The Italian's Bride On Paper by Kim Lawrence

Author:Kim Lawrence
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-08-11T15:41:09+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

THE KNOCK ON the door pulled Maya away from the mirror. Did people actually dress for dinner outside movies and royal palaces? Where did castles fit into the scheme of things? Maya did have some experience of palaces and, though her sister had instigated a more casual approach since she’d taken up residence, when it came to family dinners at least, her life still involved a number of tiara occasions.

Luckily here Maya was not the hostess, family or a guest, in any proper sense of the word, so it was just as well she didn’t possess a tiara or even a formal dress, at least not one she’d packed. She was normally a meticulous minimal packer and had not adapted well to the ‘throw everything into a case in five minutes flat’ approach.

But you worked with what you had, and her choice tonight had been between a good pair of jeans—aubergine velvet—an orange minidress she had worn once for a christening and a mid-length silk slip dress in a jewel-bright turquoise that could be dressed up or down.

The lack of jewellery to accessorise equated with dress-down, but the spiky-heeled ankle boots in a leopard print, which had involved the death of no leopards or, for that matter, any animals whatsoever, were definitely dress-up. They also made her appear quite tall, which although an illusion still felt quite nice.

She had worried when she’d first paraded in front of the massive ormolu framed mirror. True, the high neck of her dress revealed her collarbones, but nothing else. It was only when she turned around that you got the wow factor or, depending on your viewpoint, the too much factor. The back of the dress dipped dramatically almost to her waist and, while she normally didn’t flinch from being slightly in your face clothes-wise, tonight she had to admit to having some doubts.

Twisting around to look at her rear view, she frowned, then caught herself thinking, What am I doing?

Self-doubt was something she had left far behind her, and it had not been easy to do. She was no longer that person, the one who had felt as if she were fading into the background. It was no figure of speech—there had a point in her adolescence when she had literally felt almost invisible, thanks to evil Edward. Rediscovering her love of colour had been a visible reflection of how she felt inside—and how well she’d recovered from the abuse he’d heaped on her.

But there was bold and then there was all that flesh... She solved this problem by leaving her hair loose so her exposed shoulder blades and all but the lowest section of the small of her back, just before the dip to her waist, were concealed beneath a curtain of curls ruthlessly tamed—with her hair there was no other way—by the brilliant product she had dragged through it with her fingers.

She took a deep breath, and pasted on a smile. She could do this, she’d just think of it as having a solo takeaway in front of the telly, except of course it wasn’t either.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.