After zipping up the back I turn to peer at my reflection. It doesn’t look quite how I’d pictured it. The round neckline makesmy breasts look like boulders and the feather wrist cuffs are more excessive now I’m wearing it. There’s no waist to speak of, making me a look a bit like an ocean-colored, sparkly box.
I step tentatively out of the dressing room. Mallorie straightens and chews away a smile.
“Don’t take this personally but you look like a cross between a sunbathing seal and Big Bird.”
I take the price tag between my fingers. “Wow, that’s fourteen hundred dollars-worth of harsh.”
I frown at the view. I look like I’m getting ready to star in a pantomime. “But yeah, you’re right,” I mutter, shuffling back behind the curtain.
The next dress—a velvet Alberta Ferretti—gains both our approval, as do the next few dresses. All of which were selected by Mallorie, which tells me I should never be allowed to go designer clothes shopping alone.
“So, is this guy a billionaire or something? These dresses aren’t cheap, Erin.”
I finish zipping myself into a Prabal Gurung cocktail dress and step out to face her.
“I don’t know. I guess so?”
Mallorie leans forward and makes a spinning motion with her finger so I obey, giving her a 360 degree view of the outfit. “What exactly do you know about him?”
“That his name is August King and he owns a hedge fund company. And he isn’t married. And he needs a fake wife so he can broker some kind of deal.”
When I face her again, one brow is arched.
“And he’s really hot,” I sigh.
When she doesn’t respond, I grab my phone and pull up the King Investments website which I have open already on my browser and may have looked at several thousand times in the last thirty-six hours.
Mallorie takes my phone and barely glances at it. “Gorgeous.”
“God, I know right? But he’s also a presumptuous, arrogant, annoyingly smooth, inhumanly strong asshole. If I survive the seven days, I’ll deserve a medal as well as the two hundred thousand dollars.”
I look at Mal to see her staring at me open-mouthed. “I meant the dress.”
“Oh.”
“But let’s unpack a little more of that please. What do you mean by insanely strong?”
I return to the dressing room for the last outfit—the wild card, as Mallorie put it. It’s a deep red sleeveless mini dress draped in tiny, delicate red ropes. It looks like it was born in a VIP lounge.
I step into it, feeling the snug fit as I close the zipper. “Remember the piano upended in the crate of mannequins?”
“Uh huh.”
“Moved it himself, single handed. The mannequins too. Not a drop of sweat on him and all done in the space of ten minutes.”
My mouth dries at how stunning this dress is. It makes my legs look like skyscrapers, my waist like a pin. The little ropes float up when I turn, giving the dress movement.
It’s quite possibly the most beautiful thing I’ve ever worn.
I pull back the curtain.
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “A bit like the Terminator, but with slightly smoother conversation.”
“No, I mean the dress.”
“Oh God, of course. It’s pretty, right?”
