“I don’t think that’s true at all. But if you think it is, then why not make use of the situation.”
“Excuse me?”
“What better way to find out how Clare Cosi really feels about her ex-husband than right now? This is your chance to spend a little time with the woman; find out the truth before you tie the proverbial knot with her ex.”
Breanne huffed for a moment.
“Well?” Roman prompted.
“Fine. All right. Clare Cosi can ‘investigate’ this apparent threat to me. But you’re the one who’s going to spend time with her.”
“I am?”
“Yes. I insist. You find out how she really feels about Matteo. Talk her up and get back to me. I can barely stand to be in the same room with that moppet.”
The feeling is mutual, I assure you, I thought. But I wasn’t all that annoyed. Nothing Bree said was a surprise to me—except the notion of having Roman put up to the task of “handling” me for the day, which I considered a triumph. If Bree really did have an enemy desperate enough to murder her, Roman probably had a few clues about it.
Inside of ten minutes, the bulky food writer emerged from the fitting room again. By the time he opened the door, I’d quickly slipped back to the lobby, looking expectant and clueless as he approached Matt.
“Clare can stay,” he said flatly. “And you must leave.”
“Okay. I’m going.” Matt’s puppy-dog-worried eyes met mine.
“It’ll be fine,” I told him. Then I gritted my teeth and added, “I’ll watch out for her. I promise.”
Matt nodded. “See you later, Clare. Call if you need me, okay?”
“Believe me. I will.”
As I watched Matt stride through the boutique’s front archway, I girded myself for an exceedingly long, excruciatingly boring day—and then my peripheral vision snagged on something. Or rather someone.
A Caucasian man was pacing the store’s front windows. He was big, like a heavyweight boxer, but out of shape, like some of those ex-jocks and trainers my dad used to drink with—the ones who made illegal bets with insider tips.
In his midfifties at least, the man’s buzz-cut hair was the color of bread crust. His prominent nose took a slight left turn as if it had been broken once and set wrong. His cheeks were florid, like he’d had one too many at lunch, yet his eyes appeared switchblade sharp as they continually peered into the showroom window.
On any given sunny day, Fifth Avenue’s sidewalks were jammed with all sorts of people. Today was no different. And while there was nothing unusual about a passerby gawking at something through a store window, this guy just “looked wrong,” as Mike might say.
His brown off-the-rack suit was snug around the belly and wincing against large shoulders. His tie was too wide and loud to be fashionable. With his military-short haircut and worn, unpolished shoes, he certainly didn’t strike me as your typical customer for the steeply priced froufrou in the House of Fen.
I watched the guy for a full minute, lumbering back and forth, glancing into the exclusive boutique, then into the street, and back into the store again.
Anticipating a mug shot book, I took a step closer to the window. I wanted to see his eye color, note any scars, birth-marks, or other telling characteristics besides the ruddy cheeks and off-track nose.
But the man made me before I took a second step. He and I locked eyes for a frozen moment. His eye twitched as he looked me up and down, then he turned away, showing me his back.
I started moving toward the front door, prepared to confront him, ask if he was waiting for someone (and who that someone might be), when I heard a woman scream—and the voice sounded like Breanne’s.
“Noooooooo!”
As the blood-chilling wail echoed off the House of Fen’s vaulted ceiling, I raced for its fitting rooms.
Twelve
“She’s fine! She’s fine!”
Roman stood in the wide-open doorway of Breanne’s fitting room, his substantial waistline blocking all access.
“Show’s over, folks. Move along! Move along!”
The gaggle of employees and plainclothes security guards who’d come running up behind me went back to their posts. I stayed at mine, which is to say, I didn’t move a muscle.
“Okay, Roman, what’s going on?”
He waved me closer, dropped his voice. “Breanne’s couture gown doesn’t fit any longer. The bodice is too tight.”
“Twiggy gained weight?”
Okay, that sounded so wrong I didn’t know where to begin. Breanne had a vanity streak wider than Park Avenue and maintained her model thinness with a near-fascistic schedule of daily workouts. Every woman I’d ever known had tried to lose weight before her wedding pictures (except me, but I was pregnant at the time). So why would Breanne allow herself to gain—Oh, my God.
“She’s not pregnant, is she?”
“Good Lord, no. And she’s the same perfect size 0 she always was.”
“I don’t understand then. What’s with the too-tight waistline? Has the seamstress been hitting the bottle?”
“The boutique manager just showed Breanne an e-mail message from a few days ago. The thing sure looks like it came from Breanne’s personal mailbox at Trend, but she didn’t send it.”
“What did the e-mail say exactly?”
“That she lost a great deal of weight all of a sudden and wanted her waistline taken in a full inch before her final fitting today.”
“I am not a size 00!” Breanne shrieked somewhere behind Roman’s well-dressed girth, “and I did not send this e-mail!”
“But it’s from your box,” the boutique manager insisted. “Look!”
I stepped closer to Roman, put my hands on my hips, and glared. “Let me in.”
With a sigh of surrender, the big man stepped aside.
The fitting room was a large, plush space of white carpet, white chairs, and floor-to-ceiling mirrors. My focus immediately went to Her Royal Haughtiness, the soon-to-be Mrs. Matteo Allegro Numero Two.
Breanne looked as swanlike as ever with flawless, well-maintained, over-forty skin, annoyingly high cheekbones, and salon sun-streaked hair weaved into a precise French braid. By now, she was back out of her bridal gown, which hung from a padded hanger on a high wall hook.
The custom-made garment was absolutely gorgeous. Pure 100 percent Italian silk was my guess, with a simple, classic cut: a fitted bodice, full-length skirt, and tiny spaghetti straps. Draped next to it was an amazing-looking bridal wrap of handmade lace that displayed an intricate pattern echoed in both her elegant gown’s short train and her opera-length gloves. The veil was here, too, a gorgeous piece of fine tulle dappled with tiny, hand-sewn pearls.
“Look at the printout,” the boutique manager was saying to Bree. She handed over the paper. “This came from your mailbox—the same e-mail box you’ve used to correspond with me for years.”
Wearing only a short satin robe, nude stockings on her endless legs, and white silk bridal heels, Breanne studied the printed e-mail. Beneath her smoother-than-could-possibly-be-natural forehead, her eyebrows came together in clear distress.
“I did not send this. Someone else did. Some despicable individual is obviously trying to sabotage me—”
Just then, Breanne glanced up and in a moment of monumental bad timing noticed me. Her sapphire-blue eyes narrowed, and I suddenly felt as if she were going to accuse me of coming all the way from Kansas to drop a flying house on her sister.