Chapter 9
shopping with clementine
LEXI
Clementine yanked open the door on my side of the SUV, grabbed my arm, and hauled me out of the back seat like a bin full of sand-bag counterweights.
“Hey!” I bobbled and slapped a hand on the stinging-hot metal of the black-painted SUV, and then I pulled my hand right back and shook the burn off. “What the heck!”
Nechtan-the-bodyguard stood beside and behind Clementine, black sunglasses covering his eyes as he scanned the crowd thronging the sidewalk around the drop-off circle, milling at the casino entrance, hanging over the railing around the roof of the mall, darting to toss drink cups into the stone trash cans bigger than whiskey barrels, skirting the wide pillars holding up the metal sunshade three stories above, and basically lurking everywhere except near us.
“What the hell happened back there?” Clementine demanded, pointing in the general direction of Billionaire Sanctuary as the chattering couples and groups flowed toward the casino entrance on the left, giving us a wide berth.
Their chattering and harsh yells bounced off the metal sunshade above and the marble walls of the mall to the right. “Dusha accosted me but won’t say why!”
Past her slim shoulder, Dusha stepped out of the front seat of the other SUV, glaring at us at first but then scanning, watching, analyzing the crowd patterns and environment.
My muscles were still vibrating, wanting to run. “Something happened with Nicolai up in the suite after we all left. I’m not sure what went on. Ueli said something about a Code Blue, and then all heck broke loose.”
Her pale, cirrus-clouded sky eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “What the hell is a Code Blue?”
“I don’t know!”
Nicolai came around the back corner of the SUV, trailed by a new-to-me mercenary. “It means an attack was neutralized, but a threat remains ongoing.”
The new guy stood at parade rest, tree-trunk legs braced, arms ready at his sides, and slid a long look over the people meandering on the sultry sidewalk. His voice was deep bass. “It means someone let the fucker get away.”
Ueli snapped, “Davis!”
Nicolai’s lips pressed in a grin, but he stroked the laugh lines around his mouth and bent to look at the sidewalk, hiding it. “Yes, and as such, it means we should proceed inside the mall and out of the public area.”
Clementine swung her hair behind her shoulders and strode toward the mall doors.
The crowd parted for her like Moses parting the Red Sea.
Dusha chased after her, and after a glance from Ueli, the white bodyguard-guy with auburn hair and freckles followed.
I waffled, shifting to-and-fro again, trying to figure out if I should try to keep up with her or stay there.
Nicolai solved the problem by lifting my hand and curling my fingers under the crook of his elbow as he moved toward the mall, and his cadre tightened their formation around us.
The fine fabric of Nico’s suit jacket was soft under my fingers and warmer than usual, like maybe he had the slightest fever. He was probably just hot from sitting in the black SUV, which concentrated the heat of the desert sun, no matter how hard the air conditioning blew cold, dry air at us.
Between the Vegas tourists streaming toward the casino entrance on the left, I saw Clementine whip open a glass mall door and walk straight in.
Her white-guy bodyguard slipped through the next door beside hers.
Dusha caught her door as it swung and held it open above her head. After a quick glance back at us, he scowled and followed her inside.
I kind of wanted to warn him about the blasé way Clementine had talked about bodyguards and horse grooms, like they were NPCs or blow-up dude-dolls.
But Dusha was, very certainly, an adult man who could pick or reject offers as he chose. I didn’t need to play relationship fairy for him. No one would want that.
Clementine probably wouldn’t see him as human enough to hit on him, anyway.
After Dusha’s laser beam pew-pew glare at Clementine’s retreating back, he’d probably reject her with an eyeroll and tell her to find someone interested, anyway.
As we neared the entrance, the new guy strode ahead and opened one of the mall's doors.
Two of our guys fanned out and went in through flanking doors.
Ueli stepped in front of us, almost tripping me but I held onto Nico’s arm, and led our party inside.
Auburn New Guy and two other security guys entered behind Nico and me, and our whole posse rotated into a square around us again.
The sparse other shoppers recoiled at our moving phalanx. People sipping lattes in the garden-enclosed coffee shop peeped over the flowers at us.
I had to learn how to integrate myself into these danged maneuvers. Their one-two-three was obviously choreographed: New Guy open, Ueli and others head inside and scan, then us, then rear guard.
I was stumbling and messing things up at every juncture.
In the half-hidden corridor we’d walked down yesterday, Dusha held the elevator for us with one hand pressing the doors open as he continued to watch the environment.
