“Shut it or I rip your ankles off.”
Toni stroked Nina’s cheek with the back of her hand, smiling sweetly. “You will not. Know why? Because you’re my framily,” she teased, straightening one of the bows down the front of Nina’s lemon-colored gown.
Nina batted her hands away. “Fuck you and fuck your framily. Now when does this damn shindig begin? Because I want the fuck out.”
Toni ran and grabbed the official scroll the king’s messenger had sent, holding it up for Nina to see. “Nine sharp. It won’t be long now.”
Turning her back to the group, she bit the inside of her cheek to stem the tears and dropped the scroll on the beautiful dressing table, where her own personal handmaiden had twisted and turned and brushed her hair into the most fabulous up-do Toni had ever seen.
It swept upward in a riot of auburn curls swirling around her head then fell down the middle of her back in the tiniest of ringlets. She wore a gown of the softest dove-gray silk, the ruched bodice in deep purple with lavender beads dripping along the front, leading to her waist. The heavy crinoline beneath it gave it a bell shape, swaying to and fro and she moved.
Nina tucked a stray curl that just wouldn’t behave behind her ear, adorned with an earring made of lemon-colored crystals. “So have we figured out where the fuck Flawless is? Because when we find him and all his GD perfection, I’m gonna personally kick his ass from here to Jersey for abandoning the kid like this. No-good son of a bitch. I knew he was too damn good to be true.”
Yeah. Where was Flawless? After he’d left them at the castle doors last night, she’d tried to tamp down the fear she’d never see him again. All while they’d spoken to the king’s advisors, while they’d been fed and drawn hot baths, and while they’d been settled in connecting rooms, she’d wondered where Jon had gone.
As she’d stared out the window of her room late last evening, she’d hoped to catch a glimpse of him in the courtyard below, but it was as silent as a church mouse.
When they’d inquired about him this morning, her personal guard—appointed to her by the king because she still had the damn shoes—as well as most of the castle’s staff claimed they knew nothing of a Jon Doe. Never heard of him, in fact.
And that just made everything worse. It was as though he were some figment of their imaginations—as though that long trek they’d just shared had happened with the Invisible Man.
This morning, as she’d risen in her incredible bedroom in her equally incredible bed, her chest was tight, her throat sore from crying, her eyes swollen from a restless night. If Jon had meant goodbye last night, surely he could have had the decency to have been honest about it, rather than say all those pretty things only to desert her in the end.
Okay, so he’d said some things in the heat of the moment that maybe he didn’t really mean. She was a big girl. She could have taken that. But this silence? This deafening no-show? It hurt.
Jerk.
Wanda fluttered behind Toni, wrapping her arms around her shoulders from behind as they looked out the stained glass window toward the bustling courtyard, where the staff of the castle was in high gear with Christmas Eve ball preparations.
She leaned back against Wanda and fought more tears. It was Christmas, for Pete’s sake. These women belonged with their families and their Christmas trees and lights, and Carl deserved a visit with Santa Claus.
Christmas had come and gone for her these last three years since Cormac had been gone—it was just another day where most everything was closed and she’d have to choose between a Salisbury steak TV dinner or boxed mac and cheese.
But these women—these women who’d jumped on the get-Toni-to-the-castle bandwagon or bust—had traditions they’d miss if they didn’t get home tonight.
Nina had told her all about the feast Archibald, Wanda’s manservant, served for their OOPS extended family. At least fifty plates covered a formal table filled with turkeys and roasts and mounds of creamy mashed potatoes and all the trimmings. They toasted their lives together, they laughed, they danced, they had a secret Santa with Darnell playing the starring role.
She wanted them to have this night—or at least to salvage what was left of the season. She needed them to have it back, and looking for Jon would keep them from their appointment to go home.
“You three have to go meet the king. But I have to look for Jon and Dannan,” she murmured.
Marty sighed a breathy sigh and smiled fondly. “Ah, love. You’re in love.”
Was this love? Did this gnawing ache in her belly, this panic she felt without him at her side, mean love? “Can I ask you all a question?”
“Always,” Wanda whispered.
“You’ll think it’s stupid.”