The Billionaire's Unwilling Bride

KIMBERLY A few years ago...  "I didn't know you liked leftovers, Kimberly," she said. "Catherine." I kept my eyes on the mirror. The backstage of a Harrington show was not a place for conversations you wanted remembered. Too much noise, too many ears, too many people pretending they weren't listening while they absolutely were. I had learned that in my first season and I had never forgotten it. Which made what Catherine said to me — six minutes before my walk, in front of a mirror we were both using — either very stupid or very deliberate. I was finishing my liner when she appeared beside me. I saw her in the reflection before she spoke: already camera-ready, already composed, back from two years in Europe with the particular confidence of someone who had gone away to win and come home having done exactly that. She reached past me for a brush, unhurried, like we were sharing a bathroom at a friend's house and not standing in the middle of the most-watched backstage in New York. She looked at my reflection. Then she smiled — small, private, the smile of a woman about to spend something she'd been saving. The dresser at my shoulder went still. I held Catherine's gaze in the mirror for exactly long enough to let her know I'd heard it. Then I set down the liner. "You know, that's an interesting word," I said. "Given that you're the one who left." Something shifted in her face — fast, almost invisible. A recalculation. "Walters." The lineup coordinator, clipboard raised. "Two minutes." I stepped back from the mirror. I didn't look at Catherine again. She had been photographed with Edward for the better part of two years before I came into the picture — dinners, events, the kind of public proximity that the industry treated as confirmation even when nothing was ever confirmed. Then she had gone to Europe. Then the photographs of Edward and me had started running. I had registered the timing, briefly, and filed it as coincidence, because Edward had never once suggested it was anything else. She was a jealous ex taking a parting shot. That was all. I walked through the curtain. The lights at a Harrington show were different from every other show — lower, more gold than white, designed to make the clothes look like they were lit from within. What they actually did was make you feel, for the length of that runway, like the most visible person in the world. I had walked it eleven times. I walked it a twelfth. And I did not know — in the lights, in the noise, in the clean certainty of my own body moving through a space it had mastered — that I would never walk it again. At present... "Turn around," Therese said. "I want to see how it moves." I turned. The silk moved the way good silk moves — without effort, without announcement. I had been standing in front of the mirror at Maison Éclat for the better part of ten minutes, and Therese had been watching from the velvet settee behind me with her reading glasses on her nose and her arms crossed and the expression she wore when she was building a case she hadn't been asked to make yet. "Buy it," she said. "I'm thinking." "You've been thinking for nine minutes. That's not thinking, that's stalling." She tilted her head. "What's the hesitation? It's perfect on you." "Edward might not like it. Therese rolled her eyes. "It looks perfect on you." "I know," I said. I turned back to the mirror and looked at myself plainly. "I'll take it," I told the saleswoman. Therese smiled behind her glasses. I was reaching for my bag when the door opened. I didn't need to turn around. The shift in the room was enough — that specific drop in temperature, that recalibration of air that certain people carry with them. Eleven years of shared backstages had made me fluent in it. "Kimberly." The same voice from the same mirror, four years and a lifetime ago. I turned. "Catherine." She was in a camel coat I recognized from the Valentino fall collection, dark hair back, her presence in the boutique arranged with the same deliberateness she brought to everything. She stopped near the display case and looked at me the way she'd looked at me in that backstage mirror — measuring. "I didn't know you shopped here," she said. "I've shopped here for years." "Hmm." Her eyes moved briefly to the garment bag the saleswoman was holding. "The Morgan Foundation gala tonight?" I nodded. "Me too." She touched the edge of the display case lightly, a casual gesture that wasn't casual at all. "I got my invitation weeks ago — early enough that I'm really just browsing at this point. Making sure I have options." A small pause. "You know how it is." I knew exactly how it was. "How thoughtful of them," I said. "To give you so much time." "Isn't it." She smiled. "Will Edward be there tonight?" "He's been held up at the office. Acquisition business." I kept my voice even. "I'll be representing us." "That's nice." Something moved behind her eyes — brief, there and gone. "You're so good at that. Representing." She picked up her bag from the counter. "Well. I'll see you there." "I look forward to it," I said. She left. The door closed behind her. The room exhaled. Therese was on her feet before the latch caught. "She hasn't changed." I laughed. "She timed that. She knew you'd be here." "Probably." I picked up the garment bag and held its weight in both hands. Therese looked at me. "Edward told Catherine Lawson where you'd be shopping today." "He might have mentioned the gala but he won't tell her—" I stopped. I heard myself. I set the bag down on the counter and looked at it for a moment, at the clean lines of it, at the champagne silk folded inside. "She wanted me rattled before tonight," I said. "That's all this is." "Kim." Therese's voice was careful. The voice she used when she had something to say and was deciding how much of it to spend. "The late invitation. Edward not attending. And now Catherine, here, making sure you know she was invited early—" "Therese." "I'm just saying the picture—" "I know what the picture looks like." I picked up the bag again. "I've been looking at it longer than you have." I met her eyes. "Edward is my husband. He came home to me. He chose me. Whatever Catherine is doing, she's doing it because she lost, and people who lose sometimes make noise about it." I adjusted the bag on my shoulder. "I'm going to that gala tonight and I'm going to do it well, and Catherine Lawson can watch." Therese held my gaze for a moment. Then she nodded once — not agreement, exactly. Acceptance. "Then you need shoes," she said. We walked out into the afternoon. The city moved around us, indifferent and bright. I kept my pace steady and my chin level and thought about Catherine. Leftovers. I had been so certain of what I had, and of the choice I had made. I was number one. I was walking Harrington and I was marrying the man she couldn't keep. What did I have to be threatened by? My phone buzzed. Edward. I answered on the second ring. Old habit. The kind you don't examine. "How's the dress?" His voice was warm — easy, certain, the version of him I had married. "Perfect," I said. "Good." A brief pause. "The car will pick you up at seven. I want you there, Kimberly. You represent us better than I ever could." Making absence feel like a compliment. He had always been good at that. "I'll make you proud," I said. "As always." Softer. "We'll talk when you're home." After I hung up, Therese was looking at me with the expression she wore when she'd decided, again, not to say what she was thinking. I tucked the phone away. "Shoes," I said.