I blew out a breath, nodded. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s get to work.”

   Lindsey took the statement seriously. She pulled my hair into a ponytail, scrubbed my face, and then attacked me with brushes and tweezers, sponges and serums, highlighters and contouring powder.

   While she worked, Shay moved silently around the room, sometimes standing, sometimes crouching, while taking photographs. It was . . . unnerving.

   “When was the last time you were this poked and prodded?” Mallory asked.

   “Last night!” Lindsey squealed, leaning forward to click her glass against Mallory’s.

   “You’re both incorrigible,” I said.

   “We do have that in common.” Lindsey cocked her head. “I like the look of the makeup so far. Romantic, but not too ‘windswept on the moors.’”

   I smiled. “Possibly the title of the first romance novel I ever read.”

   Lindsey snorted, dabbed lipstick on the back of her hand, then dotted it across my lips. “Mmm-hmm,” she said, nodding at me, then added a coat of clear gloss. She screwed the gloss’s applicator back into the jar again, then looked around the room.

   “I think that will do it. Everyone?”

   Everyone moved in behind me, began cooing over Lindsey’s work.

   “Very elegant,” Helen said, which I figured was as good as a girl could get.

   “Now that you’re extragorgeous,” Lindsey said, “are you finally going to let us see the dress?”

   Anticipation fell over the room like a fog, silencing everything.

   No one had seen it yet, not even Mallory. I hadn’t looked forward to drinking champagne while spending four hours at a bridal store—that really seemed inefficient—but I had accepted that I’d have to do it. I’d imagined Mallory, Charlotte, and Lindsey giving thumbs-down to taffeta, circle skirts, and poufy shoulders. It just hadn’t worked out that way. I’d fallen for the first dress I’d tried on. And since we were on a tight schedule, I’d snapped it up, giving the staff just enough time to get it altered before the big day.

   It was the most expensive article of clothing I’d ever bought. Jaw-droppingly expensive, but if I was going to spend money on a dress, I figured this was the one. And the price still probably paled in comparison to the dresses Ethan had bought for me. The fact that I’d used hardly any of the House stipend I’d been collecting for a year helped ease the guilt.

   “Sure,” I said, and they moved aside to let me rise to the dress bag. When I turned around again, they were watching me.

   “I can pick my own clothes,” I said sheepishly.

   “This isn’t just clothes,” Mallory said. “It’s your wedding dress.” She held up her hands. “But the bridge has been crossed and I’m not taking it personally.”

   “You are a little.”

   “I am a little. But I will live. So let’s see it.”

   I unzipped the bag, unexpectedly nervous about whether Mallory would like the dress or not. I needed her to like it.

   “Oh,” Mallory said, barely a sound, her eyes welling at the sight of it. “Oh, Merit. That’s just . . .”

   “It’s very you,” Lindsey said, reaching out to squeeze Mallory’s hand.

   That was why I’d grabbed the first dress I’d tried on. Because it was absolutely me, and I felt like me when wearing it. Me, but maybe something more. Me-plus, if the plus was a kind of elegance I’d never really felt. But an elegance I imagined my mother would be proud of.

   It was a slender dress, overlaid in delicate French lace. There were short cap sleeves of the same lace, and a bodice with a sweetheart neckline. The lace continued through the waist, where the underlying bias-cut silk draped to the ground and pooled in a short train of more lace. It was delicate and romantic and old-fashioned, and it fit my tall frame to a tee.

   “It really is,” Mallory said, tears falling in earnest now. She stood up and wrapped her arms around me in a fierce hug that made me teary, too.

   “There’s no crying in baseball or vampire fashion,” I said.

   “There will be tears at the wedding,” Lindsey said. “From those of us happy that the two of you found each other—and those jealous that both of you are off the market.”

   I almost snorted, until I remembered the fact that Lacey Sheridan, head of San Diego’s Sheridan House, had been sufficiently in love with Ethan to try to push us apart. Vampire etiquette demanded we invite her, but I wasn’t sure whether she’d RSVP’d. Not that I was worried overmuch about it now. If anything, watching him say “I do” might help her move on. And it would probably piss her off a little. Which was fine with me.

   “You will knock his socks off,” Mallory said, using a tissue to swipe at her eyes. “I mean, he is totally crazy about you, but if you didn’t have him in the palm of your hand before, you will now.”

   • • •

   Makeup was followed by dress, which was followed by hair. By the time Lindsey had finished rolling, teasing, pinning, and spraying my hair, my scalp felt like it had nearly been tugged off my head.

   I winced as she adjusted a final pin, which poked right into the skin behind my ear. Across the room, Helen smiled. I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she liked the hair, not the pain.

   “Here we go,” Lindsey said. “Mirror time.”

   “Oh, here!” Mallory said. “For full effect.” She opened a glossy white box on the counter, pulled out my bouquet.

   “Oh, that’s beautiful,” I said, taking it. There were enormous frilled white peonies and pale green hydrangeas, with sprigs of white lily of the valley. The stems were wrapped in white satin. “And it’s heavy,” I said as Mallory passed it over. “How does yours look?”