The Billionaire’s Forever (His Submissive #12)(3)
Author: Ava Claire

She stepped up beside me, taking the foundation from my hand. "Long night?"

"Something like that." I answered. Considering her signature look was drag queen chic, I should have been a little more apprehensive when she took the sponge and went to work. I decided to just go with it. At this point, you’re so low you can’t go anywhere else but up.

"Does this have to do with Jacob’s mom?" she asked cautiously.

The cowardly answer was yes. Alicia had pretty much disregarded Jacob’s pleas and kicked the planning into overdrive. From this moment until the wedding, there would be no such thing as free time.

Jacob was so preoccupied with making sure she didn’t do anything to strenuous that it was pretty much all Alicia Whitmore, all the time.

But the fact remained that the reason I tossed and turned all night was the same reason I’d tossed and turned ever since Alicia decided to become Mother-in-Law of the Year. I was pissed at myself for not speaking up. Not asserting myself. As easy a target as Jacob’s overzealous mother was, she was a symptom, not the disease.

I wasn’t gonna unload on Mia. Not when she’d come here with her A-game. “It’s cool. I’m just tired.”

She didn’t push it, shrugging a shoulder as she finished, standing back. Since she wasn’t cringing, I took it as a good sign, but still hesitantly turned back to the mirror.

I had to give credit where it’s due–she’d worked some kind of magic on my face. My eyes still told the truth of the hour or so of sleep I’d gotten, but the bags had been camouflaged. My cheeks were perky and smooth instead of droopy and blah. I didn’t even protest when she stepped toward me and started tugging my hair band from its futile position, freeing my curls to bounce past my shoulders. I was about to look like an eighties rock star, but I figured it couldn’t be much worse than what I looked like before. She pulled a clip from her pocketbook and spun me around to face the sink. She twisted two bunches and brought them around to the center of my head and secured them. The contrast between the controlled twists and my wiry curls worked. It was the perfect style to compliment my light makeup and soften the fierce lines of my outfit.

"Mia…" I didn’t know what else to say besides that. I just couldn’t believe she’d done what took an army of stylists an hour to pull off in five minutes. And there was another, not so nice reason I was so shocked.

She gave me a knowing smile. "Surprised the magazine’s favorite ‘How Not to do Your Makeup’ target can show restraint?"

I bit my lip peevishly. Guilty as charged. "It really looks amazing, Mia." I turned back to the mirror to stare at my reflection. I kept finding some new contour that accentuated my cheekbones or made some feature really pop.

"If this acting thing doesn’t work out, I think you have a bright future as a makeup artist." I’d said it jokingly, but my smile dropped as soon as I saw her crestfallen face. I wheeled to face her, hands on her shoulders. "What’s wrong?"

Her blue eyes hardened to ice. "You don’t have to make fun of me. I know it’s not that great."

I gaped at her. I was no comedian, but I thought it was relatively clear that I’d been joking–and definitely not with malicious intent.

"I wasn’t making fun of you," I said firmly, making sure she caught how serious I was. "It’s really gorgeous. You’re very talented."

She didn’t seem too convinced, which gave me pause. Mia was fairly confident, but at that moment she didn’t look too sure of anything. She looked cornered, like she wanted to run and hide.

How did a girl with so much talent wilt before my very eyes?

I frowned, remembering her shaky relationship with her family. That was the only thing that made sense. I’d clearly unearthed some scar, a deep hurt where someone she’d cared about killed her creative spirit. They took something she was passionate about and told her she wasn’t anything extraordinary.

She shrugged out of my grip, the sight of her pulling on a mask chilling. I was used to the sting of frustration as I watched Jacob hide away his vulnerability, but not Mia. It left a dull ache in my chest.

"We should get down to the conference room." She held open the door, flashing me a mischievous smile that blurred the dark moment we’d just shared. "We don’t want to leave Rachel waiting."

I rolled my eyes at the sound of that name. Even with reinforcements I wasn’t looking forward to being in the same room as Rachel Laraby.

When I first started dating Jacob, I thought my life was becoming closer to something out of the movies. If my new life was a movie and I was the heroine and Jacob was the hero, Rachel would undoubtedly be the villain. There was no escaping her jealous clutches and I felt like now that our wedding had a date and wasn’t some far off thing, she’d amped up her efforts to win him back.

She’d been purely evil since we met. Literally laughing at the idea that Jacob could be attracted to me. Forcing me to be a pawn in her game to break us up. Lying to Jacob’s mother about my intentions. No one would fault me for holding a grudge after all she’d put me through. And it should have been easy-peasy to match her jerkiness, blow for blow, and still have plenty of animosity left, but I couldn’t sink to her level.

Obviously, my politeness wasn’t working either.

But I still couldn’t make myself be brutal. I knew what it was like to lose Jacob and even though it was only a few days, it felt like a lifetime. I couldn’t breathe without him. I couldn’t be without him. Her sense of loss monsooned mine because there she was, thinking she meant something to him, loving him, then finding out it was all a lie. I wouldn’t want to believe it either. I’d fight tooth and nail for him too.

But I’d reached the end of my rope. She’d done too much–and now she was bringing Mia in the middle of it.

Enough was enough.

I followed Mia into the elevator, readying the game plan. "So, I’ll open by thanking everyone for attending and then go right into clarifying this whole thing. I’ll discuss how noble the mission of Reach is, but make it crystal clear that at this time–"

"I think we should just go with it."

The elevator stopped on our floor and I froze, confused. "What?"

Mia was moving like a girl on a mission. Like she wasn’t going completely off-script. "She wants to do good, right?” she said over her shoulder. “Sweep in and save the day? Fix me? I say we let her."

My heels clicked on the floor as I rushed to catch up with her. "That’s not what we agreed on, Mia." Nor what I told Rachel to expect. Surprisingly, she didn’t fight me on it when I told her we were putting a stop to this whole Reach lie. Probably because she knew I’d be the bad guy and she’d come off looking like roses.