Since it was past noon, she ordered a kir royale, slipped her purse strap off her shoulder and made a conscious effort to smile. Jenny P (her last name was Pinkwater but she’d dropped it long ago) looked perfect and polished in Kajal lipstick, black merino and knee-high suede boots. Melanie Benz, affectionately known as Bitchcakes by her adoring clients, laid out her Day Timer and Palm Pilot on the table. She was chopstick-thin. Her white-blond hair was spiked, her eyebrows pared into arches of perpetual surprise. Bobbi, graced with the looks of a supermodel, was a walking billboard for their clients in a T. Gallagher sweater and leather skirt, Chez Moi makeup and a hairstyle by Iago.

Elaine had handpicked Bobbi, a nobody from a North Carolina mill town looking to break into show business or modeling. Elaine and her partners had other plans. Through the magic of their power over the press, they turned Bobbi into the city’s latest girl-about-town. They gave her the right look, posed her with the right stars and socialites, dropped her name in the right ears. And it had worked. She appeared in all the magazines that mattered—W, Vogue and Quest. Within days, the phone had begun to ring, invitations rolled in. Within weeks, Cosmo was calling to get her take on the best spot-reducing exercise for summer. Bobbi’s launch was a ringing success.

There was an unexpected bonus in Elaine’s project to create a media darling. As bubbly and refreshing as a split of Moët, Bobbi had become her best friend and confidant, the sister she’d never had. She was someone to share secrets and dreams with, someone to whom Elaine might even dare to admit that breaking up with Byron didn’t actually hurt, but had frightened her by making her doubt her ability to sustain any sort of relationship.

No. She wouldn’t go that far. Even her soul sister would not be privy to that fact.

Tonight Bobbi would play a key part in moving their firm up the food chain. It was going to be her job to beguile the mysterious and ambitious Axel, a hip Swiss parfumier they were trying to lure as a client. Everything important rode on landing this account. Axel would be proof at last to her parents that she was capable of doing something that mattered, of making a life for herself and standing on her own two feet. They’d always believed she was dabbling, their Upper East Side princess, playing at being a publicist to pass the time until she settled down and married someone with the right credentials, someone like Byron Witherspoon.

Now Elaine needed Axel more than ever. Acquiring the business of the Swiss billionaire would lessen the humiliation and soften the betrayal of losing Byron.