The inevitable? I tried not to laugh as I shook my head. Sasha was talking as if this was a planned, loving situation when it wasn’t. I knew that Targen would never do anything to hurt me, but the only reason that I was here was because his stubborn ass wanted to do things his way. Red flags were everywhere. It seemed like both sides of his family were everything but what I wanted for my ideal family. The Sidorovs were legit off, and from what Monica and Sasha were giving me, they were not just two happily partnered mothers who lived in Kansas City and hadescaped a sort of a hard life. They were potentially all fucked up, and I didn’t want to deal with any of that shit.
“Mrs. Sidorov, have you seen anything you like?” Freya, the perfectly put together clerk, asked as she reappeared.
Being polite was part of her job, but she had seemed genuinely warm when she greeted us and again when she brought us glasses of a delightful Riesling. Suddenly, an idea began to bloom in my head.
“Yes. Can you help me with this one?” I asked, smiling as I chose a fitted, satin confection with a cowl neck and long train.
“That mermaid outline is going to be perfect with your shape,” Sasha complimented, glancing at Monica expectantly.
“Yeah, she’ll probably look a’ight,” Monica mumbled.
It took everything in me not to flip her surly ass off. Instead, I followed Freya behind a carefully draped curtain and down the plushily carpeted hallway. She opened a door halfway down and I walked into the huge, softly lit, mirrored dressing room.
“I’ll stand outside so I can help you when you’re ready. Then, I can get your friends,” she offered.
Silently, I beckoned her into the room. Her eyebrow lifted, but she came in.
“I do need your help, but not like you think,” I whispered.
She nodded enthusiastically. “Whatever you need, Mrs. S?—”
“First, I’m not Mrs. Sidorov. My name is Theory Miller, and I’ve been kidnapped.”
Freya looked at me, then toward the door, then back at me. “Kidnapped? By the two pregnant women with the jewelry that could pay my bills for a year?” she asked skeptically, the shock of my confession making her drop the little proper façade.
I scowled at her. I didn’t have time for all this. “Don’t be fooled, Freya. Not by them. By their cousin who’s making me marry him.”
“You talking about that tall, fine man who told me you could charge whatever?” she asked.
“Ye— wait, why you looking at him like that?” I demanded.
“Why you care, if he kidnapped you?” she snapped back.
I kissed my teeth. “You gon’ help me or not?”
She stared at me a minute, before sighing and rolling her eyes. “You gon’ make me miss out on the biggest commission of my damn life, Ms. Miller. I can’t let you go out like that, though. You end up in Lake Houston, I’ll never get over it. My phone out there at the front desk with my co-worker, though, so we can’t call 911.”
I bit my lip before saying, “I don’t really wanna call 911. I don’t want him to go to jail.”
Her gaze was all doubt and suspicion as she eyed me. “He kidnapped you, and you don’t want him to go to jail. Come on, mama. Something in the milk ain’t clean.”
“Girl, you sound like my Granny Nette. You way too young to be saying that. He kidnapped me and he’s tryna marry me because he thinks it’s the only way to keep me safe,” I explained as briefly as I could.
“What the hell you done got into? And what if that man is right? Way he walked in here, looking and smelling like money with the black card to back it up, it might not be too bad. And he put that ice on your finger? Shoot, tell him to kidnap me,” she said, smiling.
I huffed my frustration. “I will, soon as I get out of here. Could we get back to my escape plan?”
“Y’all okay back there?”
I almost jumped out of the damn building when Sasha’s voice rang out. Freya and I exchanged panicked looks, momentarily frozen in place. Then, I pushed her toward the hallway.
“Say something,” I hissed.
She frowned at me before clearing her throat. “We’re fine. She’s almost got it on. This might be the one, ladies! She’ll be ready in just a minute.”
I clapped quietly. Freya’s eyes narrowed.
“I’on even know why we going through this. If you and I can’t get past two fifteen-months pregnant women, you deserve to be kidnapped, and I deserve to feel bad when I see you on the news,” she mumbled.