The other guy stood outside the open doors, scanning the crowd for any reason to draw a weapon, it looked like. He stepped aside as we neared.
Ueli and the rear guard sardined into the elevator after us, and we ascended to the higher floors again.
Nicolai had not been kidding when he’d said living his life would be different than what I was used to.
As the doors opened, the bodyguards streamed out and lined up like an honor guard, facing outward, and Nico led me between them.
Clementine trotted ahead of us. “We’re going to get the Birkins first.”
“The Hermes store is on the second floor with the other purse shops,” Dusha told her, his voice flat.
“I don’t shop at a mall store with tourists gawking at the price tags on scarves. We will meet my rep at her office.”
It sounded like Clementine had put Dusha in his place, but I didn’t know what that place was or how long he’d been out of it.
Three steps ahead of us, Clementine pivoted at a corner and led us down a smaller hallway, where the clatter of our footsteps climbed the walls and echoed on the hard ceiling.
At a glass door emblazoned with the name “Lynvidia LeMarck” and a silhouette of a horse and old-timey carriage with a man standing in front of them like he’d almost gotten run over, Clementine hissed to the guards that they should stay outside and led Nicolai and me into the small room.
After the weirdness of the morning, I almost got a case of nerves without being surrounded by armed guards, but the tall woman sitting behind the desk drumming her pale pink-manicured nails on the glass-topped desk made me nervous for a whole different reason.
As Clementine spearheaded our entry into the small office, she had both her hands out, wrists bent like she was showing off her own neutral manicure and calling, “Lynvidia! It’s been an age.”
I followed her inside, watching to see what I should do to act as if I belonged there. When no one seemed to look at me, I cocked one hip out and lifted my chin, smiling politely like an extra on a movie set.
Lynvidia pursed her lips, unnaturally puffy on her hollow-cheeked face, and scanned me from my blond-dyed hair to my still-untied shoelaces and back up. “Clementine, a pleasure as always. Is this your friend?”
I looked her in the eyes, as if she were the camera, and kept the quiet smile on my face.
The sneer in the woman’s voice suggested that I should not qualify to be Clementine’s friend as she received both of Clementine’s hands and clutched them like she was drowning.
Her gold cross necklace swinging near her chest was a metallic shade of her beige-checked ensemble.
As she half-stood, her hips were so narrow that her pencil skirt really resembled the diameter of a pencil.
“Yes! This is Lexi Romanov, Nicolai Romanov’s brand-new wife,” Clementine said.
“She’ll be on the red carpet tonight and all over the influencer pages soon after.
The paparazzi will go wild for her tomorrow, which is when she will be carrying your bag.
Don’t you recognize her from the livestreamed wedding video? ”
I tried to look elegant and like an empress in disguise, but I was wearing jeans and a silly ruffly blouse.
Lynvidia was unblinking, staring me in the eyes like she was a blue-eyed wolf and I was the idiot lamb wandering into her path. “Quite a dress, you were wearing, for the wedding.”
I’d liked my froufrou wedding dress, but it had been one of the cheapest on the bridal store’s website. The dress and the shape of my body underneath probably weren’t chic enough for these people.
I kept my voice low, which is what I thought a royal would sound like. “It was spur of the moment.”
“Yes, that explains it.” She finally released me from her stare and turned to Clementine. “If you’re sure this would be good for you, sweetheart.”
“Lynvidia, you are an absolute lifesaver. I love you more than I can say. Nico, give her your credit card, right now.”
Nicolai wore an amused half-smirk meant to charm as he let my arm drop and dug a black credit card out of his wallet for her.
Lynvidia ignored his expression and tapped his credit card on a white box next to her laptop, which lit up green. “Of course you love me, Clemmy. Everyone loves their Hermès rep when they need a Birkin purse, or in your case, two Birkin purses. This is quite unheard of.”
“That’s not what you said when I took you skiing in Gstaad last year with my old school buddies. Speaking of which, we’re having a bit of a soirée on Christian’s boat in Monaco in the second week of August. Can you come?”
Lynvidia fished a pleased smile from underneath her sneering demeanor and waved Nicolai’s credit card at him without looking. “I’ll see if I can get away. Your purses are in the back. I’ll just get them.”
When the door to the back room swung shut, I deflated a little, but Clementine hissed at me from between clenched teeth, “Nope! Cameras! Stand up!”