Their efforts had been well worth it, though. It was amazing what could be accomplished in a short amount of time when one had limitless funds and access to a ruthless genius event-planner.
A knock on the door startled a jump out of her, and tea sloshed over her sweater sleeve. It served her right. She had been about to lose herself in thoughts about the King. It was enough that he was devastatingly handsome. She didn’t need to compound the situation by developing Stockholm syndrome.
Moving as quickly as she could, while also steadying the mug, Mina hurried to the door and opened it to find Roz standing in the hallway.
Without a word, the older woman pushed the door open wide and Mina to one side.
“Out of the way, dear,” she rasped.
Mina frowned. The other woman’s behavior was not unusual, but it was unexpected. As far as Mina had understood, they’d had no plans to see each other until the ball tonight.
A young woman also dressed all in black had followed Roz into the room, wheeling a large beauty salon chair and vanity unit in front of her. Another woman sporting an extreme asymmetrical haircut and a color block dress followed. A heartbeat later, a bald man with a salt-and-pepper beard, thick black glasses, and a thin gray sweater entered. The last to come, and the shortest of the lot, was a woman with a face so perfect it looked like a painting. She shut the door behind her.
Mina looked around the suddenly crowded room. “Roz. Everyone... To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”
Before answering, Roz conversed with the first young woman about where to place the salon chair. Then she replied, “We’re here to fix you, my dear.”
Mina laughed. “I wasn’t aware that I was broken—but, thank you, Roz.”
Roz gifted her with a stare utterly devoid of patience and, much like the vacuum of space, of life itself. Roz did not like to repeat herself.
“I did not put together the event of the year in a single week to have it fizzle out at the finale.”
Mina set her tea on a side table and wrapped her arms around herself protectively. “And how does that relate to me?” she asked.
Roz’s eyebrow inched up, setting off alarms in Mina’s head. She had seen that look before.
“You are the finale, dear, and as it is now you simply won’t do.”
Mina frowned. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing. Other than the fact you plan to wear a depressingly square department store cocktail dress to my ball.”
Heat came to Mina’s cheeks even as she shook her head in denial. The dress hadn’t come from a department store. It was from a boutique that had been going out of business. And it was not square.
Reading her mind, Roz said, “Everything you wear is square. Off with it all. Put this on.” She held out an ivory silk robe.
Shoulders slumped, Mina took the robe and turned toward her bathroom with a sigh.
Roz stopped her with a commanding click of her tongue. “Where are you going?”
Mina turned around slowly, feeling as guilty as if she had tried to disobey her mother. She winced. “To change?” she said, the question in her voice acknowledging that it was obviously the wrong answer.
“Not in the bathroom.” Roz shook her head. “Right here. We need measurements.”
The woman with the asymmetrical hair nodded.
Mina shook her head. “No.”
Roz tsked. “Don’t be stubborn, Mina. You don’t have anything that everyone in this room hasn’t seen a million times before.”
The woman with the perfect face smiled encouragingly, adding in a soft, wispy voice, “It’s true.”
With her inherent modesty now being represented as immaturity—at least in the eyes of this roomful of strangers who were waiting to see her naked—Mina gritted her teeth and pulled her sweater over her head. She followed it with the rest of her clothes, until she stood shivering in the bright morning light wearing nothing but her underwear.
“Good figure,” the woman with the perfect face commented.
“Bad underwear,” asymmetrical haircut added.