If the Dress Fits Read online

  If the Dress Fits…

  The Almost Wives Club Book 5

  Nancy Warren

  Ambleside Publishing

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Also by Nancy Warren

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Gabby Brock paced back and forth across the hardwood floors of her airy design studio in Beverly Hills. The elegant gold script on everything from her letterhead to her designer labels read Evangeline, but inside, she’d always be Gabby Brock, the girl terrified to let down her guard even for a second, or all her success could be snatched away.

  Very few people in the world knew her real identity. She had remade herself into Evangeline back in her modeling days when she had stepped as far away from Gabby and the Brocks as she could. She had slipped into her new persona as easily as her brides slid into the pieces of perfection that she now designed for their weddings.

  An uncommon frown creased her forehead. Consciously, she smoothed it out. Her next birthday would be her fortieth and she had no wish to undergo cosmetic procedures before they were absolutely necessary.

  She could still model if she wanted to. Calls came in frequently. But she had left the business before the humiliation of having her face advertise anti-aging products. No, Evangeline stood for youth and promise and glamour. Before she became associated with skin rejuvenating serums and hair color products to hide the gray, she had transitioned from modeling into the world of fashion. Always one to sense the perfect moment to leave the party, she’d left while she was on top and smoothly gone from wearing gorgeous clothes to designing them.

  Naturally, she’d hired a competent staff to oversee all the boring parts of her business, but she’d learned to sew her own clothes when she was little more than a child in the East end of London, using an ancient sewing machine of her gran’s. She’d had a sense of style even then. Building an empire on frothy, expensive lingerie and stunning wedding gowns perfectly suited her needs and personality. She’d aimed for the top of the market and succeeded wildly. Until recently.

  God, she wanted a cigarette.

  Her business and her celebrity reputation were both in trouble. She knew she had one vicious and mentally disturbed former seamstress to blame.

  Curses! Who believed in curses? The clumsy seamstress had stabbed one of their clients during her final bridal gown fitting, causing a spot of blood to bleed through the perfect white satin of her gown. Evangeline was famous for her temper and she had certainly let it rip at the bride-stabbing seamstress. But, instead of cowering away and slinking back to her workstation the dreadful shrew had risen up, shouted back—which was unthinkable in itself—and muttered something incomprehensible in a language Gabby didn’t recognize and announced she had cursed both the dress and Evangeline.

  Not since her first taste of success in the modeling world had Evangeline ever been smacked down. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. One man who’d always given as good as he got was Wade Davenport. Which pretty much explained why they’d never married as planned.

  Once Wade had exited her life, she’d been treated with delicacy and fear. She was perfectly aware that her employees were frankly terrified of her, and that suited her brilliantly. When the seamstress had cursed both her and the dress, she hadn’t given such nonsense as curses a moment’s thought.

  Nor, she was certain, had the bride. Kate Winton-Jones was a modern professional woman. Still, the moment had brimmed with awkwardness. She’d felt bad that the bride had been subjected to such a scene, and so she had gone out of her way to be gracious, even accepting an invitation to what would have undoubtedly been a most tedious wedding between Kate Winton-Jones and her rich but dull husband-to-be, Edward Carnarvon.

  So, it had come as an unpleasant shock when the bride called off the wedding. At the time Gabby had recalled the curse and felt the tiniest shiver waft over her neck.

  Then, that same dress was handed on to Edward’s cousin, Ashley Carnarvon.

  She paced harder, her heels clacking against the hardwood like castanets. She could dance the Flamenco to the echo of her own steps. When the costly dress had been passed on to Ashley Carnarvon, she should have stepped in. She could see now, in hindsight, that was her mistake. Still trying to be gracious, perhaps yet conscious of the embarrassment of being shouted at by an underling, she had graciously allowed a gown she had designed specifically for Kate Winton-Jones to be resized for the shorter, stockier Ashley. Oh, the young woman was attractive enough, but the dress was never right. And that’s when the whispers online began to appear.

  Blog posts and gossip rags picked up the story of the cursed dress. She was positive the seamstress she’d fired was responsible and waited for the gossip to die down. Then Ashley, who’d been handed everything on a silver platter, from the incredible dress to a handsome and extremely eligible groom, chose instead to commit bridal suicide. She’d jumped out the window on her wedding day, leaving a perfectly lovely groom and two hundred guests waiting for her Evangeline gown to walk down the aisle.

  Her suicidal jump had been out of a ground floor window, and into a sports car where a sexy screenwriter waited to whisk her away, so she wasn’t hurt. Evangeline, however, was badly damaged.

  The rumors grew louder, the story started getting picked up. “Always treat people as though you might one day need them for a character reference,” Wade had said to her once. “You’re a public figure, and public opinion is important.”

  Wade treated everyone like they were his good friends. He remembered the names of doormen and asked after their children, he chatted with taxi drivers and said thank you to waiters. She felt that people were paid for a service and should perform it to a high standard. As she always had.

