Jake, meanwhile, was happily prowling around, soaking up the sunshine and attention, when he found himself being pulled aside by a skinny, insistent female arm.
“You don’t write. You don’t call.”
It was Julia Brookstein, pouting at him reproachfully in a micro silver chainmail minidress. Her honey-blonde hair had been cut short and dyed platinum, a look Jake normally hated, but on Julia oddly it worked, emphasizing her wide mouth and ridiculously leggy figure. She looked like a sexy first mate from the Starship Enterprise.
“Your husband wants to have me kneecapped,” he said, glancing around nervously for Al as he kissed her on both cheeks.
“Oh, he so doesn’t.” Julia waved her hand dismissively. “He was over that months ago. It’s a great pendant, even if it is a fake.”
Jake laughed. “Thanks.”
“In any case,” said Julia, slipping a hand blatantly under the waistband of his pants, “he’s my ex-husband now. Well, almost.”
“No. Really?” said Jake, removing her hand from his groin as tactfully and subtly as he could before Scarlett saw and blew a gasket. How could the Brooksteins be getting a divorce and he not know about it? Not so long ago he was plugged into the heartbeat of this town like a human fucking pacemaker. Evidently he was no longer an insider. “You left Al?”
Julia shrugged.
“We kinda left each other. Oh, don’t look so poo-faced, Jacob, it’s all very amicable. He wants to marry his girlfriend; I wanna buy a bunch of horses and move to Malibu. Plus, it’ll be nice to have my freedom, you know?”
She took another step closer to him, a predatory gleam in her eye.
“As I recall, darling, you were never terribly literal about your marriage vows. How much freedom do you want?”
“More,” Julia grinned. She was very close now. Jake could feel the heat of her magnificent body radiating against him. “Al’s been real decent. I get the beach house, eight in cash, the cars, and all my diamonds. Oh, and the kids,” she added as an afterthought. “I’m a woman of means now. You know, I’d treat you a whole lot nicer than your British sugarmommy does.”
She glanced over at Scarlett, who was nervously thrusting a microphone toward Kirsten Dunst.
Jake’s eyes followed her gaze, and he realized with a pang how beautiful Scarlett really was. With her piled-up dark hair, freckled nose, and her long, slender body shrink-wrapped in that ludicrously sexy dark-gray dress, she looked both innocent and sophisticated, like a teenager at her first grown-up dance, or a little girl preening around in her big sister’s wardrobe. He wanted to fuck her and protect her all at once. To march over to all the idiots standing around her and let them know that she was his, only his. He wanted to take her away, back to England, to safety and sanity. Back home.
All these thoughts were compressed into a single second. The next second, his mind had whiplashed back to Julia’s comment.
“What do you mean, ‘Sugarmommy’?” he asked, frowning. “Scarlett’s my girlfriend and my business partner. She doesn’t bankroll me, you know.”
Julia raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “OK baby. If you say so.”
“I do say so.” Jake was getting angry now. “Why? Who says different?”
“No one,” laughed Julia. “I mean, no one specific. There’s no need to be so touchy.”
Jake could smell her perfume, Prada, mingled with the sweet mint of the candy in her mouth. Unbidden, an image of her naked and climaxing, a glistening pink stone nestled between her perfectly smooth labia, popped into his head, like an errant porno shot slipped accidentally into his mental slide projector. Weirdly, he wasn’t aroused but revolted. With an effort, he blacked it out.
“It’s no secret that Solomon Stones isn’t what it used to be,” she went on, rubbing salt in the wound. “We all have bad years, Jake. There’s no shame in it.”
“The business is fine,” he said brusquely. “I’m fine.”
“Sure you are.” Julia’s voice was soft and soothing. “Look, honey, you’re taking this all wrong. I wasn’t criticizing. You got yourself a piece of Flawless, and good for you. That girl’s going places.” She looked over at Scarlett again. “Grab onto her coattails for dear life if you want to. I would, in your shoes. All I’m saying is, you don’t have to save yourself for Anorexic Annie like some kind of monk. You’re not married, Jake. You do have other options.”
