Page 40 of The Princess and the P.I.

r/PrivateDicksandJanes

moneyfancam: Who???

[image]

moneyfancam: oh. She definitely did it

How on earth was Fiona supposed to keep her mind on dresses today?

At ten a.m., Maurice walked beside her, pushing open the door to a mall in northern Virginia.

The place was so sparkly. But Fiona dreaded having to make nice with anyone right now.

Not with the certainty that her sister and maybe even her father were now speaking for the church.

Esi denied it up and down, but Fiona knew if it wasn’t outright blackmail it was heavy persuasion.

She and Maurice would have to be more careful about the information they shared in front of her.

The letters were back, little paper ghosts slipped under her door when no one was looking.

Jezebel

Harlot

She wasn’t sure when she’d started hiding them—tucking them into drawers, slipping them inside teacups, cramming them under the bed.

They were piling up, though, and somewhere along the way, she’d lost the thread of logic for why she was hiding them in the first place.

Now the letters just accumulated, little piles of evidence in a case against her.

Each one proof that she was either protecting the church or being a coward. Maybe both. She couldn’t tell anymore.

Fiona saw three women walking toward her and Maurice in slow motion. When they pulled open the doors, the industrial AC blew their hair and clothes, and the effect was not unlike three action stars walking away from an explosion.

Their arrival rippled through the store like a sudden high tide, cutting the quiet ambiance of the upscale department store, with its sparkling chandeliers and soft classical music.

Clerks and managers rushed frantically back to their stations, half-eaten lunches and abruptly cut-off conversations forgotten.

Reddit had been exceptionally cynical about meeting Maurice’s sisters.

Many used video game levels and fairy tale analogies to describe their failed attempts at warming up to them.

The consensus was that they were haughty, indifferent, and ultimately impossible to win over.

Esi’s words kept playing in her head: No dress from Ross is going to convince them…

“Fiona! Finally!” The middle sister, whom Fiona recognized from her relentless googling as Liza Bennett, approached her as if they were in mid-conversation.

“So, you’re helping my brother with a case?

” She and the other two were ignoring the workers buzzing around them like bees. “Do you get to do stakeouts?”

Fiona shook her head no. She couldn’t seem to find her voice. All three women peeled her open with their eyes. She had stayed up until all hours researching Maurice’s sisters, but her nerves still buzzed at the sight of them.

Maurice was not saving her either. He wasn’t introducing them or making it easier, and Fiona wanted to strangle him.

Jump in anytime, Maurice, I’m drowning.

LeDeya mercifully chimed in. “Stakeouts, girl, no, Maurice has every assistant up there filing and doing the most boring jobs,” she said, swinging her long hair to the other side of her shoulder.

Her lashes flapped like fans when she spoke, and her lips were so glossy Fiona could see her reflection in them.

Fiona had been obsessing about ungoogleable information, but she was playing this all wrong, trying to think about how she might draw the sisters out. But she didn’t need to do that, or she at least didn’t have to do it Maurice’s way.

“Has he always been like that?” Fiona asked.

“Overly serious and self-important?” Liza laughed; she looked like she had just left a kindergarten heist, in all black with splotches of paint on her pants and shirt. She looked the most like Maurice, and this helped ease Fiona’s anxiety a little more.

“No…um, really interested in details,” Fiona said.

“Oh yeah, he was the first to tease us when he suspected we liked someone. Remember Curtis?” Janae said with a wistful laugh.

The oldest sister was stunning in a simple white tee and jeans with a short, sleek haircut.

She looked like she’d been with her stylist and just pointed to that one Toni Braxton album cover.

“Curtis was a first love?” Fiona asked.

“First kiss,” Janae said.

Fiona snatched a look again at Maurice, who held up a discreet index finger.

Ca-ching! One down, two ungoogleable details to go.

Liza looked between them and touched Fiona’s shoulder. “Now, tell me a little bit about your style?”

“I don’t know if I have any,” Fiona said honestly, avoiding Maurice’s eyes, which she could feel upon her.

“Of course you do. Do you like more traditional conservative clothing?” Liza pulled at the shapeless bag she was wearing.

It was not unkind, but Fiona could tell she wasn’t a fan.

His sisters’ worried expressions reminded Fiona of that scene in Mulan where the matchmaker sings, This is what you give me to work with?

