Chapter 12
an inadequate supply
LEXI
Ijust wanted to get through the afternoon of high-priced shopping without offending or alienating Clementine, but there were so many dresses.
I sat on the couch beside her again, my thigh pressed tightly against hers to share the three-ring binder with her, as models who were shaped nothing like me stomped down the small runway, their mouths set in flat lines as if we were inconveniencing them.
Clementine rested her head on one finger pressed to her temple. “John sent me the schedule for this week and said you two are invited to all the events. How are we ever going to find enough decent clothes for you?” she fretted.
I didn’t know how to ask Clementine if I had been invited to things that she hadn’t been, because surely everyone invited Clementine to everything. I knew I must be right on the cusp of seeming like a déclassé dork. “Are there a lot of parties we’re supposed to attend?”
We was the right word choice, there. We could mean me and Nico, or all three of us, or even more people, unnamed.
Vagueness was my friend, and I didn’t have any other friends.
“There aren’t enough decent clothes in Las Vegas, not to mention proper accessories and jewelry,” she muttered.
“I’ve had two stylists working with designers for a month to make sure I’ll be dressed properly for all the damned events.
No doubt Nicolai threw a few suits into a garment bag because men. ”
“Do I have to wear a new dress for all of the functions? Can’t we just find a few good pieces and then re-wear, maybe with some different accessories?”
Clementine sounded like she was breaking bad news to me. “Some people might be able to do that, but you are Nicolai Romanov’s wife, and he is my dearest cousin. I won’t let you accidentally embarrass him.”
At least she was in Nicolai’s corner, if not mine. Keeping her in my corner was my only job just then.
So, no matter how much I’d rather be fighting it out with Nicolai as to whether or not we were going to stay married, I was definitely trapped in that dress showing for the foreseeable future.
I tried to help, I did. I had some opinions Clementine approved of and others she dismissed, and I let her, but I was more than willing to let her do the bulk of the deciding.
Parroting Clementine’s words back to her was a safe choice, though.
“Yes, that one is definitely too art deco for the Southwestern US.”
“Absolutely, wearing the same shade of navy two days in a row would be humiliating.”
“Of course, you’re so right that the cut of this amber dress is too similar to the claret one, and I would never want to look like I’d just bought one in every color. How mortifying.”
“Yes, Belle époque’s bell skirts definitely seem so last season.”
“Absolutely, you’re right. Nope! Nip! Not!” My voice even rose to a sharp chirp. And yet, “Hey, what if I don’t manage to get to all these events? What if something comes up, and I can’t go one night? Or more than one night?”
Or all of the nights due to a sudden divorce and annulment?
Clementine turned to me, her motionless face pale in the strings of blue-white Christmas lights dangling from the ceiling. “What’s going on with you two?”
“What did Nicolai tell you?” I countered.
She didn’t take the bait. “What’s really going on?”
“Nothing.”
She didn’t ask again, just waited, and stared at me, with her pale gray-blue eyes like she could see inside my skull.
“Nothing, probably,” I waffled.
Clementine still didn’t say a word. She just stared at me, waiting for me to spill all the beans, while bony models stomped down the runway in shimmering dresses.
But Nicolai had told me not to tell anyone, so I didn’t. “I should start my, you know, shark week, in a couple of days. Sometimes I end up lying in bed for a day or two with a stack of chocolate bars, a tub of ice cream, and a Costco-sized bottle of Advil.”
“Fine, we’ll talk about it later.” She turned back to the catwalk, where the models seemed even more pissed that we’d been ignoring them for thirty seconds.
“The dresses surely will be non-refundable after they’ve been delivered.
You can use them for any occasion this season, though, so they won’t go to waste.
But you should wear them before Memorial Day. ”
“Yeah, but maybe we shouldn’t buy so many outfits, just in case. I’m kind of grumpy. It feels like it might be a rough month.”
Clementine waved her hand at me again like I was being ridiculous.
“It’s worse not to have something suitable for an evening than to cart around a few extras.
You’ll need two day dresses for the afternoon teas, too.
Who throws teas these days? Did no one inform Anna that this isn’t the Regency era, or is she doing some historical-costume thing we’ll need to adhere to?
God, I hope not. Empire waists make me look like I’m wearing a barrel with straps, and the opportunities for criticism about colonial cosplay are endless.
” She glanced at me. “Not that my family was involved in that. We’re all merchants and bankers back to the Vasa Empire. ”
Oh, new vocabulary and history, awesome. Why didn’t I learn any of this in school? “The Vasa-what?”
“Sweden’s only and rather short attempt at imperialism,” Clementine said, watching the strutting models and offhandedly educating me about stuff I should have known.
“An overland empire, not overseas. Starting about 1523 and lasting for two hundred years, we liberated ourselves from the Danes and conquered some lands that are now our neighbors—Finland, Estonia, a bit of Poland. We called that time the Great Empire Era. And then we built a giant flagship for our great navy called the Vasa, which sank immediately and became an enduring symbol of societal overmilitarization and martial overreach. You Americans should learn something from that.”
“Oh, so Sweden didn’t do any of the really bad stuff.”
Why did I even say things that called attention to the fact that I was undereducated and uncultured?
