by Olivia Gates
When they couldn’t reach a compromise, he’d suggested they leave it up to Leo to choose when he grew older.
Not that this was a time to think of names. Now it was time to be swept into the whirlwind of preparations.
* * *
“So your man is so stingy, he wants to squeeze one major and another monumental event into one?”
Cali rushed out of the bathroom at hearing the deep teasing voice, squealing in pleasure at finding Aristedes and Selene and their two kids standing on her suite’s doorstep.
Though she was already so tired all she wanted was to collapse in bed and snooze for ten hours straight, she hurtled herself at the quartet, deluging them with hugs and kisses.
As she carried Sofia and cooed to her how her auntie had missed her and how her cousin Leo couldn’t wait to have someone his age around, Aristedes continued his mockery.
“I’ve heard of double birthdays or weddings, but a baby birthday and the wedding of said baby’s parents? That’s new.”
Selene nipped his chin in tender chastisement. “You are not going to start playing the nitpicking brother-in-law.”
Aristedes turned indulgent eyes to his wife. “That’s my kid sister over here. You bet I’m going to watch that Russian wolf’s every breath and hold him accountable for her every smile. And if I see as much as one tear...”
Selene curled her lips at him. “You mean like the rivers you made me cry once?”
He narrowed his eyes, clearly still disturbed that he’d caused her pain for any reason. “That was before we married.”
Selene arched one elegant, dark eyebrow at him. “And now you’re walking the line because I have not one but three hulking, overbearing Greek brothers watching your every breath and holding you accountable for my every smile.”
“If you think those brothers of yours have any...”
“Down, Aris.” Selene dragged him down for a laughing kiss. “That was just me teasing you to make you lay off Maksim.” At his harrumph, which said he took severe exception to any allusions—if even in jest—that her brothers could ever influence his behavior, especially concerning her, she turned to wink at Cali. “He still has humorless blackouts. But I’m working on him.”
“You’ve done a miraculous job so far.” Cali giggled, fiercely happy to see how adored her eldest brother was by the woman who owned his heart. “Before you, we didn’t think he had humor installed at all. We didn’t think he was human!”
“Like your man, you mean?” Aristedes twisted his lips, hugging Selene more securely, his eyes darting to keep track of Alex, who’d climbed Cali’s bed and was playing with the articles on her nightstand. “He was established as an arctic Russian robot of the highest order.”
Selene chuckled. “Seems we’ll discover that your man and mine are twins separated at birth.”
Cali burst out laughing. “Just substitute Russian for Greek and anything you say about one could well be describing the other.”
Aristedes pursed his lips, not quite mockingly this time. “Good news for your man is he finally did the right thing. And he wore you down in record time, too.”
“You’re wrong on both counts, since I was the one who asked him to marry me, and three months felt like forever.”
A lethal bolt of lightning burst in Aristedes’s steel eyes. “You mean you were the one trying to pin him down to a commitment all this time?”
She held up a placating hand. “First, ‘down, Aris,’ like Selene just said. Second, there is no pinning down involved. We both want this with every fiber of our beings. Third, he asked me to marry him the first night he came back and I turned him down, but he proceeded to dedicate his life to me and Leo anyway. Then just yesterday, I faced it that we have no life without him. But knowing he’d never ask again, so he wouldn’t pressure me, I had to propose this time.”
Still looking unconvinced, Aristedes growled under his breath. “This had better be the truth, Cali.”
Did he suspect she had their mother’s victim affliction? The very thing their sisters had, to one degree or another?
She held his eyes reassuringly. “It is. I don’t have a blind-eye-turning bone in my body.”
His eyes bored into hers as it to gauge the veracity of her claim. Then he inhaled. “As long as you’re sure...”
“I am.” She handed him Sofia, who’d nestled into her neck and gone to sleep, and ran to fetch Alex. Once she had him carrying both of his children, she turned him around toward the door. “Now I’ll borrow your wife and you go fetch me Melina, Phaidra, Thea and Kassandra, too.”
