Spring Collection
Page 1
ALL THEIR HOPES HUNG ON ONE
WILDLY THRILLING EVENING
OF ALL-OUT GLAMOUR …
SPRING COLLECTION
JUSTINE LORING—This brilliant businesswoman doesn’t need a man in her life. But suddenly there are two men vying for her attention … one, none other than her long-lost father.
FRANKIE SEVERINO—Since her divorce, the feisty Brooklyn beauty is off men, all men … until she starts working with the object of her devastating high school fantasy, only to find him arrogant and difficult.
APRIL NYQUIST—She has the timeless purity of her Scandinavian ancestors. But behind her exquisite, ice-princess facade lurks a far more erotic style—and her first romance will be a real shocker.
JORDAN DANCER—A colonel’s daughter with vast potential, she’s successfully navigating the roadblock to a black model’s career, but not the treacherous territory of the heart.… Is her rise to fame about to be derailed by an impossible love?
TINKER OSBORN—Once the star of the children’s beauty pageant circuit, this exquisite, emotionally fragile young woman will do anything to be on top again … even if it means risking her health, her happiness, and her life.
JACQUES NECKER—Masterful and charming, rich but lonely, the Swiss billionaire wants one thing only—a place in his daughter’s life. But that is something even his money can’t buy.…
MARCO LOMBARDI—Darkly gorgeous and as hugely unprincipled as he is talented, he is used to getting exactly what—and whom—he wants. Now, his spring show will make or break this young designer … and the model who has become his muse.
MAUDE CALLENDER—A talented writer for Zing magazine, she’s as fascinating—and gloriously unique—as any of her subjects. But is she too sophisticated to fall in love?
MIKE AARON—Tall and diabolically handsome, this top fashion photographer is paid to appreciate beautiful women. But suddenly there’s only one woman in the world for him.
BOOKS BY JUDITH KRANTZ
Scruples
Princess Daisy
Mistral’s Daughter
I’ll Take Manhattan
Till We Meet Again
Dazzle
Scruples Two
Lovers
Spring Collection
The Jewels of Tessa Kent
This edition contains the complete text
of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
SPRING COLLECTION
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Crown hardcover edition published April 1996
Bantam paperback edition / March 1997
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1996 by Judith Krantz.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.
eISBN: 978-0-307-80130-2
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.
v3.1
For my very dear friend of many years, Diane S., who has been a constant source of marvelous conversation and companionship. During twenty years in California she’s never failed to remind me that Brooklyn lives and to inspire me to write about a Brooklyn beauty.
For my husband, Steve, with my deep, abiding love and reasons that, after forty-two years of marriage, he must know by heart.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
About the Author
1
Optimistic idiot that I am, I sprinted from the subway to the office at a ridiculously early hour in the morning. Believe me, nobody can move faster than I can on the streets of New York. Call me snake-hips Frankie Severino but I’ve never needed to push or shove in an unladylike way. During my many years of taking the train from Brooklyn to Manhattan I’ve patented a way to twist, sidestep and slither through any crowd. If I’d been a man I’d have made a hell of a linebacker. Riding up in the elevator to Loring Model Management where I work, I knew that today was the day. Last night I’d had a dream about getting the long-awaited fax from Necker in Paris that had been so incredibly real—not dream-real but real real—that I woke up this morning with my heart beating like crazy. I was filled with wild anticipation, every competitive instinct I have was up and screaming, all that fight-or-flight stuff made me leap out of bed, get dressed in ten minutes and race to the subway without as much as a bagel inside my stomach.
The fax wasn’t there. The little incoming tray was bare, the smug metal fax machine sat primly on its table, too high to allow me even the satisfaction of kicking it the way you do an empty vending machine. Short of taking an ax to the thing there was nothing I could do except stomp away in disgust. At least I had my cowboy boots on so the sound effects weren’t wasted.
After I’d coaxed a cup of coffee from our fancy, temperamental coffeemaker, I took it into the main room of Loring Model Management where, in an hour, seven bookers would be sitting at their phones around the circular desk. There our models’ schedules hang on a rotating file. All day long the bookers, each responsible for ten to fifteen girls, would be talking into their headsets, twirling the file and consulting their computers. An unglamorous setting, I thought, yet on any given day a memorable page in the history of glamour could so easily result from one of the calls our bookers field so adroitly. When I’d been a booker, right after I started work here, every phone call had been a thrill to me. Now, at twenty-seven, I’m second-in-command of the business and a damn sight less easily thrilled.
