Page 105 of The Bad Girl

Chapter 36

Nadine

“Oh my God! This cannot be happening!” Allison sobs as she gazes into the mirror in her wedding dress that is getting dangerously close to bursting at the seams around her midsection.

“You look fine,” a pretty brunette bridesmaid says, but it’s a lie.

Allison, figuring she’d be four months pregnant at her wedding, read that her fetus would be four ounces and chose her dress accordingly—which was pretty fucking stupid. It makes me realize just how useless her other bridesmaids are.

“I don’t look fine!”

“There’s not much we can do with this dress because of the way it fits. It’s not meant to accommodate pregnancy,” the tailor says.

“I’ll never be able to wear this on my wedding day!”

I decide to reply before the others, so she’s not fed any more bullshit. “You’re right, but you need to calm down so we can look at the other options. Something with a looser fit.”

Her face contorts into horror. “I don’t want a loose fit! I don’t want to look pregnant in my wedding dress! That’s why I scheduled the wedding so quickly after I found out Eric knocked me up!”

“Well, there’s no getting out of this compromise,” I say firmly.

I know I’m being unusually harsh, but after being at the dress shop for two hours, it’s about time we made some progress.

She turns, eyeing her side profile in the mirror. “If I don’t move much, this will work. I just have to have all the pictures taken straight on.”

“You still have three weeks to go, you can’t fast, and you’re only going to get bigger—you might as well kiss this dress goodbye,” I say to the gasps of the other bridesmaids.

“Stop, just stop!” Allison breaks out into a fresh round of sobs, the three other bridesmaids all rushing to her.

A thin redhead, Stephanie, casts me a scathing gaze as she takes Allison into her arms. “There, there. It’s going to be fine. Maybe you won’t get any bigger.”

I roll my eyes at the idiot. “Really? What kind of a friend are you if you’re feeding her these lies? She needs to get a dress that will fit her properly, even if it’s not her dream dress.”

“I need-I need some air,” Allison gasps, rushing towards the door.

The other girls follow, each of them glaring daggers at me, but I decide to stay behind, unable to deal with the tender-hearted Stepford friends she now surrounds herself with.

“Oh, Aly, don’t worry! You’re going to look great! There’s no possible way that in three weeks you’ll gain so much as an ounce! You could walk down the aisle in a bikini, and no one would ever guess you were pregnant.”

I laugh to myself at the absurdity of it and hope to God that when I get married, I have someone with some common sense guiding me through it all. What the hell do they expect, some expert dressmaker to come to their aid?

And then it hits me.

No, you can’t ask. The contract was signed, and you’re set up for years to come. Nothing good can come of this,the angel on my shoulder says.

But the devil whispering into my ear has other ideas.

You’re a bad girl now. What do you care about contracts? He has something you need.

I pull out my phone, bringing up Harry’s contact info because I was told by legal that I’m blocked from Maxwell’s phone. He picks up after three rings.

Harry:What do you want, peasant? Don’t you know it’s rude to call people nowadays?

I haven’t talked with Harry since the night I met with Tom. I suppose he figured his work was done and went on his way.

Nadine:I need your help. I know you’re with Maxwell, I need you to hand your phone to him.

Harry:Wasn’t it stipulated in your contract that you wouldn’t try to contact him.