And yet, how often did little small-town me talk to Europeans about comparative colonial atrocities? I hadn’t had any practice. Americans had done most of our unspeakable deeds right here at home. Not all of them, of course. But a lot of them.
“Sweden wasn’t particularly involved in the subjugation and exploitation of the world’s vulnerable.” She looked at me and blinked a few times. “Unlike the Dutch, the English, or Russia, say.”
Russia? “Are you trying to warn me off of Nicolai, like he has some imperial ambitions or something? ’Cause it’s a little late for that.”
“Nicolai?” She laughed. “No, I didn’t mean Nicolai. Russia’s puppet governments and oligarchs blackmail and threaten the world into submission. I don’t think Nicolai’s the type.”
And yet he seemed to draw attention, whether he knew it or not. And the guys on his security team, other than Ueli, responded to what he said with everything short of a salute. “You don’t think so?”
“If anyone tried to thrust power upon Nicolai Romanov, he would run for the hills, poor boy, and that’s always been his official stance on the matter.
But some of those little Russian or Soviet states are still a bit tetchy about being overrun and poorly used by Russian autocrats and dictators.
Some desperate souls still believe that shooting the descendant of a defunct royal line would increase their national standing.
It’s sad, really.” She looked at me. “But it’s why Nico has a security team that costs him mid-seven figures per year to run, and it’s why you need not to run away from them. ”
“You were fighting off Dusha like he was a flying cockroach.”
Clementine leaned back and held up both hands as if I’d startled her.
“I do not want to know what sort of horrible American insect that was in reference to, but I was not fighting him off. Dusha was just being a dick about letting me drive myself. Indeed, one fewer person in Nico’s entourage might have been helpful at that point. ”
Fair enough.
“You, however, are considered a principal now. You cannot deviate from what they tell you to do, and something had obviously gone terribly wrong up in his suite.”
“I can’t even walk in formation with them right,” I complained. “I’m always stepping on people’s heels or getting too far behind, and then somebody’s hand shoves the middle of my back to force me back into position.”
“You’ll get used to it. In the meantime, we need to pick out these dresses, and then we have a spa appointment this afternoon.
I just booked us into the Lazuli Spa at Fontainebleau for a massage and facial, plus makeup and hair for tonight.
That’ll be easier than trying to coordinate stylists again. ”
“Nicolai said the lawyers are coming back at three.”
“I’ll take care of Nico and his ridiculous demands.”
She made it sound like she might murder him. “I really appreciate you sending the makeup artist and hair stylist over yesterday, but you don’t have to do that. I don’t want to bother you. I never want to be a bother.”
“And I won’t let you embarrass yourself or Nicolai, no matter what your situation is.”
My phone buzzed with a text from Nicolai.
I’m at the espresso bar downstairs. Do you want coffee or breakfast? Or tea?
I don’t need anything. I’m fine.
Lexi
I could practically hear the deepness in his voice through the text message, ordering me to tell him what I wanted instead of dodging the question.
I’d love a latte. Vanilla if they have it.
And so it will be done.
Later, Nicolai returned to the fashion show with three coffees in a tray and sat beside me, I assume because I was closer to the door he’d come in.
He handed a tiny paper cup across me to Clementine, which she accepted without taking her eyes off the models, and then gave me a much larger latte cup, holding it from the bottom so that I wouldn’t have to touch his fingers to take it.
Yeah, after everything that happened this morning with that horrible video on his phone, it probably was going to be like that with him.
No touching.
No future.
No matter what I thought about it.
And yet, the way he grabbed me and kissed me against the wall in the bedroom still whirled in my mind.
Maybe being decisively left at the altar was better than this confusion.
No. No, it wasn’t.
I would rather hold onto the hope for moments of passion and perhaps a lifetime, or just some time, or a little while longer, or only for today, than endure a definite clean-cleaved end.
Maybe not forever.
Maybe at some point, the confusion would wind me up too much, and I would want to dive into the depths of despair so I could eventually swim up for air. But for then, I was content to drown in not knowing.
Clementine sipped from her paper shot glass, and she made the tiniest sound in the back of her throat.
“Too hot?” I opened the lid of my latte. Steam roiled out. “Oh, wow. Too hot.”
“No, just a properly bitter espresso.”
“I could go get you something else if you don’t like it.”
Her quick side glance was a half-amused rebuke. “I drink five espressos a day. I love them.”
I chuckled at her joke. “Five? That would eat through my stomach like acid.”
“Keeps me off the cocaine.”
I laughed.
Clementine didn’t.
Nicolai was smirking as he stared into the depths of his coffee, though.
I braced myself by leaning back on one arm, the arm that was closer to him, and sipped my latte, which was sweet and tasted like cookies, just how I liked it.
Nicolai leaned all the way back on the couch, and then I felt the warmth of his fingers over mine on the cushion.
I didn’t move. I didn’t want the little moment to end, where his fingers lightly rested on mine, and I could believe it meant something for a few minutes.
But stupid, stupid me, I could not resist, and I asked, “So, are we okay?”
He kept watching the models as he sipped his coffee and swallowed. “That’s up to you.”
I doubted that.
Clementine leaned to talk over me. “We’ll be done in an hour. Since you didn’t allow me to drive, tell your goons to get on with it and ready the cars to take us to the spa. Chop chop.”