“Well, thank you for reminding me, Julia,” said Jake, his face like stone. “But it just so happens I’m not a flank steak, up for sale to the highest bidder. Nor am I in the business of hanging on to women’s coattails.”
“Hey, come on,” she pouted. “Don’t be like that, Jakey.”
But he was already making an angry beeline for Scarlett.
Scarlett looked pleadingly at Christian. “Are we done yet?”
Conscious that her face was flushed, her foundation running, and she had to get to a bathroom before this year’s host, Hugh Jackman, took the stage (some perverse God had decided to make her period arrive this morning, the one day in the entire year that she least wanted to have to worry about a leaky Tampax), she was desperate to call it a day.
“I need to find Jake and get to our seats.”
“All right,” said the cameraman grudgingly, handing her a much-needed chilled bottle of Evian. “You go have fun. Tamara’s here now; she can take over. By the way, if you’re looking for lover boy, he’s headed our way.”
Scarlett glanced up and caught her breath. She’d spent the last twenty minutes talking to some of the best-looking, most eligible men in the world, but none of them could hold a candle to Jake for pure, unadulterated sex appeal. Even in a tuxedo, with his thick, blond hair combed and his silk bow tie in place, there was something animal about him—a primal ball of pheromones, wrapped in an Armani jacket.
“Hey,” she beamed, kissing him on the mouth as soon as he reached her. “Sorry that took so long, but the boss here says I’m free to go. Have you been having fun?”
“Having fun?” Jake snapped. “You make me sound like a fucking nine-year-old at Chuck E. Cheese.”
“Sorry.” Scarlett looked baffled. “I didn’t mean…I wasn’t trying to be patronizing.”
She ought to be used to his mood swings by now. But she’d really thought that tonight would be OK, after he’d been so sweet and flirty in the car, complimenting her dress and everything. Perhaps if she ignored his bad temper, he’d get over whatever it was and switch back into Good-Boyfriend mode.
“I think I did OK at the presenting,” she said, smiling at him nervously for approval. “Almost everybody they wanted gave me an interview. Jen Aniston was really sweet.”
Jake laughed mockingly. “Jen Aniston? What are you, best friends all of a sudden?”
“Why are you being so mean?” Despite herself, Scarlett found she was biting back tears. What the hell had she done wrong now?
“Sorry,” said Jake, who clearly wasn’t, “but have you heard yourself lately? I thought you despised the whole Hollywood scene?”
“Oh for heaven’s sake. You’re starting to sound like Magnus,” she said. “I don’t despise anyone. Except perhaps Brogan O’Donnell.” Jake rolled his eyes. “It’s true I’m not a sceney person, but this is work. And besides, it’s the Oscars. Aren’t I entitled to be a little excited?”
“You call this work?” said Jake. “Fawning over a bunch of actors like the coach of the Olympic ass-licking team? And here I was thinking you designed jewelry for a living.”
“That’s not fair.” Scarlett felt her disappointment harden into anger. “Why am I the enemy again, Jake? What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” he grunted.
What could he say? That he’d just woken up to the fact that while he’d been away comforting his brother and hanging out in Africa trying to be the good, noble man she wanted him to be, he’d turned into a Hollywood laughingstock. That women like Julia, women who’d once perceived him as an alpha male, a success story, now
thought of him as a jumped-up gigolo? As Scarlett’s plaything, clinging on to her and Flawless’s success like a festering fucking toadstool on a damp tree.
“Tons of stars were wearing our stuff,” said Scarlett making one last, valiant effort to salvage their happy evening. “Rhianna took the drop earrings in the end. Anna Kournikova wore the yin-yang pendant, and we even got Enrique in the topaz cuff links, which he was really cute about on camera. Nicole Richie went for the snake cuff.”
“Your stuff,” said Jake. He wasn’t even looking at her. “They were wearing your stuff, not mine.”
“Yes, but…”
“I’m just your lowly diamond dealer, remember?” He kicked the ground morosely. Suddenly Scarlett became aware that they were being watched—that perhaps the red carpet at the Oscars was not the best place for a lover’s tiff.
