Some Girls Do (Outback Heat Book 1) (18 page)

Lacey looked at the remains around her. She didn’t need to be reminded what kind of a feat it would be if she could pull it off in time. “Yes. But the bodice is salvageable … Have you got a picture of what the dress …” Lacey stopped herself before she said,
used to look like
. “How it was when you bought it?”

Caroline nodded, pulling her phone out of her back pocket and scrolling through it for a bit then handing it over. “There’s a couple more further on,” she said. “It had this gorgeous bustle.”

Lacey looked at the five pictures taken from different angles. It was a
gorgeous
dress. Quite form fitting and modern from the front, covered in intricately beaded organza with an old fashion Bo Peep style bustle at the back, falling into a short fishtail train.

Lacey loved the bustle too. She loved how it added old-world charm to a very modern style.

“Well … I’m not going to be able to give you that but …” An idea came to her then and she looked down at the pile of scrap around her. She picked a piece up and fingered it.

“Okay … how about this. Have you ever heard of a handkerchief bustle?” Caroline shook her head. “Have you got a computer? Or an iPad.”

Caroline grabbed her iPad off the nearby coffee table and handed it over too. “Sit down next to me,” Lacey said, a surge of excitement fluttering in her belly.

Lacey quickly surfed to her Pinterest page, where she had thousands of wedding dress pictures she’d collected during the last few years in college. She found what she was looking for immediately.

“This bustle is made out of hundreds of colourful handkerchiefs all attached at one end and fluttering free at the other. And you just keep layering them in until they form this flouncy kind of bustle.”

Lacey shoved the iPad at Caroline and picked up a few pieces of the shredded fabric. “Most of these are about handkerchief size.” She showed Caroline how she’d sew them so they would flutter free. “I could mix all the different scraps—”

Caroline winced but Lacey kept going, her creative juices in full flight.

“—in together, so they look like they were designed to be that way. And I could bring it right down to the ground and fishtail it out just like the original. It’s not going to be a Bo Peep bustle but it’ll be unique.”

Caroline sniffled again but picked up a piece of fabric and flapped it in front of her. “What about the skirt?”

“Yeah. I’ll have to run you up a new one of those.”

“Hang on,” Mrs Duncan interrupted. “What about granny’s gown?”

Lacey lifted an eyebrow at Caroline but her mother was rushing out of the room and back again in under a minute with a long garment bag. “It was my grandmother’s,” she said unzipping it. “My mother wore it and I wore it. Unfortunately Caroline being a foot taller than all of us couldn’t but we could use the skirt maybe?”

The dress was exquisite. Plain and simple as most were during the rationing of the war years. The bodice was high-necked and long-sleeved with buttons going all the way up the arms, and the skirt was reasonably full. The white satin was in perfect condition.

“Mum, no,” Caroline said starting to cry all over again. “We can’t rip up great granny’s dress. It’s a family heirloom.”

“Rubbish. Of course we can,” Mrs Duncan dismissed with a quick wave of her hand. “I would have loved for you to be able to wear it but I had to go and marry a man who was six foot five with size thirteen feet.” She smiled at her husband lovingly. “At least this way you
can
wear it. I insist.” Mrs Duncan turned to Lacey. “Would it help?”

“It would save us
hours
,” Lacey admitted even though, like Caroline she was loathe to destroy something so beautiful. But her design mind was already working overtime as she inspected it. “We could put some lace over if you like? So it’s at least similar to the skirt of your Parisian one? What do you say? I can’t give you your old dress back, not in the time I have, but I can give you a new one using as much of the old as possible? And you’ll still get a bustle that I reckon will be the talk of the district for a long time to come.”

Caroline looked at her mother, then at her fiancé, then back at Lacey. “But … can you get it done in time?”

Lacey had
no
idea. Not that she was about to say that. “It’ll take me all night, but I reckon I can.”

“Okay then,” she nodded with a sniffle. “Yes … please. Thank you.”

Lacey smiled and gave Caroline a quick hug. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road.”

“What do you need?” Ethan asked.

“Caroline and I are going to Hoff’s, so can you grab my sewing machine from The Stockman. And the three sewing boxes. And tell Coop I won’t be home tonight.”

He nodded. “On it. Anything else?”

“Maybe some little elves along with that pumpkin?”

He laughed and saluted. “I’ll see what I can do.”

‡

A
t nine Saturday
morning Lacey sewed the last stitch on the final adjustment to Caroline’s dress. The whole room—three bridesmaids, a make-up lady, a hairdresser, two relieved mothers, a worried father, Mrs Hoff and the photographer and journalist from
Stylish Woman
—broke into applause.

She was exhausted but utterly elated.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Caroline said hugging her hard. “I can’t believe we’ve gone from a pile of shredded material to this thing of beauty. I think I love it more than my Parisian one.”

Lacey smiled, touched by the compliment. It
was
beautiful. The handkerchief bustle was nothing short of a work of art. The skirt looked amazing with an overlay of gorgeous lace that Lacey had admired that first day amongst Mrs Hoff’s curtain materials and the addition of hundreds of hand sewn crystal beads. The bodice now sported a diamond cut-out in each panel featuring more lace and artfully bordered by exquisite brocade that Lacey had found amongst her stash of ribbon.