It was freezing in the booking room and I still hadn’t taken off the old duffle coat and two extra sweaters I’d piled over my usual uniform of tights, a leotard, leg warmers and a cardigan knotted at my waist. I decided that the warmest place in the agency on this icy morning in January of 1994 would have to be the enormous, enveloping leather chair behind my boss’s desk. Justine had definitely built herself a great little fortress, I realized as I cuddled way down into her amazingly comfy chair and sipped coffee, well within earshot of the phone ring that announces a fax. Justine Loring, my peerless leader, is just thirty-four, a former model who’d intelligently abandoned her career about five minutes after it reached its peak to become an independent agency owner. She’d hired me seven years ago. The timing was perfect for me because a bad fall—where else but in the subway?—had recently brought my dancing career to an end. I’d been a serious modern dance student at Juilliard but the injuries to both my kneecaps meant that disco was th
e only dancing I’d do in the future.
Sitting in Justine’s chair, I thought that, although no one outside of the business realizes it, it’s essential for the head of any successful model agency to have a strong personal style. Every successful agency in town is defined by a single personality, ranging from preacher to pimp. Justine’s style? Good question. In many ways she qualified as the ideal Girl Scout Troop Leader with all the virtues that implies, radiating strength and trustworthiness; straightforward, infinitely capable and, above all, reassuringly calm. She’s the person anyone, even I, would agree to follow up a slippery mountain trail or cling to in an avalanche, certain of being rescued.
On the other hand, Justine’s probably too gorgeous to be a convincing Scout. If thirty-four is mature, which I deeply tend to doubt, maturity has made her far more seriously alluring than when she was modeling, blandly ravishing, throughout her late teens into her mid-twenties, a full-fledged member of the prom-queen-all-American league. You know that look: all-but-impossibly blue eyes, features too ideal to describe, a quick, indiscriminately adorable smile, infuriatingly good teeth and the faint beginnings of deliciously squinchy laugh lines.
Now Justine’s grown so interesting to watch that you wouldn’t think she’d once been only conventionally stunning. Her eyes, still the very hue of victory, are thoughtful and often pensive. Her smile is meaningful and selective, a smile that has forgotten how to turn on automatically for a camera. There’s a fascinatingly slow play of changing expressions on Justine’s lovely face that shows a mind always at work. She’s my idea of a woman who has just barely entered into the beginning of the best part of her life and eligible men, heaven knows, agree with me. But she turns them down, one after another. Sometimes I find myself in a lather of outrage listening to her explain, with that maddening, reasonable calm, just what is wrong about each one.
It must be some inherited Anglo-Saxon character trait that allows Justine to shrug off any problem she can’t do anything about and simply let it go. My preferred mode, when faced by a defect—in a man or in a situation—is to attack, charge and make it right! Fix it! But then my ancestors on both sides came from the south of Italy.
The difference in our ways of approaching life was probably why the two of us made such a good team, I thought, not for the first time, probably the reason why I’d advanced so rapidly from the ranks of bookers to become Justine’s right hand as well as her closest friend. I’m explosive enough to allow Justine to remain her glowing blond self at all times. I’m the one who understands exactly when and how to pull a major-league freak-out, who remembers to carry necessary grudges, who won’t settle for the difference between the possible and the impossible, who doesn’t believe in any sensible Twelve Step maxim about having the wisdom to accept things you can’t change. Accept, my ass! Not when you’re from Brooklyn!
“Have you been here all night?” Justine’s voice asked, interrupting my reverie.
“You scared me!” I yelped, almost spilling my cold coffee. “I got in ages ago … I had this dream … oh, never mind … you don’t want to know.”
“You’re right about that, girlfriend.”
“I love it when you try to sound hip.” I couldn’t help grinning at her, vile as my mood was. “And just what are you doing in at this hour?” I demanded, recovering my poise.
“Ah, I had one of those bad nights.…”
“You have bad nights?”
“Even I, my mouse, even I. But last night was the worst. Every time I managed to fall asleep I had a nightmare. Finally I got smart enough to realize that I should give up on sleep and get in here and do some work in peace and quiet. I see now that was not to be.”
“Not while I’m around feeling itchy.”
“That sickening contest, of course.”
“What else?”
Justine had the nerve to sigh at me, just like she would at a peevish child.
“Don’t give me that superior attitude,” I growled. “You know it’s important even if you refuse to admit it. I’m going to make more coffee. Want some?”
“Desperately. Blessings on you, my child.”
