Page 117 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

She does my makeup, but what she does bears no resemblance to the kind of makeup that I’ve learned how to do for myself, and that I’ve considered the perfect blend of practical and sophisticated all these years.

What she does is make me look like a dream.

And then she does my hair to match, twisting it up and adding accents—sparkly things to catch the light and give the impression of some kind of tiara without actually putting any kind of crown on my head.

I look like a blonde goddess, a Nordic queen, in nothing but a silk robe.

I hardly see myself in the reflection.

Then she produces a gown.

Not the dress I brought with me. This is the kind of gown that is never sold in a store or available for anyone to shop and find. This is the kind of gown that appears only by invitation and only in the finest ateliers in places like Milan or Paris, or perhaps in magazines likeVogue,and is otherwise a collector’s item.

Tonight I am wearing art.

I feel something like breathless, but I know it’s not the gown itself. It’s that he picked out this gown. It’s that he wants to see me in it.

That humming in me takes hold.

When my nameless fairy godmother is done, I look at myself in a full-length glass and I’m not certain that I will be able to remember my own name.

It doesn’t feel like much of a loss when I lookedible.

“Here,” the woman says, sounding as if she very much approves of her own work.

She fits a diamond-studded mask to my face. It covers only my eyes, but somehow, it seems as if it’s the final straw in this Cap Ferrat transformation.

Whoever that woman in the mirror is, exquisite and glamorous, she is no longer Annagret Alden. Not the Annagret Alden I know.

This woman would have no idea at all where a certain gritty Pennsylvania suburb lies. I doubt she could locate Pennsylvania on a map.

She is someone else entirely.

Iam someone else.

I ammagnificent.

Andthatis the chic, refined, breathtaking woman who glides down the stairs to the ground floor of this quietly perfect villa.Thatis the work of art who sees the man who calls himself Luc Garnier standing there in black tie with his own domino mask to cover his eyes and make him that much more mysterious.

Thatis the woman who smiles at him, like she’s finally got him where she wants him.

And for that wild, giddy moment, I believe I do.

CHAPTER FIVE

Thepartyisbeing held in a villa set far behind high walls, set up above its own, private cove. Some of the guests arrive by water, ferried in from the grand yachts that clutter the harbors all along the South of France. I can see them coming in, the running lights of the smaller crafts like sleek lanterns on the water, as I walk with my mysterious not-date in the silence—hushed and complicated—that has sat with us the whole way here from his villa.

Though, of course, it might not be his villa at all. It is entirely possible that nothing he’s showing me actually reflects who hereallyis.

I don’t know why I’m so sure that’s not true. That itishis villa and itdoesreflect him and that I somehow know more about the cipher of this man than I should.

Because this is what foolish women do,I tell myself sternly.They make up a man in their head and then expect a living, breathing,actualman to be the man they made up.

Except in my case, I never expected the living, breathing, actual man. I neverwanteda living, breathing, actual man—I just wanted the idea of him.

I’m not sure why his unexpected appearance has made me foolish all the same.

And yet somehow, walking along the path marked with candlelight to beckon us in from the dark, I cannot bring myself to parse the mysteries within mysteries that make up the man playing Luc Garnier. Not any more than I already have.

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