Starfire (Erotic Romance) (Peaches Monroe)

by Strong, Mimi

  Shayla: LOL! Good luck with that.

  Me: We could have a moment. I just have to shut up and look pretty. Maybe by candlelight?

  Shayla: He’s never going to give you what you crave. You know I’m Team Adrian now. Unless Keith Raven comes back from Italy.

  Me: Adrian is really great.

  Shayla: I’m going for brunch with him and Golden. Doesn’t that make you jealous? Don’t you want to fly back here and claim that tall freak as your personal pleasure partner?

  Me: If Dalton doesn’t give me a little piece of his heart this weekend, maybe I will.

  Shayla: Piece of his heart? Excuse me while I barf.

  Me: Any advice?

  Shayla: Got any unexplored holes to offer?

  Me: You know I don’t.

  Shayla: Fuck. I guess you’ll have to talk to him or whatever.

  Me: We could talk about our feelings. I can’t believe I just wrote that.

  Shayla: You could tell him about the you-know-what.

  (I knew she meant my pregnancy, and how I almost died when I went into labor at a very stupid fifteen.)

  Me: I want him to open up, not run away screaming.

  Shayla: Honesty is a two-way street, sweetie.

  Me: Stop making the I’m-right face. I can tell.

  Shayla: I’m also doing your I’m-right dance.

  We exchanged a few more messages saying goodbye, and I put away the phone. Vern and Dalton were busy figuring out driving directions and the vehicle’s navigation system.

  The conversation with Shayla could have gone better. I didn’t like the idea of her having brunch with Golden and Adrian, and I didn’t care for her suggestion to tell Dalton my secret.

  I pulled out my compact and freshened my makeup. One thing I felt good about was my new plan. No matter what it took, I would get Dalton to admit the engagement was about more than saving his career.

  CHAPTER 17

  Our first stop in San Francisco was at Pier 39, where we got to see the sea lions hanging out near the wharfs. They were actually a noisy group, grunting and barking at each other.

  Dalton was feeling the chill in the air, so we went looking for a souvenir shop.

  “No wonder you’re cold,” I said, poking at his shirt. “You’ve got holes all through here, and this fabric is crazy thin. Did you get this shirt off a hobo?”

  “Maybe.”

  Vern, who’d been giving us some distance, saw me bugging Dalton about his shirt and said to me privately, “He’s going through a fashion phase.”

  Dalton followed me into a souvenir shop. I bought him the most outrageously tacky zip-up jacket I could find, with an embroidered Golden Gate Bridge across the front.

  “Perfect disguise!” he said as he zipped into the thick sweatshirt. “And feels like a hug.”

  He’d been getting stared at by a few people, but nobody had come up and asked him for his autograph or a photo yet.

  The sweatshirt was a good disguise, and we looked just like all the other tourists milling around.

  At the Pier 39 market, we walked by a table of leather goods that drew Dalton’s eye. He selected a fanny pack—one of those bags that’s built into a belt—which he paid for and quickly wrapped around his waist.

  Grinning, he said, “Do I look like a tourist, or what?”

  I pulled a pair of huge, pink-framed sunglasses from a nearby display and put them on. “These are so nobody recognizes me out shopping with some weirdo in a fanny pack.”

  He handed the vendor some money for my sunglasses. “My fiancée will take those glasses, and give us half a dozen of those pins.”

  Despite my protests, he proceeded to flair up my hoodie with an assortment of pins with goofy sayings on them, about leaving my heart in San Francisco, welcoming the zombie apocalypse, being a witty 1950s housewife, and giving zero fucks while dancing in an alpine meadow.

  Vern gave us an approving nod. “Excellent tourist disguise, but we’ve got eyes on us at six o’clock. Don’t look, just turn around and keep moving.”

  I grabbed Dalton’s hand and hurried with him into the crowd. As he had for the last few hours, Vern followed us, staying back about six feet and keeping his eyes open for potential trouble. He wasn’t a tall man, or very imposing as a bodyguard, but Dalton assured me it was his keen eyes and instincts for avoiding trouble that made Vern invaluable.

