But Zeke clearly thought that because he lived in this huge French mansion he had to decorate it like he was in the Palace of Versailles. Gold chandeliers. Persian rugs covering marble flooring everywhere. It was cold on my feet, which didn’t feel good under the circumstance. It was almost as though the cold burned.
I limped after him, keeping my decorative opinions to myself. Room after room didn’t change my impression, which of course begged the question as to whether it actually wasn’t him who had done it. No, this was a decorator. In fact, with their long, heavy drapes and fabric striped couches I saw displayed here and there, I would bet that no one ever came in these rooms at all. He lived here, but he didn’t really live here.
Chandeliers everywhere. And my god, mirrors. This was ugly. Really, truly, a lesson in what not to do when decorating.
I’d never been so glad to get upstairs as I was when that finally happened. The bedroom he led me to seemed much more like a hotel room than a statement in the history of the French monarchy that the downstairs had been.
“This can be your room.” It was the first time he’d spoken in a long time, and I was glad for the noise.
A man I’d not met rushed past us, putting my bags—the garbage bag and two thrown together suitcases—down in front of me.
“Thank you,” I said, and he nodded to me.
“Layla, this is Carel. He works for me with three other people. They know you’re going to be staying with me for a while, and they’re going to do their best to speak to you in English.”
Carel cleared his throat. “We’re glad to have you. My sister follows you.”
I smiled at him. “Thank you for helping me.”
He nodded and left. Zeke stood, watching me. “I didn’t realize today how famous you are. I guess I knew it, but I’d never focused on it. And having spoken to you today more than I ever have, you’re different than I would have imagined. Different from your sisters.”
I didn’t have the wherewithal right then to ask him in what ways I was different. I pretty much knew the answers. He’d worked with Hope and Bridget. He’d know how… I wasn’t even going there in my mind at the moment. I couldn’t. There was only so much self-flagellation I could take in one day. And it was… I looked at my phone. Only just about mid-day.
“I’m going to take myself into that bathroom and soak my feet before I wash off the rest of today.”
He put his hands in his jacket pockets. “Sounds like a good plan. I’ll order some food for dinner. I don’t assume you’ll want to go out.”
I absolutely didn’t. “We should talk about why you want me here, but before we do that, I have to ask you a favor.” And I hated having to do it like I hated pretty much everything right now.
“What’s that?” He lifted his dark eyebrows. Even knowing that he’d hired a terrible decorator to do up his house like some kind of monstrosity out of a horror movie, he was still absolutely the most physically beautiful man I’d ever seen.
I made myself look away, knowing that my cheeks were going to get really red in the way that happened to redheads. “I need you to get me out of my wedding dress. I can’t do it myself.”
He cleared his throat. “Get you out of the dress? Like undo the buttons and what not?”
“Frankly, I don’t care if you take scissors to it and slice it into strips that you then use to wash your windows. But I need to get out of this, and I can’t do it myself.”
One more humiliation on a day filled with them.
Chapter Five
He stepped toward me. “Turn around.”
I pivoted, grabbing on to the top of my dress in front so that it didn’t fall down. “Do you see the buttons?” I’d been so out of it when they’d been putting me in it that I hadn’t focused on how long it had taken the woman who buttoned me in to do it. Not long, I didn’t think. But she’d been a stylist. They were amazingly adept at all things clothes.
The dress vibrated slightly as he undid one button and then another. There were probably about fifty of them for him to undo. He had big, strong hands with thick fingers. This might be hard for him, but he didn’t say a word of complaint.
“What would you have done when you wanted to get out of it after the wedding?”
I smiled. “Kit would have had to have done it.”
He was quiet for a long moment before he spoke again, in a low voice. “He’d never have been able to do this.”
I pictured Kit’s shaking hands. “No, he wouldn’t have. Long night, I guess. Or I’d have had to call someone in the hotel to help me.”
“Or sleep, live, eat, and die in this dress for the rest of your life.”
This was like the flying car conversation. I liked when he did that. The idea that his mind sometimes fled from the present to the absurd like my own did was fun. And not something I ever imagined when I was touching myself and thinking of his hands on me. My cheeks heated up at the memory.
“Right,” I managed to get out. “Or I’d have to stay in this horrendous dress for the rest of my life.”
He finished and stepped back. I held on to the dress to keep it over my body and turned to look at him. “I thought you were a fashion person. Why do you hate your own dress?”
“I’m not a fashion person. Not really. Not a designer or a stylist. I wrote, or sort of wrote, a book that helped people to feel better in their own styles, in their own clothes. This wasn’t my idea. I didn’t even pick it out.”
Zeke must have been done with this conversation because he turned and left, stopping only when he was by the door. “I think you have everything you need here. But if you’re missing something, let me know. I’ve never had anyone stay here before, so it’s possible something was forgotten. I’m down the hall. Burgundy doors. Knock if you need me.”
I limped into the bathroom. We had to have some serious conversations about what exactly he expected for this night, or nights, I got to spend in his house. First, however, I was going to soak my fucking feet. The bathroom was huge with a cast iron tub that called my name. I dropped my dress onto the ground in between the bed and the bathroom and made a limping beeline to the tub, where I ran the hot water. I should put my whole body into it, but for now, it just had to be my feet.
Very rarely did I think about my feet, but when they hurt, they were all I could think about. I tucked myself into the side of the tub to sit on the edge and put my feet beneath the water. I wished it felt wonderful, but they stung, and I was pretty sure I was going to have to clean them off with antiseptic and antibacterial and everything anti before I bandaged them in a few minutes.
I closed my eyes. I just had to breathe. But then my phone rang.
I stared down at it as Hope’s name appeared on the screen. I answered it. “Hope?”
The sound of the airplane hit me before she answered. “Layla?”
I smiled. It was ridiculously nice to hear her voice. “What happened?”
“I’ll tell you, hold on.” She paused for a second. “He’s being ridiculously mean right now.” Of course, she meant Dad. “And I’m hiding in the bathroom. Bridget is distracting him with numbers.”