Flawless (28 page)

“I’m not sure,” said Scarlett. “It’s too early to say, I suppose. The house I’m staying in is divine, and it looks like Jake has found me a wonderful space for the new store. If we get it,” she added, cautiously.

“We’ll get it,” said Jake. No one would know the effort of will it took for him to keep his eyes away from Scarlett’s bosom, edibly gift-wrapped as they were in that unforgivably sexy dress. “I’m telling you, it’s a done deal.”

“And what about you guys?” asked Scarlett. “How have you been coping with…everything?”

No one spoke for a moment, and she worried she might have pried too far and somehow put her foot in it.

“We’re fine,” said Diana, squeezing Danny’s hand tighter.

The truth was, it had been a hellish few weeks. To say that Brogan had taken her departure badly would be a major understatement. After the attack in Telluride, he’d oscillated wildly between violent threats and bouts of pleading that left Diana winded with guilt. So far, Danny seemed to be taking a sanguine view of his “if I can’t have her, no one can” ranting. But Diana knew her husband too well to dismiss his reactions as so much hot air. She hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in weeks.

“We’re very grateful to Jake for giving us a hideout here,” she said, forcing a smile. “Living at Danny’s apartment has been like being in a cage at the zoo. We’ve been desperate to leave New York, but neither of us had the money to spend on hotels.” Catching Scarlett’s look of surprise, she explained, “Brogan’s cut me off from all my credit cards and closed our joint account. My parents have sent me some cash to tide me over, very kindly. But I’m too old to run back to Daddy for an allowance, so I want to make that money last.”

“Can Brogan do that?” asked Scarlett, frowning. “You were married for years. Surely some of that money is yours by right?”

She didn’t know why, but she liked Diana. Even in her current, happier state, she inspired strong feelings of protectiveness in Scarlett, a desire to stand up for the sisterhood. Scarlett hoped they might become friends.

“We’ve got a good divorce attorney working on it,” said Danny. “But these things take time. It doesn’t help that Brogan’s the one divorcing Diana. For adultery, if you can believe the cheek of that, the randy sod.”

“You knew my husband, didn’t you?” Diana looked across at Scarlett. “I remember him talking about you.”

“I didn’t know him,” said Scarlett. “I knew of some of the things he allowed to go on at his diamond mines, that’s all, and I spoke out against them.”

“That’s right,” said Diana, putting the pieces together. “The cancer cases. Trade Fair; that’s you, isn’t it?”

Scarlett nodded proudly. Jake looked across at Danny and rolled his eyes.

“What?” said Scarlett crossly, catching the look.

“How’s your charity going?” asked Diana.

“Slowly.”

Scarlett took another sip of her drink. She remembered Gregori and Andy from her trip to Yakutsk last summer, and their predictions about how hard it would be to get people interested in the Siberian miners’ plight. Unfortunately, they couldn’t have been more right, she thought guiltily, reflecting that she’d achieved precisely nothing on that front in the last six months.

“Part of my reason for coming out to LA was to try and breathe new life into it and get the word out in the States.”

“The word out about what? Brogan’s mines?” Diana frowned. “You know, I admire what you’re doing. But you can’t be sure about those lung cancer cases. I mean, I’m not saying he has no responsibility. But it’s a much more common illness in Russia than it is here. Those men might have had problems anyway.”

“Yakutia’s not our only focus,” said Scarlett, anxious to avoid an argument. “In fact, up until last year, Trade Fair was almost exclusively in Africa. But the injustices in the diamond business are endemic worldwide. It doesn’t help that most Americans are more likely to give to animal charities than human ones,” she added bitterly. “D’you know how much money PETA raises annually in California alone?”

“All right, all right, no hobby horses at the dinner table,” said Jake. His growing attraction for Scarlett hadn’t stopped him from getting irritated by the way she insisted on chewing people’s ears off about her charity bollocks
all the time
. Diana and Danny had come here for a break, not a lecture on bloody Africa. He’d hoped being away from London might have prompted her to lighten up, but no such luck, and he was starting to regret having held out
the carrot of increased US exposure for Trade Fair if she moved here. She seemed far more interested in that than in their new business.

