Sun-Kissed Read online

  They’d packed each outfit in acid-free tissue and hung them inside plastic bags in a portable closet that was going in the truck to the Hamptons. The messengers were arriving in an hour, and the clothes would be in the store by the next morning—the day of the party.

  Eliza planned to catch a few hours’ sleep and then drive out to the Hamptons later that afternoon. She nodded good-bye to the rest of the team and went home for a well-deserved shower.

  In an uncharacteristic fit of generosity, Sydney had allowed everyone to take the company car service home, and a fleet of black Lincoln town cars were parked in front of the building. Eliza directed hers up to Park Avenue.

  It was wonderful to be home—truly home. The doorman tipped his hat and held the door open for her, and she felt an immeasurable amount of pleasure as she walked into the marble lobby, decorated with rococo-style pastel murals of nymphs and cherubs. She took the carpeted, mirrored elevator to the twenty-first floor. The Thompsons’ homestead had been in Eliza’s mother’s family since the early part of the twentieth century. It was a “classic six,” but a “luxury twelve” was more like it, since it was double the usual square footage, with a soaring, three-story entry space and a balcony that overlooked Central Park.

  Her parents were already in the Hamptons, back in their Amagansett “cottage” (their ten-bedroom country house could only be called rustic according to the standards of a Ralph Lauren ad), and Cheka, their maid, answered the door sleepily in her nightgown. Eliza was shocked to realize she’d probably been working harder than Cheka all evening and most likely getting paid less for it. It was strange—Eliza would never have thought of herself as someone who enjoyed working, but a day in Sydney’s studio had suddenly changed that.

  All of her friends from Spence did nothing more than make hair appointments, shop for clothes, and talk about boys. Sure, there were those brilliant girls who went to Williamsburg for the summer for acting camp or interned at magazines or the White House, but Eliza had never been interested in being one of them.

  She never thought a hard night of work would actually make her feel more energized, not less. But having the opportunity to express herself creatively and using her innate talents to make something beautiful brought a level of satisfaction she’d never experienced before. Eliza felt inspired, and she was glad she’d taken the internship at Sydney’s company. She couldn’t wait until the show itself.

  A few hours later, refreshed from a nap and a much-needed shower, Eliza packed the last of her monogrammed Goyard bags and called downstairs for a taxi. She took the taxi to their garage across town, which housed her new ride—a sporty new Land Rover LR3, an upgrade from last summer’s leased Jetta. Her parents had bought her the car as a prize for getting into Princeton, her fathers alma mater. The SUV was polished to a shine, and Eliza threw her stuff in the back and hopped inside the driver’s seat.

  A clipped British voice greeted her as soon as she gunned the engine. “Good morning, Eliza. Where would you like to go today?”

  “Good morning, car!” Eliza chirped back. It always cracked her up to have a conversation with her automobile. Eliza punched their address in Amagansett into the automated GPS system.

  The car began giving her directions, and Eliza drove it out of the lot and pulled out into traffic. “Telephone,” the car informed her as a flashing symbol on the dashboard lit up.

  “Answer,” Eliza said.

  “Answering telephone. You are connected.”

  Eliza heard the sound of waves in the background and Jeremy fumbling with his cell phone. “Hello? Hello?” he called. “Liza, are you there?”

  “Hi, baby.”

  “Hey.” He had a voice that melted her heart. A deep rumble. Eliza felt a twinge of pity for any girl who didn’t have a guy with a voice as sexy as Jeremy’s. She remembered how Charlie Borshok, her former paramour, had a voice like a hyena and tended to laugh in a high-pitched giggle.

  “I just left the garage, and I’m about to go into the tunnel. I should be there in a few hours.” Her conversational voice was quickly replaced by schoolgirl cooing. “Did you miss me?”

  “Not one bit,” he joked.

  She steered the car into the cavernous Midtown Tunnel, and the signal started to fade. “Jer, I’m going to lose you. I’ll call when I’m on 27, okay? Love you!”

