Four Of A Kind

Chapter 71: [2.44] I Have Been Improved Against My Will

Harlow dragged me through hallways I hadn’t seen before, past rooms I couldn’t identify, and down a staircase that seemed to exist in a pocket dimension separate from the rest of the manor. Her grip on my wrist never loosened.

“Where are we going?”

“The Archive!”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It’s not ominous, it’s AMAZING!”

We rounded another corner. Then another. I was fairly certain we’d passed that same disapproving portrait three times now, which meant either we were going in circles or the Valentine ancestors had a thing for identical stern expressions.

Finally, Harlow stopped in front of a set of double doors that looked more like the entrance to a bank vault than a storage closet. She pressed her thumb against a hidden panel, and something inside clicked.

“Security on a closet?”

“It’s not just a closet.” She pushed the doors open with both hands. “It’s THE closet.”

I stepped inside.

My brain short-circuited.

The room stretched back at least fifty feet, with ceilings high enough to require ladders mounted on rolling tracks. Racks upon racks of clothing lined both walls, organized by color and then subdivided into categories I couldn’t begin to comprehend. Islands of shelving occupied the center floor space, displaying shoes, bags, accessories. Glass cases along the far wall contained what I could only assume were pieces too valuable for open storage.

The fluorescent lighting hummed overhead, casting everything in harsh retail clarity.

This wasn’t a closet. This was a department store. A very expensive, very exclusive department store that happened to exist inside someone’s house.

“What…”

I couldn’t finish the sentence. My vocabulary had abandoned me somewhere around the third rack of what appeared to be Gucci suits arranged by shade from lightest to darkest.

Harlow bounced past me, already running her fingers along hangers. “The Archive! This is where we keep all the samples, promotional pieces, gifts from designers, stuff from photoshoots that never got used. Mom says keeping it organized is essential for tax purposes but honestly I think she just likes having options.”

I walked forward in a daze. A single jacket caught my eye. I checked the label.

Brunello Cucinelli.

I didn’t know the exact price, but I knew enough to understand that this one jacket was expensive as hell. And there were dozens of them. Hundreds, maybe. Thousands of pieces filling this room.

My overnight bag with its three shirts and two pairs of pants suddenly felt like an insult to the very concept of fabric.

“This is a war crime,” I said quietly.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Harlow had already moved deeper into the room, pulling things off racks with the confidence of someone who had done this many times before. She held up a sweater against her torso, shook her head, hung it back. Grabbed a pair of pants, examined them under the light, set them aside on a rolling cart that had materialized from somewhere.

“Okay, so,” she said without looking at me, “you’re definitely a winter. Maybe a deep autumn? No, winter. Your undertones are too cool for autumn. And your body type is…” She turned, eyes scanning me from head to toe with an intensity that made me want to check if I’d grown an extra limb. “Athletic. Lean. Shoulders are good. Waist is snatched. You’re basically a model size, actually, which makes this SO much easier.”

“I understood approximately forty percent of those words.”

“That’s fine! You don’t need to understand, you just need to stand there and look pretty.” She paused. “Prettier. You already look pretty. I mean. Good. You look good. Normally.”

Her cheeks had gone slightly pink. She turned back to the racks before I could comment.

I wandered through the aisles while Harlow accumulated an increasingly alarming pile of clothing. Designer names jumped out at me from every direction. Tom Ford. Zegna. Prada. Burberry. Each label another reminder that I had somehow stumbled into a world where people threw away clothes worth more than my education.

A shirt caught my attention. Deep charcoal, almost black. Silk, obviously. The buttons looked like they might actually be made of something expensive rather than plastic. I reached out to touch the fabric.

Softer than anything I’d ever worn. Softer than anything I’d ever touched, period. Including human skin.

“Oh, good eye!” Harlow appeared at my elbow, making me jump. “That’s from the fall collection five years ago. Dad loved that line.” Her voice softened for a moment, then bounced back to normal volume. “It would look AMAZING on you. Here.”

She grabbed the shirt off the rack and tossed it onto her cart, which had somehow transformed into a small mountain.

“Harlow.”

“Hmm?”

“I can’t wear any of this.”

She stopped mid-grab, turning to face me with genuine confusion. “Why not?”

“Because…” I gestured vaguely at the entire room. “All the money I will ever make, combined, probably wouldn’t cover one of these racks.”

“So?”

“So I can’t just… take it.”

Her confusion deepened. “You’re not taking it. You’re borrowing it. For the weekend. So you have proper clothes to wear instead of…” She wrinkled her nose. “Three shirts and two pants.”

“My three shirts are perfectly fine.”

“Your three shirts represent a cry for help that I am CHOOSING to answer.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but she was already pushing the cart toward a curtained area in the corner that I hadn’t noticed before.

“Changing room! Go!”

“Harlow.”

“GO.”

