Breanne paused, the steel in her eyes softening. “How is she? My sister. Is she holding up okay?”
“She was very sad, of course. But she seemed okay, a survivor. Her husband came with her. She said she has two younger daughters and a son back home.” I stepped up to Bree’s desk and put down a piece of paper. “This is her hotel and phone number. She’ll be in New York until tomorrow morning if you want to see her before she leaves.”
Breanne bit her lip. “Rhonda’s daughter was shot instead of me.” She closed her eye, shook her head. “It’s my fault the girl’s dead...”
“That’s ridiculous. You didn’t gun her down. And your life was in just as much danger.”
“But if I had known that Hazel needed money, she wouldn’t have had to do the exotic dancing. I could have helped her—”
“Like I said, according to your sister, Hazel didn’t want your help. She was proud of her looks, her talent. She wanted to make it on her own.” I raised an eyebrow. “Sounds a lot like you, from what Rhonda told me.”
Breanne met my eyes. “And what else did Rhonda tell you?”
“That you were barely out of your teens, yet you quit college to take care of your younger sister and brothers on nothing but food stamps and welfare checks. What you did was admirable, Breanne. I don’t understand why you’re trying so hard to hide it.”
“My father was a criminal, and my mother was an alcoholic who ended up in a mental hospital. Not a very pretty past, Clare. I also did things, illegal things, for extra money. Did Rhonda mention that?”
“No.”
“Well, what’s the difference? In for a penny in for a pound, right? I didn’t have to do it for long. A family friend helped me get a legitimate job at a local department store.”
“Rhonda said you were very smart, you made friends with the store buyers.”
Breanne nodded. “I wrote articles for local publications about new products. But there was one story that broke me out.”
“The one on the Vogue cover? How did you manage that from a trailer park in West Virginia?”
Breanne’s hard blue gaze softened again. “There was a clothing buyer at the department store, a very nice man. He told me about a famous architect who was collaborating with a fashion designer to create a new line of women’s clothes. So I took a bus to Pittsburgh, where the architect lived, interviewed him extensively, and put a slick piece together with the help of one of my old community college teachers. Before she retired, she’d worked in New York as a reporter. She was the one who made a few calls, found out which editor at Vogue would be receptive to the piece.”
“And Vogue bought it? Just like that?”
“Fortune favors the foolish, I guess. The circumstances were unusual.”
“What do you mean?”
“The architect was no spring chicken. The man suffered a heart attack and died right before fall fashion week. The clothing line he helped create was a huge hit, and I had the only interview.”
“So your article ran as a Vogue cover story under a pen name you invented: Breanne Summour.”
She nodded. “By then Rhonda was old enough to take care of my brothers. So I moved to New York and, with a completely fabricated résumé, landed a job at New York Trends.”
“But I still don’t understand. Why did you have to hide your past?”
Breanne’s laugh was sharp and cynical. “I didn’t have an Ivy League degree—or any degree. I talked my way into the job with the single Vogue piece.”
“Didn’t anyone look into your background?”
“New York Trends wasn’t exactly high on the food chain. Randall Knox was just a horny little editor-in-chief. I fluttered my eyes, flipped my blond hair, crossed my legs, and he didn’t bother checking out my fake credentials. He just hired me on the spot. The creep hit on me regularly, by the way, along with every other woman under thirty in his office, which is one reason I vowed from day one to create my own magazine. Taking most of Knox’s staff with me was just the cherry on top.”
I regarded Breanne, looking as polished as ever in her thousand-dollar Fen business suit, her million-dollar view around her. “It was your ex-husband who did the polish job on you, wasn’t it?”
Breanne’s glossed lips twisted into a smirk. “I considered it a fair trade at the time. Stuart Winslow was a blueblood. Back then he was riding high with money and connections. In the ten years we were together, I did a lot of catching up. He taught me how to dress, how to speak, what to praise, what to disdain. And I taught him how to screw.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“His Mayflower name was a huge help on my pitch to Reston-Miller to start Trend. I’d been a Winslow for so long by marriage, I’d created a whole new me, a whole new life. No one in my new social circle ever questioned my right to be there.”
I looked at Breanne once more, but I didn’t see Nunzio’s braying donkey. I saw the Esmeralda geisha, a spindly coffee tree that no one noticed until she was planted at a higher altitude, cultivated, and brought to market, where bidding could drive up her value.
I’d once read a breeder’s notes on the varietal. The geisha, he’d written, was an undesirable type of bean, long and thin, which, under neglectful conditions, produced a liquor of poor quality; yet it almost always displayed resistance to leaf rust. Breanne carried innate resistance, too, and she’d been forced to become hearty in the big, bad city. She’d not only learned how to adapt and survive but flourish. Still, Breanne’s choices had exacted a price. Women with real patrician backgrounds had nothing to prove. They floated through social circles on lilting breezes of carefree laughter. For Breanne, the facade of taste and class had to be scrupulously maintained. Without the silk shawl of Nunzio’s little proverb, the world might just label her a pack mule.
“If Knox knows what I know, he can ruin you. Can’t he?”
“He can’t take away Trend’s phenomenal circulation,” Breanne said. “But he can embarrass the hell out me.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Don’t you worry about Knox. I’ll swat that little pest myself. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to deal with this sort of thing, and I doubt it will be the last.” She exhaled and met my eyes. “Okay, Clare, you know everything about me now, the ugly truth.”
“It’s your private business, Breanne. I just need to know one more thing. Why are you marrying Matt? What’s the real reason? Is he some part of an elaborate game plan, like your first husband was?”
“Not even close.”
“You really love him?”
Breanne glanced away, which I didn’t take for a good sign. I waited in silence as she studied the view beyond her floor-to-ceiling windows. Finally, she answered. “More than any other man I ever met, Matt makes me feel the way I used to feel about myself.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
She faced me again, met my eyes. “I’m a fighter, Clare. I did what I had to for my family and for myself—to succeed. Here at the magazine, I’m the bitch boss. It’s a role that gets the job done, gets the magazine out on time, keeps my people employed and my bank account healthy. But when I’m with Matteo...”
“Go on.”
“He’s like no other man I’ve ever known...” The woman’s brassy voice had become a whisper, and her gaze drifted back to the clouds, the park, her dreamy view. “When he takes me in his arms at night, I feel vulnerable again, innocent and sweet and beautiful. When he kisses me, he makes all the bad days... all the bad years... disappear...”