Chattiness Pays Off
Flicka von Hannover
Magical thinking.
Flicka swallowed the first dose of the morning-after contraceptive even though she knew that she could have just resumed her pills and her chances of being knocked up would have been quite low. Last night’s pill would have only been about twelve hours late.
Insignificant, statistically.
Just the thought of Pierreforcingher to be pregnant made her hands shake. He’d been so sure that he could do that, that he would just impregnate her and neither she nor anyone else could stop him. Even though he’d been so angry, hisconfidencethat he owned her body terrified her.
Never again.
She never wanted to be in the same room as he was ever again, and she wanted to finalize that divorce as soon as possible. That afternoon, if she could. Getting married was the stroke of a pen. Divorce should be the same way.
She suspected that divorce would not be that easy, but she hoped. The prenuptial agreements had been hammered out by teams of lawyers over months. There should be no quibbling over money, property, or titles. There was a rubric. Less than five years with no children meant that everybody picked up their money and went home.
But she wanted it doneright then.
To do it, though, she had to get to Paris.
Flicka stared into the bathroom mirror above the sink and did her best to change her appearance with the cosmetics that Dieter had bought. Luckily, he had purchased an eyeliner and some different colors of foundation.
Professional makeup artists had been performing their magic on Flicka for years, often several times a week. Flicka waschatty,and she liked peoplea lot.Her chattiness bothered some people, and she had learned to sort those out and let them do their jobs without her interference. But if they were up for it, she was more than happy to listen, ask questions, and be very interested in everything they did. Cosmeticians had been divulging their best secrets to her all that time as they giggled together.
Basically, Flicka did the opposite of what the good make-up artists did.
She changed the heart shape of her face by highlighting her jaw to widen it, blunted her cheekbones, and shaded in her eyes until they were almost almond-shaped. The frightened tremor in her fingers made her glop on the eyeshadow, exaggerating them more than she had intended.
It worked, though.
Most of her close friends would have walked right by her and never glanced twice.
She scraped her voluminous blond hair back into a tight bun and bound it with a rubber band she had found in the back of one of the vanity drawers.
The clothes that Dieter had purchased for her were dowdy and scratchy, but the high-necked, long-sleeved shirt covered up the bruises on her throat and arms. The pants were loose around her waist and hips. Just how big did he think her butt was, anyway?
A baseball hat and sunglasses rattled around in the bottom of the bag, the uniform of incognito celebrities everywhere.
The canvas flats he’d picked out fit her wide feet really well, a small miracle. Her toes could actually move in the padded, slide-on shoes. Dang, she was going to take Dieter shoe-shopping with her from now on.
Dieter’s low voice whispered through the door, “Are you ready?”
She opened the door. “Are we leaving right now?”
He looked her up and down. “You look different.”
“It’s makeup.”
“Okay. I’ve got a few guys from Rogue clearing the way for us through the hallway and parking garage. We’ll be out of here and to the train station in minutes.”
She clasped her hands together to stop them from shaking. “A train. At least this is an adventure, right?”
“Yes,Durchlauchtig.”
“I’m used to having a phalanx of bodyguards around me, you know? There are always at least four guys surrounding me, ready to keep me from getting hurt or keep any jackals from getting too close. I know how other women live their lives, the constant worry, the never-ending vigilance. Everybody tells you to hold your keys in your fist like a mace, or watch shadows to see if anyone is walking behind you, or check the back seat of your car to make sure no one is hiding there. They tell you to leave a relationship if the guy shows any signs of violence. And if something does happen, they blame you for not doing all thatbetter.”
“It’s magical thinking. You know that, right?”
Flicka drew in a shuddering breath while her hands cramped from clenching. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Those things that they tell women to do are like magic spells. People tell women to perform the rituals—don’t turn your back on your drink, carry pepper spray on your keychain, always go to the bathroom in groups, dress like a damned nun—but they don’t work. Then, when a woman is the victim of a crime, other women can feel smug and safe because they would have done all those magic spells better. It blames the victim, and other people think it won’t happen to them. It wards off the fear, but it does nothing to stop men from assaulting women.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, trying to quell the shaking in her hands and lungs. “I’ve never had to do the magic spells before.”
Dieter stepped toward her. His hands twitched at his sides, but he didn’t reach out. “I will keep you safe. Let’s go to Paris and see what the lawyers have to say.”
