Free Masquerade by Melissa de La Cruz Page B

can’t hear you that well. What time did you say you guys were getting there?
    “We’re at the hotel. Yeah, the penthouse. Sorry, do you mind? Excuse me, hello, you there,” she said sharply to the goateed stylist with the hair dryer. “You almost singed my ear off,” she said, giving him a dirty look. “Sorry, Bliss, I gotta go.”
    Mimi flipped her cell phone closed, and the activity around her came to a standstill.
    “Are we done?” she asked.
    “Look.” The stylist handed her a mirror.
    “Polaroids!” Mimi demanded.
    One of the black-shirted assistants took a quick snap.
    Mimi checked her reflection as well as the photograph. She studied herself critically, searching for any detectable flaw, no matter how minute. Her hair was brushed and styled to a burnished sheen, and framed her face like a golden crown. Her skin glowed; a dark smoky shadow brought out the green in her eyes, and her lips looked stained with freshly picked roses.
    “Yes, I think that will be all,” she said regally, dismissing her entourage with a wave of the hand and without a trace of gratitude. Mimi considered it a privilege for them to work on her, not the other way around.
    Soon after, her maid entered the room bearing a white cardboard box the size of a small child’s coffin. It had been messengered over to the hotel at the last minute, and Mimi clapped her hands when she saw it.
    “It’s here!” her maid said happily, having been the unlucky recipient of Mimi’s tantrums at the fact that the ball was starting in a few hours and her dress had still not arrived.
    “I see that. I’m not an idiot,” Mimi snapped.
    She ran over to the box, laid it on the bedspread, and ripped open the brown parcel paper like a whirling dervish.
    After leaving the Dior showroom, Mimi had complained to her mother about the lack of proper ball gowns, and Trinity had secured her an appointment at the Balenciaga atelier to meet with the head designer himself.
    Over the course of the five-hour meeting, Mimi had rejected and dismissed countless designs, causing the designer to rip up more than several dozen sketches.
    “What is it you’re looking for?” he had asked, completely exasperated. “You’re pickier than a bride.”
    Mimi inhaled sharply. “Exactly.” She closed her eyes and saw herself and Jack together—during their first bonding. The dress she’d worn then was simple, white, merely a sheet, like a toga, and they had walked barefoot down the streets of Venice together, hand in hand, for the ceremony.
    “White, the dress has to be white,” she murmured. “White like snow. Transparent like tears.”
    Now, there it was, nestled in deepest tissues. The dress of her dreams.
    It was made of the thinnest white silk satin, and when she picked it up, it felt like a whisper between her fingers, it was so fragile. Just as she had ordered, it was severe in its simplicity. It looked like nothing on the hanger—like a plain white piece of cloth. It was corded with a heavy silver chain at the hips, and had a sexy, unexpected keyhole cut out at the hip bone—the one concession to modern fashion she had allowed.
    Mimi shrugged off her bathrobe, tossing it to the floor. She stood in the middle of the room, completely nude as her maid held the dress aloft. Mimi stepped into it, feeling the light, gossamer fabric fluttering about her like mist, settling against her slim form.
    “Go,” she said curtly to her maid. The frightened servant almost tripped on the bathrobe in her haste to leave.
    She tied the cord around her waist and assessed the tanned skin that peeked through the cutout. When she stood in front of the light, her form would be shown in complete blackened silhouette; every curve of her body, every line from neck to breast, from waist to hips to her endless legs, she would be at once covered and yet exposed, clothed and unclothed, garbed and yet nude.
    No underwear necessary.
    It was spectacular.
    “Wow.”
    She smiled. That didn’t