Where Beauty Lies (Sophia and Ava London) (15 page)

He was laughing at her. “We can.”

“Right. Good. Um, ’bye. Nice seeing you again.”

“Nice seeing you too,” Dalton called as she ran toward the entrance of the building. “Wait a second, aren’t you forgetting something?”

“I told you I’ll kiss you later,” she yelled over her shoulder and heard him laugh.

“I meant your dog,” Dalton said, coming up and handing her the leash. “I’ll wait on the kiss.”

Her cheeks were already burning and she felt them get even redder when she passed the doorman and saw him trying not to laugh. Riding up in the elevator, she glanced at Popcorn and could have sworn he was smiling.

But Ava worked hard to repress her smile as she walked into the living room. Everyone was gathered around the large, draped item, except the Contessa.

“She wanted to make an entrance,” Sophia explained.

“I’m sorry,” Ava said. “I ran into an old friend on the street and got distracted.”

“By ‘run into,’ do you mean literally?” MM asked, pointing to the smears of dirt on her knees and on Popcorn’s face.

“Yes.” Ava nodded.

Sophia’s face went white. “Are you both okay? Are you hurt? Was there an accident?”

“I’m better than okay,” Ava said. “And we now have a spy inside of Christopher Wildwood’s studio.”

Suddenly the Contessa was there, dressed in a gold pants suit. She clapped her hands for silence, then looked from one to the other of them to make sure they were all paying attention. “We have come the long way,” she said. “We have survived many cruel twists of fate. And to commemorate now I present to you—” She whipped off the cloth, revealing a six-foot-wide, four-foot-tall clock set to four days, five hours, and forty-nine minutes. “The final countdown.”

When the Contessa was finished, Sophia turned to Ava. “What did you mean about a spy in Christopher Wildwood’s studio?”

“It’s Dalton,” Ava told her.

“
Your
Dalton?” Sophia asked.

“In
New York
?” MM followed.

“On the
street
?” Lily said.

“Who’s Dalton?” Sam asked from behind the camera, but Lily glared him into silence.

“Yes, yes, and yes,” Ava answered. “And his band is playing at Christopher Wildwood’s show.”

“What is this interesting person you speak about?” the Contessa asked them. “
Your
Dalton. I want to know all. I am, after all, a biff.” She smiled at Ava winningly. “And for your protection. So close to the day of the fashion show it would be
tragico
if the count, he had the second thoughts.”

LonDOs:

Dalton

The DA dropping the charges

Boys who take gigs just to see you

Puppies who smile

Puppies who are going to the groomer

Chests for leaning heads against

Lemon-peppermint conditioner

LonDON’Ts:

Put off kissing someone until later

Make pacts with the Contessa

Countdown clocks that tick loudly enough to be heard in your bedroom

Counts

Muddy paw prints on the black carpeting

13

bright lights, big party

The limo drove from the apartment down Broadway, through the middle of Times Square on the way to the Fashion Week opening party. Sophia, curled on the seat, stared out the window and found herself smiling at the lights and the sheer energy of it. The sounds of Lily’s, Ava’s, MM’s, Sven’s, and Sam’s voices were a soothing backdrop to her thoughts.

How long had it been since she’d just sat and thought? she wondered. She looked down at her hands and was surprised, again, to see them empty. No phone. Nothing to check. There would be no messages. No texts. Hunter had—

Hold yourself together,
she cautioned.
This is not something you want to share.

She saw the Hershey’s store, an ad for the national parks, a billboard showing people standing across the street waving, a butterfly turning into underwear, and the Naked Cowboy with his guitar, every surface pulsing and blinking and clamoring for her attention. Attention she was only too happy to give.

It wasn’t just Hunter who wouldn’t be texting. She still hadn’t heard from Giovanni. Which was only what she’d expected. And completely fine since she’d decided she would have to tell him she was seeing someone else and couldn’t continue their friendship. She’d composed the text a dozen times in her head, hating the sound of it, but given where things were with Hunter, it had seemed like the correct thing to do.

