And shehadbeen expecting a check in, as pathetic as that was. Which of course pissed her off.
“Fran, can you zip me up?” Nicki walked into the room in stilettos that rivaled Fran’s eyelashes in terms of being deadly weapons. Her get-up was so completely un-Nicki that Fran grinned despite her foul humor.
“Stefan isn’t going to know what hit him.”
“Yeah, well, I hope he gets hit in a hurry,” Nicki groused. “I haven’t balanced on anything so narrow since I tried tightrope walking in the sixth grade. If I fall so much as three inches this dress is going to split right up the seam.” She glanced down at her cleavage. “As it is there’s no way I’m going to be able to wear a bra. I don’t know who designed this thing, but it definitely gets an F in functionality.”
“You’ll thank me later.” Lauren sailed in with a dress that Fran would never have picked for her in a hundred years, yet it was somehow absolutely perfect. The lightest shade of pink—almost a creamy petal—it was a soft sheath gown that dropped silkily over Lauren’s body like a second skin. She wore her hair down and around her shoulders, secured with a single clip, and the entire ensemble made her seem soft and eminently touchable.
The other thing that tied Lauren and Nicki’s dresses together was the wordsleek. While there was nothing sleek about Fran’s ball gown.
A sick wash of dread pooled in her stomach. “Guys, you both look way chicer than I do. I can barely get through a door in this gown.”
“You look beautiful,” Lauren said, and Nicki blinked as she nodded her head several times.
“Seriously, girl, you do. Like, I wouldn’t know it was you except I know it’s you. You were born for that dress,” Nicki said. “Even the queen thought so!”
“Yeah, like she was going to tell me I looked terrible,” Fran cracked, but as she said the words, she realized they were unfair. The queen had been nothing but kind to them since they’d come to the royal palace. She’d welcomed Emmaline with open arms, had pushed Dimitri and Lauren together, and had arranged it so Stefan and Nicki would take off on a grand adventure…an adventure that had ended with them falling in love. She’d even attempted some matchmaking, Fran was certain, with herself and Ari—at least in a general sense. She’d wanted Ari to have a friendly female face to help him through his transition back to Garronia and, well…Fran had been that for him. The queen was grateful, she was sure. But she was hardly going to embrace Fran as her bosom friend.
Even if she was wearing a four-thousand-dollar gown.
“Will Em meet us there?” Nicki asked, then slapped her hand to her ear. “Oh my God, I forgot my earrings. How could I forget my earrings?” She held up a finger. “Talk loudly or come with me.”
Fran and Lauren exchanged a knowing grin, then dutifully trooped into Nicki’s room, a veritable disaster of clothes, makeup and shoes. “I put the ones I wanted to wear right over here,” she muttered, then she glanced up. “Keep talking, though. Is Emmaline meeting us there? She’s a part of the family right? She should be meeting us there, going with Kristos and the parents. Don’t you think? Oh—here they are. Okay, good. What do you think?”
Fran blinked, trying to follow Nicki’s rapid words, but it was Lauren that replied first. “Yes, Emmaline is with Kristos, and no to the other open question, I have no idea if he’s planning to propose tonight. Dimitri refuses to speculate.”
“Propose!” Nicki’s eyes narrowed. “He already proposed.”
“I mean propose properly, with a ring,” Lauren said. “Kristos gave Em some kind of military pin, which she wears everywhere now and that’s darling, but it’s not a ring. She deserves to have a ring, and I think Kristos should propose tonight.”
Fran thought the same thing. “Is there any chance of that?”
“Well, I think that’s why despite the fact that the occasion is so intimate, we’re all dressing like Royal Barbie. If there’s going to be an official photographer on hand, you might as well show the American girls in a good light, especially since we’re all fast friends of the newest princess of Garronia.”
“Princess or Queen?” Nicki was shaking her head in the mirror, watching the dangle of her earrings. “Is Ari seriously going to bounce Kristos off the throne?”
“Yes, if Kristos is really, really lucky,” Lauren said. “And those earrings are ridiculous. Wear these.”
Nicki scowled as she saw what Lauren had picked up off the dresser. “But those don’t dangle,” she said.
“Your hair is down and dangling earrings will get tangled in it. They’ll also block your neck, so if you were hoping to get any action from Stefan tonight, you might want to keep all available kissable zones obstacle free.”
Nicki’s brows went up, then she grinned. “Okay, you totally win at this. Gold hoops it is.”
Fran touched her own earrings, which were the size of roller skates. “Should I change?”
“No, but be careful,” Lauren said. “Those earrings don’t have backs and I don’t trust the hook things on them.”
A staff member came to their doors a few minutes later to walk them through the long hallways of the palace to the cars that would take them to the Visitors’ Palace, where all the special events were held for the royal family. Due to their dress volume, their original limo was scrapped in exchange for an SUV, and two men helped them step into it, picking up Fran’s voluminous skirts as if they were used to handling such cargo on a daily basis.
“There’s not a receiving line, right?” Nicki asked, her knees pressed together and her hands clutched atop them. “I don’t think I could do another receiving line.”
“There might be one, but it’s really not supposed to be anything like that first ball, for all the fact that they’re calling it a ball, and that we’re dressed to impress,” Lauren said firmly. “It’s family, friends and dignitaries. That’s it.”
Fran cocked her a glance. “By all accounts that’s pretty much everyone we saw at the ball last time.”
“It’s not, truly,” Lauren said, but her mouth pinched into a frown as the car slowed, and they saw the long line of vehicles ahead of them. She grimaced. “Then again, maybe the guest list got out of hand or something.”
