When she lowered the bottle from her mouth, Jules realized the smoothie had left a peach-colored milky ring around Vivian’s lips. It momentarily hypnotized her, and her heart thumped pleasantly at the sight of it—it was cute and sexy, but nobody except Jules would think so.

“Ahem,” she said.

Vivian frowned at her.

Jules started making circling motions over her own mouth with her index finger, then tapped her lips. “You’ve got, you know.”

Vivian went pink. “I’ve got…to what?”

“You’ve got stuff on your mouth from the smoothie.” She winced. It seemed rude when you had to say it.

Vivian’s eyes opened even wider in understanding. Her cheeks went pinker too.

Jules quickly offered her a paper towel.

Snatching it, Vivian then dabbed at her mouth, peering at her reflection in a nearby glass cabinet and scowling all the while. “Let’s go.” She tossed the nearly full smoothie in the trash.

“Oh,” Jules said, inexplicably crestfallen. “You don’t want—?”

“I want”—Vivian cleared her throat—“to go. It’s not complicated.”

“I’ll get your coat.” Jules tried not to sigh audibly.

“This is an extremely important week, Julia,” Vivian said, like that wasn’t a massive understatement and like Jules didn’t already know. “Don’t let yourself get distracted.”

“Distract—” Jules began, then cut herself off, going rigid when she figured out what she meant. Being distracted meant fussing over the pregnancy, which Vivian did not want and would not appreciate.

Not this week, anyway. Maybe not anymore, ever. Okay. Fair enough. Totally fine. Right?

“Right,” she mumbled. She headed to get the coats, thinking hard about not thinking at all.

* * *

That afternoon, disaster struck. First of all, the front row at the Ashish show did not have a seat reserved for Charlotte, Du Jour’s top photography editor, a detail Vivian had told Jules to take care of personally. Fortunately, Jules noticed the mistake before Vivian (or Charlotte) arrived and pounced on the staging director immediately.

“Listen, I don’t know what to tell you,” he said.

“Tell me you’re going to boot one of these people so Charlotte Cooke can get a seat,” Jules said. “I spoke to Elyssa, and she said—”

“Oh, that explains it. Elyssa quit three days ago.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” Jules said, trying not to sound panicked because Vivian was due to arrive any second. “But Charlotte is in Vivian Carlisle’s entourage.”

“Oh-h-h.” The staging director’s eyes went wide as Vivian’s name worked its usual magic. “Shit. Okay. Let me fix that…”

Thank God. He went to talk to the woman who’d had the temerity to take Charlotte’s seat. Jules, bouncing on the balls of her feet and hoping the woman would vacate her place before the rest of the Du Jour crew arrived, checked out the other side of the room.

Stan Oppenheimer was sitting in the third row.