7

Gemma stood outside the Union Square Barnes & Noble and checked her phone. Sanjay was ten minutes late, but he was doing her a favor, so she knew she couldn’t complain. She had a bunch of new pieces she needed photographed for Instagram and he agreed to help.

It was the day of the farmer’s market, so she at least had great people-watching to pass the time. You never knew when you’d spot a celebrity on the hunt for prime butternut squash.

Her phone rang.

“May I speak to Gemma Maybrook?” a female voice said.

“This is Gemma.” She stepped closer to the bookstore awning and covered one ear with her hand.

“I’m calling from Jacob Jabarin’s office. Mr. Jabarin unfortunately needs to postpone your meeting.”

“Postpone? Why?”

“I’m not at liberty to disclose all the details, but he said you have a product more than a business, so it’s premature to discuss any potential investment.”

A product rather than a business? But that was why she needed seed money—to grow into a business. She needed to invest in materials and at least the occasional pop-up before a physical store. She needed a marketing campaign to get her message out. Sure, she had a respectable following on Instagram and she was making some money. But she’d gotten as far as she could on her own. She had to take things to the next level and knew a real investor would get her there. She’d seen too many other promising NYSD graduates fail to segue from wunderkind to serious competitor in the marketplace. She didn’t want to fall into that trap. She had the New York City and LA crowd wearing her designs. What she needed was the homemaker in South Carolina buying her daughter a charm necklace for Sweet Sixteen, or a workingwoman in upstate New York buying herself a Rock Candy ring for her own birthday.

“Feel free to check back in a few months. Perhaps the end of the summer?”

Gemma forced herself to reply with detached politeness, not betraying the frustration she felt. What was going to change by the end of the summer? As the call ended, she spotted Sanjay emerging from the subway station. At least she still had him on her team. Barely.

A gifted photographer, Sanjay had been assigned to her group for a project in a business elective freshman year. They had to create a marketing campaign for a product, and the group decided to use her jewelry and his photography. She got an A on the project, but more important, found a new friend in Sanjay. They shared the same obsessive drive, the same sense of having something to prove. She had jewelry-making in her blood but had been cast out of the family; Sanjay was from a strict Indian household that believed any career for a man other than medical or scientific was a waste of time. For both of them, NYSD was more than just a school: It was their launching pad for proving their families wrong.

At the end of junior year, when she created her first real line of jewelry with the Rock Candy rings, she enlisted him to help her take photographs for Instagram. At first, he said he just didn’t have time: He had a full course load and worked every weekend at the Casterbridge.

She considered other photographers within the school directory, but Sanjay’s work stood out. The way his shots conveyed texture and light was unique. She couldn’t take no for an answer; instead, she told him she’d rent a room at the hotel one night, bring all her things, and if he could just run up to the room after work and shoot, she’d “pay” him with some of the pieces that he could give to his sisters. They negotiated: He said his sisters didn’t wear jewelry, but he’d do it if he could keep some of the photos for his portfolio or even to sell in the future.

“Deal,” she said.

The Casterbridge was a redbrick and stone Georgian Revival building overlooking Central Park. A room was a big expense, but she knew she would make it back if she sold just a quarter of the rings Sanjay photographed. She brought along a bottle of prosecco to celebrate when the shoot was finished.

He finished his shift at midnight and worked methodically but quickly; he tried different backgrounds, some white light box, some colorful textile, some taken of the rings on her fingers. The ones she liked best were the close-ups of a ring with the bright white background. They allowed the gems to pop, vivid and enticing as actual candy.

As she watched him work, trusting his art direction instead of her own urge to call the shots, she realized for the first time how attractive he was. With his intelligent dark eyes, thick black hair, and dimpled smile, she could only assume her admiration for his talent led her to prematurely put him in the friend zone. And Sanjay must have felt something different that night, too, because somehow, between breaking down the lights and camera setup and opening the bottle of prosecco, they kissed. It was a great kiss, one that made her knees weak.

A kiss worthy of launching a real love affair. And it did—until she screwed it up.

It had only been a few weeks since he’d forgiven her and they’d tentatively found their way back to friendship. With school ending, they both wanted to set things right, and Gemma was grateful to have her friend back. Still, she longed for him in a way that would make it impossible to be satisfied with just friendship. And there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

“Wanna grab something to eat?” she said.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” he said. “Let’s just get to work.”

“Oh? Big plans tonight?” she teased to cover up her disappointment. She thought with a pang of the days when they met up at her apartment, had heart-stopping sex, ordered in food, and then finally got around to photographing her work around midnight. Then more sex. Then waking up in each other’s arms . . .

Stop it.

They walked west, passing the shuttered restaurant Coffee Shop. Sanjay stopped at a hot dog vendor to buy a bottle of water. At five in the evening, it was still close to eighty degrees out—the warmest day of spring so far.

