Dress shopping. I can’t think of anything more horrendous…until I have to go dress shopping with Elsie and Adrianne. Two insanely different personalities and yet neither has found anything. Elsie goes on and on about Adrianne wearing a dress. I’m almost positive that Adrianne is about to shank Elsie just to get out of having to go to the inauguration.
I feel a massive stress headache coming on as these two continue to snipe and bitch at one another, but I wisely keep my mouth shut because it’s sort of my fault that we don’t have outfits yet and the ball is now less than twenty-four hours away. Talk about leaving things to the last minute, but in my defence, we were basically in lockdown until things with Harold and the rogue security breach were dealt with. So yes it’s my fault, but also it’s not my fault, because I couldn’t have predicted that would happen.
“Why do I need to wear a dress? I feel like one of those fancy dolls old people put over their toilet paper,” Adrianne whines. She sure does remind me of Kalen at times. I used to feel the same about the dresses and heels and makeup, but I’ve learnt to just go with it. There’s no stopping Elsie when she sets her mind to these things.
“I don’t even know what that means, but you look pretty,” Elsie says to her and Adrianne snorts, looking down at the green floor length gown Elsie picked out for her to try on.
“I don’t want to look pretty,” Adrianne complains.
“Then I don’t know how we are going to find dresses last minute if you’re not willing to pick one,” Elsie snaps.
“I can’t believe we’ve left this to the day before,” Adrianne mutters.
“We’ll, you can blame Amelie for that too. Little miss, I'm too busy for anything.”
“You forget that you haven’t picked a dress either,” I say with a laugh. I picked a dress at the very first store, mostly to keep Elsie off my back, but I do also happen to like it. It’s midnight blue, floor length, and off the shoulder, with a plunging neckline and splits right up both sides. I also paired it with a Swarovski crystal belt and silver heels that wrap around my ankles and up my calves a little with silver rhinestones. I even picked out a matching hair piece. No doubt Elsie will choose my jewellery to match from her vast personal collection.
“We can’t all look good in everything, Amelie.” Elsie snipes, a true testament to how stressed she is about all of this. “I didn’t want to jinx it. I have to look perfect. Jasper and I can finally be together with no secrets, and I plan on looking so damn good he begs for forgiveness.”
“There will always be secrets, Elsie, he won’t be able to tell you everything. And the same goes for you, if you’re sent on a top secret job then you can’t even tell him. So you need to make sure that this is what you really want.” I feel like a fraud saying this, knowing that my position puts me above this rule. My guys will never have to keep secrets from me when it comes to The Order, and as future members of my board, I won’t have to keep things from them either. I don’t envy Elsie the position she’s in, but I know she’ll be a lot happier in The Order than out of it.
“I know that, but at least we can say that we can’t talk about it because it’s Order business. Up until now he’s just been infuriatingly silent about everything.”
We leave the current store, and poor Frost sighs when he notices that we come out empty handed.
Elsie sits in the front passenger seat and directs him towards another store. Adrianne looks as unimpressed as Frost, her arms crossed against her body and a pout that could rival Kalen’s.
Our next stop is a shopping centre but with high end fashion, compared to the likes of Kmart and Target back in Australia, which are both stores that I love. You go in to buy thongs and come out with throw pillows, flowers, nicknacks, and a whole bunch of things that you didn’t know you needed but had to have.
Small things like that make me miss Australia, besides my family. I can’t wait to see my dad, even though it hasn’t really been that long. It’s super hard when you go from seeing someone everyday for your entire life to only a handful of times in a year. Even phone calls are hard. I usually set my alarm to get up early so I can call them after work. I still text Smalls, but I’ve backed off now that he’s seeing Katie. I have to give him a chance to make it work with her. She says she’s cool with our friendship, and I hope that’s true because I would hate to lose him. He’ll always be my family.
I know my guys are still bothered by it considering I loved him for so long. But I’ve tried to convince them that, while I will always have love for him, I can see now that I’m not in love with him. Kalen was easier to persuade, but he’s easily convinced with sexual favours. Sawyer is reasonable and can understand my attachment, but the twins…not so much. I hope one day they can spend some time with him and see how amazing he is.
Frost finds a place to park, and we all trail behind Elsie who keeps describing her perfect dress. She wants to look like a princess.
“Oh my god!” she screams, causing Frost to pull out his gun. Every shopper around us turns and stares. We chase after her as she runs towards a shop.
“It’s perfect,” she whispers as she comes to a complete stop in front of a store window. How she could even see it from where we started is beyond me.
The dress Elsie has fallen in love with is absolutely perfect for her. With her pale colouring and blonde hair, I know she’ll look like a princess in it, just like she wanted. The strapless gown has a sweetheart neckline and a fitted bodice that’ll show a little cleavage, while still being modest. The skirt trails all the way to the ground and is made up of layers and layers of baby-soft tulle without being poofy. There’s a split up one side that would come to mid-thigh, but again, it doesn’t look trashy. The skirt looks as soft as a cloud, and the overall effect is elegant and classy, but still stunning and understatedly sexy. She’ll look a million dollars in it; it seems as if it was made for her.
“We need to go in,” she says to me, taking my arm and dragging me into the store straight to the front counter.
“Hi, welcome to Luxua.”
“I need that dress,” Elsie announces, and the lady quirks a brow. Not in an amused sort of way, more like in a condescending, disdainful manner. It gets my back up immediately.
“What she means is, we would like to try on the dress in the window,” I clarify with a falsely sweet smile.
“I’m sorry,” she states with a tight smile that’s anything but apologetic. “But that dress is not for sale right now.”
“Then why is it in the window? That seems ridiculous,” Elsie snaps.
Adrianne snorts at how rude Elsie is being, already knowing her well enough to realise this is completely out of character for her.
