She’d greeted us at the front of the store like she’d been expecting us, then escorted us to a quiet elevator tucked away from the store’s main shopping space.
We got inside and I glanced at Vigo, who was somehow wearing a pair of Versace sunglasses I’d never seen before.
Our escort looked suspiciously at him, her mouth turned down in a frown.
“What do you think?” he asked her as the elevator whisked us to the sixth floor.
“Much too large for your face,” she said.
Vigo glanced at himself in the gold reflective surface of the elevator. “You think?”
The elevator doors opened and we got out, then followed the woman around artfully placed racks of clothes, past a sign that readThe Fifth Avenue Club, and into a sitting area with two sofas and a coffee table arranged on top of a pale blue rug.
A large painting leaned against one white wall and lamps glowed from the side tables next to the sofa. A stack of thick books — the kind that were displayed in designer living rooms in the magazines Daisy read — sat on the coffee table and an assortment of jewelry was laid out on a long console table on one wall.
The entire space was beautiful and minimal, every item obviously chosen with care. If it hadn’t been for the racks lined up on two walls — swaths of shimmering satin, ethereal feathers, and textured silk in every color under the sun — I would have thought it was the living room of an A-list celebrity instead of a major department store.
“Please make yourself comfortable,” the woman said. “Meredith will be your stylist and will be in shortly.”
She exited the room and I turned to Vigo, still wearing the sunglasses.
“What is this?” I asked in a hissed whisper.
He looked confused. “I told you. We’re shopping. For the dress.”
“This isn’t shopping,” I said. “This is… this is Met Gala prep.”
He scrunched his face in distaste. “The Met Gala is boring. You don’t want to go to the Met Gala. Trust me.”
I didn’t even want to know how he’d come by any firsthand experience with the Met Gala. Knowing Vigo he’d slapped on a fake mustache from a cheap costume shop, stolen someone’s jacket off the back of a chair, and started serving canapés to the guests.
I sighed. “This isn’t about the Met Gala. This place is too fancy. Let’s just… let’s just go downstairs and shop like a normal person.”
Daisy’s dad was rich and as far as I knew even she’d never shopped this way.
Jagger walked over and touched my face. “Relax, Cass.” His blue eyes were warm, his expression tender, and not for the first time I realized how much I’d missed looking at him — at all of them — when I couldn’t see. “You deserve this. It’ll be fun.”
I looked at Hawk to get a read on his mood — this definitely didn’t seem like his scene — and found that he’d taken up residence on one of the sofas, looking surprisingly blasé about the situation.
I had the sense that I was fighting a losing battle. The Hawks had decided I was getting theSaks Private Shopping Experienceand that was what I was getting.
“Hello.”
I startled a little when a voice sounded behind me and I turned to find an attractive woman in her thirties wearing a simple navy sheath dress and heels, her blonde hair slicked back into an austere bun.
“Um, hi,” I said.
“I’m Meredith,” she said, extending her hand. “I’ll be your stylist and shopping experience manager today.”
I shook her hand, introduced her to the Hawks, and watched her try to compose her features into a mask of casual professionalism as she took them in.
I couldn’t blame her for being thrown. Hawk took up half the diminutive sofa with his giant body, one inked arm slung over the back, his expression somehow more menacing for the fact that there was no expression on it at all.
His biceps bulged under the sleeve of his black T-shirt, stretched to its limit, and his thighs strained against his jeans,with just enough of a manspread to give her a view of his denim-clad dick.
He looked too wild for this place, his long back hair brushing the collar of his T-shirt, his eyes the burnished gold of a lion.
Jagger stood next to the racks of dresses, the edge of a scarlet floor-length dress between his fingers, like he’d been assessing the fabric. I realized it was the first time I’d see him in pants that weren’t jeans, and I wondered if he’d worn the gray trousers and white button-down as a nod to the fact that we were going to Saks, a store that was probably familiar to him after his years living and working in the city.