  There was no answer. The symbol on the dashboard was dull. She’d lost the connection. No matter. She’d call him again once she got past the tunnel. She felt a thrill thinking of the special custom-made lingerie set in her luggage. The palest pink silk, with satin ribbons. Jeremy didn’t know it yet, but tonight her V card would expire. Hopefully the world wouldn’t end before then because Eliza had absolutely no intention of dying a virgin.

  the devil wears louboutin

  THE FIRST GIVEAWAY THAT THIS WASN’T GOING TO BE A normal job was the sight of her boss’s heels perched on top of her desk. Mara admired them from the corner of her eye. They were hot-pink patent-leather Louboutins with fire-engine-red soles—the status-conveying detail that communicated each pair’s five-hundred-dollar price tag to observant and shoe-savvy females everywhere.

  For a decade Sam Davis had ruled the New York media world. She had single-handedly transformed several sluggish, out-of-touch magazines into cash-cow bonanzas, starting with American Teen and working her way up the “pink ghetto” of women’s magazines, from Sophisticated to the Spanish import Anna Claudia to the mainstream Glitter to her most famous reinvention yet— Them—a notorious weekly celebrity tabloid that fed the public desire for knowledge about the intimate private lives of nubile reality television stars. Sam Davis was the reason pop starlet Chauncey Raven, newly married to her former backup singer Daryl Wolf and mother to four-month-old Liam Spenser Raven Wolf, had already totaled two Mercedes-Benz convertibles in high-speed paparazzi car chases through Malibu.

  Sam Davis bent the media landscape to her will, and her trajectory had seemed to go higher and higher. For years, it seemed she was unstoppable. Thinking she could conquer all, she set her sights on reinventing the intellectual-mag market. She proposed a magazine that was equal part Harper’s and InStyle that would make “smart people sexy.” She did this by putting Nobel Prize winners in skimpy outfits and having actresses review the latest literary tomes. The high point had come when a reality show host summed up a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on famine in Africa as “making her hungry for more.” The magazine folded after three issues, her multi-year contract was canceled, and as quickly as she had been the toast of the town, she was a laughingstock.

  Hence the exile to the Hamptons. She swore it was to get back in touch with her family (she worked sixteen-hour days, her staff reported, even while her five-year-old son was in the hospital with a brain tumor) and to enjoy the slower pace of Hamptons reporting (garden shows, horse shows, show-offs). But New York knew the truth—she was over.

  But not out. Sam Davis was eager to put her personal stamp on Hamptons and shake things up once again.

  Mara waited eagerly while Sam was on the phone harassing her assistant about her coffee. “Haven’t I told you a thousand times? A dry cappuccino has no foam!”

  She still couldn’t believe she’d landed such a sought-after gig. The speed of it still made Mara’s head dizzy. All her life, she’d been told getting ahead was the result of hard work and discipline, but how could she believe that when with one simple phone call—one connection—she’d landed the job of her dreams? It didn’t seem quite fair. What about all the other girls who had applied for the position but weren’t lucky enough to have once worked for Sam Davis’s college roommate?

  But thoughts like that were “lame” according to Eliza. The world operated on the Rolodex system. It was all about whom you knew— the more important and worth knowing, the better. At seventeen, Mara was surprised to find she knew quite a lot of those people.

  “Yes?” Sam asked, finally acknowledging Mara’s presence. She was a solidly built woman of thirty-six with a ha
rd, lined face. Her jet-black hair was meant to look punk, as was the dog collar around her neck, but somehow, stuffed into a too-tight Vivienne Westwood sweater and thigh-hugging bootleg Shagg jeans, Sam Davis still managed to looked like any other suburban mother of three but one who was desperately—and vainly—trying to hold on to her rebellious youth.

  “I’m Mara Waters. Your new intern. I filed the story on the benefit at Cain last night.”

  “The what?” Sam asked. She whipped her feet back onto the floor, her pink shoes disappearing in a lurid flash. “Oh. Right. Got your copy. We cut it.”

  “Oh,” Mara said, stung and disappointed. All that work, leaving Ryan, and the piece hadn’t even run. Plus, it proved her worst fear—she wasn’t a writer. She couldn’t even make a society gossip column exciting. This was seriously depressing.

  That morning, Mara had woken up in bed alone. Ryan had left a note saying he’d gone off to surf. He had a habit of waking up at dawn to catch the waves. She’d felt a little sad—last night they’d been too tired to hook up, and then they hadn’t even been able to spend the morning together. She’d planned on making them a romantic breakfast in the galley kitchen but had had to settle for a cold bagel alone by the television.

