I Bought His Love, Then He Became the Don novel · Chapter 7 of 76

Chapter 7: The Hem

Serena Lazzaro stood on the little platform in the cream silk and didn't know me yet.

I kept my head down and worked the hem.

My boss had sent me to the house in Lake Forest because the usual girl was sick.

Three hundred dollars for one fitting.

That was my father's clinic copay for the month.

"Tighter at the waist," Serena said. "I want him to see I made an effort."

Her bridesmaids were draped over a white sofa with champagne.

There were four of them, and I had known two before I pinned the first inch.

One was the girl who'd had the window desk in my costume studio.

One was the girl in the gray sweater, only she was in green now, and I would have known her mouth anywhere.

Neither of them knew me.

Nobody looks at the woman with pins in her mouth.

One of them asked who "him" was, like she didn't already know.

Serena laughed.

"Only the most dangerous man in Chicago. The party's a week from Saturday. He's proposing in front of everyone."

I pinned. I didn't look up.

"Hey," Serena said. "You. Look at me."

I looked up.

She stared at me for a long moment.

Then she put her hand over her mouth.

"Oh my God. Lucia? Lucia Morelli?"

The room went quiet.

The girl with the window desk set down her glass.

"Hi, Serena," I said around the pins.

She stepped off the platform, dragging the hem I'd just pinned across the floor.

She walked a slow circle around me.

"Girls. Girls, you have to hear this."

"I don't," I said. "Stand still, please. You'll pull the pins."

She didn't stand still.

"Third floor, freshman year. Her daddy built half the parking garages in the city."

She tapped my shoulder with one finger.

"She used to tip a hundred dollars on an omelet. Now I bet she counts her change out loud."

Two of the bridesmaids laughed hard, and I didn't blame them.

I had earned about half of it.

"Do you want to know how she got a boyfriend?" Serena said.

"Serena," I said.

"She bought one."

The laughing stopped. They wanted the rest too much.

"A gorgeous scholarship boy with a sick grandpa. She wired eighty-six thousand dollars to a hospital, and he dated her for it. Like a job."

She put a hand over her heart.

"I was her best friend. I had to sit there and watch."

"For real?" a bridesmaid breathed.

"For real. Then her daddy went broke and ran from his debts, and she ran right along with him. Nobody's seen her in five years."

She smiled down at me.

"Where's the checkbook, Lucia?"

The bridesmaids laughed for real that time.

I knew where the checkbook had gone.

It had gone to my father's clinic, and into the meals I skipped so he could have his.

I didn't owe these women that.

I stood up.

My knees cracked. I'd been kneeling for an hour.

"The hem's pinned on the left," I said. "The right side is loose. Any shop can finish it."

Serena's smile slipped.

"Excuse me? You're not done."

"I'm done."

I started packing my tape and shears into the canvas bag.

"Your shop is getting paid three hundred dollars for this," she said. "I'll call them."

"Call them."

She snatched an envelope off the side table and held it out to me between two fingers.

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