“You called?”
The cheerful voice was Thea’s. The next second, she had appeared in the doorway, followed by everyone Cali had just named. They were all wearing the same dress that was sculpted over Selene—an incredible sleeveless creation with an off-shoulder décolletage, nipped waist and flowing skirt in powder-blue, supple satin embroidered with gold thread. Which meant they were serving as her bridesmaids. The ever-present lump in her throat expanded.
“How’s that for fast service?” Kassandra chuckled.
“You’re mind readers.” Cali pounced on them and dragged them in, before turning back to Aristedes. “You go see what Maksim has planned for you during the ceremony, but behave or I’ll sic Selene on you.” Aristedes gave a sigh of mock resignation, dropping a kiss on her cheek, then another on Selene’s lips.
Before he walked away, she clung to him. “Is he here?”
His lips thinned. “Andreas? I would have skinned him alive if he didn’t come.”
She winced. “You have a thing for skinning alive men who don’t perform to your standards, don’t you?”
He exhaled. “Lucky for him, I won’t have to this time. He wasn’t coming when it was only Leo’s birthday, but as per his words, ‘not even a bastard like him would miss his kid sister’s wedding.’”
Not exactly the enthusiasm she would have hoped for from her older brother, but all that mattered was that Andreas was here. Everyone was here.
Her eyes filled, her chest tightened. As it seemed was her natural state these days.
Aristedes kissed her again. “Now hurry and be a ready bride so I can give you away. And ladies, don’t get so carried away dressing her up that you lose track of time and keep us waiting too long.”
“We don’t have long,” Cali wailed as she closed the door to drown out the sound of his infuriating chuckling, then turned to the grinning women. “Wait until you see what Maksim sent me for a wedding dress. I’m afraid to even...approach the thing, let alone wear it. And to think I sent away those stylists and beauticians Maksim hired to help me get ready, thinking I can manage.”
Selene smiled. “Based on his similarity to Aris, I bet he has them standing by in case you change your mind.”
“He did send in plan B.” Melina pointed at herself.
Phaidra nodded. “Yep. He barely saluted us before almost chasing us here so we’d run to tend to your needs.”
“But what were you thinking sending professionals away, you silly girl?” Thea scolded. “Since when do you know the first thing about makeup and hairdressing, when you never use any with your disgustingly perfect coloring and hair?”
Cali sighed as they approached the dressing room. “Your all-too-kind compliments aside, that’s why I didn’t want their services. Makeup and a hairdo would make me look different, and I don’t want Maksim to find a woman he doesn’t know walking down the aisle to him. Then I saw the so-called wedding dress and its accessories and almost fainted. Here...” She turned on the dressing room’s lights. “You’ll see what I mean.”
Everyone blinked and their jaws dropped.
But it was Kassandra, of course, who recognized what that masterpiece was.
Her exclamation reverberated in the spacious room. “Tha
t’s Empress Alexandra Feodorovna’s dress!”
Yep. Maksim had gotten her the dress of the freaking last tsarina of Russia. She’d recognized it from her extensive research into his motherland’s history.
Kassandra shook her head in disbelief. “It has to be a replica. That V-shaped satin inlay in the bodice below the embroidery was red in the original. This one’s is—” she swung her dazed gaze to Cali “—the exact color of your eyes.”
Cali’s eyes misted again at the lengths he’d gone to at such short notice. “I thought so at first, but couldn’t figure out how he could have had a replica made in under ten hours. The more plausible, if more insane, explanation is that he had the original customized to me.”
“But...but—he couldn’t have!” Kassandra looked faint with even imagining this. This would be tantamount to sacrilege to the designer in her. “That dress, if it’s the real thing, is a...a relic. He couldn’t have tampered with it for any reason. And how could he have gotten his hands on it at all? God, Cali, just who is this man you’re marrying?”
“A very, very influential man, m’dear,” Selene retorted.
