Page 43 of My Charming Rival (Stars In Their Eyes 1)
“You know I don’t believe in wearing plain clothes. That’s the simplest thing I own,” Anaka said, and gestured to her own outfit. She wore a purple scoop-neck shirt, a jean skirt, thigh-high striped gray-and-lavender socks, and heeled lace-up boots with a Victorian flare to them. Her black hair was swept into a twist on top of her head.
I marched into my bedroom, grabbed a blue T-shirt from a drawer, and pulled it on, along with underwear and jeans. I returned to her room, and held out my arms for her appraisal.
“Perfect. You skinny bitch.”
“You’re exactly the same size.”
She grabbed at her belly. “Don’t make me show you my love handles. Because I will.”
I poked her stomach with a finger. It was flat. “You’re beautiful.”
“And so are you,” she said emphatically. “Whether you’re a skinny bitch or not.”
“Now you’re just practicing all your help the friend who used to have an eating disorder tactics,” I said.
“Is it working?”
“Like a charm.” Then I snapped my fingers when I remembered I needed something from my brother for the wedding. “Hold on. I need to send Bryan a note,” I said, grabbing my phone and firing off a quick email request to him. I dropped the phone on my bed, then returned to the altar of the bathroom mirror where I applied a light dusting of blush to my cheeks, then blow-dried my hair as Anaka and I chatted. “And now,” I said, turning off the hair dryer, “I’d like to become a pixie-cut redhead.”
Anaka rubbed her hands together, made a beeline for her closet, and pulled out a hot-pink box. She flipped it open, and extracted one of her many wigs.
“Voilà.” She gave me the stocking cap to hide and flatten my own hair, and I tucked my hair into it, then pulled on the auburn-ish wig and considered my reflection.
“He’s going to think you’re so hot as a redhead,” she said.
“I’m wearing it so Riley doesn’t recognize me.”
“If William can’t keep his hands off you, don’t say I didn’t warn you. But wait…don’t forget the golden rule of a good romantic comedy film,” she said in a teacherly tone as she wagged a finger at me.
“What’s that?”
“Think of all the good ones. Late Nights in San Francisco, When My Best Friends Met, You’ve Got Me.”
“Love those,” I said, pining momentarily for the golden days of romantic comedy, and not just the times of black-and-white, but a few decades ago, when stories were fresh, when the leads held out, when the writing wasn’t predictable.
“They don’t make movies like that anymore. I’ll tell you the big flaw with rom-coms today.”
“Please tell me.”
“They let the leads hook up too early. A good romantic comedy needs to be full of simmering will they–won’t they tension until well into the third act. Then the first kiss can come. Then the misunderstanding. Then the final scene when they make up and live happily ever after.”
“Delayed gratification,” I said with a nod. “Then it’s too bad I already kissed William twice.”
“We’re just talking about the movies, Jess. In real life, you can and should kiss him three times tonight.”
Like that was going to happen.
20
William
I spread the blueprints against the wooden gate outside a branch of the Burbank Public Library as we began our wedding planning in a well-lit spot before the stakeout. It was ten minutes after eight, the sun had set, and Jess scanned the map from the light of an old-fashioned streetlamp nudged into a corner nook in the reading garden.
I’d brought three pages of the layout of Chelsea Knox’s spacious property that James had shared with me when I was working on the computer maintenance for him. To develop a full picture of the venue, I’d compared his blueprints to the publicly available photos from real estate listing services, flyover photos, and a Google image search.
“Veronica’s going to get ready here, right inside the east wing of the house. We’ve all been instructed that absolutely no one is allowed in the east wing under any circumstances,” I said, tapping a bedroom layout on the second floor that overlooked the ostrich and llama pool. “The ceremony itself will be under the bamboo veranda, which is right next to the pond full of mechanical koi.”
“Mechanical koi?”
“Chelsea Knox thinks it’s inhumane to raise fish in any form,” I said as if the answer was obvious.
“I trust there won’t be salmon on the menu?”
“There are three menus. Dairy vegetarian, vegan, and raw.”
“Will you be guarding the crudités, then?”
I laughed. “I’m sure there will be a mad rush for the carrot sticks. We’re going to have plainclothes security officers all throughout the grounds, around the perimeter, but also along the driveway, inside the house, and by the pools.”
“What are they doing about the possibility of helicopter shots?” she asked, thoroughly running through her questions, looking all the more alluring in her redheaded wig tonight. Though, in all honestly, she’d be hot to me if she had purple hair. Blue hair. Green hair. Didn’t matter. It was her attitude that had hooked me from the start.