“It’s hardly a hobby horse,” bristled Scarlett. “Perhaps if you read some of the literature I gave you, you’d have a bit more respect for what I’m trying to do. Or at least some understanding. Have you read that book on Sierra Leone yet?”

“Fine.” Jake frowned, loosening his tie. “If I promise to read the book, do you promise to get off my case about this? You can’t expect the entire world to agree with you, you know, just by nagging them into submission.”

Scarlett blushed. Was that how he saw her? As a nag?

“All right,” she said more quietly. “If you read the book, and you still think after that that the way you and Danny do business is OK, I’ll ‘lay off,’ as you put it. For now.”

“So,” Diana, ever the peacemaker, tactfully changed the subject. “I hear you’re opening a new store here. Will you stock a range of designers, or will it be all your own stuff? I love that brooch, by the way.” She pointed to the diamond-and-garnet starburst pinned to the halter tie of Scarlett’s dress.

“Thanks.” Scarlett fingered the brooch lovingly. “I made this years ago, when I was just starting out. Unfortunately all my London stock was lost in the robbery, and the fire destroyed most of my sketches.”

“That’s the other reason Scarlett moved out here,” said Danny grimly. “Your old man burned her London store to the ground.”

“I’m hoping the new store will be all my own work,” said Scarlett. “But I’ll have to work my butt off to produce a new line in time for our opening.”

“No!” Diana shook her head, looking quizzically from Scarlett to Danny and back again. “Brogan wouldn’t set fire…no, no, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do a thing like that. Why?”

“Because Scarlett’s campaign was making him lose face, not to mention money,” said Danny harshly. “Why d’you think?”

Diana had been under so much pressure these last few weeks, what with leaving her marriage and all the press intrusion, not to mention trying to recover from her physical and emotional injuries, that he hadn’t wanted to bother her with the details of Scarlett’s situation, or her proposed joint venture with Solomon Stones. His hope was that once Diana knew, she’d begin to lose some of the guilt that she still harbored for leaving Brogan. That she might even start to hate him, once she saw that it wasn’t only her life that he’d made a misery. But instead, her first instinct was to defend him. It made Danny want to scream.

“Are you sure it was Brogan?” she asked Scarlett directly. “It really doesn’t seem like him.”

Sensing her pain, Scarlett chose her words carefully. “I can’t prove it, no. But I believe he was behind what happened. We both do.” She looked to Jake for support, but he seemed to have developed a burning interest in the menu. “Anyway, it’s all in the past now. Hopefully moving out here will be a whole new start.”

Mercifully the waiter reappeared at this point and took their orders. Soon all four of them were tucking into juicy New York steaks and fries, washed down with far too much alcohol, and all awkward talk of Brogan and the past was forgotten.

“So,” said Danny, smacking his lips as a quivering mountain of lemon meringue pie was dolloped down in front of him. “Any ideas on a name yet? For the shop?”

Scarlett shrugged. “I hadn’t thought,” she said. “I guess I could just call it Bijoux. Or Bijoux LA?”

“Nah. Boring,” said Jake, without looking up from his dessert, a slice of pecan pie roughly the same size as a traffic cone.

“Well, what do you suggest?” said Scarlett, annoyed. Why did he always think he knew better?

“Actually,” he said with an arrogant smile, “I’ve got the perfect name. Something that sums up LA and the fantasy of what we’re selling, but that’s punchy enough to work as a global brand.”

“Oh really?” Scarlett looked at him sarcastically. “Well, please, do tell. Share your wealth of zero retail experience with the group, Mr. Meyer.”

“Now now,” laughed Danny. “You two sound like an old married couple already, d’you know that?”

Jake paused for effect. Then, looking Scarlett right in the eyes, he said: “Flawless.”

