“What I want you to do,” Vivian said acidly, “is check on the London hotel reservations.”

“I did that while you were at lunch,” she said, trying hard not to think about her room—no, Robert’s room—no, the second bedroom—at Vivian’s London townhouse. “We’ve all got rooms lined up.”

“‘We’?”

“Well,” Jules said with a forced laugh, “not you, obviously. You’ll be in the townhouse. I meant…”

Vivian gave her a flat look. “So will you.”

After a moment, Jules said, “Oh.”

“Make sure there’s enough room for Charlotte in the front row at the Ashish show.”

Vivian strode away, and Jules took a deep breath before calling the Ashish organizers and then the hotel to cancel her room. Because she wouldn’t be there anymore.

Then she found herself staring into space. So she was going back to the townhouse after all. It was stupid to feel happy. It would be stupid to feel anything at all. It wasn’t a reason to be happy—it wasn’t good, it wasn’t fair of Vivian to get Jules’s hopes up like that, whether she meant to or not.

Because she didn’t think she could take it—living in Vivian’s house again, talking to her at four in the morning again, making her breakfast and seeing her bare toes again, and knowing that none of it was for her. That even if Stan Oppenheimer wasn’t in the picture, it still wouldn’t be for her. That she couldn’t afford to get used to it, no matter how much she wanted to.

“Hey, Jules?” Allie said.

She jumped. She hadn’t heard her return from her errands.

But now Allie nibbled at her lower lip, which made her look like a worried, redheaded rabbit.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Jules snapped, and when Allie’s face crumpled, she felt like a monster. “Fine,” she repeated more gently. “I just, um, have a headache.”

“Oh gosh!” Allie dug into her tan Chloé bucket bag, which Jules had envied for days. “Here. I have some ibuprofen.”

With no reason not to, Jules took the pills. Might as well, since she really did have a nasty headache coming on. “Thanks.”

Maybe a headache was better than heartache. Too bad she had a mortal case of that too.

Chapter 33

Chapter 33

Two days later, Jules realized exactly how far she’d fallen when her column appeared in Salon and she could only get mildly excited about it.

There it was in black-and-white on her screen: “From Clubbing to Couture: How a New Generation of Designers is Queering the Fashion Industry.” Beneath it sat a photo from the Sophie Cochevelou show last fall, in which a male model strode down the runway in a checkerboard-print dress with fuchsia tights.