Even so, when she stood dressed and ready in front of the mirror, she saw a stranger. Not because it had been so long since she had seen herself stage ready, but because she was no longer fourteen. Being twenty-two shouldn’t have made such a difference when she had been acting like an adult as an adolescent, but it did. Rather than looking like a girl playing dress up, she looked like a woman. A confident, self-possessed, beautiful woman.
Act like you believe it, she silently told the apprehensive face in the mirror.
“Monsieur Dean has arrived,” her seamstress came in to advise her. “Ooh, là là! He will faint. I may.” She fanned her face.
“Thank you,” Luli said, accepting the compliment graciously, as her mother had taught her to do. Anything less would suggest she believed herself inferior in some way.
Luli gave herself a final scrutiny, adjusted her posture and ensured she stood as tall as she was able. Then she thought back to the puppy she had played with as a child. She didn’t recall whom it had belonged to, but the memory was one she had always used to awaken a feeling of happiness within her. It was the happiest she’d ever felt.
She faltered. Had she really not had a happy moment since then?
“Perhaps you would like to carry this instead?” the seamstress said, offering a Cleopatra clutch in black alligator skin with an ornate silver clasp.
Luli had kept her wallet in her line of sight the entire time she’d been here, terrified that if it disappeared, she would. She used the excuse of changing purses to check again that her precious identification was still in her possession. She handed off the empty wallet to the woman who promised to bag it with the items going to the car.
Emotion threatened to swamp her afresh as she absorbed what Gabriel had given her with a few legal documents. Options. Possibility. The gift of existence was greater than any haute couture dress or designer handbag or limitless credit card.
It was a miracle.
She did have a more recent memory of happiness, she realized. This. As she snapped the clutch closed and turned its tiny lock, she let the glow of gratitude toward him seep through her until joy shone from her smile and radiated from her demeanor.
With every ounce of grace she had ever possessed, she walked to the reception lounge.
* * *
Gabriel turned from instructing the couturier to box up as much as possible by morning so they could take it on the jet with them—and all the air was punched from his lungs.
A goddess approached in an unhurried gait that rocked her hips. Her skirt wafted back from her mile-long legs and her breasts bounced lightly above a long, slender waist. Her hair slithered in loose ribbons of caramel with glints of cool platinum against the warm gold of her bare shoulders and upper chest.
Her face was an angel’s, luminous and pure. Aside from the dramatic lines that accented her eyes and gave them a hint of tilt, she wore little makeup. Or wore it so well, it was barely noticeable. Her lashes were naturally long and thick. He’d studied them while she had slept on the plane. Her succulent lips were accentuated with a delicate pink and shone with gloss. Her smile was one of exultation. Whatever she was celebrating, he decided she was entitled to it.
He couldn’t fault her in that moment for one damned thing.
She halted before she reached him, struck a pose, pivoted to show the back of the dress. It lifted and floated back down before she pivoted again and continued toward him with a playful sparkle in her eye.
The entire move had been executed so smoothly, he chuckled with enjoyment.
“Maximum points for first impression, I hope. Otherwise we start again.” She met his gaze without shyness, smiling, utterly composed.
She was sexy as hell.
Virgin, he reminded himself, yet the only thing that kept him from ravishing her on the spot was their rapt audience.
She was waiting for his judgment, he realized, as she continued looking at him and he noted tension creep in around her smile. The flutter of her pulse in her throat grew more rapid, exactly as it had been when she had quietly challenged him in his grandmother’s office.
“You broke the scale.” He brought her hand to his mouth, wanting to place his lips in far more intimate places than her soft knuckle. “And good thing because I’m too hungry to wait while you start again. This is for you.”