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"No. You're being ridiculous," David said angrily, throwing up his hands. "You're going to embarrass me in front of my mother and her friends. Now put that suitcase down and let's go to dinner. All right?"
"No." She turned as she reached the door, trembling slightly. She looked at David, in his expensive-looking blazer, his trendy horn-rimmed glasses, and his shiny monogrammed cuff links and couldn't remember what she had found so attractive about him anymore. Ryan was right. David was an impossible snob. Worse, he was kind of a jerk.
Suddenly she thought back to last summer, when she was
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living with Ryan on the yacht and writing her column for Hamptons. Ryan never understood the writing thing the way David had--it just wasn't one of his interests. But there was a huge difference between her two ex-boyfriends. Ryan would never, ever look down on her.
"What am I going to tell my mother?" David asked, his angry expression crumbling into doubt. Suddenly he looked like a whiny little mama's boy.
"I don't know, David. Why don't you make up a story? That's what writers do, isn't it?"
She slammed the door in his face and raced out of the Dakota and onto West Seventy-second Street, hailing a cab. She hoped she could still catch the last Jitney and make it to the big Vogue party. Maybe it wasn't too late to make everything right.
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JACQUI DOESN'T SEEM TO LIKE SURPRISES EITHER
"IS IT EVERYTHING YOU EVER WISHED FOR?" MARCUS
asked with a grand wave of the arm, gesturing at the scene before him.
"More," Jacqui said breathlessly.
She had expected the usual Hamptons blowout for the Vogue party celebrating Eliza's collection: a cadre of security at the front gates, bedlam at the door, valet
s hustling guests out of their shiny new Porsches. But the fete at the Calvin Klein mansion was a far cry from the extravagant, over-the-top, anything-goes bacchanalian parties that put the Hamptons on the map.
Instead, the spare, modern spaces of the large and airy home were as artfully decorated and well edited as any Vogue spread. The pristinely white walls were adorned with enormous, elegant black-and-white blowups from the shoot, and classical music was piped in from the invisible overhead speakers. The magazine had invited only an intimate handful of the most powerful, influential, and well-known style arbiters who had passed muster with
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the publication's exacting editor in chief. It was a chic and stylish crowd, comprised of old-money scions and blue-chip heiresses like the Lauders and the Hearsts. Needless to say, Chauncey Raven wasn't on the guest list.
Jacqui couldn't stop looking at the humongous life-size photographs of her. She was inescapable. She was no longer Jacqui Velasco, pretty girl from Brazil, but the one-named wonder "Jacarei." She couldn't cross the room without being accosted by several different people--editors, modeling agents, PR reps, reporters, designers, photographers, who all wanted a piece of her. The attention was almost overwhelming.
"I'm . . . everywhere," she said as she took it all in.
"My dear, that's how Jacarei was meant to be experienced," Marcus drawled, nodding in pleasure at the enormous wall-high photographs.
Whether or not that was true, the sight gave her a bit of a headache. She wished she hadn't left her purse in the coat check, since she always kept a few Tylenol pills stashed away. She excused herself and made her way to the grand staircase and the coat check beyond.
As she walked up the stairs, she adjusted the front of her dress, making sure her bra straps weren't peeking out of the neckline. Knowing that most would expect her to show off "the Body," Jacqui had decided to trump expectations by choosing a loose, poufy baby-doll dress from Eliza's fall line. She'd worn it with sky-scraping six-inch Pierre Hardy wedges that made her tanned
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legs look endless. The effect was stunning and subversively sexy and showed that Jacqui could command a room without having to show off her figure. See? She didn't need Eliza to style her after all.
From the top of the landing, she could see the main hall below, where Eliza was holding court in the great room, looking poised to take over the global fashion market. She wore a smashing red dress with flamenco ruffles--for her resort collection, she'd decided to channel 1950s Cuba. Not that Eliza had told Jacqui that. She'd had to hear about it from Marcus, since she and Eliza still weren't speaking, despite the fact that it had been an entire week since their argument.
Eliza had come up to her when she'd first arrived at the party and hissed in her ear that she needed to talk to her about Marcus. But Jacqui had angrily waved Eliza away. She didn't want to hear another warning about Marcus and the evils of modeling, and she was sick of Eliza thinking she needed to be taken care of. She'd made up her mind, and there was no going back: she'd signed up with the Chrysler agency and was leaving for Paris the next morning. She would have to let NYU know she wouldn't be enrolling in the fall at some point--after all, they'd probably notice when she wasn't at orientation tomorrow-and the thought brought a little sadness. But she was determined, and nothing was going to stop her.
She was feeling a little dizzy from all the cocktails she'd drunk. They'd created a special drink in her honor--the
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Passionate Jac, made from Jack Daniels and Brazilian passion fruit juice. She looked for an empty bathroom where she could at least clear her head. As she stumbled around a corner, trying to find her way, she crashed into something. Make that someone.
