“She sounds very… loyal,” Hanna said. As if Gina secretly hated the dress and hadn’t wanted to tell me. These two women hadn’t even seen what I’d made—what made them so sure it was garbage?
Savanna gave a long-suffering sigh. “Nothing we can do about it now that we’re stuck on this tiny island.”
Hanna looked around pointedly. “In an even tinier room.”
I scanned the space again. It wasn’t new, but it seemed well-maintained. The beds looked fairly modern. Then I frowned. There were two beds, both of which had clearly been claimed. “Is there another room?”
“Nope.”
“But… there aren’t enough beds.”
Savanna laughed. “Yes, there are. Yours is up there.” She jerked her head upward.
I followed her gaze and saw that on the far side of the room was a wooden platform that hung over part of the twin beds, forming a small loft. It looked like the only thing up there was a plain mattress. “There’s not even a way to get up there.”
Hanna walked over to the bed on the right and pointed at something along the base of the wall. Moving closer, I saw that it was a crudely constructed wooden ladder. Not the kind of ladder you’d buy at a hardware store, but one made out of heavy-looking logs.
My stomach sank. Even if I could pick it up and prop it against the ledge of the loft, it didn’t look very sturdy. For that matter, I didn’t know how sturdy the loft itself was. What if it hadn’t been used in years?”
“Hope you’re not afraid of heights,” Savanna said.
It was with an extreme sigh of relief that I stepped out of the cabin. It hadn’t been easy, getting ready in such a small space. Especially when I didn’t want to change in front of the other two. Not that I was a total prude, but they’d shown, in countless ways, that they disapproved of me. That didn’t make me particularly eager to take off my clothes in front of them. I’d tried my best to lose weight before the wedding, and I actually had lost a few pounds, but not the thirty I’d been hoping for. Stripping down in front of size zero mean girls wasn’t exactly at the top of my bucket list.
And they were mean, all right. At first, I’d tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, but wow. In addition to insulting me in every snide way they could think of, they implied that Gina was a gold-digger who was only after Doug for his money. I tried to explain how she hadn’t even known about it when she met him, but they didn’t listen.
In order to keep myself from smacking one or both of them, I grabbed my dress for the evening and disappeared into the bathroom the first chance I got. It wasn’t easy because they were also bathroom hogs. One pounded on the door until I came out with my dress not even zipped up all the way. Then I resorted to fixing my hair and makeup using only the mirror from my compact. Not an easy task for someone with masses of curly hair. And the island air, as pleasant as it was, wasn’t doing me any favors. I had to use more product than usual to keep it from getting too frizzy.
Once outside, I sat down on a low bench by the door so I could put my earrings and necklace on. I was still aghast at the selfish sisters inside. How on earth could they be related to Doug? But I remembered that they weren’t, really. Their mother had married Doug’s uncle, which made them his cousins. His stepcousins, actually.
That made them almost sound like fairy tale villains, and lord knew, they were mean enough for it. Didn’t Cinderella have some ugly stepsisters? Maybe Thing One and Thing Two in there could be considered ugly stepcousins. Except they weren’t physically ugly—just their personalities were. If anything, they seemed more evil than ugly. That was the perfect name: evil stepcousins.
When I was as put together as I could manage under the circumstances, I started toward the main lodge on foot. I considered taking the golf cart, but I didn’t know how well-lit the paths would be after dark. Besides, I wanted to drink and let loose a bit tonight.
The reception had already started by the time I reached the main lodge. Chairs and tables were scattered in front of the lodge, stretching from there to the pool. Strings of lights hung from tree to tree, and candles floated in the pool. The effect was quite lovely, and I was sure it would be even prettier once it got darker.
Stations full of food were interspersed with the tables for guests, and there was a bar in a little hut with a grass roof on one side. Servers from the resort circulated with hors d'oeuvres and drinks. Music came from a string quartet set up just beyond a wooden dance floor.