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"Right," Mara agreed. "Well. . ."
"I guess we'll see you around then," Ryan finished with an upbeat, friendly smile. He was being so polite and maddeningly
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nice. Sure, Mara wanted the two of them to be friends, but he was treating her as if she were just another guest at the party-- not the girl he'd lived with on a freaking boat just last summer!
"Yeah." Mara nodded lamely as Tinker got up to greet some new arrivals. She noticed Ryan squeeze Tinker's leg gently as she stood.
"Hey, man, can you pass a beer?" Charlie asked from his perch on the hammock. As Ryan reached into the cooler to get him one, Mara seized the opportunity to duck away as quickly as possible.
As she approached the gate, Mara took one last glance back at the two of them. Tinker had jumped on Ryan's back, and he was giving her a piggyback ride all the way to the edge of the pool. They fell into the water, laughing and screaming as their toned, athletic bodies splashed about.
Why did she even want to be friends with him? She couldn't remember the reasons. She was too angry and confused, her mind racing as she remembered all those times she'd come home from work and found Ryan hanging out with Tinker. She wondered if Ryan had ever really been such a great guy to her after all--or if their relationship had been just a sham. Was it possible there had been something between him and Tinker even then? Mara felt her cheeks burn from the heat, inside and out.
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JACQUI ENJOYS THE VIEW FROM THE TOP
"ARE YOU READY?" MARCUS ASKED, GIVING JACQUI A
hand as she stepped out of his Jeep onto the red carpet that lined the driveway up to the Swan estate, where the Hamptons magazine bash was being held.
She nodded and inhaled deeply. It was her first official modeling shoot--or at least as official you could get, since it was taking place at a party--and she was nervous and excited. Especially since the shoot meant a night out on the town with Marcus. A few hours earlier, a two-man hair-and-makeup team had arrived at the Finnemore mega-mansion to prepare her for the evening. It had taken them three hours to transform Jacqui from merely devastating to billboard-worthy.
She swiveled her legs forward, locked together at the knee so that she wouldn't show her underpants to the world, and exited the car gracefully. With her bronzed skin, dewy lips, and hair worn in loose, mermaid-like waves, she was radiant in a short white jersey minidress--an Eliza Thompson design, of course---
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with a back that dipped dangerously low to show "back cleavage." Hordes of paparazzi stationed at the party's entrance immediately descended on her like honeybees around a queen. It was pandemonium bordering on hysteria. Jacarei!
"Over here!"
"No, over here!"
"To your right!"
"To your left!"
"Jaaaaacareiiii!"
Jacqui glanced questioningly back at Marcus. She noticed Midas standing a little removed from the paparazzi horde with his bulky professional camera and tripod, intently taking photographs. "What's going on?" she asked.
"It's all part of the shoot," Marcus explained with a smile. "It's a day in the life of a glamorous jet-setter, so we tipped the paparazzi to treat you like one."
They had advised her there would be some staged scenes at the party, but Jacqui was unprepared for the level of commotion the Easton boys had instilled in the photographers. The buzz surrounding "Jacarei" (one name only, at Marcus's insistence) had officially begun.
The Easton boys had envisioned their
photo spread as a showcase of Jacqui as a busy Hamptons glamour girl, and tonight would be the first of many shoots. Midas seemed to have the more formal shoots all planned out: they'd get shots of Jacqui
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attending the biggest parties, hopping off fifty-foot yachts, sunning on Main Beach, riding a horse at the Hamptons Classic. They intended to divide the work between them, and Marcus had readily volunteered to take care of the "behind the scenes" cinema verite moments--Jacqui brushing her teeth over the sink (wearing items from Elizas new lingerie line), chatting on the phone, or texting on a BlackBerry, having a cup of coffee. Jacqui was excited at the idea that Marcus would be trying to capture such intimate moments and hoped that it would mean having him around a lot.
"What am I supposed to do?" she whispered, unsure of how to proceed. Her hesitation was causing a backlog on the red carpet. An assistant to an actress who was idling in her limousine waiting for her moment in the limelight came up to Marcus to complain about the holdup.
"Very simple, my dear. Model," Marcus said, whispering huskily in her ear and stepping aside to let her commandeer the spotlight solo. He removed a tiny Canon Elph from his jacket pocket and began taking shots of her as well.
