A Reputation For Revenge

Until she saw herself in the full-length mirror on the other side of the bedroom. Wait. Was that what she looked like? She took three steps towards it, then sucked in her breath in horror, covering her mouth with her hand.

Josie knew she wasn’t the most fashionable dresser, and that she was a bit on the plump side, too. But she’d had no idea she looked this bad. She’d crossed the Pacific twice in the same rumpled T-shirt and wrinkled, oversize men’s jeans that she’d bought secondhand last year. In her flight back from Seattle, she’d been crushed in the last row, in a sweaty middle seat between oversize businessmen who took her armrests and stretched their knees into her personal space. And she hadn’t had a shower or even brushed her teeth for two days.

Josie gasped aloud, realizing she’d been grungy and gross like this when she’d been face-to-face with Kasimir. Picturing his sleek, expensive clothes, his perfect body, the way he looked so powerful and sexy as a Greek god with those amazing eyes and broad shoulders and chiseled cheekbones, her cheeks flamed.

She narrowed her eyes. She might be a frumpy nobody, but there was no way she was going to face him again, possibly on her fake wedding day, without a shower and some clean clothes. No way!

Looking around for her backpack, she saw it sitting by the door and snatched it up, then headed for the large en suite bathroom.

It was luxurious, all gleaming white marble and shining silver. Tossing her tattered backpack on the marble counter, where it looked extremely out of place, she started to dig through it for a toothbrush. Some great packing job, she thought in irritation. In the forty seconds she’d rushed around their tiny apartment in Honolulu, trying to flee before Vladimir Xendzov could collect Bree as his rightful property, Josie had grabbed almost nothing of use.

The top of a bikini—just the top, no bottom. Her mother’s wool cardigan sweater, now frayed and darned. Some slippers. She hadn’t even remembered to pack underwear. Gah!

Desperately, she dug further. A few cheap souvenirs from Waikiki. Her cell phone, now dead because she’d forgotten to pack the charger. A tattered Elizabeth Gaskell novel which had belonged to her mother when she was a high-school English teacher. A small vinyl photo album, that flopped open to a photo of her family taken a year before Josie was born.

Her heart twisted as she picked it up. In the picture, her mother was glowing with health, her father was beaming with pride and five-year-old Bree, with blond pigtails, had a huge toothless gap in her smile. Josie ran her hand over their faces. Beneath the clear plastic, the old photo was wrinkled at the edges from all the nights Josie had slept with it under her pillow as a child, while she was left alone with the babysitter for weeks at a time. Her parents and Bree looked so happy.

Before Josie was born.

It was an old grief, one she’d always lived with. If Josie had never been conceived, her mother wouldn’t have put off chemotherapy treatments for the sake of her unborn child. Or died a month after Josie’s birth, causing her father to go off the deep end, quitting his job as a math teacher and taking his seven-year-old poker-playing prodigy daughter Bree down the Alaskan coast to fleece tourists. Josie blinked back tears.

If she had never been born…

Her parents and Bree might still be happy and safe in a snug little suburban home.

Squaring her shoulders, she shook the thought away. Tucking the photo album back into her bag, she looked at her own bleak reflection, then grabbed her frayed toothbrush, drenched it in minty toothpaste and cleaned her teeth with a vengeance.

A moment later, she stepped into the steaming hot water of the huge marble shower. The rush of water felt good against her skin, like a massage against the tired muscles of her back and shoulders, washing all the dust and grime and grief away. Using some exotic orange-scented shampoo with Arabic writing—where on earth had Kasimir gotten that?—Josie washed her long brown hair thoroughly. Then she washed it again, just to be sure.

It was going to be all right, she repeated to herself. It would all be all right.

Soon, her sister would be safe.

Soon, her sister would be home.

And once Bree was free from Vladimir Xendzov’s clutches, maybe Josie would finally have the guts to tell her what she felt in her heart, but had never been brave enough to say.

As much as she loved and appreciated all that Bree had sacrificed for her over the past ten years, Josie was no longer a child. She was twenty-two. She wanted to learn how to drive. To get a job on her own. To be allowed to go to bars, to date. She wanted the freedom to make mistakes, without Bree as an anxious mother hen, constantly standing over her shoulder.

She wanted to grow up.

Turning off the water, she got out of the shower. The large bathroom was steamy, the mirrors opaque with white fog. She wondered how long she’d been in the water. She didn’t wear a watch because she hated to watch the passage of time, which seemed to go far too slowly when she was working, and rushed by at breakneck speed when she was not. Why, she’d often wondered, couldn’t time rush by at work, and then slip into delicious slowness when she was at home, lasting and lasting, like sunlight on a summer’s day?

