Даниэла Стил - All That Glitters

“My parents died last July, a year ago,” Coco said quietly in answer to what her father did. Nigel sobered for a minute, and gazed sympathetically at her.

“Oh, I’m sorry. How awful for you. Both at once?” She nodded. “It must have been an accident. Terrible bad luck. Do you have siblings?”

“No, I don’t,” she said softly, trying not to sound tragic about it, although it was. “Cannes, last July.” He knew instantly what that meant, and touched her hand gently, although he barely knew her. The kind gesture brought tears to her eyes. “We used to go to the South of France every year. I wasn’t with them last year. I had a summer job at Time . I didn’t go back to school last year because of it. I was thinking of starting again this September, but I’ll wait till January now. This is a wonderful change of scene after all that. It was a hard year.”

He nodded and then smiled at her. “Thank you for warning me. We’ll have to do our best to convince you to stay here. University is so boring, and we have much more fun here. Do you hunt?”

“I never have.”

“We can arrange that when the season starts. I have lots of friends who hunt. My brother is the master of the hunt in our region. But we don’t speak so we can’t go there. It’s great fun, if you like to ride. I usually avoid my brother at all cost. We hated each other growing up. I almost got over it, but then he inherited everything, and I can’t stand his greedy little pig-eyed wife,” Nigel said somewhat bitterly. Leslie pulled her away from him then, before Coco could comment, as they set their empty plates down and a waiter whisked them away. Nigel conceded with regret as Leslie removed her. “We can talk about my family some other time,” he said, as Coco followed Leslie.

“Don’t let Nigel monopolize you. He’ll talk your head off. He knows everyone in London. He has a complex about being a younger son, but he’s very sweet,” she said, smiling. Coco had enjoyed him, and she liked hearing all the pertinent insider information he had shared with her. It added local color. Leslie introduced her to the two French girls from Vogue, who were very stylish and avant-garde. They spoke perfect English, and greeted Coco warmly, despite the flock of handsome men around them, most of whom were dressed like Nigel, in jeans, tweed jackets, and brown suede shoes. It was a good look and Coco liked it. She thought that most of the men in the room were sexy and handsome and seemed more polished than their counterparts in New York, although most of the men she knew there were students or recent graduates like Sam. Ed, of course, was at a whole different level, and wore a suit most of the time, except on weekends. There wasn’t a suit visible in Leslie’s living room. They were all much more casual, and the Italians looked more stylish than anyone else. Leslie made a real effort to introduce Coco to as many people as she could, although it had gotten difficult to move around her living room, so many more people had arrived as the evening wore on.

Nigel came to say goodbye to her before he left, asked for her cellphone number and said he’d text her and take her to a party sometime soon, or maybe they could have dinner together. She gave him her number willingly, and stayed for another hour after he left. One of the Italians had been flirting with her at a distance, but never came over to talk to her. She ended up chatting with a very interesting group of women who worked for Condé Nast, and an auctioneer at Christie’s who was in the art department. Coco could see that Leslie knew lots of interesting people, and Coco wasn’t alone for a minute all night. She left after midnight, and the party was still going strong, but she’d had two glasses of wine and one of champagne, and she was tired. She slipped away quietly, after thanking Leslie for a fantastic time. Several people were smoking joints by then, and the whole group seemed slightly drunk, some more than others. The alcohol had flowed generously all evening, and people had settled into smaller groups, some sitting on the floor.

Politics was a popular subject, and Leslie seemed to know a number of people in fashion. Coco noticed that all of the men in the fashion business wore heavy oxfords and no socks. The rest of the guests were more traditionally dressed. Leslie herself had worn a short tight black knit Alaïa dress that showed off her figure and her hair was as dark as Coco’s. She wore it in a knot, with no makeup. She was an attractive woman and didn’t look her age. Coco liked her, and had had a great time at her party.

She fell asleep minutes after she got home, and tried to describe it all to Sam the next day. He was impressed, and said he’d had a nice evening with Tamar. They’d gone to a movie and had dinner at a kosher restaurant on the Lower East Side, since she was Orthodox, and would only eat kosher meals, which would delight his mother if he told her about Tamar, but he didn’t intend to. He didn’t want to fuel his mother’s obsession about his getting married, especially to an Orthodox Jewish girl.

“No more BLT sandwiches or lobster for you, if you stay with her,” she teased him and he laughed.

“My mother would have a heart attack if she knew what I eat when I’m with you. That sounds like a pretty racy crowd you fell in with last night,” he said, half impressed and half worried for her. “Be careful not to get in over your head.” But fortunately, no one knew her circumstances, so fortune hunters weren’t likely to go after her. She just looked like an exceptionally pretty young woman, and dressed like everyone else their age. Unless they knew who her father was, which most people didn’t, they wouldn’t suspect that she had inherited a fortune. He was glad that she was happy and having fun, and meeting new people, which had been the whole point of going there, and staying occupied. She had spent a year of intense mourning, now she needed to get back into living. The world she was exploring sounded like fun for her. At times, Sam envied her the options she had in her life. In contrast, he felt like he had none at all.

“You have to come over and visit,” she urged him. She’d only been gone for ten days, but already missed him. He was so much a part of her life, and stood in as her family now, that she felt as though she had lost a limb being away from him. She didn’t miss Ed nearly as much as she did Sam, and she was still angry at Ed, and herself for falling for him. She could see now how innocent and trusting she had been, and he had taken full advantage of it, and still wanted to, if she’d let him. She was no longer as naïve, at least not about him. But Sam wasn’t sure how much more alert she would be, if the bad guys were packaged differently in a new setting. She was only twenty-two, and it would be easy for her to be taken advantage of in a fast international crowd in London. It sounded to him like she had fallen in with some of them the night before.

“Just be careful,” he warned her again, and promised to come over when his father would let him take time off from work and he could afford a cheap ticket, if he could find one.

Nigel made good on his promise and called her on Monday, at work. He told her how much he had enjoyed meeting her, and hoped to see her again soon. Hearing from him put a smile on her face as she started her second week of work. The next day, he came down from upstairs and showed up in her office right before lunchtime, and invited her to have lunch with him. She had no plans so they went to a pub nearby, and he had her laughing all through lunch, describing house parties he’d been to. He was the most engaging, ingenuous, funnily innocent man she had ever met. He had a boyish quality about him that was very endearing, and he was very sympathetic about her losing her parents. His own parents had died when he was young, but had been much older than hers, since he was the youngest son and his only brother was fourteen years older than he was, from his father’s first marriage. They walked back to the office together, he disappeared upstairs to the advertising department, and she went back to work for Leslie, and did some filing.