Reborn to Dodge the Bad Marriage novel Chapter 85

Chapter 85 One Look Was Enough

Nara nodded, perfectly agreeable. “Sure.”

“Top of the foot. Side of the nose. Mid back, beside the spine. Base of the skull. Arch of the foot, Olivia began.

She rattled the points off fast, and every name she said put a gold needle in, dead on target.

Quick as she went, each word came out clean enough to follow.

She reached the end of the sequence and the last needle at the same moment.

She wiped the sweat off her forehead and glanced over. “Did you catch all that, Nora?”

Nora nodded. “I did.”

Olivia gave a light laugh. “There are a lot of points and they’re hard to keep straight. I’ll only run it once, and I’ll print the rest out for you to memorize.

“For now, try the two easy ones, the arch of the foot and the base of the skull. Pick up a needle and see how it feels.”

Nora looked at her. “Right now?”

Olivia nodded, encouraging. “Right now. Don’t be nervous. You’re working on a mannequin, and everyone gets it wrong the first time. That’s completely normal.”

Nora looked at her a beat longer than she needed to. “All right.”

A quiet laugh came out of Julian.

Olivia glanced at him, puzzled, then decided he was laughing at Nora, and the thought settled her considerably.

She sat there with her eyes wide, waiting for Nora to drive a needle into her own hand, waiting for her to stumble through the chart, all thumbs and no talent, nothing going for her but a pretty face.

Under that expectant stare, Nora picked up a needle, turned to the mannequin, and began calling the points herself. “Top of the foot. Side of the nose… crown of the head.”

Every name she spoke put a needle exactly where it belonged, at the right pressure, never too light and never too hard, and not one of them went a hair too deep.

Olivia had settled in to watch a disaster, and instead she watched Nora run the whole Fivefold sequence more smoothly than she could run it herself.

Nora glanced up with a mild smile. “So how did I do?”

Olivia’s smile slipped. Minutes earlier, she had been explaining that Nora wasn’t fit to be her student, that beginners always made mistakes.

Now, her face couldn’t settle on a single color.

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15:31 Thu, Oct 1 MJ ·

Chapter 85 One Look Was Enough

Finished

And when Julian had told her not to teach Nora, he hadn’t been sparing Nora any embarrassment. He had

en laughing at her!

Nora hadn’t been worried about looking foolish either. She had been asking where Olivia found the nerve to offer!

It landed like a pair of invisible hands taking her by the face and slapping it back and forth until both cheeks burned.

“Nora, you already knew the Fivefold Method,” Olivia burst out. “Why didn’t you just say something? You let me go on and made me look like a fool. Was that fun for you?”

She delivered it like a woman who had been wronged.

She had only pushed to teach Nora so she could watch her fail.

One aggrieved little speech, though, and it sounded as if Nora had set the whole thing up to humiliate her

Nora drew the needles out one at a time, and a short laugh escaped her. “You offered. I turned you down. Julian told you to leave it, and you insisted anyway.

“And somehow I’m the one out to humiliate you?”

Olivia’s eyes went glassy. “If you already knew it that well, you could have just told me.”

“Told you?” That got another laugh out of Nora. “Would you have believed me?”

“Of course I would!” Olivia’s voice rose, and she pushed on. “Who taught you? How long have you been at it? A year? Longer than that?”

Nora had to fight the urge to roll her eyes. “I learned it the night you let me watch you.”

“That’s impossible!” The words were out of Olivia before she could stop them.

Nora had watched her work exactly once, and Olivia hadn’t named a single point out loud that night, so there was no way anyone could have learned it.

Nora spread her hands. “See? This is exactly why I said nothing.

“If I’d told you before I picked up a needle, you’d have called me a liar. I keep quiet, and now I’m doing it to embarrass you. Which is it?”

Olivia bit down on her lip. “But nobody learns the Fivefold Method from watching it once. It took me

‘months!”

Nora let out a short breath. “You couldn’t. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t. Besides, you put this whole sequence together for Julian, didn’t you?

“You wouldn’t have gone near him with a needle unless you were sure of it. So I doubt you were out advertising the method before you ever used it on him.”

Olivia had nothing to answer that with.

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15:31 Thu, Oct 1 MJ).

Chapter 85 One Look Was Enough

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