What Doesn't Kill Her (Cape Charade #2)(94)

“Absolutely not!” Verona was still angry about Nils putting the moves on her. Or Max seeing her. Or...whatever. “My mother always told me the challenge to getting a child ready was whether to dress yourself first, then dress them and ruin your outfit in the process, or dress them first, then dress yourself and discover while you were busy they had made a mess of themselves.”

Kellen glanced down at Rae, who was looking up at her. “Which of us do you think will make ourselves a mess, Rae or me?”

“I never know. You are both trouble.”

Verona led Kellen up the stairs to the third floor. “Your room is here.” She indicated door 345, then pointed at the far end of the corridor. “Rae will go to room 323 and wait for me there. Or she had better.”

“Yes, Grandma.” Rae scurried down the hall.

Kellen went back to the stairwell and yelled, “Nils will be hanging around out here, too, to keep an extra eye on Rae.”

A groan from below answered her and, “I’m on my feet now.”

“What an awful man! I don’t know why we need him. I’ll dress Rae and meet you at this spot—” Verona pointed at the flowered carpet at her feet “—in forty minutes. We’ll go down to the tasting room, out the door and down the aisle at exactly six o’clock. Then you will be married.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Kellen risked a grin. “I’m looking forward to that.”

“As am I. Why do I think something will go wrong?” Verona flung open the door to Kellen’s suite and gestured her inside. If Verona knew about the weapons in the safe, and the reason for them, her current worry would escalate to a frenzy. Better that Kellen keep that information to herself.

She reached for her best diplomacy. “Max wants Nils to make sure Rae doesn’t disappear again, so let’s cooperate, okay?”

Reminded of all that had occurred the last time Rae disappeared, Verona took a forbearing breath and nodded.

Birdie was waiting, clothed in her bridesmaid’s dress, dark eyes shining with joy and excitement. She gestured at the clothes spread out on the bed. “I never thought to see this day, Captain.”

“No. But then I never expected to discover I have a seven-year-old, either.” They both laughed, Kellen put her forehead against Birdie’s, and they smiled at each other, two women who had survived war, survived grief and loss and now had found joy in the changes life had brought them.

“Anyone tried to kill you today?” Birdie had been thoroughly briefed on her role as bridesmaid and bodyguard, and intended to take both duties seriously.

“Not yet.”

Birdie pushed Kellen away. “Good. With everything else we’ve got to do, we don’t have time for any merry mayhem. We’ve got to get you dressed because your mother-in-law has given me strict instructions about the schedule and where you have to be when.”

“I got that, too.” Kellen headed into the bathroom. “Let me shower. Then you can shove me into all that underwear.” She glanced at the bed and halted. “Tell me that’s not a corset!”

Birdie put on her cockney accent. “Can’t do that, luv. Zio Federico gave me explicit instructions on how to lace you in.”

“I am not going to let you lace me in.”

“I don’t think he realizes how slender you are.”

Kellen took another step and stopped again. “Pantyhose? Are those pantyhose?”

Birdie gave her a shove. “Go on, take your shower and be glad we don’t have to contend with a hairdresser and makeup artist.”

“I refused!”

“So I heard. Go on.”

Kellen hadn’t been in the Army for six years without learning how to take an efficiency shower. She was in and out in less than five minutes, shampooed and every inch of her skin scrubbed. She knew how to do efficiency hair, too: spray with texturizer, which she figured was a fancy term for hair spray, blow-dry, fluff and spray again. Makeup took a little longer than normal; she was great with foundation, concealer, blush, but add eyeliner and exotic eye shadows, and by the time she was done, Birdie was banging on the door shouting, “Come on! Come on! Come on!”

Kellen slipped into her lacy white panties and push-up bra—Max was going to greatly enjoy removing them, and she was going to enjoy his enjoyment—wrapped a towel around herself, jerked open the door and stepped out of the bathroom. “They can’t start without me.”

Birdie paused, her fist raised, ready for the next door-knocking. “I forgot. You clean up well.”

“Thank you.” Kellen thought she’d managed to make herself look good, and with only one terrible mascara blunder. “Is the hair okay?”

Birdie was suddenly all business. “We’ll worry about that after we get you into that dress. With that corset and those petticoats, it ain’t gonna be easy.”

Birdie wasn’t kidding.

The pantyhose had to go on first, then the corset, then the deceptively simple dress—heavy crepe with a formfitting bodice, natural waist wrapped by a fabric belt, and full skirt—which created its shape with boning and three weighty petticoats. The skirt had pockets hidden in the side seams, deep pockets for Kellen to hide her phone, her tissues, her lipstick. The final touch was the elastic lace garter that wrapped around Kellen’s thigh so tightly she complained it was cutting off the circulation to her foot.