Page 25 of My Wedding Mafia Style

“No.” She looks me over with bright, assessing eyes. “You’re better. Mannequins aren’t as funny as you.”

I lift one hand to my cheek, which is a mistake. Both sisters notice immediately.

Isabella gasps. “I adore her.”

“I’m beginning to feel like a stray cat someone found behind the restaurant.”

Bianca smiles. “Yes, but a valuable stray cat. The kind with unusual eyes that ends up owning a jewelry store.”

“I don’t think that’s a type of cat.”

“In Miami it is.”

Before I can respond to that, she opens a glossy white door and sweeps me into a room that smells faintly ofperfume and the kind of wealth that probably has climate control preferences.

I stop just inside. “Oh.”

Bianca’s room is not a room. It is a floating boutique that appears to have been attacked by a very fashionable storm. Clothes drape over the back of a cream sofa. Shoes line the wall beneath a wide mirror. Jewelry trays glitter on a vanity. There are garment bags hanging from hooks, scarves looped over a chair, and a half-empty glass of champagne sitting beside a lipstick the exact red of bad ideas. Everything is chaotic. Everything is beautiful. Everything is probably insured.

“This,” Bianca announces, releasing my arm and striding toward a wardrobe, “is where we save you.”

“I didn’t know I required saving.”

Bianca points at me. “That right there is why we need to move quickly. The woman is drunk on champagne, ocean air, and my brother’s mouth.”

“I am not drunk on your brother’s mouth.”

Both sisters stare at me, and I hear the sentence after I say it. “I would like to leave this conversation.”

“You can’t,” Bianca says. “We’re at sea.”

I look toward the door. “That feels legally relevant.”

Isabella flops onto the cream sofa. “Don’t worry. If anyone asks, you came willingly.”

“That is not comforting.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

I stare at her.

She grins. “That’s what Luca says, right?”

Unfortunately, yes. And unfortunately, hearing his name makes the kiss replay in my mind with humiliating clarity. His hand at my cheek. His voice saying, I’m going to kiss you. My own ridiculous face lifting like a woman in a perfume commercial who has never once had to worry about rent.

I turn toward the nearest mirror and nearly startle at my reflection. My hair is wind-touched, my cheeks flushed, my lips slightly swollen. I look kissed. Not politely kissed. Not first-date doorway kissed. Kissed by a man who could make an entire coastline seem like background decoration.

Bianca appears beside my reflection, studying me with the focus of a surgeon and the enthusiasm of a woman about to do something expensive. “Oh, excellent.”

“What is excellent?”

“You already have the glow.”

“The glow?”

“The freshly kissed glow. We don’t have to fake it with highlighter.”

Isabella leans forward. “Can I tell Luca that?”