Chapter Eleven
Genevieve took her phone from her purse and scrolled thorough the numbers until she found the one she was looking for. Danneel frowned, trying to figure out just who the other woman was calling, knowing no one else had even been considered to play Jane that they knew. Finally, there was and answer on the other end of the phone and Genevieve smiling into the receiver.
“Hey,” Genevieve half-flirted into the phone. “You know how you’re off and all? Well, we have an emergency over here.” She shifted from foot to foot, listening to the party on the other side of the line patiently, waiting her turn to plead her case. “Yeah, I know I said this before, but this time it’s real. No, I promise it’s not Ben and Jerry’s related this time.” There was a muffled sound that was clearly the other party trying to guess what was going on. “Well, I’m here at the park, not at my apartment. In the main princess dressing room.” She rolled her eyes as there was more chatter. “Don’t give me that. I know you have clearance.” More muffled protests. “Well, yeah, but who cares? You better, that’s who. I mean it.” She cut off the words that were being said. “You have to! I will so owe you one.” Genevieve nodded to the other person, not realizing she was even doing it before frowning deeply at her phone. “What? Three? No way! Two. That’s my final offer. Take it or leave it.” Panic crossed her face. “No, wait! You can’t leave it! Come on…PLEASE?” She looked over to Danneel and shrugged. “Oh thank you thank you thank you!” She all but kissed the phone before hanging up and smiling at her colleagues. “I did it. I saved her hind end.”
**--**--**
Jensen was sure that he broke at least fifteen traffic laws on his way to the park. It was just that Genevieve had sounded so needy and that just wasn’t like what he knew of her. He fumbled with his clearance badge as he fought to get out of his car. He was actually crap at rescuing maidens if he was being honest with himself, he was quickly realizing. Thought he wasn’t really so bad at getting places quickly he realized as he rounded the corner to the main princess dressing room at what could only be called ‘break-ankle speed’ and knocked on the door for entrance, hoping no one spotted him and tried to stop him.
“Jensen?” Genevieve’s voice answered back even as she was swinging the door open and grabbing his arm. “Thank God.”
He allowed himself to be pulled in, but not without clamping a hand over his eyes in case any of the women inside were less than clothed.
“Jensen?” Another voice asking in confusion, one he thought might belong to Danneel Graul, the stunning redhead he’d had the pleasure of seeing perform at the coffee shop open mic, but he couldn’t be sure. “Okay, Genny, how is he going to help? Do you think he’s going to magically make Sandy all better?”
“Not exactly,” Genevieve was talking again, but she was further away this time.
“Hey, cowboy, you can take your hand off your eyes,” still another voice invited, this one invitingly husky. “It’s nothing that you’ve likely not seen before and, anyway, we’re all adults here.”
Jensen obliged by slowly removing his hand and dared to look around the room. The three young women that were there were mostly dressed, so he figured it was as safe as it was going to get. “Okay, so what’s the emergency? And how does it relate to Sandy?”
“You ask too many questions,” Danneel declared, walking so that she backed Jensen into the wall on her approach. “And you are also very skittish.”
“Oh, Danni,” the as yet unknown to Jensen woman admonished. “Stop it. You know you can be quite intimidating when you try.” She offered a hand to Jensen. “Sophia Bush, Danneel’s friend and roommate. Pleased to meet you.”
Jensen could only nod as he took the hand he had been offered and tried not to watch as the redhead moved from striking distance.
“I prefer formidable,” Danneel announced as she flipped her hair and went to collect her dress from the rack where it awaited her. “It just sounds classier.”
He was still trying his best not to look when she sauntered past him to her vanity. “So, yeah, uh, what’s with…what’s with…um…uh…”
“Sandy?” Danneel offered up for him.
“Yeah, that’s right. Sandy.” Jensen swallowed around the lump forming in his throat. What’s wrong with Sandy again?”
“She’s…well, she’s, um, well - let’s go with sick.” Sophia said matter-of-factly. “And so now, and this is the moral of the story - we have no Jane.”
“Whoa, no. I just saw her last night and she was fine. She can’t be sick. Not during Long Lost Friends Week. We made a deal. She wasn’t supposed to even go out drinking. Has anyone told Jared yet?”
“Nope. And we aren’t going to.” Genevieve smiled up at Jensen even as she talked to Danneel.
“Why not?” Jensen frowned. “He can’t go out there by himself. I don’t think that they do that - do they?”
The look in the tiny brunette’s eyes was starting to scare him. “Because we found someone to fill in for her.”