She shoved me behind the curtain with surprising force for someone who probably weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. The cart followed, narrowly missing my ankles.

I stood in the small space, surrounded by fabric and confusion. The curtain rustled, and a pair of pants flew over the top, hitting me in the face.

“Those first! They’re your size!”

“How do you know my size?”

“I looked at you! Obviously!”

More clothes sailed over the curtain. A shirt. A sweater. A belt. Something that might have been a jacket or possibly an art installation. I caught each item as it appeared, building a pile in my arms that grew increasingly unstable.

“Harlow, this is too much.”

“This is the MINIMUM! Try the navy set first! Then the gray! Then the charcoal! Ooh, and DEFINITELY the black! The black is going to be KILLER!”

I stared at the pile. Picked up the navy pants.

What was my life.

Three weeks ago, I was a scholarship kid who ate instant ramen for dinner and slept on a couch. Now I was standing in a billionaire’s closet being force-fed designer clothing by a girl who organized fashion like military strategy.

I changed.

The pants fit like they’d been tailored specifically for my body. The shirt required no tucking or adjusting. The belt sat at exactly the right height. Even the sweater, which I’d assumed would be too warm, felt light and breathable against my arms.

I looked down at myself.

Okay.

Maybe Harlow had a point about my three shirts.

“Are you dressed? Let me see! I need to see!”

I pushed the curtain aside.

Harlow stood about five feet away, hands clasped together, bouncing on her toes with visible impatience. When I stepped out, she stopped bouncing.

Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

No sound came out.

This was, I realized, possibly the first time since I’d met her that Harlow Valentine had nothing to say.

She walked toward me slowly, her fuzzy cat socks silent on the floor. Her eyes traveled from my shoes to my face and back down again, and she completed a full circle around me like I was a sculpture in a museum.

“Um.” Her voice came out smaller than usual. “The fit is… that’s really… wow.”

“Good wow or bad wow?”

“Good wow. Very good wow. Extremely good wow.” She appeared in front of me again, reaching up toward my collar. “There’s just one thing…”

Her fingers brushed against my neck.

We both froze.

Her hand hovered there, fingertips barely touching the skin just above my collar. I could feel her breath against my jaw. Her purple eyes had gone wide, fixed on some point near my throat. The strawberry scent from earlier filled my nose, stronger now that she was this close.

Neither of us moved.

Harlow’s cheeks flushed from pink to red to something approaching scarlet. Her fingers trembled slightly against my skin.

Then she jerked her hand back like I was made of fire.

“I was just! The collar! It was crooked! Because of the changing and the…” She took three rapid steps backward, nearly colliding with a rack of suits. “You look great! Really great! Assistant-kun cleans up nice! So nice! The nicest!”

“Harlow.”

“Yes?” Her voice cracked on the single syllable.

“Thanks.”

She blinked. “For what?”

“For…” I gestured at the outfit. “This. The help. You didn’t have to.”

“Oh.” The scarlet in her cheeks began to fade toward a more manageable pink. “Well. Someone had to save you from your three sad shirts. Might as well be me. Since I’m nice like that. And helpful. And definitely not weird about collars.”

“Right.”

“Right!”

We stood there in the aftermath of whatever had just happened, neither of us quite willing to acknowledge it directly. Harlow’s hands fidgeted with the hem of her oversized t-shirt. I kept my own hands firmly at my sides, away from any collar-adjacent areas.

“What are you two doing in here?”

The voice came from the doorway, cold enough to lower the room temperature by several degrees.

Vivienne stood at the entrance to The Archive, her posture rigid, her expression carved from ice. She wore a deep emerald cocktail dress that probably cost more than everything I was currently wearing combined, and her wine-red hair had been pinned up in an elaborate style that must have taken an hour to achieve.

Her purple eyes moved from me to Harlow to the cart full of clothes to the curtained changing area and back to me.

“Harlow.”

“Vivi! Hi! We were just…”

“Raiding The Archive without authorization. Thirty minutes before dinner. With our employee.”

Each sentence landed like a separate accusation. Harlow’s bounce completely vanished, replaced by the hunched shoulders of someone awaiting sentencing.

“He only brought three shirts, Vivi. THREE. For the whole weekend. I couldn’t let him suffer like that.”

Vivienne’s gaze returned to me. She studied my outfit with the same intensity she’d applied to the store inspection earlier this week. I couldn’t read her expression, but something flickered behind her eyes.

“The navy Brunello suits him,” she said finally. Her tone remained frosty. “But the sweater is last season.”

“I KNOW but the new collection hasn’t arrived yet and I thought—”

“Replace it with the charcoal cashmere from the spring line. Second rack, left side, three items from the end.”

Harlow’s mouth fell open. “You… you’re helping?”

Vivienne stepped into the room, her heels clicking against the floor. “If you’re going to dress our assistant without permission, at least do it properly.”