  (Instincts for avoiding trouble made Vern the exact opposite of Dalton, which was probably why they were such a good match.)

  We had a quick lunch, then made our way back to the truck. From there, we started driving to our main destination, which was a bridal shop near Union Square. I’d never heard of Union Square before, but I’d picked up a tourist map and was poring over it in the back seat as we drove.

  “San Francisco is pretty small,” I said to Dalton, who was still keeping his distance from me by sitting in the front seat. “Seven miles by seven miles. You know, that’s not much bigger than Beaverdale, space-wise, but there are so many people here, and they’re all so colorful.” I peered out the tinted windows to find street signs and place our location on the map. “Hey, can we go to the hippie area? And see those cool houses—the painted ladies? Oh, and I want to see Chinatown.”

  “Pace yourself,” Dalton said, laughing. “You haven’t even picked out your wedding dress yet.”

  I looked out the window. “Well, it’s just a fake wedding, so it doesn’t matter to me. I’ll just pick the first one that doesn’t make me look like the tooth fairy.”

  We drove for a few minutes in silence, then Vern pulled the vehicle over to the sidewalk and announced we were at the boutique.

  “Great,” I muttered under my breath as I stepped out. “Goody, goody, can’t wait for this fresh hell,” I grumbled.

  My mother had told me all about her experiences shopping for a bridal gown, and nothing had changed in the last twenty-five years, based on what my cousin Marita had told family about shopping while curvy and pregnant.

  The thing about wedding gowns is, you try on the styles, called samples, and then your dress is custom-made for you. That sounds great, but the samples come in three sizes at most, and they aren’t big girl sizes. At best, the consultants will hold the back together while you admire yourself in the mirror. At worst, you stand there in your slip while they hold the dress up to the front of you.

  Dalton took my hand and asked, “Are you mad that you have to do this with some stupid guy? I know it’s traditional for the bride to try on dresses with her bridesmaids.”

  “Whatever.” I shrugged.

  Dalton asked me to wait a second as he talked to Vern and made arrangements for the rest of the day. From what I overheard, Vern was going to drop our things off at the hotel and take the rest of the day off. Apparently, he’d already had a long day, flying up to Washington from LA to pick me up.

  I shook my head in amazement at the idea of having your own airplane, to fly wherever you wanted. I didn’t even have a car.

  ~

  The interior of the bridal gown store was white, white, white. The floors were an ashy, pickled wood, but everything else was white. Did I mention how white it was?

  A woman clad in pale gray approached us, smiling and saying, “Welcome to San Francisco.” She looked at my new funny buttons on my jacket. “My dear, those buttons are charming. We could add one to your gown for a little something blue.” She laughed merrily at her joke.

  I instantly liked the woman, and not just because she had a body shape similar to the curvy women of my family. Her gray suit hugged her body and showed off her shape, but the most stunning part of her was her snow-white hair, cut in a chin-length bob. She must have gone gray young, because her wrinkle-free face didn’t look a day over forty.

  She widened her eyes at Dalton. “D-man, you’re wearing the hell out of that fanny pack.”

  His green eyes twinkled. “You recognized me right away, Nancy.”

  “Come here!” She didn’t wait, though, but strode r
ight up to him and grabbed his cheeks in her hands. “Wook at dat widdle face.” As she fawned over him, she wiggled her butt like a happy pet greeting a favorite family friend.

  “Good to see you, too,” he said.

  “Why won’t you eat?” she exclaimed. “Have you heard of this wonderful thing? It’s called pastry.”

  I have to admit, I liked Dalton even more now that this stylish woman was squeezing his cheeks and telling him to eat a cinnamon bun from time to time.

  “Are you trying to set a trend?” she asked, pointing at his leather pouch.

  “These are so practical,” he said. “I should design my own line of man bags.”

  She snorted. “Man bags. Honey, think about what you’re saying.”

  As he unzipped his fanny pack to brag about all the stuff he could carry, I looked around the storefront. The front was just a vestibule, and an arched door led, presumably, to the actual dresses. The adjoining hallway was also white and minimal, decorated with white objects, including a white vintage-looking telephone on the wall. If I wasn’t mistaken, it was the exact same model as the yellow one at Peachtree Books.