  “I thought about running it next week, but by then it’ll be old news. And we don’t do old news at Hamptons” Sam Davis declared pompously.

  “Of course.” Mara nodded. She began to put her notebook back in her bag. It was obvious she was about to get relegated to the keeper of the office supplies. Her shoulders slumped.

  But to her surprise, Sam gestured for her to take the seat across the desk, and, after Mara removed the piles of manuscripts, magazines, envelopes, and FedEx boxes lying on top of it, she did.

  “Listen, it’s not a big deal. Happens all the time,” Sam said, rolling her eyes. “It was a little heavy on the puns—but otherwise not a bad read. A little wordy. You buried the lead by putting the polo player hooking up with the NBC star in the fourth ’graf. But you’ll learn.”

  Mara perked up. “Really?”

  Sam shuffled through some papers on her desk and found a hard copy of Mara’s story. She skimmed it quickly. “There are some nice things here—‘celebrity math’—that’s funny. I like that. We need more of that.”

  Mara glowed. She’d thought that was a cute turn of phrase.

  “Tell you what, the managing ed hired another intern, some favor to the publisher’s sister-in-law or something. So it turns out, we don’t need you to intern,” Sam said.

  But before Mara’s face could crumple, Sam finished her sentence. “But I do need someone to fill in the Social Diary column regularly. Courtney von Wilding called. She’s spending the summer sailing the Mediterranean on some Greek prince’s boat and wont be back in New York till the fall.” Sam sighed. “That’s what I get for hiring some junior socialite to write the Diary column. It’s almost impossible to get those girls near a keyboard. Ruins the manicure.”

  She pulled out a few old issues of the magazine and threw them across the desk in Mara’s direction. “You’re going to cover fashion shows, the polo, benefits, dinner parties, who’s in, who’s out, what they’re wearing, who they’re sleeping with, who got snubbed at the fireworks this year. Let’s shake it up a little! Give them something to read between all the Cartier ads.”

  Mara nodded, scribbling furiously. Who in/out, read btw Cartier ads.

  “Sydney Minx is opening his new boutique tomorrow. I want you there; make sure you get an interview with him. Let’s do a full profile. More of that outsider-turned-insider stuff you do. Maybe we’ll do it as a cover. See what the old bitch has got up his sleeve. I want three thousand words by Monday.”

  Three thousand words! Practically a novel! And had Sam Davis said “cover”? This was her big chance!

  “But before I forget, there is one thing I desperately need,” Sam Davis said. “Socks.”

  “Socks?”

  Sam pointed to her feet. “Socks. For my tennis game. I need some. Get Sydney to send some over. Tell them we’re shooting for a fashion page.”

  “Sorry—call in some socks?”

  “Are you deaf? Yes. Here’s the number,” she said, throwing a card at Mara. “I’m late for my lunch at Nick and Toni’s.”

  And with that, Sam Davis departed.

  Mara stared at the scrap of paper in front of her. Did her boss actually expect her to ask a designer to messenger over some socks? Why couldn’t Sam just pop down to the store and buy a pair? Or go home and pick up her own?

  She dialed the number.

  “Goober Public Relations,” said a silky female voice she recognized as Mitzi’s assistant’s.

  Mara immediately hung up the phone. She just couldn’t bring herself to ask someone to send over some socks, especially not Mitzi. Not even with the crazy excuse of needing them for a fashion photo shoot. They were just white socks—they sold them at a drugstore for $1.99. Maybe she should just run down there and buy some. But what if Sam noticed they weren’t Sydney Minx socks? Was there something special about Sydney Minx socks?

  Luckily, she had another idea. She quickly dialed Eliza’s cell.

  “Liza?”

  “Mar! Holla!” In Cabo, they’d played Gwen Stefani’s album on Mara’s iPod speakers until their ears bled.

  “Holla back, girl! Where are you?” Mara asked, feeling a flush of happiness at hearing Eliza’s throaty voice. This summer, the three of them would be together again—and who knew what kind of mischief they would find themselves in?

  “Stuck in traffic on 27, as always. I should be there in an hour, though.”

