Shot Through Velvet (22 page)

“You’ll need a ladder.” Lacey sipped her hot chocolate with only a half shot of the amaretto. It was a school night for her.

Stella munched a truffle. “Endorphins, Lacey. I need strength, and chocolate endorphins are the best kind of endorphins. True fact. Everyone knows it.”

“Yay for chocolate-covered endorphins,” Lacey said.

Stella was ripping open the chocolate-covered graham crackers when a knock came at the door. “I wondered when
she’d
get here,” Stella muttered. “Always late.”

“It’s Brooke. Open up in the name of the law.” Brooke made her entrance, breathless, as usual. It was part of her charm to treat life as one big dramatic conspiracy.

“I didn’t know Stella called in the posse,” Lacey said.

“Of course she called in the posse,” Brooke said. “I understand we have a crisis. Hi, Marie. All present and accounted for. Now, are we ready to save Stella from the fire-breathing Gorgon?” She squeezed Lacey’s arm and gave her a significant nod. “And to interrogate our fashion reporter? I understand dead men get the
blues
?”

Lacey raised one eyebrow. She double-locked the door behind Brooke. Stella hobbled on her one stiletto to give Brooke a hug. The two had finally bonded over gunpowder, margaritas, and that terrible day in the snowstorm. Lacey thought it was possibly the least likely pairing she had ever inadvertently helped bring about.
Well, except for Stella and Nigel.

Brooke had perfected her version of the sleek young D.C. lawyer look. Her usual Burberry trench coat covered an Armani gray pinstripe skirt suit, with a blue shirt buttoned up to the neck, black tights, trim black leather heels. Her long blond hair was pulled away from her face in braids, which were wrapped around her head like a Swedish milkmaid. Stella put her hands on her hips and regarded Lacey and Brooke.

“God, the way you two are dressed, you’d think I was having some kind of Chamber of Commerce meeting.”

Brooke pointed to her larkspur-colored blouse. “What? I’m breaking out in color. I’m practically a rainbow. See?”

Stella sighed dramatically. “Brooke, I bet you look like a lawyer even when you’re in your underwear. I bet you sleep in gray flannel pinstripes. And that hair! I don’t even know what to say about that.”

“Please, Stel. At least they’re dressed.” Marie was always soothing ruffled feathers in this crowd. “You’re here, Brooke—that’s all that matters. And we’re all here for Stella in her hour of need. Now, Miss Stella, would you care to explain?”

“Right. As you know, Nigel and I have decided on an April wedding. The clock is ticking. Like a freakin’ time bomb. I need your help. All of you. Um, there’s a big fat
please
in there too, in case you didn’t hear it. Anybody need more chocolate? More amaretto? More
pleases
?”

Chapter 20

“Stella, don’t you think you’re rushing the wedding a little?” Lacey said. “I mean, six weeks! Not much time to plan a wedding.”

“It’s like seven and a half weeks. The cast comes off in four. And hello? Cherry blossoms! I have always wanted to get married at cherry blossom time, Lace. And I know those blossoms are sneaky. They come early. They come late. They pop out, and then bang! They’re gone. But this year, they’re supposed to pop in about seven weeks. If I wait too long, another year could go by. I could be dead. Nigel could be dead. I am grabbing my man and my cherry blossoms and going for the gold. And if you want my advice, Lacey, you should go for it too.”

“Vic and I are fine. Thank you very much.” Lacey didn’t want to get into a discussion of Vic and why it had taken them so long to get together. It was complicated.

“You must really love riding the stubby bus of love.” Stella made a cross-eyed face at Lacey. Brooke and Marie laughed. “I don’t know why I bother giving away good advice. Anyway, more chocolate, everybody. Then we can discuss the emergency while you all help me decorate my cast. Glue guns are locked and loaded. It’ll be like a bridal bonding experience.”

“Decorate your cast?” Brooke stared at the stark white encumbrance on Stella’s leg, from which scarlet toenails peeked out.

“Rhinestones. We’re helping with the rhinestones.” Lacey pointed to the jars of rhinestones amidst the candles on the coffee table. They were pink and red and clear, all of them extra sparkly. Hot glue guns stood at the ready. “And, Stella, the theme is—?”

“Swirling hearts, ’cause it’s almost Valentine’s Day. And stars, for me, Stella. And maybe a few arrows, ’cause love is dangerous.”

“We all know about the dangerous part,” Marie said. She poured hot chocolate for Brooke and added amaretto. Lacey hefted a jar of pink rhinestones, shiny and mesmerizing.