Seemed,
she repeated to herself.
Correct thing to do.
With ideas like those, no wonder Ava had hated being her so much.

And no wonder Giovanni hadn’t texted her.

She glanced down the limo toward her at exactly the moment that Ava looked in her direction. That happened when they were in sync, and for the past few days, since Ava’s afternoon in Central Park, they’d been completely in step, finishing each other’s sentences, filling in blanks. It was an amazing feeling, having a real partner, someone you knew you could trust without reservation.

It made what had happened with Hunter that much more jarring.

Don’t think about it now,
she told herself, shifting her attention back to Ava. She didn’t want to spoil her sister’s good mood.

Because when Ava had come in from walking Popcorn she’d appeared—happy, Sophia thought. Simply, blissfully, completely happy. In a way she hadn’t seen for months.

And Sophia had known, even before Ava said a word, that it had to do with Dalton. No one else came close to making her look that way, not even the guy who’d perked up her mood at the zoo. She seemed happier that afternoon, but Dalton made her positively glow.

“So he came to New York just to see you,” MM had summarized after Ava finished telling them about her meeting with Dalton. “As soon as his name was cleared. Adorable.”

Sophia couldn’t have agreed more. Even the Contessa seemed moved. “Not only is he in New York but he comes in and swoops, like the hero, saving your life,” she’d said. “Wow. It is like something from a movie.”

“It really was,” Ava had admitted.

And then the Contessa had put on her most serious face and said, “Of course we are not fooled.”

“Fooled?” Ava asked. Sophia had seen the flutter of panic in her eyes, the way her brows contracted.

“But yes.” The Contessa looked at all of them incredulously. “It is so obvious this is all part of the plot.” When none of them said anything, she went on. “You do not see? Even you, the smart of the group?” She pointed at Sven.

Sven shook his head.

Sophia had felt desperate to stop whatever the Contessa was doing. “Dalton is a friend. He would never do anything to hurt us.”

“Yet, as you say, he was convinced you had been hurting him?” The Contessa gave her a frank, open gaze. “And what was it, this very moving line you related? ‘I know what it is like to have someone try to ruin your life.’ Very exciting.” The Contessa nodded. “Only ask yourself, what would he not do to punish the two people he thought tried to ruin his?”

“But he doesn’t think we ruined his life,” Ava protested. “He said he knew that wasn’t true.”

“Blah blah blah.” The Contessa waved it away. “He would say just this if he were trying to win your trust, no? And did it not strike you as too smooth as silk, him announcing he does not care who put him into prison? Now that it is over, he wishes only to move on with his life.
Pfui,
” the Contessa said. “No one is that good at forgiving.”

“Maybe you’re not,” Sophia had insisted. “But Dalton could be.”

The Contessa turned up a hand. “Also, he is already accused of being the thief.”

“And let off,” Lily pointed out.

“Not to mention, we were arrested for the same crime,” Sophia said. “So if you’re going to hold it against him, you have to hold it against Ava and me as well.”

The Contessa raised her arms in a gesture of surrender. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps he is the saint in wolf’s clothing. But me, I do not chose to take this chance. And I know also that Ava, she is a serious girl. A serious girl would not take this chance.”

For the first time her eyes moved to Ava. “I know you know what to do. I know I do not need to watch you with the eye of a hawk to make sure you do not see him. Or put the little bug on your phone to make sure you do not talk to him. Or have the camera in your room to make sure you do not see him on the computer. Of course I can do all of these things, but why would I need to? You are serious girl.” She patted Ava’s cheek. “I can trust you, no?”

“No—yes,” Ava said. “You can trust me.”

“You are thinking now only of Fashion Week, but I see more. I am confident you will fall the head over feet for my nephew and him for you and all will be well. The manufacturing, the licensing. We will have much happiness together as a family. We do not discuss now the future, we only mention it so you can think a bit.”

