“You know, it would be funny.” I say.
“What’s that?” he asks with his face still twisted from the shot.
“If I wore the dress,” I say.
“I think you should.”
I narrow my eyes and a smile creeps across my face. The tequila is making its way into my bloodstream, thus beginning the first of possibly many half cocked decisions. Although, I suppose the first bad decision was agreeing to do this in the first place.
“We are going to need to leave soon if we want to be fashionably late,” Asher points out.
“I’ll be ready in five minutes,” I tell him as I open the junk drawer and pull out a pair of scissors.
“What are those for?” he asks.
“I just need to make a few alterations.”
Asher scrambles after me, but I am on a mission. A mission that if I was of sound mind, I wouldn’t be doing. But desperate times call for desperate measures. And desperate measures call for short dresses.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asks as he watches me flatten out the dress on the bed. I place the blades of the scissors about twelve inches up from the bottom hem.
“Oh trust me, this is the best idea I’ve had since we decided to go through with this charade,” I say with a smile. Then I start cutting, carefully taking off about half the dress. By the time I am done, it looks like a completely different dress entirely.
“Voila,” I say, holding it up to my body with a satisfactory smile. Then, without thinking about it, I ditch the bathrobe and toss it aside. For a split second I realize I am changing in front of him, and I’m standing here in nothing but a black strapless push-up bra and matching satin panties.
Asher swallows hard enough that I can actually hear it.
I slip into the dress and turn around to face him, the lace and sparkles twirling as I move. “What do you think?” I ask, checking myself out in the mirror.
“I think you look beautiful,” he says.
“Do I look vengeful? Do I look like I’m about to crash a wedding,” I ask. Those are the real questions right now.
“You look like you can do anything you want, Harper. You look too good for him.”
My eyes flash back to his in the mirror, and my grin softens to a smile.
I know all of this is fake. It’s for show and revenge against the man that broke my heart. But as Ash looks at me in the mirror with his bright blue eyes and sharp jawline, I have to remind myself that this isn’t real.
Chapter 28
Harper
“We need a story,” he says, as we drive towards the hotel where the wedding is taking place.
“A story,” I say as I check my lip gloss in the mirror. “Right,” then I pause. “What’s our story?”
Ash’s eyes narrow, and he rubs his chin. “We’re in love,” he says.
“Obviously,” I giggle. “I mean we wouldn’t be married if we weren’t in love,” I say.
“Oh, speaking of that,” he says. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small, black velvet box. He hands it to me.
“What’s this?” I ask, but I open it before he can answer. “A ring?”
“Yeah,” he says, glancing over at it before looking back at the road. “We can’t be married if your hand is bare.”
“Where did you get it?” I ask. It’s not just a ring, it’s a rock! A beautiful white gold band with a gorgeous pear-cut diamond, surrounded by smaller diamonds around the edges.