“You never know when some wack job who wants your man is going to kidnap you and throw you over a cliff. It happened to me. It could happen to anyone.” Stella pointed one long, pink nail at Brooke. “I want everyone to help. All my maids of honor.”

“Stella? Glue guns? Oh no! I. Can’t. Glue.
Anything
.” Brooke was frozen in her lawyerly shoes. “I flunked arts and crafts. Martha Stewart wouldn’t trust me with a glue gun. A real gun, yes. Glue gun, no. There could be injuries.”

Brooke was a perfectionist. She had received A’s in everything that advanced her career in law. But she was a failure in the most basic of crafts. She couldn’t draw or paint or make collages out of pictures from cut-up magazines, and she couldn’t glue.

Stella led her to the sofa. “You can supervise, doll. Or sue the glue gun company for damages. Whatever. Just have fun. Now come on. We have to make this ugly cast pretty. Or at least memorable. Thank God it will be off for the nuptials. You cannot imagine how hard it is to maneuver a cast and a man in bed. Nigel nearly injured himself. And me!”

“Too much information, Stella,” Lacey said.

“Prude.” Stella gave Brooke a little push. “And you, Annie Oakley, sit down already. I got things to tell you.” Stella steadied herself with a slug of amaretto-laced hot chocolate. “My nerves are
shot
.”

Marie waved her hands gently, like a conductor. “Just be very clear, Stella. This is about Nigel’s mother and how you are going to get along with her. Now, cleansing breaths.”

“Right.” Stella closed her eyes and took a deep breath, reopened her eyes, and blew it out. “I’m focusing my core. Okay, Nigel says his mother is pretty much hell on heels. He calls her the Gorgon. Affectionately, he says. And she has never, I repeat,
never
, liked any of his girlfriends. Or even met them. Lady Gwendolyn Griffin is flying in tomorrow, and she wants to meet me. She’s staying with him all week! And she’ll be back before the wedding.”

“Maybe you can elope,” Lacey suggested.

“It crossed my mind, believe me. But no way am I sacrificing my wedding day, my moment in the spotlight.”

“Damn right you’re not,” Brooke proclaimed. “Your wedding is a civil right.”

You have a right to a wedding spectacle, or disaster, of colossal proportions.
Lacey smiled at the thought.

“Everything will turn out as it should,” Marie said, quite as if she could foretell the future. “It will be fine. After some trials and tribulations.”

“I hope you’re right,” Stella said sadly. “I am so worried about the children.”

“The children! Whose children?” Lacey asked. “Does Nigel have children we don’t know about?”

“Our
future
children,” Stella clarified. “My clock is ticking. You know when they say someone is horsey-looking? Or horse-faced? I totally never knew what that meant before Nigel showed me pics of his mother.”

“She can’t be that bad. After all, Nigel is . . .” Lacey hunted for the right word. “Nice-looking.”

“He is a babe. But genetics are a bitch. What if there’s a throwback to his mother’s recessive horse-face genes? Honestly, Lacey, I don’t want to name our kids Seabiscuit and National Velvet.”
Please,
Lacey thought,
no more velvet.

Brooke broke into the truffles and handed one to Lacey, who ate the whole thing in one bite. “Stella, what does the poor woman look like? Don’t keep us in suspense.”

“Like Eleanor Roosevelt. Crossed with a Clydesdale.” Three women gasped.

Stella passed around a photograph. Lacey gazed at it for a long moment before passing it to Brooke. “Maybe she just doesn’t photograph well.”

“I’m sure that’s it,” Brooke chimed in. “Wow. Clydesdale or Lipizzaner?”

“It’s just bad lighting,” Marie suggested over Brooke’s shoulder. “Really bad.”

“What did I tell you?” Stella said. “My Nigel is half racehorse. On the other hand, that would explain his—”

“I like her eyes,” Marie said. “They’re very, um,
direct
. Under all those eyebrows.”

“Oh, my God, I hadn’t even noticed the eyebrows!” Stella grabbed the picture.

“Stella, calm down,” Lacey said. “You’re just psyching yourself out. Gwendolyn Griffin might be just as nervous about meeting you.”

“Ha. She is as cool as a cucumber,” Stella said. “We gotta get her mind off me.”

“Perhaps we should get your mind off
her
,” Marie suggested.

“Yes,” Lacey said, thrusting a glue gun into Brooke’s reluctant hands. “Let’s talk about the wedding.” She couldn’t believe what she was saying. She was sick of wedding talk. “How are you wearing your hair for the wedding?”

