Page 371 of Knox Academy Omnibus
Baxter
I’m going to be protecting you for life if that’s your defence.
Amelie
I feel so safe now : )
Baxter
You shouldn’t. I could change my mind about you.
Amelie
You won’t, you love me too much.
Baxter
Keep telling yourself that so you can sleep at night.
Amelie
Goodnight, Baxter.
Baxter
Goodnight, Amelie.
Chapter Twenty-five
Amelie
Dress shopping. I can’t think of anything more horrendous…until I have to go dress shopping with Elsie and Adrianne. Two insanely different personalities and yet neither has found anything. Elsie goes on and on about Adrianne wearing a dress. I’m almost positive that Adrianne is about to shank Elsie just to get out of having to go to the inauguration.
I feel a massive stress headache coming on as these two continue to snipe and bitch at one another, but I wisely keep my mouth shut because it’s sort of my fault that we don’t have outfits yet and the ball is now less than twenty-four hours away. Talk about leaving things to the last minute, but in my defence, we were basically in lockdown until things with Harold and the rogue security breach were dealt with. So yes it’s my fault, but also it’s not my fault, because I couldn’t have predicted that would happen.
“Why do I need to wear a dress? I feel like one of those fancy dolls old people put over their toilet paper,” Adrianne whines. She sure does remind me of Kalen at times. I used to feel thesame about the dresses and heels and makeup, but I’ve learnt to just go with it. There’s no stopping Elsie when she sets her mind to these things.
“I don’t even know what that means, but you look pretty,” Elsie says to her and Adrianne snorts, looking down at the green floor length gown Elsie picked out for her to try on.
“I don’t want to look pretty,” Adrianne complains.
“Then I don’t know how we are going to find dresses last minute if you’re not willing to pick one,” Elsie snaps.
“I can’t believe we’ve left this to the day before,” Adrianne mutters.
“Well, you can blame Amelie for that too. Little miss, I'm too busy for anything.”
“You forget that you haven’t picked a dress either,” I say with a laugh. I picked a dress at the very first store, mostly to keep Elsie off my back, but I do also happen to like it. It’s midnight blue, floor length, and off the shoulder, with a plunging neckline and splits right up both sides. I also paired it with a Swarovski crystal belt and silver heels that wrap around my ankles and up my calves a little with silver rhinestones. I even picked out a matching hair piece. No doubt Elsie will choose my jewellery to match from her vast personal collection.
“We can’t all look good in everything, Amelie.” Elsie snipes, a true testament to how stressed she is about all of this. “I didn’t want to jinx it. I have to look perfect. Jasper and I can finally be together with no secrets, and I plan on looking so damn good he begs for forgiveness.”
“There will always be secrets, Elsie, he won’t be able to tell you everything. And the same goes for you, if you’re sent on a top-secret job then you can’t even tell him. So you need to make sure that this is what you really want.” I feel like a fraud saying this, knowing that my position puts me above this rule. My guys will never have to keep secrets from me when it comes to TheOrder, and as future members of my board, I won’t have to keep things from them either. I don’t envy Elsie the position she’s in, but I know she’ll be a lot happier in The Order than out of it.
“I know that, but at least we can say that we can’t talk about it because it’s Order business. Up until now he’s just been infuriatingly silent about everything.”
We leave the current store, and poor Frost sighs when he notices that we come out empty handed.
Elsie sits in the front passenger seat and directs him towards another store. Adrianne looks as unimpressed as Frost, her arms crossed against her body and a pout that could rival Kalen’s.
