Starfire (Peaches Monroe #3)(38)
Author: Mimi Strong

I instantly liked the woman, and not just because she had a body shape similar to the curvy women of my family. Her gray suit hugged her body and showed off her shape, but the most stunning part of her was her snow-white hair, cut in a chin-length bob. She must have gone gray young, because her wrinkle-free face didn’t look a day over forty.

She widened her eyes at Dalton. “D-man, you’re wearing the hell out of that fanny pack.”

His green eyes twinkled. “You recognized me right away, Nancy.”

“Come here!” She didn’t wait, though, but strode right up to him and grabbed his cheeks in her hands. “Wook at dat widdle face.” As she fawned over him, she wiggled her butt like a happy pet greeting a favorite family friend.

“Good to see you, too,” he said.

“Why won’t you eat?” she exclaimed. “Have you heard of this wonderful thing? It’s called pastry.”

I have to admit, I liked Dalton even more now that this stylish woman was squeezing his cheeks and telling him to eat a cinnamon bun from time to time.

“Are you trying to set a trend?” she asked, pointing at his leather pouch.

“These are so practical,” he said. “I should design my own line of man bags.”

She snorted. “Man bags. Honey, think about what you’re saying.”

As he unzipped his fanny pack to brag about all the stuff he could carry, I looked around the storefront. The front was just a vestibule, and an arched door led, presumably, to the actual dresses. The adjoining hallway was also white and minimal, decorated with white objects, including a white vintage-looking telephone on the wall. If I wasn’t mistaken, it was the exact same model as the yellow one at Peachtree Books.

“Where are my manners!” Nancy said, turning her excitement back to me. “Here’s your beautiful fiancée. I can’t wait to get her clothes off.”

Dalton slung his arm around my shoulder protectively. “I know exactly how you feel.”

Nancy tossed her head back and laughed. “Except I want to get her dressed in taffeta and lace, whereas you’re a very naughty boy.”

I interrupted to ask, “How exactly do you two know each other?”

“Nancy was our original costume designer on the show.”

I gasped, realizing I was in the presence of greatness. “You did the zombie bride dresses?”

“And all the zombie bridesmaids,” she said, smiling sweetly as her cheeks flushed with pride.

I started to gush, “You’re amazing! My best friend and I both dressed up as zombie bridesmaids last year for Halloween. We used a hot glue gun to attach all the bones and jewelry to our corsets. We tried to imitate your beautiful designs. I had skeleton hands cupping my peaches, just like the slutty zombie bridesmaid.”

She clapped her hands together. “Tell me you took photos. Show me, show me!”

I pulled out my phone and showed her the best pictures, while apologizing for modifying her beautiful, original designs. She told me to not be silly, and that she was beyond flattered.

Dalton interrupted us, saying, “I hate to be a downer, but I can’t marry a zombie bride. Not again. Nancy, you promised you had some designs for the living?”

A tall, slim woman in a gray dress appeared in the doorway. “Everything’s ready,” she said to Nancy.

“No skeletons,” Dalton said.

Nancy rolled her eyes at Dalton’s comments. “D-man, don’t you wrinkle your forehead like that or you’ll need Botox before you’re thirty, unless you already are, ha ha. I’ve got something much better in mind for your fiancée, based on the notes you gave me.”

She waved us through to the next room, which was mostly white, but with some relief in the form of a gray carpet and gray furniture. Dalton took a seat on the chaise lounge and unzipped his Golden Gate Bridge sweatshirt. He held his hand out to accept a tall flute of champagne from one of the three gray-clad assistants in the room.

Nancy herded me over to a curtained changing area, moving like a border collie herding a reluctant lamb. One of the other ladies handed her a gown, which she handed to me.

“This is the mermaid gown,” she said. “If you look closely, you’ll see it’s not white, but hues of iridescent blue and green.”

The dress looked like it had floated out of my dreams, shimmering and beaded with everything from crystals to tiny starfish. Nancy wasn’t a less-is-more designer; she was more of a f**k-yeah-let’s-add-more-beads designer, and she made it work.

After a few moans of wordless appreciation, I finally said, “That is so f**king gorgeous, I could eat it. Sorry about my language, but you’re a genius. Get me a fork and I will eat this dress.”

Nancy laughed and called over her shoulder, “You’re right D-man, I do love her already!”

“That’s why I’m locking it down,” he replied.

Nancy rolled her eyes again. “Locking it down?” she whispered. “Please tell me the proposal didn’t include that particular phrase.”

“Hard to say. The whole thing happened so fast.” That wasn’t entirely a lie.

She backed away, still smiling. “This is where I leave you, my dear. Gwendolyn and the others will see to your needs, and as far as I’ll ever know, you love everything. But you must be honest with the girls about what you like or don’t like, and don’t worry about my feelings. This is your dress, for your special day.”

Nancy disappeared, and the tall woman took her place and officially introduced herself as Gwendolyn. At her beckoning, I took off my clothes, down to my underwear. She lightly patted my face with a tissue to ensure my makeup didn’t transfer to the dress, then she was joined by another girl and they lifted the gown up, over my head.

To my relief, this dress wasn’t a tiny-sized sample. It was actually too big, and they used plastic clamps to take up some space at the back.

The dress was so breathtaking, I could barely look at myself in the mirror, for fear of bursting into tears and flooding the whole corset.

“Show your fella,” said Gwendolyn.

I walked out of the changing room slowly, trying to pretend this wasn’t a big deal. The staff assured me that it wasn’t that unusual these days to have the groom be part of the dress-selection process. Bulldoodle. They were humoring me, but they were so nice about it.

Dalton looked me up and down, and he didn’t say anything at all for several minutes. I started to worry, and sweat, and worry about sweating, then worry-sweat some more. Was he getting cold feet?