Page 89 of The Fake Out

“He went off with Piper.” She clapped her hands like a giddy three-year-old with an unlimited supply of cupcakes and no parental supervision. “Let’s go find Sergio.”

“Who’s Sergio?”

Margot put her palms on her cheeks. “Oh, he’s amazing. He’s the stylist. Did you see all those racks of clothes? They’re for us.”

“A stylist?”

“You’ll see.” She hooked her arm in mine and pulled me along to a bedroom. She knocked. “It’s Margot and Mae.”

The door flew open and a man held his arms out. “It is Mae? She’s here.”

“Mae, this is Sergio,” Margot said.

He was a slight man who wore a black kimono-style dress over black leggings. His bleached-blond hair swooped over one eye. With the eye I could see, he was inspecting me carefully. He held a finger up and indicated I should twirl. So, I did. With the same finger, he tapped his mouth, clearly deep in contemplation. Every now and then, he hummed or muttered under his breath.

After a solid minute of this, he smiled widely. “Yes, you will do very nicely. So lovely and soft. Between you and me, those thin models are like hangers for the clothes. If I wanted to work with hangers, I would have a job at the Gap. But you”—he put his fingers to his mouth and kissed them—“you will make the clothes sing with your curves. Perfection.”

“G-great.”

“Come, come. No time for talking. We have work to do. Let us go find you the perfect outfit.”

That turned out to be more complicated than I expected. I counted five racks of clothes in the living room, but Sergio pointed out two specifically. “These are for you, my love. No one told me you were a redhead.” More tapping of his mouth. “For you, we will look for yellow, or maybe…”

He wandered off to one of the racks and began flipping through them. When he noticed I hadn’t moved, he waved me to the other rack. “Go on. Look through it. There is a dress that would be beautiful on you, I think. It is aqua green and long and very dreamy. You will look like a seductive wood nymph.”

I was pawing through a rack of dresses when Piper found me. “There you are. Are you all caught up?”

“I’m currently looking for a dress that will make me look like a seductive wood nymph. That’s all I got right now.” I held up a dress. “Is this the one, Sergio?”

He scowled. “That is not aqua green; that is turquoise.”

“Right. Silly me.” I put the dress back.

“I know this is all sudden,” Piper said. “But we were able to get Charles Thackery to take your photos.”

“Should I know who Charles Thackery is?” I pulled another dress off the rack. It was green and it had a lovely flowy feel to it. “This one?”

Sergio shook his head in disgust. “That is seafoam green. Did you not learn your colors as a child?”

“Not that one, then.” I turned to Piper. “How exactly did you find a Sergio on such short notice in the middle of Oklahoma?”

“Honey, I can work miracles even Moses would think twice about.” Piper grinned. “Charles Thackery is a hotshot wedding photographer. He happened to be shooting a wedding in Oklahoma City yesterday for some richy-rich oil baron’s kid. But I was able to talk him into doing this for us.”

I glanced around the room and moved closer to Piper, dropping my voice. “But doesn’t this seem like a lot for a fake engagement? These pictures are going to be useless.”

She shook her head. “No, they’re not. They’ll help us get some great press out there. That anonymous jackass has not shut up yet. At this point, he’s making stuff up just to piss me off.”

“You still haven’t figured out who he is?”

Piper’s eyes got hard. “Not yet. But when I do, I swear I’m going to punch him right in his lying mouth.”

“Here it is, darling. Here it is.” Sergio held up a green dress. “This is aqua green, and it will be perfect on you. I know these things. I am a style magician. Come. Come. It is time for magic.”

THIRTY-NINE

There’s something wrong with my phone. Your number isn’t on it.

—LINDA E.