  What Wade, who had grown up in a good family and gone to prestigious schools, could never understand was that her greatest fear was being found out. The fear always lurked, just under the surface, that she, the great Evangeline, was a fraud. An invention of a frightened young girl who had dragged herself up from nothing with no more to offer than a pair of extraordinary blue eyes, good bone structure, freakish height and an iron will.

  She hadn’t gone to finishing school or modeling school or any school but the one of hard knocks. She’d learned by watching and practicing and being ready, always ready for her moment.

  And when that moment came, when a modeling scout approached her on Bond Street, while she was wearing one of her own handmade dresses, she’d grabbed the opportunity with both hands and hung on hard ever since.

  Now she felt her iron clasp slipping. Once the fashion bloggers and paparazzi got hold of the ridiculous curse story, Evangeline had been too busy shoring up her business to do anything about getting that dress out of circulation.

  How could she have been such a fool?

  That was when the first brides started canceling their orders. Her lips thinned in an angry line and not even thoughts of Botox or collagen fillers could make them unclamp. Ungrateful wretches. She only accepted one in four of the brides who begged her to design gowns for them. Now some of the lucky ones had canceled? Well, she made a note of every name and not one of those brides would get a second chance.

  To her shame she had begun accepting brides that normally she never would have taken on as clients.

>   And then the unthinkable happened. Instead of being shut away in an attic somewhere, her gown was passed on a third time and before she’d recovered from the insult that yet again, her lovely creation had been passed around like a bag of cheap toffies, one of her employees forwarded an online ad featuring her gown, her creation, in an advertisement for a secondhand store! Gabby felt as though all her empire were crumbling. She felt in that moment how easily it could all slip away.

  Her rage that day had been monumental. When she flung her laptop across the room and it crashed into the wall, she had a moment’s deep satisfaction, wishing she could smash the curse as easily.

  One thing was clear. She had to get that dress back. She sent an employee to buy the gown but the woman returned empty-handed. The young punk behind the counter of the vintage store had refused to sell her the gown, said it was bringing so much business in that they would continue to display it in their front window for at least a few more weeks.

  Her gown was bringing in business to a two-bit secondhand store? Oh, no.

  She had always known that, ultimately, a woman could only depend on herself.

  She refused to think of what she had done as stealing. She had merely gone into the vintage store when it was busy and no sharp-eyed young man hovered. Instead, an older woman dressed as though she were off to have cocktails with Dorothy Parker was in charge of the store. She’d been more interested in talking to the customers than selling clothing. It was perfect.

  Gabby had waited until the store was quite busy and then breezed in and asked to try on the dress. Even though she was quite famous, and no doubt the store’s owner, Joanne West, would have recognized her from their modeling days together, Jo was nowhere to be seen. Knowing this was her best chance, Evangeline stepped into a fitting room with the gown, then pushed it into the big carrier bag she had brought specifically for the purpose. Peeping through the red velvet curtain of the fitting room, she waited until the shop attendant had her back turned. She swept back out onto Melrose Avenue again before anyone even noticed the gown was missing.

  However, even though the gown was hers, her conscience bothered her. A day or two later, when the vintage store was closed, she’d slipped five thousand dollars in cash, which was the price of the gown, under the door of the shop.

  Now, the dress was out of circulation and that ought to be the end of it.

  She glanced over to where the dress hung in one corner of her large studio. As though it were in the naughty corner. It looked a bit sorry for itself, as it should—three brides and not a single one had worn the gorgeous gown down the aisle.

  Her plan was simply to wait out this unfortunate spell, and with the gown safely in her possession, no more brides could be cursed.

  However, it seemed her problems weren’t over yet. Her employee had not been the only one who had recognized that dress in the advertising. One reporter in particular seemed to revel in her discomfort. Wolf Dixon. Wolf Bloody Dixon. He was a nasty weasel, paparazzi of the crawliest kind, but she was discovering firsthand that while the pen might be mightier than the sword, the Internet blog was mightier than a scud missile. Orders were dropping. Clients were canceling. And that nasty pipsqueak Dixon had the gall to call her office and request an interview.

  Gabby rarely hired consultants. She was too confident in her own abilities. But this mess was getting stickier and she didn’t know how to get out of it. She called Sarah Marsden, a top public relations and media consultant. Sarah had managed to get a philandering senator re-elected and a drug and booze addicted celebrity, who’d flamed out so many times he’d become standard fodder for late-night comedians, back on track. Getting the smudge polished off Evangeline’s image should be a piece of cake.

  Shouldn’t it?

  Chapter 2

  Sarah Marsden walked into Evangeline’s studio with a purposeful stride. She looked like one of her clients; slick, refined, charming, and rehearsed.

  Gabby recognized the type. She was one herself.

