Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
And here she was, trying to deal with the fallout of nearly being left at the altar, being basically told she wasn’t sexually appealing and losing her house.
It was too much to bear and she needed to dosomething.
What is it you want?
To stop thinking so damned much.
She put on red lipstick, thicker eyeliner than usual. She fluffed her hair up until she didn’t fully recognize the woman that was looking back at her in the mirror. This woman might understand how you could go a little bit crazy over sex. This woman might make a man go crazy over sex.
Maybe this woman could cut loose and not try to choreograph everything.
Except this woman was still Rue.
Except then she felt her confidence crumple, because she wasn’t that woman. It was some other woman. A woman she had never seen before. A woman she didn’t know or understand.
She had turned her fiancé into a man she didn’t recognize. Into a stranger.
The firm knock on the bedroom door startled her.
“Come in.”
Justice pushed the door open, and froze. He looked her over, slowly, and she felt her face getting warm.
“What? You act like you’ve never seen me in a dress before.”
“I haven’t seen you in one like that.”
And she realized that Justice King had just checked her out. His eyes flickered downward, looked at her breasts, then down her legs. Justice had seen more women naked than maybe any man she had ever known, and he had just looked twice at her body.
So either he wasn’t discerning, which was definitely one way to look at it, or she looked really good.
Really good.
The thought that he might have looked and seen her as attractive made her feel warm in a way she knew it shouldn’t.
“Do I look okay?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“It’s just that youlooked.”
“I’m lookingatyou, of course I looked.”
“There’s noof courseabout it,” she said, feeling warm and restless. “I mean did you... did you look?”
It seemed very important to know. Because she felt unattractive and sad right now. Because he was... Because his reaction to her in her wedding dress had mattered and somehow so did this.
“I... Rue,” he said.
“What?”
“I don’t know how to have this conversation with you.”
“But did you?” Danger.Danger, so much danger. Why was she doing this?
“Yes,” he said, finally.