  “Where are my manners!” Nancy said, turning her excitement back to me. “Here’s your beautiful fiancée. I can’t wait to get her clothes off.”

  Dalton slung his arm around my shoulder protectively. “I know exactly how you feel.”

  Nancy tossed her head back and laughed. “Except I want to get her dressed in taffeta and lace, whereas you’re a very naughty boy.”

  I interrupted to ask, “How exactly do you two know each other?”

  “Nancy was our original costume designer on the show.”

  I gasped, realizing I was in the presence of greatness. “You did the zombie bride dresses?”

  “And all the zombie bridesmaids,” she said, smiling sweetly as her cheeks flushed with pride.

  I started to gush, “You’re amazing! My best friend and I both dressed up as zombie bridesmaids last year for Halloween. We used a hot glue gun to attach all the bones and jewelry to our corsets. We tried to imitate your beautiful designs. I had skeleton hands cupping my peaches, just like the slutty zombie bridesmaid.”

  She clapped her hands together. “Tell me you took photos. Show me, show me!”

  I pulled out my phone and showed her the best pictures, while apologizing for modifying her beautiful, original designs. She told me to not be silly, and that she was beyond flattered.

  Dalton interrupted us, saying, “I hate to be a downer, but I can’t marry a zombie bride. Not again. Nancy, you promised you had some designs for the living?”

  A tall, slim woman in a gray dress appeared in the doorway. “Everything’s ready,” she said to Nancy.

  “No skeletons,” Dalton said.

  Nancy rolled her eyes at Dalton’s comments. “D-man, don’t you wrinkle your forehead like that or you’ll need Botox before you’re thirty, unless you already are, ha ha. I’ve got something much better in mind for your fiancée, based on the notes you gave me.”

  She waved us through to the next room, which was mostly white, but with some relief in the form of a gray carpet and gray furniture. Dalton took a seat on the chaise lounge and unzipped his Golden Gate Bridge sweatshirt. He held his hand out to accept a tall flute of champagne from one of the three gray-clad assistants in the room.

  Nancy herded me over to a curtained changing area, moving like a border collie herding a reluctant lamb. One of the other ladies handed her a gown, which she handed to me.

  “This is the mermaid gown,” she said. “If you look closely, you’ll see it’s not white, but hues of iridescent blue and green.”

  The dress looked like it had floated out of my dreams, shimmering and beaded with everything from crystals to tiny starfish. Nancy wasn’t a less-is-more designer; she was more of a fuck-yeah-let’s-add-more-beads designer, and she made it work.

  After a few moans of wordless appreciation, I finally said, “That is so fucking gorgeous, I could eat it. Sorry about my language, but you’re a genius. Get me a fork and I will eat this dress.”

  Nancy laughed and called over her shoulder, “You’re right D-man, I do love her already!”

  “That’s why I’m locking it down,” he replied.

  Nancy rolled her eyes again. “Locking it down?” she whispered. “Please tell me the proposal didn’t include that particular phrase.”

  “Hard to say. The whole thing happened so fast.” That wasn’t entirely a lie.

  She backed away, still smiling. “This is where I leave you, my dear. Gwendolyn and the others will see to your needs, and as far as I’ll ever know, you love everything. But you must be honest with the girls about what you like or don’t like, and don’t worry about my feelings. This is your dress, for your special day.”

  Nancy disappeared, and the tall woman took her place and officially introduced herself as Gwendolyn. At her beckoning, I took off my clothes, down to my underwear. She lightly patted my face with a tissue to ensure my makeup didn’t transfer to the dress, then she was joined by another girl and they lifted the gown up, over my head.

  To my relief, this dress wasn’t a tiny-sized sample. It was actually too big, and they used plastic clamps to take up some space at the back.

  The dress was so breathtaking, I could barely look at myself in the mirror, for fear of bursting into tears and flooding the whole corset.

  “Show your fella,” said Gwendolyn.