“I haven’t decided, but it’s got to make a statement, you know?” Stella wouldn’t dream of not making a statement with her coiffure. “Part of me wants to go, oh you know, blue with platinum highlights. Something crazy, like a punk angel with little blue wings on the side of my face, like a Farrah Fawcett do?”

“Okay, maybe we should pick another topic,” Lacey said.
No more blue either.

“Don’t look at me,” Brooke said. “I’d probably look like a lawyer. Stella, I think the
something blue
part of the rhyme should not be your
hair
. I’d go with Grace Kelly hair and pearls.”

“Okay, part of me says don’t mess with the curls,” Stella said, fluffing her locks. “ ’Cause they’re cute as a baby duckling, and Nigel really likes running his fingers through them. Curls and pearls! That sounds good, doesn’t it? Not to mention the Girls.”

“Um, the thing about weddings, Stella, is that you’ll have the photos forever,” Lacey said. “Your wedding is a moment in time. The punk angel look may not last forever. You might be sick of it in a month. But you could go classic and timeless—”

“Or I could be an embarrassment forever. You’re right, Lacey. It torments me, and that’s just the hair! I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder if I’ll be like those brides from the Fifties with their little knee-length, shirtwaist white dresses and poofy chin veils and cat-eye glasses. And forever after, people will snicker when Nigel and I bring the album out.” Stella made cat-eye glasses over her eyes with her hands. Lacey reached for more amaretto. “But you know, that might be cool. Just for the irony of it? And then we could hire an Elvis impersonator.”

Lacey and Brooke looked horrified. “Stella, you’re not really having an Elvis impersonator at the wedding, are you?” Brooke said.

“No, not really. Elvis tends to pull the focus off the bride.”

Lacey jumped in. “What about your dress?”

“It’s got to be fabulous! White as snow, with like a
lot
of beads or sequins or pearls or something. I don’t have a clear picture of it yet, but my wedding dress has got to fit like skin and look like sin, and show off the Girls to their very best advantage,” the bride-to-be declared.

“Well, y’all have a lot of decisions to make,” Marie said. “But I say nothing goes smooth as silk for a wedding gown.”

Stella’s eyes lit up. “Oh, you’re thinking silk? I was thinking like maybe a tight white leather minidress—”

Marie shared a look with Lacey. “What about the attendants?” she asked.

Lacey felt a tickle of anxiety. Her taste and Stella’s taste were continents apart. But she was a bridesmaid and she was fated to fail in this decision.

“Black,” Brooke said.

“Black?! Brooke, it’s my
wedding
, not my funeral. And it’s not like we’re vampires or something. Black is out. Red, maybe. Red would match my sofa. But I was thinking leather bustiers in some cheerful color. Pink, maybe? Something that goes with cherry blossoms for my attendants.”

“How about gray?” Brooke suggested, as a lawyerly compromise.

Lacey felt her eyes go wide. Her views on gray were well-known in this crowd. “Not gray,” she whispered.

“Blue-gray? Mauve-gray?”

“No, Brooke,” Lacey said. “No gray. And no taupe, beige, or brown.”

“Yeah, what she said,” Stella said.

“Cherry blossoms are pink,” Marie said. “The color of hope and new beginnings.”

Stella nodded. “Pink is good, but pink with some passion to it. Like shocking pink or maybe neon purple. This wedding has to make a statement.” Lacey and Brooke both reached for the chocolate grahams at the same time. “And oh my God, what am I supposed to do with Nigel’s mom?”

“Do you have to do anything?” Brooke asked, lifting her glue gun nervously.

“There will be photographs, Brooke.” Stella picked up the picture of Mrs. Griffin and shook it. “And photographs are forever. People put them on the Internet!”

“Cleansing breaths,” Marie sang out.

“I’m thinking because of her resemblance to the very late First Lady,” Stella said, “Nigel’s mother should wear something like I saw in the Smithsonian. Not you, Lacey Smithsonian. The museum Smithsonian. Eleanor Roosevelt’s inaugural gown, in lavender velvet. And that color would go with whatever else I choose. Covered up, long sleeves. More regal than racehorse.”

Velvet? Why am I not surprised?
“That dress is not on display anymore, Stella. The museum has drastically reduced the First Ladies exhibit,” Lacey said. “But I know the one you mean. Simple, long sleeves. It crisscrosses over the bodice. That would work.”