But Kassandra was rushing to closely examine the dress in openmouthed shock and wonder and was joined by the others.
Selene remained beside Cali. “For your ears only, Cali, since the ladies are overwhelmed enough, I wouldn’t put obtaining such an artifact past Maksim. Literally anything is possible with our one-in-a-billion men.”
Kassandra turned stricken eyes to them. “It’s done ingeniously, but I can detect where the azure inlay overlies the original red. It is the dress.”
Cali shuddered. “So I was right to fear touching it.”
Thea scratched her head. “Apart from its pricelessness, how do you put it on? I don’t see any zippers or buttons.”
“It does seem as if there is no way to get into it,” Phaidra agreed.
“Oh, of course there is.” Kassandra waved their stymied perplexity away with the assurance of an expert. “And it’s a good thing you declined putting on makeup, Cali. I would have had an ulcer dreading you’d smudge this one-in-history masterpiece.” She picked up the extremely heavy dress reverently, her eyes eating up the details before turning to the others. “You ladies sit down over there—” she indicated the brocade couches on the other side of the room “—while I get Cali into this, and we’ll get this show on the road.”
Selene curtsied. “You’re the boss here, Kass.”
Melina bowed before Kassandra with arms stretched in mock worship. “She is the goddess, you mean. She conjured those bridesmaid’s dresses in Maksim’s demanded shade for all of us in under three hours!”
Imitating their sister, Thea and Phaidra bowed to Kassandra, who touched their gleaming heads in mock magnanimity, before they all burst out laughing.
Sobering a bit, Kassandra said, “Seriously, I couldn’t have gotten everything done on that short a notice. I made the final selections, but it was Maksim’s magic wand that had the dresses adjusted and flown in to your doorsteps in time.”
As Cali’s eyes welled and her sisters swooned over her groom’s gallantry, Kassandra shooed them away again.
Clearly delighted to not have to handle Cali’s wedding artifact, to sit down and watch as if they were in a fashion show, everyone hurried to comply with Kassandra’s directives while Cali rushed after her to the changing room.
Ten minutes later, she stood gaping at herself. It was a good thing she’d declined a professional hairdo and makeup. With only the dress, she looked totally transformed. The white satin masterpiece molded to her like an extension of her. The bodice opened on a plunging off-the-shoulders oval décolleté, pointing into a sharp V at the nipped waist. The long sleeves opened longitudinally at the armholes and flowed down, folding back to expose her arms whenever she moved them. The skirt was bell shaped in the front with a detachable ten-foot train at the waist that folded softly at the back with pleats of tulle.
The bodice below the décolleté, with that newly installed azure-satin inlay, was embellished in prominent silver flower wreaths, and the borders of the sleeves and train, as well as the middle of the bodice and skirt, were all embroidered in complex golden garlands. A panel of gold velvet traveled down the midfront with pearl and diamond buttons, and the kokoshnik, the headdress that stood for a veil, was exquisite snow-white lace worked with the same designs.
Cali let out a ragged breath, still hardly believing her own eyes. “I don’t think I could have gotten into this thing if you weren’t here, Kass.”
“I trust Maksim will know how to get you out of it?” Kassandra chuckled, then frowned in alarm. “Do you get how we put it on you to instruct him if he runs into trouble? If he gets frustrated being unable to peel it off you and damages it, I’d...”
“Yeah, have an ulcer.”
“Ulcer is for makeup smudges,” Kassandra scoffed. “For an actual tear? Nothing less than an aneurysm.”
Cali’s heart slammed painfully against her ribs.
Of all the things to mention, why would Kassandra say this specifically? Was this more than a coincidence? The fates telling her something through her unwitting friend...?
Just how ridiculous was she being? People blurted out things like this all the time. It was she who was hypersensitive to it.
Her smile wavered as she met the other woman’s eyes in the mirror. “Shall we let my sisters be the ones to help with the headdress and accessories?”
“Yeah, they can help with all the indestructible articles. And let’s have Phaidra twist your hair up like her own hairdo. It’ll suit you and the accessories perfectly.”