She opened her mouth to criticize, then closed it again. Jake sat back in his chair and folded his arms with the smug satisfaction of someone who knows they’ve just won an argument hands down.

“I like it,” said Diana.

“I love it,” said Danny. “Scarlett?”

Damn and blast the man! Why did he have to get it right first time?

“It’s not bad,” she said grudgingly.

“
Not bad
?” Jake gave her his best “come off it, ref” look.

“I’ll think about it,” said Scarlett. “
If
you read those books I gave you.”

“Deal!” said Jake, raising his glass. “To Flawless!” he toasted. “And all who sail in her.”

“Flawless!” said the other three in unison.

T
HANKS TO
J
AKE’S
natural talent for self-promotion, Flawless’s opening party rapidly became the most talked-about social event in Beverly Hills since the Oscars.

By the time the big night finally arrived in late March, neither he nor Scarlett had any handle on the guest list. At the last count, they reckoned that between them they’d officially asked around two hundred people, mostly contacts and clients of Jake’s, with a smattering of Scarlett’s London friends and charity bigwigs thrown in for good measure. Jake estimated at least double that number would show up when it came to it, drawn by the rumored celebrity attendance and the promise of unlimited free champagne. His biggest worry was how they were going to cram so many bodies into the tiny, twelve-foot-wide store without risking a sardines-like crush. Whereas Scarlett remained stuck in a flat-out panic, convinced that no one would show up at all.

“Are you sure you and I shouldn’t be there earlier?” she’d asked Jake for the hundredth time that morning, glued nervously to her cell phone while stuck at the beauty salon. “I can do my own hair and get to the store by, say, three.”

Jake, sprawled out on a lounge chair on the roof of the Peninsula, sipping a postbreakfast Bloody Mary and topping off
his tan in preparation for the silk turquoise shirt he planned to wear this evening, sighed heavily.

“The party’s at seven,” he said patiently. “No one’s gonna show until half past at the earliest, and we’ll both rock up at six. That’s plenty of time. The last thing we need is you stuck there waiting for four hours, whipping yourself into a frenzy about no-shows.”

“But what if someone important does show up early?” pressed Scarlett.

“Perry’s there all day,” said Jake. “He knows what to do.”

Perry was the new store manager, a flamingly gay ex-dancer whom Jake had poached from Cartier, another brilliant coup. Scarlett could pay him only half what he’d earned before, but the management at Cartier had treated him like dog shit, and his encyclopedic knowledge of gemstones and natural people skills had been woefully underused. At Flawless he’d almost be his own boss, with overall responsibility for the day-to-day running of the store—a necessity while Scarlett focused on the creative side of the business. Then there was the added bonus of working in such close proximity to Jake, who wasn’t above flirting with men if it helped him get what he wanted, and who had shamefully led Perry on from the beginning, hinting at a closet bisexuality that kept his admirer’s hope alive.

“Besides, the whole grooming thing is important,” he added, knowing how much Scarlett loathed salons and wasting time being “done,” as she put it. “This is not the night to show up with do-it-yourself hair, trust me. You’re on show as much as the jewelry.”

Unsurprisingly, this failed to reassure Scarlett, who spent the next four hours, against her better judgment, being plucked and painted by a fat, tattooed girl named Misty, whom Jake had assured her was the very best beautician in the city but who looked to Scarlett like she’d be more at home on an oil rig or
driving a truck than explaining the benefits of threading over waxing in a Japanese-themed “retreat” on Beverley.

“You’re sure it’s not over-the-top?” she asked hesitantly, as still more heated rollers were wheeled out by Misty’s mute girl assistant. Not since her modeling days had she willingly subjected herself to this sort of torture, and she was suddenly reminded of why she’d quit. “I’ve always gone for more of a natural look. And Flawless is all about gemstones as natural art…”

“The hair’s great,” said Misty firmly. “Don’t touch it. I’ll wrap the whole thing in plastic before we spray you. Then it’s dress, shoes, and you’re good to go.”