  I walked out of the changing room slowly, trying to pretend this wasn’t a big deal. The staff assured me that it wasn’t that unusual these days to have the groom be part of the dress-selection process. Bulldoodle. They were humoring me, but they were so nice about it.

  Dalton looked me up and down, and he didn’t say anything at all for several minutes. I started to worry, and sweat, and worry about sweating, then worry-sweat some more. Was he getting cold feet?

  Finally, he shared his thoughts, his voice husky and cracking. “The mermaid of my dreams is real.”

  “He likes the dress,” Gwendolyn said, translating helpfully.

  “Me, too,” I whispered, wrapped up in Dalton’s adoring gaze—his cool, green eyes the water for my mermaid dress.

  Gwendolyn said, “Not so fast. We’re not going to take it easy on you just because we like you. Now get back in that change room because you have at least ten more different dresses to try on.”

  “Like hell! Not until I get a glass of champagne.”

  Laughing, she agreed to this, and they brought me a glass in the changing room. I got back down to my underwear to cool off, tossed the champagne back and said, “Gown me up!”

  ~

  After a dozen gorgeous wedding gowns and almost as many glasses of champagne, I walked out of the boutique feeling like royalty.

  “Did you pick the mermaid dress?” Dalton asked. “Or the one with the pink ribbon thing?”

  “Not telling.”

  “You seem really into your dress, for someone who keeps using the word fake to describe our wedding.”

  In response, I zipped open the fanny pack he wore right under his belt buckle and started rifling around in the contents. “Got any gum? You should keep gum in here.”

  “Keep looking.”

  “You don’t have any gum, you pervert.”

  He made a silly face, sticking his tongue out to the side. “No need to stop looking.”

  After a few moments of furtive digging and face-making, I noticed people were staring, so I stopped. I zipped the little bag closed and linked my arm with his, resting my head on his shoulder as we meandered down the sidewalk.

  For the rest of the afternoon, we wandered in and out of stores, including an enormous Bloomingdale’s.

  Every time I looked at something for more than a second, Dalton tried to buy it for me. It took a while to convince him that sometimes I was looking just because I was curious, and I didn’t actually want a diamond-encrusted gold and pewter egg.

  I did, however, find a
watch that was so pretty, it made me want to wear a watch. Dalton had his credit card out before I’d even finished dropping my first hint.

  I wore the watch out of the store, admiring it in the bright sun.

  “That watch will go perfectly with your ring,” he said.

  “You’re right.”

  “You haven’t even looked at the ring.”

  “You don’t know everything, D-man.”

  He shook his head, smiling. “Only Nancy calls me that.”

  “How about David?”

  His smile disappeared at the mention of his original name, and he started walking faster. I had to trot to keep up, as we headed up a hill. San Francisco really is as hilly as it looks in movies.

  I caught up and linked my fingers with his. “Dalton, I want to know who you are, and I want to know who David Blake is, especially if I’ll be marrying him.”

  “My name’s been legally changed.”

  “So, I’ll be Mrs. Deangelo?”

  “I don’t know. Will you?”

  “I have to. I signed the agreement that I’d do ANYTHING.”

  “If you change your last name, you’ll be Peaches Deangelo. Hmm.”

  “I could hyphenate. How long is your publicist planning for us to be married?”

  “How do you know I have a publicist?”

  “Someone was posting pictures of an egg white omelette on your social media accounts while you were drinking champagne in the bridal boutique. Plus you told me, back when we first met.”

  “I can’t get anything by you.” He stopped and peered at the menu posted outside a restaurant with a sprawling sidewalk patio. “Dinner here?”

  “Sure. And then what?”

  “After dinner, I’ll take you back to my hotel room and make sure you know your wifely duties.”

  My jaw dropped and I held my hand over my mouth. “Excuse me, but I told you I have a boyfriend.”

  “Yes, but you’re both seeing other people, so don’t act like you’re not going to spend tonight in my bed. He’s with that little blonde right now, probably. I know things too, Peaches. I have my little birdies who tell me stories.”

  “Who told you?”

  “I took your little friend out for a milkshake. Not the tall one. The short blonde. She’s cute as a button.”