“Not really. These are just the only type of clothes I was allowed, so it still shapes what I pick up. I would like clothes I can move a little bit in. I take online jujitsu.”

Maurice snorted, lifting a finger like he was testifying in church. “Point of clarification: she pays someone to let her flail around on Zoom.”

Fiona’s lips twisted into a dangerous smile. “Maurice, anytime you want a demonstration…”

“Oop—” Deya nudged her sister, half-scandalized, half-delighted.

Maurice tilted his head, his side-eye long and pointed. He was a guns-over-everything kind of man, no patience for grappling techniques or “soft” martial arts. His skepticism radiated off him like heat.

“All right, okay.” Liza clapped her hands, stepping between them. “We’re not here to debate combat effectiveness. You want mobility, you’ll get it.” Liza circled Fiona like she was sizing up a mannequin. “I’m thinking high-waisted stretch, tailored but flexible—power, but make it fashion.”

Fiona blinked. “What does that even mean?”

Liza smirked. “It means when you break someone’s arm, you’ll look good doing it.”

Those words had Maurice smacking his teeth again. “Wait, she’s getting workout clothes and some normie outfits. Y’all stop acting like she’s trying to say yes to the dress.”

“Maurice, if you’re not going to help, can you get us a table for brunch nearby?”

When he turned to leave, LeDeya stopped him.

“Leave your card.” She extended her palm.

Maurice slipped his card out of his wallet, passed it to his oldest sister, only to snatch it back a second later and press it—to everyone’s surprise—into Fiona’s hand.

“The only one of y’all that’s not going to charge a boat to my card.” He huffed and walked away.

Fiona held the card up like a shield. She was alone with his sisters.

Liza came back with a cascade of glittery dresses folded over her arms. “Fitting rooms!”

“You want me to try on all of these?” Fiona nearly toppled at the weight of the dresses.

“Of course, Fiona!”

“But didn’t I just come for simple clothes?”

Liza, Janae, and LeDeya collapsed laughing onto the plush chaise in a cloud of expensive perfume like they had done a full day of hard labor.

Finally finished zipping up the first dress, she had barely stepped out of the dressing room before the oldest one shouted, “Next.”

Okay, I didn’t even really get a foot out, and I like the color. The next eight outfits went like this—instant rejections so fast Fiona was unsure they had even seen the dress.

Somehow, his sisters had been served champagne and popcorn while Fiona was peeling off whatever the heck a Balmain was. She started to tell them that she appreciated everything they were doing but a modest outfit was all she needed, when a simple black dress slipped out from underneath the pile.

As soon as she pulled it over her head, she instantly knew this was the thing his sisters had been looking for.

She stepped out, and there was a hair’s breadth of a pause before they fell over themselves rushing to her side.

It was a deceptively unassuming black dress that split at her hip.

The silk halter top didn’t make big show of her breasts, but it outlined them and pulled so snugly under her bust that her natural waistline looked barely there.

She knew it was a trick of the luxurious fabric, but she felt elegant in the dress.

She couldn’t stop touching the satin on her hips.

“This is outrageous, Fiona! Write this down: Christian Siriano, black, sweetheart, tea length. You can shout any of those things in any order and be the beginning and end of every event you go to.” LeDeya clamped her hands on either side of her face like a Home Alone poster.

Fiona self-consciously held the soft roundness of her belly, seeing that it must be visible in the dress.

“No, don’t you dare hide that stomach.” Liza slapped at her hand. “Men love that.” The women started complimenting everything on her body in rapid succession. Things she never paid attention to.

“Yass, eyebrow shape!” LeDeya snapped.

“Come on, cheekbones,” Liza said.

They started piecing an entire look together, grabbing attendants so they could shovel boxes of shoes at her feet.

There was an unquestioning appreciation of her body that overwhelmed Fiona. When she came out in a tight black dress, they simultaneously erupted into “You a big fine woman, won’t you back that thang up.” The juxtaposition of being both big and fine was uncomplicated to his sisters.

LeDeya dabbed foundation from what looked like a painter’s palette on Fiona’s face.

And Janae kept telling her to push her boobs out, insisting it was good posture.

This was the most impossible for Fiona, who had grown up curling her shoulders in on themselves, to draw the least negative attention to herself.

Her mother had taught her the hunched-shoulder, folded-arms trick when she started to develop before some of the other girls in her class.

“If I sit like this, my boobs will stick out.”