her to hope for something that just couldn’t be.
* * *
“I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” Major said when Nina was escorted into the den at his parents’ house on Sunday evening.
He hadn’t been avoiding her this time. Something had come up at Brand Integrated that had taken him all weekend to deal with. But he’d wanted to see her.
Major had also been dealing with the engagement ring. Among all the other plans, that detail had somehow fallen to the wayside. It had taken six days for the ring Major wanted for Nina to be ready and it had been delivered to his apartment yesterday morning. He’d refused to address why he felt a jewelry designer was required for a fake engagement, but he wanted the ring on Nina’s finger before their next public appearance.
Now, she was here, in the house he’d grown up in, looking around the room, one hand to her chest before she settled her gaze on him. “Sorry, still trying to catch my breath from that magnificent foyer I just walked through. That staircase is breathtaking, and I’ve never seen anything like the brown-and-gold marble floor.” She gave her head a little shake and then cleared her throat, dropping her arm to her side. “But yeah, your mother invited me to dinner while we were at the fitting yesterday,” she said, waving to Maurice and RJ who were sitting in chairs behind him.
“She was at the fitting?” Was that on the itinerary?
“Yes, Mom was at the fitting. Everything doesn’t have to be on the itinerary, Major. It’s all right to be impulsive sometimes,” Riley said as she entered the room. The smile on his sister’s face solidified the feeling of dread in the pit of Major’s stomach. “We had a wonderful afternoon. The gowns were all so beautiful on Nina. We had a terrible time deciding on the final one.”
RJ stood and went to the bar in the far corner of the room to fix himself a drink. “Why? It’s not like there’s really going to be a wedding.”
The room went silent for a few seconds and Riley chimed in again.
“The name of the game is to get customers to buy into the whole process, which is why we have Infinity doing the six-page spread for June. The dress is the center of any wedding, so it made sense that we start there. Next week there will be coverage of our venue hunt and talking to artists about the reception.” Riley, wearing a long, pleated green skirt and casual T-shirt, sat on the coal-colored couch, leaning back on its huge fluffy pillows.
RJ shook his head as he dropped ice cubes into his glass. “For all this effort, I sure hope this fake wedding campaign works to our advantage.”
“Oh come on, RJ. Man, you were just talking about the bump in orders in the casual wear sections,” Maurice said.
“I saw that, too,” Nina added, excitement clear in her voice. “Since the media has decided that, in addition to the wedding, they want to do stories on who I am and our business partnership, I took a chance and ran a digital ad on some of the fashion blogs and did numerous posts on my Instagram page, tagging fashion groups and other influencers.”
Major noted how lovely she looked in a long animal-print skirt. He wondered if she and Riley had conferred on their attire for tonight. Her plain tan T-shirt was also on the casual side, as well as the three-quarter dark denim jacket she wore over it. For a few seconds he wondered about the beads riding low on her hips beneath the clothes she wore.
“That was a great idea,” Maurice continued. “Customer service reported some mentions in their feedback box when we met with them Friday morning.”
“That’s in the area of the app. I’m talking about this engagement sham,” RJ continued before taking a swallow of the vodka he’d just poured.
Marva wouldn’t like that he was drinking before dinner, but Ron would defend his oldest son, claiming if a man worked hard he had every right to drink hard whenever he wanted to. As long as the work was done and above reproach—that was always the unspoken part of anything their father said to defend them. He could condone just about anything if RGF came first. A fact that had Major’s jaw tightening.
Nina moved around him to take a seat in one of three brightly colored and mildly disgusting salon chairs his mother had added