Vivian didn’t look at her. “Did they really believe I wouldn’t notice this pitiful little selection?”

Jules didn’t pray, but it seemed someone should—for Lucia, Alyson, and perhaps Givenchy itself. “Looks like it.”

“I’ll deal with Lucia,” Vivian said. She picked up a photograph, sneered at it, and dropped it back down onto the table. Then she rubbed her fingertips together as if they had something gross on them. “You’ll return to Givenchy.”

Jules could just bet how Lucia was going to be dealt with. At least she didn’t have to see it in person this time. “Okay. Who am I going with?”

“Nobody,” Vivian said.

Jules stared at her in shock.

Vivian stared right back. “Don’t let me down, Julia. That would be a shame.”

* * *

Alyson had not been pleased by being summoned at a moment’s notice. But since the summons was from Vivian Carlisle, she greeted Jules graciously enough. “Fancy seeing you here again,” she said. “But where’s Lucia?”

“Lucia won’t be coming today. It’s just me. Vivian wanted kind of a do-over of the last meeting.”

“A do-over? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She wants to see a wider selection. She wants to see more of your accessories line. You have so many beautiful things,” she added with what she hoped was a charming smile.

Alyson wasn’t going for it. “I sent her the best of our new line. They’ll really grab a reader’s attention. Didn’t she like them?”

“Well, like I said, she wants to see more.” Hopefully, Alyson wasn’t going to make this harder than it had to be. “So, if you could just give me more photos or samples. A wider range of—”

Alyson narrowed her eyes. “Aren’t you just her assistant?”

Just? What an asshole. She squared her shoulders. “Yeah. I’m her assistant.”

“Well,” a mean little smile lingered on her mouth, “hold on a second while I help you out.”

She turned and sashayed out of the room.

Jules got a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. It couldn’t be this easy.

Sure enough, when she returned, she had only two glossies in her hand. The accessories in the photos—a ring and a bracelet—looked almost exactly like the ones in the photos Vivian already had.

“Here you go,” Alyson said sweetly as she thrust the photos at Jules. “You can show yourself out.”

“No, I can’t,” Jules snapped. She didn’t move to take the photos.

Alyson looked disdainfully at her. Like that was going to work after a year of being scorned by the best.

A lieutenant, Vivian had called Alyson. Why was she being so stubborn, especially given that it was Vivian Carlisle’s ire she was risking? Why not just fork over a few more photos of some stuff that didn’t look just like—

Oh.