While I hung over the coffeepot I allowed myself to brood over the events that had started this whole waiting-for-the-Paris-fax business. It all started about three months ago. A woman named Gabrielle d’Angelle arrived in New York on a mission to all the model agencies in town. Gabrielle was a highly placed assistant to a guy named Jacques Necker. You know, the Swiss billionaire who’s head of La Groupe Necker? He owns four of the world’s most important fabric mills, two major fashion houses and a fistful of highly profitable perfume and cosmetic companies. Even civilians have heard of him. GN, as everybody in the business calls it, had recently decided to back the designer Marco Lombardi in a new couture house. Lombardi’s first spring collection would be shown in Paris in a little more than two weeks from now.
“I’m here to find a group of completely fresh faces,” the Frenchwoman had told Justine and me in her impeccable English. “I need girls who are as unexposed as it is possible for models to be, girls who are entirely virgins to the Paris collections, yet they must not be too raw, too green to work with—even if they are technically children they must not look it.” I tried unsuccessfully to catch Justine’s eye. Of all the glossy, brilliantly dressed, annoyingly overconfident females I’d ever come across, Gabrielle took the cake. “I’ll be searching for them,” she had continued, “at every agency in town and making videotapes of the best of the lot. Three among them will be picked to come to Paris to take part in Marco Lombardi’s very first spring collection. One of them will ultimately be chosen as the incarnation of Lombardi’s style.” She had smiled loftily at us. “I suppose you Americans would call it a contest, I prefer to think of it as a modern-day version of the Judgment of Paris.”
“Just exactly what plans do you have for this lucky little contest winner?” Justine asked. Amazingly I heard clear suspicion in her voice. My mental eyebrows shot up at Justine’s tone. What was there to be suspicious about?
From the moment it had been announced, everyone in the fashion world had been agog to see what would come of the Lombardi launch. How come Justine wasn’t delighted to hear of this chance for new girls to be showcased?
“As I’m sure you realize, the first Lombardi collection will be the most watched event of the spring collections, Miss Loring,” Gabrielle d’Angelle answered her, allowing herself to look ever-so-slightly huffy and sounding ever-so-faintly surprised. “The winning girl will be signed to a long-term exclusive contract and become the focus of a worldwide advertising campaign.”
“Exclusive?” Justine’s question was sharp and hard, all but nasty. “If the winner’s so good, give me one reason why she should tie herself down to a new designer.”
What the hell was biting Justine’s ass, I wondered in absolute bewilderment. Her manner was utterly unlike the way she’d ever handled any prospective client.
“The contract will guarantee the winner of the contest three million dollars a year for the next four years,” d’Angelle said. Her words were crisper than fresh Melba toast and she obviously expected them to cut off further discussion.
“Aren’t you taking a large risk? An unknown model working with an unproven talent? Lombardi may just be a flash in the pan,” Justine insisted, sounding entirely unimpressed by twelve million dollars. I had to fight not to enter the discussion, even with body language, but of course I knew that whatever mistake Justine was making, she didn’t want to be second-guessed.
“Monsieur Necker did not arrive at his present power without taking risks,” the Frenchwoman said. By now she wasn’t bothering to hide her affront at Justine’s unexpected skepticism.
Justine just wouldn’t get off it. “Of course there’ll be so much publicity for GN about this talent search that it’ll be worth twelve million, even if the new girl doesn’t work out and you dump her for one of the usual stars.” Now she sounded downright hostile.
�
��Miss Loring, we have every intention of building the house of Lombardi in the way Monsieur Necker has planned,” Gabrielle said, deeply irritated—and who could blame her? I felt like throwing up my hands and screaming. How could Justine possibly treat Necker’s emissary with rudeness and scorn?
“No new house has opened successfully in Paris since Lacroix,” Justine continued with one of those curt little negative shrugs I thought only the French could do. “And that was a long time ago.”
“Miss Loring, if your agency isn’t interested in participating.…” Gabrielle d’Angelle said, pulling herself together, and, while I watched, frozen, she started to rise.
“Oh, you know perfectly well that I can’t say no,” Justine interrupted, cutting her off. “I’ll make a list of my best prospects and deliver it to your hotel with their head sheets.”
As soon as the Frenchwoman left, I turned to Justine incredulously.
“What the fuck! Are you totally insane?”
“Why didn’t I lick her exquisite shoes?”
“Basically yes, damn it. I was in cardiac arrest listening to you! So what if it’s a long shot, even if they don’t pick a single one of our girls, you had no reason to speak to her like that. She’s not looking for white slaves, for God’s sake. It’s the chance of a lifetime for someone and you know it.”
“I find all this … talent search … corrupting … distasteful … almost degrading.”