Chapter 28
CASSIE
I’d been in nice stores before. Bram hadn’t been cheap about stuff like that when I’d been a kid, and he’d even weighed in on dresses for prom and homecoming, although he had always leaned toward the most chaste of my options.
But I’d never been in Saks Fifth Avenue and I’d definitely never had what the older woman in a Gucci skirt suit and strand of pearls called “our private shopping experience.”
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 read The 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 the Saks Private Shopping Experience and 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.
His short dark hair accentuated his sharp bone structure, and he looked more like someone who should be modeling clothes than someone shopping for them.
Vigo appeared behind her — when had he left the room? — with two glasses of champagne in either hand. He edged past her and extended a hand for me to take one, then gave one to Hawk and Jagger.
The woman tipped her head, like she was trying to figure out a confusing puzzle.
“Shit!” Vigo said, looking at her from behind the Versace sunglasses. “I’ll go get you one.”
“That won’t be necessary,” she said as he started for the short hall leading to the rest of the store. “And please, just let me know if you need anything and I’ll have it brought over.”
There was an element of pleading in her voice and I hoped she wasn’t going to get in trouble if things went off the rails. Because looking at the Hawks, occupying the space like three panthers corralled in a playpen, I had a feeling things were definitely going to go off the rails.
Jagger scowled as Vigo hopped onto the console table next to what looked like tens of thousands of dollars in jewelry.
“Sure thing,” Vigo said.
Meredith turned to me and extended her hand toward the racks of clothes. “As you can see, I’ve pulled some pieces based on the brief. You’re attending an academic award ceremony?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Wonderful. You’ll find these selections are suitably restrained, all from this season, and all in your size.”
“My size?”
“A twelve right?” Vigo said, swinging his legs on the console table.
I sighed. There was no use fighting it. “Yep.”
Jagged approached Meredith, several dresses in his hands. “You can take these. And no more synthetics please.”
She nodded, took the dresses from this hands, and looked at me. “I’ll take you to the dressing room and we can get started.”