“Why didn’t you come by my graduation party?” he said.

She hadn’t told him about the Pavlin & Co event.

Growing up, Gemma never discussed her relationship with the Pavlins, not even with her closest friends. It was a habit she’d gotten into because of Nana’s attitude toward her maternal family. It was an unspoken rule that they didn’t ever acknowledge that side of Gemma’s life. As she grew up, hungry to know more about the mother she’d lost, she learned to swallow her curiosity. It became almost a superstition not to mention the Pavlins—like avoiding stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk. In contrast, her grandparents’ house was a shrine to her father. His photos were on every flat surface in the place, along with his high school soccer trophies, plaques for his honor roll in college, and the awards he won in advertising. Because she was raised in that environment, it was like she was one hundred percent Maybrook.

Sanjay was one of the few friends of hers in whom she’d confided about her actual family background, and only then because she’d had one too many glasses of wine at her birthday dinner. She instantly regretted it. She hated to think of Sanjay googling her famous mother, seeing the photos of her in the Pavlin & Co ads that were plastered all over the city—all over the country—thirty years ago. She was afraid he’d look at her differently. But to his credit, he never even brought it up again except when he read her sales pitch for the investors. He’d suggested she include it in her bio, and she hadn’t listened to him. Considering the call from Jacob Jabarin’s office just now, maybe she should have.

“I’m sorry. I had a . . . thing I had to take care of.”

“You should have been there to celebrate with everyone. Graduation is a big deal, you know.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I feel like you go out of your way to avoid being happy.”

Gemma couldn’t help but think this was a dig at how she messed up their relationship.

They walked in silence until they reached her building.

“I think you were right about leaning into my family connection more in my business plan,” she said, stopping on the front stoop to fish her keys from her bag. “But it would have to be done in the right way.”

Pavlin & Co might have outdated designs, they might not have innovated in decades, but it was, at least, a company. A world-renowned company. Legendary. Her connection to it might give her legitimacy in the eyes of investors. But it had to be something more than just a line in her bio.

She’d once read that a single tabloid photo of her mother wearing the Electric Rose generated more sales at Pavlin & Co than a six-figure advertising campaign. What if she were able to use the ring to generate that kind of buzz for her own brand? She’d find an angle, something like “tradition reimagined.” The only way she could compete with a monolith like Pavlin & Co was to show it was a dinosaur—that the customers and creators of jewelry were different in the new millennium. She could design a new setting for the Electric Rose, transforming it from an engagement ring into a pendant that symbolized independence. Women didn’t need to wait around for someone to buy them a diamond ring. They bought their own jewelry. They knew how to celebrate themselves.

They climbed the stairs to her apartment, each floor more stifling than the one below it. When they reached her front door she found a piece of paper taped to it.

“What’s this?” she said, leaning closer to read it. The words “commercial enterprise” and “lease violation” swam before her eyes.

Sanjay pulled it off the door and looked at it closely. “This,” he said, “is an eviction notice.”

---

Elodie sat elbow to elbow at a long table inside the Hall of Ocean Life at the Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side. She wished she hadn’t committed to the fundraiser, but she was a sucker for anything animal-related. And the museum still had its butterfly room, so technically it qualified. With a rush of nostalgia, she remembered how her younger sister, Paulina, had loved butterflies. She shook the thought away.

Inside her handbag, her phone vibrated. She gave her screen a quick glance and sent her lawyer’s call to voicemail.

“The problem is these young people don’t understand that not all money is created equal,” said the woman next to her.

One of the eternal downsides of being a single woman on the fundraising circuit was that she was always trapped in conversation with people she had no interest in talking to. She couldn’t even look across the table at a spouse or partner for a sympathetic nod whilst trapped in a boring conversation.

Today, she had Esther Dernhauser on her right talking her ear off about co-op board problems. On her left, she had Joe Lavendero, an eighty-year-old billionaire who was considered quite the catch. Had she been seated next to him in some sort of misguided matchmaking attempt?

That was the other problem with being single in New York society. Everyone wanted the feather in their cap of being the one to pair you off. A hundred years after Edith Wharton, and matchmaking was still the preferred sport of the rich.

Elodie had been in love precisely once, back in the early nineties.

Four years out of Columbia, Elodie was hitting her stride as her father’s heir apparent. As far as her sisters went, it wasn’t even a contest: Celeste was away at grad school, and Paulina was flitting around the world being photographed by tabloids and sleeping her way through Europe’s most eligible gene pool. Elodie was delighted. After being in the shadow of both of them for her entire life, she finally had her father’s attention—and the company—all to herself.

Every year the agency built a campaign around Pavlin & Co’s holiday collections. Alan paid a small fortune for the annual blitz of magazine ads and television spots. As he always said, desire had to be invented.