“Think a bit,” the Contessa had prescribed. And Ava had, all afternoon. Sophia had seen it as they went over the order of the outfits for the show, observed Ava half there but half somewhere else as Lily made sketches of the stage. Ava had momentarily snapped out of it as she watched the whole thing in motion, and when she’d rushed to hug Lily and tell her it was brilliant, Sophia had known that there was no Dalton, no trace of the Contessa’s injunction to think on her mind.

But it was as they were getting ready she had said to Sophia, “It’s obvious that what I have to do is let Dalton go.”

Sophia heard the ache in Ava’s voice, saw the pain of her heart breaking all over again. “There must be another option.”

Ava shook her head and Sophia made out the tears there, waiting to fall. “If I don’t, I’d just be stringing him along for who knows how long while the Contessa played her games—with us, and, worse, with him. But if I don’t see him or talk to him, then he’ll be safe.” She took three quick breaths and tried to muster a smile then. “Besides, when I’m with him I can’t think straight, and we don’t have time for that right now.”

Go think about it.
The words echoed in Sophia’s mind, snippets from a different conversation, but interchangeable in the pain they caused.

“That’s what I’m going to do. Go think about it,” Hunter had said in a strange, manic-sounding voice right before hanging up on her. Two days earlier. Forty-eight hours. The last time she’d heard from him.

The conversation hadn’t started any better, but she’d been expecting that. It was natural that he’d be defensive at first when she brought up changing patterns of behavior he was comfortable with. It would be hard for him to hear how finding them creeping into her relationship with Ava had made her realize how toxic they were. But his defensiveness would wear off as they talked, as he saw she wasn’t attacking him, she thought.

Instead they’d just gone around and around in a circle, making no progress, his position becoming more rigid and his tone more brittle with each rotation.

He’d said with a sneer, “So you’re saying you want to hear from me less. Fine. I know what that means.”

“No, sweetheart,” she’d answered. “I want to hear from you whenever you have something to say. But I don’t want either of us to feel tethered to a schedule. Or to your past. I’m sorry your mother left. But by trying to work that out through our relationship, you risk pushing me away.”

“That sounds like a threat,” he’d said.

“It’s not. It’s my attempt to make things between us stronger.”

“By talking to me less?” he demanded, sarcastic. “Interacting with me less? Are you going to improve our romantic life by making out with me less? Or your attractiveness by wearing push-up bras less?”

“You’re taking this the wrong way and being mean.”

“Tell me how I’m supposed to take it when my girlfriend says she’s going to stop answering my calls,” he’d said, snarling.

“That’s not what I said. I said that I’m not helping you by playing into your fear of abandonment,” she told him. “I’m just letting that fear continue. I’m nurturing it. I’d rather help you get over it.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Maybe not,” Sophia said. “But I know I’d be a better girlfriend if I could spend more time thinking about you, and less time thinking about
calling
you.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” he’d said.

“It would if you stopped to think about it.”

And then his final foray: “You know what? That’s what I’m going to do. Go think about it.”

She’d left him alone the first day. But she’d called him that morning and been bounced straight to voice mail. Her texts had gone unanswered, too.

He was just taking time to think about things, she told herself. Because when she thought about it, really considered that it might be the end for them, she became shaky and felt like the world was tipping.

It’s not,
she assured herself.
This is just a bump. It’s healthy for him to think. You’ll come out the other side stronger.

But there was part of her that wished she’d never brought it up. That cursed herself for not being able to just stay safely in the box he’d put her in.

MM’s voice saying, “Places everyone,” pulled her from her thoughts. Harper’s assistant, who was riding up front, would be on the ground, shepherding them through the press gauntlet on what Harper referred to simply as The Rug, while Harper directed her through an earpiece from an elevated observation spot she’d staked out hours earlier.

The Contessa had already been there delighting and confusing the press with her
blah blah
for the last hour, “so they’re primed for you,” Harper’s assistant reported.

“It’s 7:07,” Lily announced as the limo made the front of the line. “Synchronize your watches.”

“Why?” Ava asked.

“Because you never know,” Lily said leadingly as she opened the car door, letting in a blast of sound, and plunged into the crowd.