“I probably won’t even be that for much longer.”
“You know what? Fine,” snapped Scarlett. She was tired of pandering to his constant neediness. He wanted to push her away? He’d just succeeded. “If you don’t want to be here, why don’t you just piss off?” She turned on her heel. “Go on. Go home. Feel sorry for yourself. I’m past caring.”
Sweeping regally into the theater alone, her head held high, she steeled herself not to look back.
Jake, bitterly ashamed of himself, watched her go.
From behind she looked powerful and supremely confident, a pewter Amazon in that dress. As she disappeared into the throng, he felt smaller and more pathetic than he could ever remember. With a heart full of ashes and a mouth as dry as dust, he turned in the other direction and walked away.
Aunt Agnes was wrong.
She didn’t need him. Not in the least.
Had he followed her into the powder room sixty seconds later and seen Scarlett bent double over the wash basin, sobbing her heart out, he might have felt differently.
Cried out, she splashed cold water on her face, dabbed away the worst of the mascara smears with a paper towel, and looked in the mirror.
“That’s it,” she told her reflection, ignoring the sidelong glances from actresses perfecting their makeup beside her. “No more. It’s over.”
It was funny the way relationships ended. How some of them exploded in a ball of passionate fury and others, like with Magnus, faded away with a whimper. With Jake, it had been different again: a growing realization that, love or no love, they couldn’t live together. They were the classic opposites attracting. But Jake’s anger, his resentment, the whole professional jealousy thing that had gotten so utterly out of hand—it was no way to live, or to love.
She’d go home to Vado Drive tonight, alone. And tomorrow she’d drive over to Jake’s and clear her stuff out of his apartment.
She doubted there’d be any drama. Deep down, she knew, he felt the same way she did—that it simply wasn’t working. All the fights must have taken it out of him too. Besides, they had a good reason to keep things civil. Whatever he might say in the self-pitying heat of the moment, Scarlett did need Jake at Flawless. The diamonds he brought her were second to none. She couldn’t hope to find another supplier half as good, never mind one who understood promotion and branding in the jewelry business as well and instinctively as Jake did.
For all her bravado, secretly she shared Jake’s fears about Brogan. He might well set his sights on her again after this NPR business and try to damage Flawless. Judging by how effectively he’d eviscerated Solomon Stones, not to mention the lengths he’d gone to—burning down Bijoux—the last time she’d strayed onto his radar screen, it was not a threat to be taken lightly. And it wasn’t something she wanted to face alone. Professionally, she needed Jake more than ever—and for obvious reasons, he felt the same way. Maturity had never been his strong point. But she felt confident that even he would see the need to maintain a viable working relationship. Who knew? Maybe, once the dust had settled and the broken hearts begun to heal, they might even salvage a friendship from this unholy mess.
The rest of the evening was torture, on so many levels. Scarlett was an Oscars virgin, and no one had warned her how interminably long the ceremony itself would be: hour after hour dragging by with nothing to do but think about Jake and how she’d lost him, staring into space throughout the wooden jokes, the forced laughter, the endless nominations for categories nobody but the friends and family of those involved gave a shit about: wardrobe coordination, sound editing, light engineering, the list went on and on. And on. It was like School Speech Day at St. Clements, except four times as long, with no pee breaks, the world’s most uncomfortable dress on, and a heart that was crumbling inside her chest like a stale Wensleydale cheese.
By two a.m., when she staggered up the porch steps of Nancy’s cottage, she felt as drained and spent as a sun-withered flower. Somehow she’d managed to keep a professional smile glued to her face at Elton John’s star-studded AIDS Foundation party and schmoozed everyone she was supposed to. But, boy, was it a blessed relief to be out of there at last!