“Miss Pavlin, we have a new account executive working with us on this project,” said the agency CEO, Jim Rizzi, when the conference room was fully seated. “This is Liam Maybrook.”

Elodie took in his wavy dark hair, cornflower blue eyes, and sharp cheekbones. He was tall and lean and when he reached over to shake her hand, Elodie felt as if the chair dropped out beneath her.

“We just lured him away from TBWA/Chiat/Day and we’re delighted to say he’s hit the ground running on this,” Jim added.

Liam Maybrook gave her a brief nod before launching into his presentation, using a projector to run through a slide show.

He was dressed in a jacket and tie, and he moved with a stiff formality. But there was something devil-may-care in those deep blue eyes. He spoke with an absolute command of the room, and she found herself almost holding her breath.

At the end of the presentation, it was as if she snapped out of a dream. She was there to either sign off on the pitch or ask for a different direction. She found herself unable to do either.

“You’ve given me a lot to think about,” she said. Jim Rizzi, sensing that she was being euphemistic for “I hated it,” jumped in with, “Look at the time! It’s almost five. Who can make decisions on an empty stomach? Let’s discuss this over dry martinis and rare steaks.”

The Palm was just a few blocks away on Forty-Fourth and Second Avenue. The maître d’ seated their large party immediately.

“I eat here four or five nights a week,” Jim told her, either bragging or to explain how they bypassed all the patrons waiting at the bar.

The table for six was round, and the group politely waited for her to take a seat before filling in the chairs around her. Fate smiled at her, because Liam Maybrook ended up directly to her right.

She spent the first round of martinis and the appetizer course talking to the man on the opposite side. It took her that long to get her bearings. Only then, fortified by the vodka, could she turn to Liam and attempt small talk. She noticed he stopped drinking after the first round.

“Do you prefer wine?” she said, wondering if they should order a bottle. She wouldn’t have minded switching over herself. Between the hard liquor and her attraction to this stranger, she could barely keep her head straight.

“I like martinis just fine,” he said. “But I stop at one when I’m on the clock.”

“Oh?” she said. “I didn’t realize you were still on the clock.”

He turned his empty cocktail glass, glancing sideways at her with a small smile that made her melt.

“I’m always on the clock. But someday I hope to spend a lot of time traveling. There’s so much to see in the world. I think a lot of people in New York City forget that.”

Elodie picked up her water glass and held it out toward him.

“I’ll drink to that. But are you really always working, Liam?” she said with out-of-character flirtatiousness. The man did something to her.

He nodded, a twinkle in his blue eyes. “If I wasn’t—and if my work didn’t involve your ad campaign—I would ask you out to a proper dinner.”

She felt her heart stop.

“In that case,” she said, “maybe I should quit.”

Now, three decades later, she could still see him like it was yesterday. More, she could still feel the rush of longing.

Elodie tried to root herself in the present, looking around the packed luncheon hall, barely aware of the Emmy Award–winning actress taking the stage to juice up the crowd so they opened their wallets.

“Elodie Pavlin! What a surprise to see you out and about,” said Isabel Haupt, wife of hedge fund honcho Ian Haupt and one of the wealthiest women in Manhattan. “I guess you haven’t been feeling very charitable lately.” No matter what planning committee they were on together, Isabel was always the contrarian when it came to Elodie’s suggestions and opinions. And since planning committees were never about who had the best ideas but rather who would be bringing in the biggest donors, Isabel’s opinion won out every time.

“Some of us have full-time jobs, Isabel,” Elodie said.

“Still,” Isabel said, looking grave and putting a bony hand on her forearm, “one must always make time to give back.”

“As a matter of fact, I’m working on something for charity right now.” She made a mental note to talk to Sloan Pierce about partnering with a charity.

Just a day earlier she’d decided to move forward with the auction. She’d get a year’s worth of publicity out of it, she’d unburden herself of caretaking all the pieces, raise some money, and, best of all, that niece of hers would have less reason to keep sniffing around.

Her phone buzzed again, and again she checked. Her lawyer. At least this time the call would extract her from the conversation with Isabel. She excused herself and stepped away from the table.

“Elodie speaking.”

“I’ve been trying to reach you all morning. We need to discuss the auction paperwork you sent me,” said her lawyer.

“Right now? I’m at a luncheon.”

“There’s a problem. The Pavlin Private Collection is part of a trust. You can’t sell any of the items without sign-off from the co-owners of the trust.”

Had he been day-drinking? “There aren’t any co-owners of the trust.”

“I’m afraid there is. Your sister Celeste.”

“Celeste? Celeste hasn’t had anything to do with the company . . . ever!” It was an outrage. A grotesque mistake that she would immediately remedy.

“And your niece, Gemma Maybrook.”