  They sized each other up for an instant before she swept forward and held out her hand. “Sarah, it’s lovely to meet you. I’ve heard wonderful things.” She spoke in a clear, well-modulated voice that echoed with English boarding schools and the Queen’s garden party. She’d spent hours watching and copying Princess Diana and royal commentators on the BBC. It would take Henry Higgins himself to detect cockney origins in her speech.

  “Nice to meet you, too.” Sarah shook her hand briefly, and they sat down in the conversation area by the long windows. Sarah got right down to business. “I’ve reviewed all the media reports—and I use the word media in the broadest possible terms—and I have to tell you, this is beyond public relations. The stories are getting tons of hits and spreading. We’re looking at full on crisis management.”

  “Crisis management? Isn’t that what you do when a restaurant gives its clients food poisoning? When people die?”

  “I’m not trying to be dramatic, but your business, which is based so much on your own celebrity, is in serious jeopardy.”

  She sighed. She felt suddenly tired of all the effort she’d put into this great empire. “What do I do?”

  “Give that interview.”

  “To that little weasel, Dixon?”

  Sarah nodded. “He’s a complete ass but he’s got reach. People love his bitchy columns and you’ve made yourself a perfect target. You’ve slipped out of the limelight. Get back in it. Demonstrate your success. I want to see photographs of you at weddings beside blushing brides wearing your gowns. There are brides still wearing your dresses aren’t there?”

  “Of course there are,” she snapped. There simply weren’t as many as there should be.

  “Good.” She nodded briskly. Made a note. “Get me a list of upcoming weddings. We’ll pick the most media-friendly and get some sympathetic journalists there.”

  She needed sympathetic journalists now? God, she wanted a vodka soda to go with that imaginary cigarette.

  “Next. Damage control.”

  “Isn’t that what I hired you for?” She used the tone that always made her underlings quake. Sarah merely looked at her coolly.

  “I’m only as good as the information I get. And so is Dixon. Where is he getting his dirt? He seems to have an inside source.”

  She did not want to think of betrayal within her ranks. Maybe she had a bit of a temper, but she paid her people well and expected loyalty. “My guess is the seamstress is behind it all.”

  Sarah tapped her gold pen on her pad of paper. “Maybe. And that’s another thing we have to do. We need to track down that seamstress. You may need to pay her off, and then have her sign a gag order.”

  Gabby jumped up and began to pace. “Pay the woman who is single-handedly destroying my business? And my life?”

  Sarah sent her the same cool look. “You hired me for my expertise. Be smart enough to take my advice.”

  For a second she teetered on the brink of one of her monumental rages, but she stifled her acid comments. The woman was right. “How do you suggest I find her?”

  “If she’s feeding Dixon information then she’s in the area. Probably still in contact with some of your current staff.”

  She wanted to throw something. “Have they no loyalty?”

  “Maybe they meet to shoot the breeze and have no idea she’s pumping them for information. I suggest you have a meeting and let your people know that all their jobs are in peril. If your company goes down because of this woman and her curse, they’ll be out of work.”

  She hated the idea of coming across as needy. She always presented a strong front, as though she were in complete control. She’d get her right hand, Salvador, to talk to the staff.

  Sarah continued. “If we need to, we’ll hire an investigator. We’ll track her down, pay her off and shut her up.”

  “It’s this reporter I want to shut up.”

  “I’m in complete agreement. But he’ll only stop when his source dries up and you appear successful ag
ain. I’ll draft you speaking points. He’ll try to needle you, and get you to say things you don’t intend to say.” The woman gave her a level look. “Your temper is famous. He’s going to try to get you to blow your top. You can’t let him get under your skin. Do you understand me?”

  “Of course I do. I shan’t let him get to me.”

  “Good. We’ll do some practice interviews. I’ll play him and I’ll try everything I can do to provoke you. Just stick to the script. I’ll be with you during the actual interview.”

  Gabby shook her head. “If he sees you there, he’ll be like a shark scenting blood. No. I don’t want him to know I’m frightened of him or anything he can do.”

  Sarah nodded briskly. “You’re right, of course. If you’re sure you can handle him, it’s better if I stay in the background.”

  “Oh I can handle him all right.”

  She waited until Sarah had left, and then she shut her door. She dug into the bottom drawer of her priceless Chippendale desk and found the pack of Players she’d hidden. She opened the long patio doors and stood by the window smoking in jerky puffs.

  She dressed carefully for her interview with the reporter, Dixon. With the help of her public relations advisor she had chosen a soft, feminine dress in a dusky rose color. There was nothing high powered or businesswoman about it. Her makeup was also done in a soft palate and her hair, her glorious trademark mane of chestnut curls, hung loose. There was nothing threatening, nothing sharp or businesslike about her clothing, her look, or even her environment. She conducted the interview in the same office where she interviewed prospective brides. Instead of sitting behind her desk, she’d been coached to sit in one of the two armchairs that were normally occupied by the client and her mother.

  She desperately wanted a cigarette. Gabby had given up smoking almost ten years ago, but stress brought on powerful urges and every once in a while she succumbed.