Forbidden - Karla Sorensen Page 0,14
wasn’t right for me, or if my body was so used to workout gear that it now actively rejected any finer materials.
“Are you dressed yet?”
My hands fell by my sides. “Yes. I don’t think this color works on me, though.”
“One, I find that highly unlikely, and two, show me.” Molly tugged the curtain aside, and when she caught sight of me, her smile was massive. “Iz, I love it. You look so pretty!”
With a skeptical glance at the mirror, I tugged at the drapey things over my shoulders. “There are frills. On my body.”
She laughed. “You don’t have to choose that style. I’m just trying to decide on the colors. I like the blush pink, but it might be too summery for a fall wedding.”
“The blue,” I insisted. “I will feel naked in that pink one.”
“Definitely blue,” Lia called from across the space.
Our two youngest sisters, Lia and Claire, separated by all of two minutes at birth, were sharing a dressing room. “Come on, you two,” Molly called. “Iz is already dressed.”
“Hang on. Lia’s new mom boobs are huge, and she can’t get her dress zipped.”
Molly and I grinned at each other because really, they were. She’d given birth about eight weeks earlier, and honestly, she had the rack of a centerfold if I’d ever seen one.
While we waited, Molly pulled out her giant wedding binder and made some notes after flipping to a bright pink tab. It was no surprise that Molly was the most organized bride-to-be on the planet, and also no surprise that she had zero Bridezilla tendencies so far, something that was making this whole “watch my big sister get married” thing a lot easier.
“Where’s Paige?” I asked.
“She had to stay home with Emmett. He wasn’t feeling well, and Logan is at training camp.” Molly held up her phone and snapped a picture of me. “But I promised I’d send her pictures.”
As her fingers tapped out a text to our sister-in-law, I took a seat on the large ivory ottoman in the middle of the room. No one else was in the dress shop with us, so I leaned back on my hands and listened to the laughter of Lia and Claire as they struggled to close up Lia’s dress.
Out of nowhere, I felt very, very lonely sitting in that room with my sisters.
Molly was getting married.
Lia was living with her boyfriend, Jude. With the addition of their son, and Jude’s new gig playing soccer for Seattle, I knew it was only a matter of time before they made it official too.
Even Claire, the shyest of the four of us, found her person in bad-boy snowboarder Bauer Davis.
And none of this was new; none of their relationships were new. Was I allowed to blame Aiden for this? I tried to imagine his face if I came back to work in a rage.
Yo, bossman, seeing you has me all twisty inside, and I don’t like it. And when you’re nice and thoughtful, it makes it worse, and I start feeling like a lonely petulant teenager around my very wonderful, happily-in-love sisters because I’d rather gouge my eyes out than explain it to them. Please stop. Thanks.
“What are you smiling about?” Lia asked.
Belatedly, I noticed all three of them staring at me.
“Nothing.” I cleared my throat.
Molly nudged Claire. “She’s terrified of her hot new boss. Did I mention that yet?”
Lia’s eyes widened. “Oooh, are you?”
“How hot is he?” Claire asked.
Molly held up both hands, all ten fingers wiggling. Claire laughed.
I gave her a steady look. “Are we deciding on dress colors or not?”
Lia held her hand out to help me off the ottoman. “Sorry, Iz. We’ve never been able to tease you about a man before.”
Molly snickered. “Yeah, because normally, she eats them alive once she’s done with them.”
The words I muttered under my breath would’ve set a nun’s ears on fire. Lia was the only one who heard and started laughing. The idea of me as a man-eater, casually licking my fingers after I’d had my way with them was so laughable. But immediately on the heels of that was a startlingly clear mental image of Aiden lying on a bed, spent and wrecked with me equally spent and wrecked next to him. My heart rate jumped at the vivid picture in my head. But that kind of inner-vixen reaction would be welcome after how I’d started off with him.
The tripping, coffee-spilling me was nothing like they imagined me.
It was so much easier to let them think