Elegant Sins - Stasia Black Page 0,17

all sound so dire and important. But now that I blinked my eyes and looked around the dingy master bedroom of my trailer, the dirty brown carpet, the peeling linoleum of the bathroom that I could see from my bed…

I flopped back on my pillow.

I was such an idiot. Some weirdo in a Halloween costume probably high on meth came into the diner last night and gave me a pretty piece of paper—and of course Delilah romanticized the hell out of it and got dreams of grandeur.

It was probably just a prank. The Order of the Silver Ghost. The name sounded familiar, so I googled it when I got home last night. There are conspiracy theories about it, but they all sound as fake as crap about the Illuminati.

I wanted out of my life so desperately, I was willing to grasp at straws.

But I wasn’t Cinderella and there was no such thing as dreams come true.

A sudden banging at the front door had me jumping out of my skin.

“Jesus!” I covered my beating heart with my hand as I climbed out of bed and yanked the robe from the hook on the back of my door.

“Coming!” I called even as I squinted at the midmorning light. God, what time was it? It was the first day in forever that I didn’t have a shift and I’d been looking forward to sleeping in. The microwave clock said it was 9:23. Who the hell was banging on my door at 9:23 in the morning?

I swung the door open without even looking. And froze in my tracks.

It was the guy in the Halloween costume from last night. Starched white tuxedo shirt and black coat tails, his graying hair perfectly coifed. He was holding a huge white box that almost engulfed him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I crossed my arms over my chest.

He lifted the huge white box toward me. “Do you accept the dress? The ball is tonight. You must arrive three hours early, prepared and wearing everything in the box.”

I just stared at him for a long moment.

Until finally, he pressed again. “Do you accept, Miss Morgan?”

“Are you for real?”

A small smirk quirked the older man’s lips. “I assure you, Miss Morgan, I am very much real. As is the invitation you received yesterday. Do you accept?”

I swallowed hard, then laughed and brushed my hair back from my face, leaning out and looking around. Where were the cameras? Where was the man jumping out saying this was all a joke or some sort of weird reality show?

There was no one there, though. Just Jeeves here, and for once, a quiet trailer park. At this time of morning, everyone was still sleeping it off from the night before. But soon they’d start waking up, and what would I say if anybody saw this guy?

“I thought the invitation said attendance was mandatory.” Was I stalling for time while I tried to figure out what to do? Yes, yes, I was.

The Jeeves lookalike just looked at me cryptically. “There’s always a choice.” Then he was back to his same old line: “Do you accept?”

There was a rustling down the way. Damn it. Mrs. Brown always was an early riser. She loved nothing more than spreading gossip around the park community. This fancy guy in his fancy tux standing outside my door at 9 a.m.? By noon the whole town would know if I didn’t get rid of him fast.

So, I made a split decision. It was all probably still a hoax anyway.

“I accept.” I yanked the huge box away from Jeeves, pulled it in the house, and slammed the door closed in his face.

Ten minutes later, my jaw was still on the floor.

It was the most exquisite dress I’d ever seen.

I thought I’d seen fancy dresses before—at the mall, and once when I went to Atlanta and walked beside some upscale shops. I mean, some of those dresses were over $100. I’d even dared touch one dress that was $180.

But this dress…

I reached out with the tip of my index finger to caress the delicate little gemstones hand-stitched onto the bodice but then pulled back at the last second. What if the oils on my finger damaged it? It seemed like a work of art that I might screw up at any moment.

I immediately ran to the kitchen sink and washed my hands and then washed them again.

Then I came back to the box.

Holding my breath, I lifted the dress out of the