The night was calm and clear when she got home, and she lingered on the porch for a while, sinking down onto the love seat and pulling off her agonizing stilettos at last. Too tired to think anymore, she rubbed the balls of her feet and stared up at the night sky, taking comfort in the blanket of stars twinkling above her in their agelessness. She imagined those same stars over Scotland, and London, Africa, and Siberia. What time was it in Yakutsk, she wondered? Were Brogan’s miners out there, gazing up at the heavens like she was right now, bracing themselves for another day’s grueling labor in his mines, hacking away at an open cast pit, the cancer in their lungs multiplying with every breath? What right had she to be unhappy, compared to those men?
The ringing of the house phone brought her back to reality. In the silence of the night it sounded supernaturally loud, like an air-raid siren or a fire alarm. Jumping to her feet, she scrambled inside and picked up after five rings.
“Scarlett?”
The voice on the other end of the line was so choked with tears it took a second for her to register that it was Nancy.
“Yes, Nance, it’s me.” She tried her best to sound comforting. “What’s happened, darling? What’s the matter?”
A long intake of breath.
“Mom died. A couple of hours ago.”
“Oh, Nancy.” Scarlett winced. There was nothing to say, but unspoken sympathy hung in the two thousand miles of air between them.
“Can you come to New York?”
Scarlett didn’t hesitate.
“Of course. As soon as you want me.”
“Can you come tomorrow? I hate to ask, but Che Che and I broke up officially last night…” Tears broke the flow again. “I can’t face the thought of doing the funeral alone.”
Scarlett made quiet, shushing noises, like a mother calming her newborn. Of course she’d be there. She’d throw some things in a bag right now and catch the first plane out in the morning.
The morning. It was already the morning. She hadn’t slept, yet she felt like she was in the middle of some nightmarish dream.
“Just hold it together, Nance, OK?” she said, grateful for the chance to put thoughts of Jake aside entirely for a few hours. “I’m on my way.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE CATHEDRAL OF St. John the Divine, on the corner of Amsterdam and 112th Street, is the home of the American Episcopal Church and the largest neo-gothic edifice in the world.
Built in the 1880s at the height of the second great wave of immigration into New York City, its architects conceived it as a “house of prayer for all nations,” a bricks-and-mortar symbol of America’s status as the ultimate ethnic melting pot. Anyone visiting the church for the first time on the day of Lucy Lorriman’s funeral, however, would have seen precious little of this much-vaunted diversity.
Nancy’s mother’s funeral was old-school to its Ivy League core. Every face in the congregation was white, protestant, and Republican. The dress code was traditional, with mourners
wearing black, not miscellaneous “dark colors.” Women covered their heads, carried prayer books, and kept jewelry and makeup to a minimum. Children stood rigid-backed and silent beside their parents, their scrubbed faces a picture of forced solemnity. The whole occasion reminded Scarlett of home and the stiff, joyless church services she’d been forced to attend in Buckie as a child. “Remember, young lady, you’re a Drummond Murray,” her mother would warn her sternly before they went inside. “People will be watching you. Behave yourself.”
People were watching her now, too. Standing in the front row with the family, clasping Nancy’s hand, she felt the stares of the six-hundred-strong congregation burning into her back like blowtorches and developed an irrational terror that she might fart, or get the hiccups, or in some other way let the side down. Of course, immediately afterward she felt guilty for allowing her thoughts to turn to such frivolous things when Nancy’s mother’s coffin lay not ten feet in front of them, a gruesomely gleaming slab of polished wood on a solid gold plinth.
She remembered Mrs. Lorriman well from her and Nancy’s schooldays as a warm, doting mother, always quick to see the funny side of her daughter’s outrageously naughty behavior (unlike Caroline). On the rare occasions when Nancy’s parents flew in for parents’ weekends or other important school occasions, Lucy always went out of her way to include Scarlett in the Lorriman family plans, which were inevitably far more glamorous and exciting than the Drummond Murrays’. Nancy’s picnics involved Fortnum & Mason game pies, mountains of smoked salmon, and as much champagne as one could drink to wash down the cream cakes and strawberries for dessert. Dear Mrs. Cullen’s Tupperware pots of coronation chicken, washed down with Panda cola and a packet of Hostess cupcakes, didn’t stand a chance by comparison.
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