She clicked on the email with trembling fingers. It hadn’t been a hallucination. The Cut had accepted her article about Working Girl. They wanted a couple of line changes and one whole paragraph had to go, but if she got those done within a few days, she was in. Then the article would be published in two weeks.

The mattress bounced as she flopped back down on it. She looked at the ceiling and exhaled, a breath that ended in an incredulous laugh.

The article was in. It might not seem like much, but it was something, and maybe when Jules was Vivian’s age and a staff writer at The New Yorker, she could look back on this as her first tiny step. Why not? Tonight was the night for impossible fantasies, wasn’t it?

She set her phone on the nightstand and rose to her feet with a groan. Time to change, go to sleep, and hopefully dream of professional success. Better that than dreaming of Vivian.

Vivian: laughing, beautiful, incandescent. She was the one who should be photographed, not Jules. That might not be fair, though. The world couldn’t handle it.

She was pretty damn sure she couldn’t either. Something was clearly wrong with her. Because although she’d looked tired in her selfie, there were also—undeniably—stars in her eyes.

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Jules had hoped that, when she woke up on January 1, she would no longer find Vivian Carlisle attractive. Like it had been the last mistake she’d made in the previous year. Something that wouldn’t matter anymore when they changed the calendars, and on New Year’s Day, she could start completely fresh.

She could even make a resolution of some kind: I will not fantasize about having sex with Vivian until we are both too tired to move.

Then again, she’d already broken that one in about half her dreams last night. So much for dreaming of professional success.

After waking from one of those dreams at six thirty, Jules staggered into the shower to start her day. Then she dressed and went downstairs, fully expecting to have the place to herself for an hour or so. She could make those changes The Cut wanted and forget all about Vivian dressed in champagne and gold.

This wasn’t Jules’s fault. Vivian had been so stunning that practically everybody at the ball had wanted her or wanted to be her. Jules couldn’t be blamed for being dazzled by something so…perfect. Today would be different. Today everything would be back to normal.

But when she wandered into the living room at five till seven clinging to a hot cup of coffee, she ran smack into the sight of Vivian curled up on the love seat by the window.