoning that she wants to die but just can’t bring herself to do it, so she keeps running away instead.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Flicka saw that Dieter had turned and was watching her. His gray eyes didn’t waver.
“Did she say that to you?” Rae asked Flicka, reaching over to touch Flicka’s arm. “Did Georgie say that she was thinking about harming herself?”
Rae thought they were still talking about Georgie.
Flicka said, “No, I’m just playing armchair shrink. Indeed, I’ve barely talked to her or anyone for months except for wedding planners and caterers and florists and designers, and now I’ve lost three whole damn hours. I’ve got to get these napkins right, or people will talk. Good God, Rae. White, polyester napkins!What would people say?”
Rae blinked for a moment, probably thinking that Flicka had lost her mind over the napkins. “You’ve done a brilliant job, Flicka,” is what she said. “I appreciate everything that you’ve done, and it’s beautiful and it’s perfect.”
Flicka tried to stick some anger on her face to cover up the fact that she was just about to roll off the couch and sob on her knees.
“Really!”Rae told her. “I mean it. I am stunned by how much you’ve done. Everything is absolutely beautiful and perfect. You have done a wonderful job with this. Thank you, and I mean every word.”
Flicka blinked, her lips sucking inward to control it all. “Okay. Thanks. I’m glad that you like it. Now, if you’ll excuse me for a few minutes, I have to make sure that my fashion-challenged brother puts on the right suit because if there are two suits in the garment bag, he will choose the wrong one, and then I have a table designer to disembowel if he doesn’t produce three thousand unbleached silk napkins in the next three hours.”
“Four hours,” Rae said.
“Three,” Flicka replied. “I need an hour to whip all the waitstaff into folding some of them into two thousand perfect little goddamn swans.”
She breezed out of the dressing room.
When she looked back, a dark shadow moved in the hallway behind her, a very tall, muscular man, blocking out the sharp sunlight and protecting her from everything.
Flicka rushed off before Dieter could ask her what the hell was going on.
The Wedding of Rae and Wulf
Flicka von Hannover
I’m smiling up here,
smiling as perfectly as I can.
No one can tell I’m dying inside.
Flicka winched the corners of her mouth up so that she appeared to be smiling and strolled down the long aisle of the church.
Fresh incense smoke wafted through the sunbeams, scenting the church with fresh, smoky herbs.
She tried not to grind her teeth behind her smile.
The bouquet of white jasmine and lily of the valley flowers drooped over her knuckles, cooling her hands as she strangled the flowers. Sap oozed from the bruised stems, bleeding through the ribbons tying it and squishing between her fingers. Her fingers cramped.
The church was packed—from its arches seven stories above her, to the stained-glass windows and the white-columned walls—with nobles and royals who were important enough to be invited to the main event. She’d wanted a larger church, but this one was Lutheran. Wulf had demanded Lutheran, and so her relatives’ upper-crust butts were all packed tightly into the golden wood pews.