“Adrianne, take Elsie to look around the store while I talk to…” I look at her name tag that reads Eliza. “Eliza.”
Elsie reluctantly walks away and I turn my attention back to the clerk. If Elsie wants this dress then she will damn well have this dress. She didn’t overcome her fears to be told her dream dress is not for sale.
“I can appreciate that you are only doing your job, but I would like to talk to the store manager, owner, or even the designer.”
“It’s just not for sale. The designer would like a celebrity to wear it to a red carpet, widely publicised event, not for some Daddy’s princess to show off.”
Well, her attitude changed quickly, as does mine.
“I wouldn’t be so quick to judge. We may not be movie stars but I can promise you that I hold more damn power in this country than any of them.” Frost clears his throat and I pull back. “Now, I would like to talk to someone else who can sell me that dress. Everybody has a price, and I’m willing to pay.”
“I think you should listen to the lady, I would hate to have to cause a scene.” I turn at the sound of Baxter’s voice and see that he’s pulled out his knife. With my hands on my hips, I glare at him.
“Put the knife away, we don’t need to resort to violence,” I warn.
“Violence is always the answer, and look, the snotty bitch has run off.”
“Probably to call security.”
“Frost and I can take them, don’t worry about it.”
“Baxter—”
I’m cut off by Adrianne and Elsie coming back to stand with us.
“Do I get the dress?” Elsie asks.
“Thanks to Baxter, probably not. He pulled his knife.”
Baxter smirks and Elsie’s eyes go wide and her nostrils flare. “So help me god, Baxter, you might be scary as fuck but I will gut you like a fish if you ruined my chances of getting the perfect dress.”
Baxter snorts at her less than threatening tone.
“I can steal it, the lady has gone out the back. A quick snatch and run will be a piece of piss,” Adrianne offers.
“For fuck’s sake, we’re not threatening anyone, nor are we stealing it!” I snap, exasperated.
The lady makes a reappearance and hands me a business card. Sawyer is better at negotiations than me, so I take a picture of the card and then dial his number.
It rings once before he answers. “Hey, how is dress shopping going?”
“Since you asked, Elsie found the perfect dress, but it’s not for sale because we’re not movie stars. So Baxter pulled a knife on the snotty cow working in the shop and Adrianne wants to steal it.”
“Sounds interesting,” he muses. In the background I hear Onyx add in a pissed off growl, “What the fuck is Branson doing there? He better not be watching you try on dresses.”
“Calm down. He just showed up, like he does. He’s not watching us get changed, and besides, we’re just friends.”
Baxter coughs. “Speak for yourself, I’m always down to see you nak...Omph.”
Elsie sucker punches Baxter in the gut, and I brace myself for the fallout. Even Frost has his hand on his gun. We all stare at Baxter in silence until he smirks. I breathe in relief. Elsie really needs to be careful, I know her and Baxter are friendly-ish but he’s a wild card.
“Anyway, I was calling because I need you to pretty please call the designer and persuade them to sell us the dress.”
“Okay, give me five minutes and it’ll be done, but Amelie, you owe me one.”
I chuckle and agree that I owe him a favour. Because he didn’t actually use the term favour , I know he probably means the sexual, off the books of The Order kind of owing ‘one’. Hopefully I can repay it naked, I like the sound of that kind of favour.
We end the call, and I turn back to the lady who stands as far away from us as possible.
“I would start wrapping the dress, we’ll be back to pick it up before we leave.”
Her mouth hangs open in shock, but she’s smart to not say anything as we all exit the store. It’s time to go hunt for something for Adrianne to wear. We lose Baxter when Elsie makes a pit stop for lacy underwear, or what she classifies as underwear. I feel like she might as well wear nothing, and I tell her as much, but she just laughs and asks then what will Jasper pull off with his teeth? She has a point, but I really don’t want to think about them doing that . All three of us browse through the choices anyway. Elsie sticks with her dental floss inspired underwear. I find a very sexy red set – even if it does come with a thong – which leads me to second guess my dress colour.
“What about these?” Adrianne asks, holding up a black sports bra and boy boxer underwear. Elsie screws up her nose in response.
“Wear whatever makes you comfortable,” I reply.
“I think it’s a very sensible choice, no riding wedgie if she needs to defend herself,” Frost adds, and we all stare at him, open-mouthed, considering he’s been quiet most of our trip.
“It’s Amelie's inauguration, who is she going to be fighting?” Elsie asks. Frost shrugs as both Adrianne and I laugh and say, “Kalen”.
We all check out with our purchases and I start to get nervous for Elsie when I haven’t heard back from Sawyer. Elsie’s phone rings and we all stop while she answers it. I watch Adrianne looking at a store and I gesture to Elsie that we are going in while she takes her call. I grab Adrianne by the arm and drag her away.
“If you don’t want to wear a dress, then don’t.”
She nods and we look around the new store, which is an entire store of Tuxedos and pants suits for women. Adrienne’s face lights up as she looks through her options.
She stops at a mannequin and grins at me. “This is the one.”
“Did you want to try it on?” I ask and she shakes her head no.
“When you know, you know.”
I get the store clerk's attention and we get him to size her up. She’s found a white shirt, blazer and tailored pants that will sit at three-quarter length. She even shocked me by asking for the black heels to pair with it.
“What? I never said I have anything against heels, just dresses. I could kick ass in heels, I could stab them into someone’s eyeball.”
“Okay, killer, let’s rein in the violence.”
She laughs as her outfit is bagged up. By the time she is handed her bag and we head out of the store, Elsie is off the phone.
“Jasper?” I ask.
“No, Sawyer. The designer is an extortionist but we negotiated a price. So let’s go and get my dress before I have a stroke.”