She didn’t believe Nicolai’s story in the slightest. I started to turn to warn him.
Clementine snatched my hand from my side and tugged me after her, my white beaded reception bag dangling from my wrist.
I lost my grip on Nicolai’s arm. He grabbed after me butmissed, and then he peered over the crowd, trying to watch us, but Clementine dodged and wove through clusters and knots of people, towing me in her wake like I was waterskiing out of control.
I waved him off.
If I couldn’t handle questions from someone I knew and liked like Clementine, this ruse wasn’t going to work for a whole year.
CHAPTER 10
conference with clementine
LEXI
When the ladies’ room door closed behind Clementine and myself, the almost-painful volume of the stomping techno beats fell by several orders of magnitude.
I sucked in adeepbreath because my lungs were no longer thumping in four-four time. “Wow, that music is loud out there, huh?”
Clementine was slapping open the stall doors and craning her neck, even shoving aside a plastic curtain to look into the small shower in the very back. She must’ve been satisfied we were alone, because she stormed back, reaching for an earring in an upper piercing of her left ear. “You met Nicoliterallyyesterday and married him right off, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. Clementine was not to be trifled with.
“Take off those ridiculous earrings. No one will believe you are who you say you are with those cheap hoops on. And let me see thosehalfwaydecent rings he finally got you.”
I complied.Quickly.
She held her hand out for my silver hoops, smacking them onto the sink counter beside us while she handed me herdiamond earrings that were so large I felt their weight like a handful of rocks.
When I offered my left hand, she seized it and inspected the wedding ring set on my finger, turning the diamonds in the light.“Better.They’re Graff, right?”
Yeah, she would have detected white sapphires in a hot minute. “That was the name on the boxes.”
“Graff was probably the best he could do on short notice. Nico should have gotten you something bespoke or storied, but those will do.”
“Oh, but I don’t need something flashy?—”
Clementine made that little chirpingzipornopesound she’d made in the car, the one that meantyouweredonetalking. “Put those earrings in, right now. If you had been dating Nico foryears,he would have been buying you jewelry all this time, and you would have decent pieces to wear tonight. Otherwise, it means he never told you who he was all that time, which is impossible. If that had been the case, he would’ve crowed to us all these years about how he was deceiving an ignorant peasant woman, and we would’ve had quite the laugh about it.”
I swiveled the posts of Clementine’s enormous earrings into my earlobe holes while she talked. “That doesn’t sound very nice. Would Nicolai have done something like that, dated someone foryearswithout ever telling them about why he rides around with security guards?”
Clementine shrugged. “We’ve all been slumming at some point, pretending to be of the common people and looking for a ‘soulmate’ who would love us for our sparkling personalities and pure souls. It turns out, we have neither of those. Either we find a gold digger who will love us for our money and then lord it over them until they can’t take it any longer, or else we marry each other. At least we know what we’re getting into when we marry each other.”
That was dark. “I’m not digging for dirt about Nicolai’s exes, but he mentioned that he dated someone kind of seriously a few years back. He didn’t lie to her about who he was, right?”
Clementine ducked her chin and looked up at me from under her lashes, essentially rolling her eyes at me. “That was Hanna. The woman we all thought he was serious about was Lady Hannelore Morrit, the second daughter of the current Earl Savernake. It would’ve been quite a coup for either one of them, depending on who you asked. They dated foryears,well over two, nearly three, if I remember correctly.”
I flinched. “Wow, that’s a while.”
“Hanna said she let it go on too long. She knew after a year that they weren’t right together. Too alike. But she said the D was so good that she just couldn’t let him go.”
“Oh.Wow.”I didn’t want to know what Nicolai’s previous conquests thought about his D. “TMI, maybe?”
“Hanna said Nico had a magic dick. She said she came so hard and so many times that she was worried about cumulative brain damage. He actually knocked her unconscious once, she screamed so hard.”
I literally took a step backward. “Oh,wow.Wedon’tneed to specify?—”
“She said it was like she had tetanus, every muscle in her body locked up so tight she couldn’t inhale.”