  “Listen, I need some socks. For my boss. Sam Davis. Do you think you guys can send some over?”

  “Socks?”

  Mara quickly explained.

  “Oh yeah. Don’t worry. I heard she does that all the time, calls in for every little thing. No one even lends her any clothes anymore since she always lies and says it’s for a shoot and then they see it on her at some premiere party. But she and Sydney go way back, I heard. I’ll get one of the girls in the shop to send over a pair. What’s her size?”

  Mara surreptitiously kicked the Louboutin shoe box under the desk so that she could see the label. “Ten and a half. Literally Bigfoot.” She snickered.

  Eliza beeped off the line and then beeped back on. “They’ll be there by noon.”

  “You’re a lifesaver.”

  “More like a socksaver.” Eliza giggled.

  “Guess what? I’m writing a cover story on Sydney Minx!” Mara said, her voice rising with excitement. She doodled on her notepad, writing, By Mara Waters, and, Social Diary by Mara Waters, and tried out a few byline bios: Mara Waters lives in Sag Harbor with her boyfriend. This is her first piece for the magazine.

  “Shut up!” Eliza gasped.

  “Seriously. They’re making me the Social Diary columnist. Isn’t that crazy?”

  “Insane,” Eliza enthused. “Oh my God, you’re, like, going to be so important!”

  “You shut up!” Mara laughed. Eliza tended to exaggerate, but it was still nice to hear. She put her feet up on the desk just as she’d seen Sam Davis do. There was no one around who would be able to see her anyway.

  “Will you put me in the story? I styled the whole collection.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Mara replied in a professional tone.

  “Oh,” Eliza said, disappointed.

  “Loser, I’m only kidding. Of course you’ll be in it,” Mara promised.

  “Phew. For a minute there, I thought I might have to bring you my super-duper-big-head-shrinking machine,” Eliza teased.

  “See you at the Perry house?”

  “If I don’t see you first!” Eliza threatened.

  Mara smiled as she hung up the phone. She couldn’t wait to see her friends.

  jacqui tunes out preludeto-divorce radio

  THE KIDS TRIED TO PRETEND THEY DIDN’T HEAR THEM, BUT the house reverberated with the sound of poi
son and bile. Kevin and Anna were fighting over the intercom. Again.

  Jacqui looked at the white box by the toaster and wished she could shut off the speakers, but their Hamptons intercom was different from the New York system. In New York, when you beeped for a certain room, you got a private line. But in the Hamptons, which had older technology, when you pressed a button, your voice carried to the fifteen other intercom speakers in the house.

  “Goddammit, where the hell are my golf clubs? How come I can never find anything in this house?” Kevin bellowed.

  “Don’t blame me—I wasn’t the one who sent them out to get varnished!” Anna screeched.

  “It’s not like you do anything around here! All you do is spend money! And by the way, that little stunt you pulled on my ear is serious. The doctor said it’s become infected!”

  “So what? I don’t care! I’m so sick of the way you treat me. I’m your wife, not your assistant anymore!” Anna screamed.

  “Yeah, I know. My assistant does more work than you do!” Kevin retorted.

  “Screw you! I want a divorce!”

  “Fine! You’ve got one!” Kevin yelled back. “You probably just want to be with someone younger! It’s not like you ever want to do anything that I want to do!”

  “Earth to Kevin. Your friends are bo-ring!”

  “Well, you won’t have to hang around them anymore, will you?”

  “I mean it this time!” Anna threatened. “I want a divorce!”

  “Go ahead! Call your lawyer!”

  “He’s on speed dial! Just watch me!”

  “They don’t mean it,” Jacqui said as she ladled out organic, steel-cut Irish oatmeal into the children’s cereal bowls. The idle threat of divorce was thrown out so often, it lacked any punch. “Seriously.”

  Madison rolled her eyes. She pretended to be indifferent to her father and her stepmother’s quarrels, but since Anna was the only mother they had—their real mother, Brigitte, had absconded to a Sri Lankan ashram and had hardly laid eyes on any of them in years—it was evident the fights spooked her. When a long shriek of Anna’s voice screeched over the intercom, Madison accidentally upset her glass of orange juice on the table.