“I couldn’t have managed it without Mrs Hoff.”

While Lacey had made two dresses into one and slaved over the bustle for long hours, Mrs Hoff had helped with the seamstress work—the measuring and the cutting, the hems and seams, and had done all the beading to the skirt. There was no way Lacey had time to sew on over three hundred beads, but Mrs Hoff had revelled in it, creating the perfect balance of clusters to complement the lace design.

“Well go on. Get into it. I’m going home to bed.”

“But you’re going to come back for the wedding this arvo, right?” Mrs Duncan insisted. She’d been insisting for hours now and Lacey was finally too tired to turn her down. Besides, who didn’t love a wedding?

“Yes, you must, dear,” Mrs Hoff, who was already on the guest list, pressed.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Lacey said, summoning a smile.

“And bring that sexy man of yours,” Caroline said. “I hear he’s a hottie.”

“Oh yes,” her mother agreed. “Even I’ve heard he’s quite the spunk.”

Lacey wondered if delirium had set in or if she’d just heard prim-and-proper Esther Duncan call Coop a
spunk
. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “He’s not that social, though, so no promises.”

Lacey almost laughed at her understatement. Coop would probably rather stick himself in the eye with a hot poker than attend a Jumbuck Springs wedding, but if she was going then her
boyfriend
was going too. They still had a façade to maintain after all.

He wasn’t at the hotel when Mrs Hoff dropped her off. He’d be at the garage—of course. The damn man might as well take his mattress down there and be done with it.

She shot off a quick text before crawling into bed.

Dress fixed. Wedding at 3. We’re going. Be home by 2.

Lacey supposed she should have given him some kind of choice but she was too tired to cajole and, as she fell headfirst into sleep, she hoped that he’d take it as a fait accompli.

*     *     *

At nine o’clock
that night, Coop was well and truly over the wedding. When he’d arrived home at two to tell her he didn’t think he should go, she’d looked at him from the bed with big sleepy eyes and said, “But they’re expecting me to show off my boyfriend.”

So here he was, the son of a sheep farmer seated on one side of him, talking about an old farm ute he was wanting to do up, and Lacey in a red swirly dress on the other, taking full advantage of their fake relationship to touch him every opportunity she got. She’d even stolen two not very chaste kisses.

He was so freaking turned on he doubted his discussion about reconditioned motor parts was remotely coherent.

“Oh, I love this song,” Lacey announced suddenly. “Dance?”

And then she was dragging him up to the raised wooden dance floor again. It sat to the right of the bridal table and was lit by pretty paper lanterns that gave the voluminous white marquee an added bridal feel.

Lacey pulled him into the middle of the dancers, pressing her body against his, snuggling her head into his shoulder and swaying to the low, sexy tune. With her skyscraper heels their hips were reasonably aligned and his dick felt every single sway. He wanted to grab her ass and hold her tight against him to stop the sheer erotic torture.

But then she’d know how aroused he was. If she hadn’t already figured that out from their previous half dozen dances.

“Relax,” she teased suddenly, looking up at him. “You’re so tense. Is it really such a hardship to dance with me?”

Her eyes sparkled out from the fringe of long sooty lashes and her hair swung all long and loose over her shoulders, exactly the way it had been the night they’d first met.

A hardship?
Hardly.
“I’m sure I’ll survive it.” It wouldn’t pay to give her any indication of just how easy it was to hold her.

“But you’re not enjoying the wedding, right?”

“I’m enjoying how you’re enjoying it,” he said.

And that was the truth. Lacey had been in her element, fielding a barrage of compliments on the wedding dress—which was stunning considering the photos Ethan had shown him yesterday. She’d smiled for pictures taken with the bride by the magazine photographer and laughed with old school and family friends.

In fact she’d chatted with just about everyone at the wedding, obviously happy and comfortable and loving their company. And it was clear that they loved her too, these people. That they were
her
people.

And she was theirs
.

She’d been dazzling. Gone was the sad girl that he’d seen lurking one too many times. He’d loved watching her like this.

Hell, he could look at her like this all damn day.

An enthusiastic couple jostled past them, elbowing Coop even closer to Lacey. His cock rejoiced and Coop was relieved when the song started to fade out.

“Another?” she asked as the dancing hit a lull before the next song.

“Lacey …” Coop hoped there was more foreboding than plea in his voice because if he had to do one more duty dance with her he was going to pass out from lack of cerebral blood flow. It wouldn’t be so bad if she’d chosen rock songs and kept her distance, but she’d favoured slow, sexy ballads and had shamelessly invaded his space, taking advantage of their fake coupledom.

She sighed dramatically as the music started again but took pity on him with a smile. “Okay, fine. We’ll go. But on one condition.”

Oh no. Coop did not want to be backed into a wall. Nor did he want to rain on her parade. She was having a good time, there was no need for her to leave. “You can stay.”

She shook her head, her hair swishing, suddenly serious. “I leave with the one who brought me.”

He rolled his eyes at her old-fashioned response. Lacey was a strange mix of small-town values and big-city vice. “What’s the condition?”

“We stop at the garage so I can see my car.”

Coop almost kissed her. The scenarios in his head had been way dirtier than that. “Deal,” he said, taking her elbow and walking her off the dance floor.

*     *     *