“And you want me to go get her?” Jensen patted his pockets for his car keys. “Not a problem. If you just give me the address I can go there right now and we won’t have any problem at all, though I’m not sure why you couldn’t give me the address on the phone. But we should hurry, because, as you know, time is really of the essence here and, while rescuing princesses is shaping up to kind of be a specialty of mine…” He stopped talking when he noticed that all the eyes in the room were now on him.
“Uh uh,” Genevieve didn’t break sight with him as she continued to explain. “I mean, it’s a little non-traditional, but, given the circumstances, I think it’ll work.”
Jensen felt like a sheep among wolves, but continued with his questions as he was still completely baffled. “What are you - oh no. UH UH.” Jensen was now slowly backing away from the small woman in front of him, but, unbeknownst to him, closer to the other two woman in the room with him. “This is not in my contract.”
“Oh, honey. You are a gene-ee-us, Genny!” Danneel gushed as she clapped her hands animatedly. “Jenny - I get it now!”
Jensen gritted his teeth and visibly winced. He had always hated that nickname, but, coming from the shapely redhead he was so trying to impress that stood in front of him, it almost didn’t sound so bad. But even that didn’t change the fact that the girls had all but put aside what they had been doing and were now advancing on him. “Get away from me,” he warned gently.
“Don’t you care about Sandy?“ Genevieve was working the sympathy vote, hoping Jensen was as much of a gentleman as she had figured him for.
“Of course.” Only six more steps and Jensen would be close enough to just calmly turn and leave this room gull of half-crazed women.
“You don’t want her getting in trouble do you?”
Jensen wasn’t even sure what she thought he could do. He was at least a foot taller than Sandy. “No, I don’t want her getting in trouble.”
“Because she needs this job, Jensen. She loves this job, Jensen.” Danneel was now trying to help the cause, and damned if it wasn’t sounding like a better and better idea. “She’s stupid and married to Ian Somerhalder now, Jensen. We need to save her from herself, Jensen.”
“But I can’t even fit in her dress. So this is just crazy talk. Besides, I look too much like a man - “ he was fighting with his words, be he was already backing up to sit down in the chair Danneel had vacated.
“Oh, silly Jensen,” Genevieve giggled, and he knew he was about to agree to anything they suggested. “Each princess has a range of sizes. Sandy didn’t even go get her dress yet. And even if she did, it just means hers isn’t in stock anymore. The girls hoard all the good sizes, remember?”
“But I’m sure they have her size on file.”
“Then we’re just going to have to figure out a way to change that, aren’t we?” Genevieve turned to Sophia with a mischievous glint in her eye. “What size do you think our girl Jenny is?”
“Don’t call me that,” Jensen barked, then added, quieter, “Please.”
“Okay, maybe that was a bit too far. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. I know you weren’t being mean.” And now Jensen felt like shit. He sighed, resigned. “Okay, what do you need me to do?”
Genevieve’s face lit up like it was Christmas. “Oh, Jensen! You’re a real Prince!”
“Oh yeah, just the best.” Jensen leaned back in the chair. “Hurry up and tell me what I need to do before I change my mind.”
Genevieve turned to Sophia. “I’m going to need your make-up expertise if this is ever going to work.”
Jensen groaned. There was no way this was anywhere in the neighborhood of a good idea, let alone an idea that was going to work. But he was willing to go along with it if it meant Sandy had even a tiny bit of chance of not getting in trouble.
“Oh goodie!” Sophia pranced over to where Jensen sat, make-up palette in hand. “I’ve been wanting to get at these cheekbones since I first saw them - and those eyelashes!”
“Danneel!” Genevieve called, trying to snap her friend out of whatever trance she was in.
“Huh? Yeah?”
“We’re going to need to pad Jensen up and find him some suitable street clothes.”
Jensen frowned in confusion. “Street clothes?” He didn’t understand why he couldn’t just wear what he had come in wearing in the first place.
“Uh, yeah - otherwise how are you and Danneel going to go down and get your dress? You can’t just go walking in there dressed like that. If anyone saw you come in here in that shirt and those jeans and your freaking female doppelganger leave here in the same clothes, someone is going to know what’s up and tell on us. Our whole cover swill be blown and all our work with be for nothing.”
“I don’t think I can - “
Jensen made to stand up, but Sophia forcibly, and maybe a bit too roughly, pushed him back down, all but putting her knee in his chest. “No backing out now, bucko. You said you would help Sandy and you are going to help Sandy."
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