Chasing Harry Winston

A little after midnight, Toby finally agreed they could leave. Dean had ducked out a bit earlier with profuse apologies that he had to get to a friend’s party he simply couldn’t miss (damn him!), Mackenzie was now feigning disinterest in Jack on a love seat in a dark corner, and Adriana was, once again, supremely bored. She’d already tried every trick in the book to get Toby to take her dancing, but he would have none of it. He was exhausted from the work and the travel; he was going directly back to the hotel, and he expected his girlfriend to join him.

Toby chattered on about something as he helped Adriana into her coat, but it wasn’t hard to block him out. What proved more difficult was remembering that she was only thirty-a mere girl, practically!-and not the fifty- year-old woman she felt like. At least the night wasn’t a total loss; it looked like Mackenzie, all touchy and laughing with Jack, was a changed woman. Adriana waited to catch her eye and offered a little wave good-bye.

Mackenzie motioned for her to wait a minute and, like a consummate professional, lightly grazed Jack’s lips with her fingertip and sashayed away from him, toward Adriana.

“You’re leaving already?” Mackenzie asked, glancing at Adriana’s coat.

“It’s after midnight. I’m beat,” Adriana lied. Not beat, just bored, she thought. “But it looks like you’re doing great work.”

“You. Are. A. Goddess!” Mackenzie whispered, leaning in and clutching Adriana’s arm. “He’s already invited me back to his place for a drink. I told him I’d think about it.”

Adriana was impressed. Nothing worked more efficiently than a maybe. It wasn’t a flat-out rejection, but it definitely sent the message that he’d have to work a little harder.

“Just remember, if you sleep with him, no staying over. I don’t care if it’s five in the morning; you have to be the one to get up and out. Stay as long as you’re having sex. The moment it’s time for sleep, you’re out of there,” Adriana advised her new pupil and tried not to think about how much she sounded like her mother.

Mackenzie nodded, hanging on every word. “What if he-”

“There are no exceptions.”

Another nod.

“Enjoy!” Adriana trilled. She gave Toby’s hand a little tug to pull him away from the circle of people who had entrapped him. “Honey, we really should be going…”

“Oh, and one more thing,” Mackenzie whispered. “I want to pitch a story idea to you, as the focus for our next issue. I’m not sure what the angle would be yet, but you have an absolute gift and I think our readers would love to know about it.”

Well. This was an interesting-and unexpected-development. Adriana was accustomed to being solicited for her picture by random tourists who thought her exotically gorgeous, and tonight wasn’t the first time a magazine editor had deemed her beautiful enough to be included in an issue. But a story focusing on her innate abilities with men and her talent for teaching other women how to snare them? That didn’t happen every day.

She feigned indifference even though her voice shook slightly from the excitement of it all. “Oh, well, that might be nice,” she said blandly.

“Oh, I do hope you’ll think about it and agree. I can see a double-page spread with a full interview and lots of gorgeous glossy pictures. We’ll make it phenomenal, I promise,” Mackenzie gushed. She hadn’t seemed like a gusher earlier in the evening, but then again, she hadn’t seemed like someone who could snag a guy so expertly, either.

It was all Adriana could do not to shriek with joy. “Well, um, Catherine knows how to reach me-or, at least, how to reach Toby-so that’s probably the best way…”

But Mackenzie had already started back toward Jack. “I’ll call you next week! Great to meet you. And thanks… for everything.” She waved and continued her sashay back to the darkened love seat.

“I hope you had a nice time, sweetheart?” Toby asked as he hailed a cab outside the building.

“It was so much more than nice, Toby. I had a wonderful time,” Adriana said with more honesty than she’d thought possible before Mackenzie’s idea. “An amazing, splendid, wonderful time.”

The knock woke Leigh out of a deep sleep, something she rarely achieved at night, never mind in the middle of the afternoon when she hadn’t even intended to fall asleep. There was something about the air or the water out here, something she needed to bottle: Every time her little rental car pulled into Sag Harbor, her whole body went slack with relaxation.

“Come in,” she called after a quick check to make sure she was clothed and not covered in drool. She was shocked to see that it was already dark outside.

Jesse opened the door and peeked just his head inside. “Did I wake you? Sorry, I figured you were hard at work twenty-four hours a day.”

Leigh snorted. “Uh-huh. I’m learning firsthand that having two Bloody Marys before lunch isn’t all that conducive to productivity.”

“True enough. But how good do you feel?”

“Pretty good,” she admitted. Despite the bits and pieces of her dream that were flashing back to her-something to do with walking down the aisle naked and shivering-she still felt rested and peaceful.

“Wait just a minute,” Jesse said as he crossed the room in three quick strides. He sat on the edge of the bed where Leigh sat fully dressed bolstered by half a dozen pillows, on top of the quilt. “What do I see here?”

Leigh followed his eyes to the paperback that was spread open across her stomach. It sported a baby blue cover with a picture of a prettily wrapped gift and was a sequel to Something Borrowed, a book she’d just finished and loved.

“This?” she asked, folding down a page and handing it to him. “It’s called Something Blue. The first one was about a girl who falls in love with her best friend’s fiance and doesn’t know what to do. Well, they end up together, and now in this one, we see the story from the perspective of the best friend who lost her fiance. Not that she’s so innocent, either, because she slept with one of her ex-fiance’s groomsmen.”

Jesse read the back cover while shaking his head. “Incredible,” he murmured.

“What?”

“The fact that you read this.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, come on, Leigh. You don’t think it’s amusing that little Ms. Cornell-English-major-I-only-edit-serious- works-of-literature is reading Something Blue in her free time?”

Leigh snatched the book back and pressed it against her chest. “It’s really good,” she said with a frown.

“I’m sure it is.”

Leigh wanted to say that, at least as of this moment, Something Blue was far better written than the latest draft of Jesse’s novel. That it had a sensible structure and coherent language. That maybe it wasn’t exploring too many lofty intellectual themes, but so what? It was witty, clever, and fun to read-something Mr. Literary Hotshot could use in triplicate right about now.

But of course Leigh didn’t say any of this. She merely said, “I’m not going to defend my pleasure-reading choices to you.”

Jesse held up his hands in surrender. “Fair enough. But you do realize that this changes everything, don’t you? I now have actual proof that the work-Nazi editor is actually a human being.”

“Just because I read chick lit?”

“You got it. How tough can someone be if they read and relate to Bridget Jones’s Diary?”

Leigh sighed. “I loved that book.”

Jesse smiled. “What was that other one…The Nanny Diaries?”

“A definite classic.”

“Mmm,” Jesse murmured, and Leigh could tell he was rapidly losing interest. She knew his gestures now, his expressions, could decode the meaning of a furrowed eyebrow or a half-smile. She’d been to the Hamptons four times in the last three months, and with each meeting things had felt less awkward. The second time she’d again stayed at the American Hotel, although she’d spent barely a handful of hours there-a fact that said a great deal considering the visit took place on a No Human Contact Monday (she waived the rule for one night). On the third and fourth visits she accepted Jesse’s offer to stay in the guesthouse he’d built for his nephews-it was so much more convenient-and it wasn’t until yesterday, on this fifth visit, that Leigh had realized the wisdom of bunking in