Chapter 19: Dress Rehearsal

Leona's POV

The green dress still fit.

I stood in front of the long mirror in our dressing room on Friday night, the night before the gala.

I turned sideways to check.

My stomach was flat.

Nothing about me showed what was inside me yet.

The gray cat lay on the end of the bed, watching with his chin on his paws.

"You're going to wear that tomorrow," Elias said from the doorway.

"I'm going to wear it exactly the way I wore it that night."

"The same dress."

"The same room. The same woman at the microphone." I looked at him in the glass. "I want her to see it coming."

He came in and shut the door on the cat, who made a noise of deep betrayal.

He stood behind me and looked at us both in the mirror, his hands loose at his sides.

"Zip me down," I said.

"Leona."

"I want to see your face when you do it."

He found the zipper at the small of my back.

It slid down smoothly all the way, with no stick this time.

The satin fell off my shoulders and gathered at my hips, and I stepped out of it and stood in my underwear with my hands on the dresser.

His breath went out of him.

"Look at that," he said, very low.

"At what?"

"At you."

His hands came up my ribs and settled over my stomach, spread wide.

I put my hand over his.

"It's too early," I said. "There's nothing to feel."

"I know."

"Then why do you do that?"

"Because I want it to know me."

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Called Me Barren, I Married a Billionaire from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.