27
MARGARET
ROWS UPON ROWS of dresses line the store I’m standing in. Agent James is my company on this trip, part protection and part bridesmaid. We’re out in the open, hoping word may get back to Anton that I’m here, in Vegas, searching for a wedding dress.
I can’t settle the butterflies that take flight in my stomach at the thought of marrying Liam, fake or not.
I was most surprised that he was so into the idea of everything, of faking a wedding to pull Anton out of his cowardly hiding spot. Who knew a man so twisted would be scared of the government? I suppose once you know you’re backed into a corner, you’ll do whatever is necessary to stay away from them.
“What about this?” I ask and then stop, holding it up, looking at her in question. “Wait, what’s your name?”
“Agent James,” she replies stiffly, looking at our surroundings with a bit of disgust on her face.
“I know that one, but what about your real name?” I clarify.
“It’s not important.”
I let my arms drop from where I was holding a dress up to my body and give her a look. “Look, this might be fake, but it also might be my only chance to be a bride. I’d like to at least know my only bridesmaid’s name.”
She sighs and looks at me. Her face gives away her annoyance, but I don’t let up on the stare I’m holding. “Fine. It’s Gemma.”
“Gemma James?” I say.
“I didn’t pick it,” she replies, raising her hands in the air. “Did you find one or not?” She gestures toward the dress in my arms.
“I don’t know…this one is just not my style.”
“What is your style?” she asks, quirking a brow.
I hesitate before replying, knowing my answer isn’t what we’re looking for, but it is the truth. “Pants,” I say, chuckling lightly. I take a minute to watch her; she’s a rigid woman, but she’s beautiful. It’s amazing that she’s an FBI agent when she could easily be a model.
“How’d you get into being an FBI agent?” I ask her. I don’t expect her to give me a real answer—she doesn’t seem like a very personable person—but I want to know the people who have helped me out these last few weeks. She helped Ford and me escape our own personal hell.
“I didn’t really plan for it.” She fingers one of the gowns that surrounds us and sighs, her shoulders dropping and her gaze softening. “I was in school, finishing a pre-law degree.” Now, a lawyer—that I can picture. “One night I was working late, and I didn’t think about anything but getting home and getting to sleep. It was finals week and I was pulling twenty-hour days, sometimes more. It was dark, the campus only dotted with a few stragglers who were just as tired as I was. It wasn’t supposed to be dangerous.”
A touch of vulnerability reaches her voice and I wait patiently, knowing I won’t like the ending but needing to hear it anyway.
“A guy I was classmates with came up to me really suddenly, and I didn’t think anything of it. We were friends, kind of. I was always so busy in class that I didn’t really make a ton of them, but we’d talked before and he was nice enough. He offered to walk me back to my dorm that night, and I said yes. We talked about the class we shared and how the professor was a dick.” She scoffs, rolling her eyes at the memory and seemingly forgetting I’m there. She hasn’t once looked up at me. “We were almost there when it happened. He asked me out and I—as politely as I could—turned him down. It wasn’t even a bad excuse—I just said I was too busy with school, too tired to go out or start anything when finals were stacking up, but he couldn’t take no for an answer. He easily outweighed me by about eighty pounds, and it took nothing for him to attack me.”
Gemma clears her throat and blinks her eyes, the mist from them fading. When she looks up at me, she almost seems surprised I’m still there.
“Anyway, he got off on a fine, and that was when I decided I needed to change some things. I joined the police academy, then Quantico, became an FBI agent and never looked back.”
She goes back to looking at the dresses in front of her, but I can tell she’s not used to telling that story and it’s made her vulnerable. “Wow.” My mind is reeling after what she just told me, at the idea that one decision, one incident changed her whole life. “That’s incredible.”
Gemma doesn’t respond, giving me a tight smile. “You said pants, right?” She walks over to a rack we passed a ways back. “I saw just the thing.” She pulls out the hanger and my eyes widen, taking in the piece she’s holding out—or should I say, the pieces.
“That’s gorgeous,” I say, fingering the sleeve of the top. “But I don’t think I can pull it off. It’s very…form-fitting.”
Gemma scoffs. “Are you kidding? You have just the right amount of curves. Try it on.” She thrusts it into my hands and pushes me toward the dressing room. “We do have a few other things to do before we take down the biggest drug lord in America, ya know?”
Her sarcasm catches me off guard, but I obey and go into the first open room. I pull the curtain closed and carefully hang the outfit on the hook. As I’m putting it on, I hear Gemma get a call, and I eavesdrop through the curtain. I mean, surely if it was that private, she wouldn’t be standing right by the room.
“He got a tux? Like a real one?” Gemma asks, and my brows rise in amazement, a small smile touching my lips. Liam in a tux? Damn. I don’t know if my ovaries can handle that. “Well, I think this one is her outfit, so we shouldn’t be much longer,” she replies to the caller; I’m guessing it’s Ford.
She’s confident this is the outfit when she hasn’t even seen me in it yet. I finish up the last button and move around in it—I have to be able to move to do what we have planned. It’s surprisingly comfortable.
I step out, and Gemma’s only reaction is a raised eyebrow while I walk past her and onto the small platform so I can look in all the mirrors arranged there. I look up and scrunch my eyebrows. The garments don’t make me look like me.