Wrapping a plush white towel around her body, over skin that was scrubbed clean with orange soap and pink with heat, she looked at the sartorial choices offered by her backpack. Let’s see. Which was better: a wool cardigan or a bikini top?

With a grumpy sigh, she looked back at the dirty, wrinkled T-shirt, jeans and white cotton panties and bra crumpled on the shining white tile of the bathroom floor. She’d worn those clothes for two days straight. The thought of putting them back over her clean skin was dreadful. But she had no other option.

Or did she…?

Her eyes fell upon something hanging on the back of the bathroom door that she hadn’t noticed before. A white shift dress. Going towards it, she saw a note attached to the hanger.

Every bride needs a wedding dress. Join me at the rooftop pool when you’re awake.

She smiled down at the hard black angles of his handwriting. She’d thought she hadn’t wanted a dress, that she wanted to keep their wedding as dull and unromantic as possible. But now… how had he known the small gesture would mean so much?

Then she saw the dress’s tag. Chanel. Holy cow. Maybe the gesture wasn’t so small. For a moment, she was afraid to touch the fabric. Then she stroked the lace softly with her fingertips. It felt like a whisper. Like a dream.

Maybe everything really was going to be all right.

Josie exhaled, blinking back tears. She’d taken a huge gamble, using her last paycheck to come back to Honolulu, trusting Kasimir to help her. But it had paid off. For the first time in her life, she’d done something right.

It was a strangely intoxicating feeling.

Josie had always been the one who ruined things, not the one who saved them. She’d learned from a young age that the only way to make up for all the pain she’d caused everyone was just to take a book and go read quietly and invisibly in a corner, making as little trouble or fuss as possible.

But this time…

She tried to imagine her sister’s face when Josie burst in with Prince Kasimir and saved her. Wouldn’t Bree be surprised that her baby sister had done something important, something difficult, all by herself? Josie, her usually unflappable sister would blurt out, how did you do this? You’re such a genius!

Josie smiled to herself, picturing the sweetness of that moment. Then she looked down at her naked body, pink with heat from the shower. Time to do her part, but maybe it wouldn’t be so awful after all. How hard could it be, to get dressed in a fancy wedding gown, and marry a rich, handsome prince?

Pulling the white shift dress off the hanger, she stepped into it. Pulling it up her thighs, she gasped at the feel of the sensual fabric against her skin. It was a little short, though.

Josie frowned, looking down. It only reached to her mid-thigh. Maybe it would be all right, though. She reached back for the zipper. As long as it wasn’t…

Tight. She stopped. The zipper wouldn’t zip. Holding her breath, she sucked in her belly. Nervously, she moved the zipper up inch by inch, afraid she’d break it and ruin the expensive dress. Finally the zipper closed. She looked at herself in the mirror.

Her full breasts were pushed up by the tight dress, practically exploding out of the neckline. She looked way too grown-up and, well, busty. Bree would never have let her leave the house like this in a million years.

But it was either this or the dirty clothes. She decided she could live with tight. She’d just have to be careful not to bust a seam every time she moved.

Going to her backpack in mincing steps, she grabbed a brush and brushed her wet brown hair down her shoulders, leaving traces of dampness against the silk. She put on her pink flip-flops—it was either that or fuzzy slippers, and she was in Hawaii, after all—and some tinted lip balm. She left the bedroom with as much elegance as she could muster, her head held high.

Tottering down the stairs to the bottom floor of the penthouse, Josie went through the rooms until she finally found her way to the rooftop pool, with the help of the smiling housekeeper she’d found in the big kitchen. “That way, miss. Down the hall and through the salon.”

The salon?

Josie went through a large room with a grand piano, then through the sliding door to the rooftop pool. She saw Kasimir at a large table, still dressed in his severely black suit, leaning back in his chair. He was talking on the phone, but when he saw her, his eyes widened.

Nervously, Josie walked along the edge of the pool towards him. She had to sway her hips unnaturally to move forward, and she felt a bead of sweat suddenly form between her breasts. The sun felt hot against her skin.

Or maybe it was just the way her bridegroom was looking at her.

“I’ll talk to you later,” he breathed to the person on the phone, never looking away from Josie, and he rose to his feet. His gaze seemed shocked as it traveled up and down her body. “What are you wearing?”

“The wedding dress. That you gave me. Should I have not?”

“That—” his voice sounded strangled “—is the dress I left you?”