Even in her lingering dismay, she smiled at Kassandra’s protectiveness of the dress, which only a true artist would feel toward an irreplaceable work of art.
The others’ reaction to her appearance confirmed that she looked like a totally different woman. Her sisters, especially Melina, as her eldest sister, went all teary eyed at the sight of the baby of the family looking like an empress, and basically becoming an empress of the new world, since her groom was an emperor of industry and commerce.
As they gathered around her, Kassandra stopped them from hugging her so their makeup and perfume wouldn’t stain the dress. Teasing Kassandra about her new obsession, they started adorning Cali in the jewelry Kassandra insisted had been that particular dress’s, especially the breathtakingly ornate crown of white gold, pearls and diamonds.
Then it was time. To marry Maksim.
She rushed out of the suite as fast as the dress allowed her with the rest behind her, trying to help her with her train, then giving up because she needed no help at her speed, since it flew behind her on the marble floors of the mansion.
They had to pull her back at the entrance of the dance hall so she wouldn’t spill in. She forced herself to walk in as if she weren’t a mass of excitement and screaming nerves.
And she found herself stepping into a place she felt she’d never seen before. It had been transformed into a scene from the most sumptuous times of imperial Russia. The paneled-in-gold walls gleamed under the combined lights of the crystal and gold-plated metal sconces hanging between them and the spotlights that were directed toward the thirty-foot painted ceiling, reflecting on the scene to drench it in magical golden glow.
Against each side of the length of the gigantic rectangular hall, endless tables were set, leaving the rest of the elaborate hardwood floor empty, with only an aisle running down its middle. The tables were covered by an organza tablecloth with the symbol of the estate—a cross between a phoenix and an eagle with its wings spread—repeated in a pattern throughout. Tatjana had told her that the extravagant sets adorning the tables came from a service of Sevres porcelain Napoleon Bonaparte had given to Tsar Alexander. There were only about three hundred people seated there, with the rest of the guests attending the re
ception/birthday afterward.
Among those, she looked for one person first. Andreas.
It was actually hard to believe he’d come for her wedding, when he hadn’t for Leonidas’s funeral.
She didn’t look long. He stood out in the bright, festive scene, emanating his own deep shadows. He wasn’t sitting with the rest; he was standing almost at the entry, apart, alone. And, as always, he looked like a barely leashed predator, his black hair and eyes matching the darkness he exuded.
He met her eyes across the distance, didn’t smile. Then he raised his hand and placed it flat over his heart.
Her nerves jangled. She loved Andreas but had never figured him out—or if her emotions were reciprocated, if he even felt anything for anyone. This simple gesture somehow told her everything he’d never said. He did love her—and probably loved the rest of his siblings, too, just in his own detached, unfathomable way.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t stop to savor this rare moment, had to relinquish his gaze, move on.
Tatjana captured her focus next. She was at the middle of the table to the left, looking majestic in an elaborate gold-satin dress that she believed belonged to one of Russia’s grand duchesses. Rosa, in something sumptuous from Tatjana’s wardrobe, was standing behind her, with an enthralled Leo in a vivid blue-and-gold miniature of an adult costume, looking so absolutely adorable her heart flailed in her chest.
She kept her eyes averted from the end of the hall. She knew Maksim was there, flooding the hall with his overpowering presence, permeating her cells with his influence. She wanted to keep him for last. There would be no looking anywhere else after she laid eyes on him.
Aristedes, in his resplendent tuxedo, strode toward her, smiling into her dazed eyes as he took her arm.
As they walked down the royal-blue-satin aisle, spread on both sides with white-and-gold rose petals, he said, “Your man throws a mean party in record time. At least I hope he does, and this isn’t how he intended to celebrate a one-year-old’s birthday.”
She wanted to explain that this was all new, but had no more breath. Only her feet remained working on autopilot. For she had finally looked down the aisle. At Maksim. It was a miracle she remained erect.