Skinny Dipping (The Au Pairs 2)

"Love that shirt. Is it Proenza?" one of the style experts asked, fingering the material on her pink polka-dot blouse. She'd matched it with a pair of slim white Bermuda shorts and cork-wedge espadrilles. After spending last summer with two fashion mavens--Jacqui and Eliza--Mara had picked up a few

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tips. She was flattered by the compliment and didn't have the heart to tell him it was a knockoff she'd bought at Forever 21 for fifteen bucks.

Lucky took a few shots of her, then leaned over to whisper conspiratorially with his seatmate. Mara couldn't help but overhear buzzing as her name was linked to Ryan Perry's.

The stewardess led her to the nearest available seat and Mara sipped happily from her champagne flute, soaking in the atmosphere, listening in on the gossip from the Cape Cod beach wedding they were all returning from. After a year in Sturbridge, where the most glamorous thing in town was the hokey piano bar attached to the Hyatt, she'd forgotten how well the other half lived.

"Oh! There's Garrett!" a girl next to Mara whispered excitedly.

"Mr. Reynolds!" Lucky greeted. "Can we get a shot?"

Mara looked up to see a tall, shaggy-haired boy emerge from the cockpit. Immediately, all the girls in the group stood up a little straighter, trying to catch his eye. He was holding a champagne bottle aloft and grinning. He was rakishly, devilishly handsome, with a Jude Law-style flop of dark hair falling over his forehead. His button-down white Thomas Pink shirt lay rumpled and un tucked from his black wool pants.

"You," he said, walking down the aisle and heading straight for Mara.

He had deep, dark eyes, as dark as his hair, framed by the thicke

st set of lashes Mara had ever seen. "Come with me," he

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said, taking her by the hand before she could protest. As Garrett led her away, the group parted silently to let them through, and Mara received glances of barely contained jealousy from the girls, as well as an approving nod from Lucky. Mara felt singled out, special, and she couldn't help but think, Hamptons, here I come.

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jacqui gets serious . . . about shopping

THE GUY AT BOOKHAMPTON WAVED AWAY HER CHARGE

card with a smile, even though Jacqui Velasco insisted on paying for her books herself. Just once she wished she could meet a guy who saw past her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition body. It was getting on her nerves a little--the abject, puppy-dog treatment from men who were always more than willing to pick up the check, the tab, the bill. Not too long ago, Jacqui was more than happy to let them pay, and she had a wardrobe full of Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Prada to prove it. But things were different now. Last summer, Jacqui's heart had been broken by slimy Luke van Varick, and now she was determined to become a more serious person, someone whom people took seriously.

"Por favor, I insist," Jacqui repeated, trying to change his mind.

"Sorry, your money's no good here," the pimply cashier repeated, even though Jacqui knew he'd hear it from his boss later when the receipts came up short. But that was the impact Jacqui had on guys--something about her slightly almond-shaped eyes

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and bee-stung lips (not to mention that impressive set of 36Cs) turned even a ninety-pound bookstore nerd into a protective, macho, chest-puffing buffoon who would do anything to impress her. "Consider it a gift," he added.

Jacqui sighed and accepted the plastic bag reluctantly, tossing it into her patent leather carryall. She walked into the bright early-summer afternoon and crossed the street to sit on a park bench to wait for Eliza. It was another glorious day in East Hampton. The early-morning rainfall had given way to sparkling sunshine, and the tiny, jewel-box boutiques on Main Street trilled with the chatter of what to wear to another season of beachfront barbecues and white-tent benefits. Jacqui was oblivious to the stares from the preening slicksters in their 911 Carreras or the head-to-toe scrutiny from the Botox brigade. She sat and immediately immersed herself in her book, The U.S. News & World Report's guide to Americas best colleges.

It was amazing what a little studying could do for her grades and how gratifying it was to bring home a decent report card for a change. Her grandmother couldn't believe it--during the past year, Jacqui had spent more time at the library than the mall and was even talking about going to college. In the past, the only thing Jacqui had been passionate about was whether or not she'd be able to score the latest fox-fur Prada shrug before anyone else. Before, she'd had only a vague idea of what she wanted for the future. She'd always assumed she'd end up marrying some rich guy twice her age and spend the rest of her life flitting between

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spa treatments and couture fittings while ignoring her husband's infidelities. It was the life that Jacqui had been groomed for.

Her mother, a former beauty queen who had won third runner-up in a Miss Universe pageant, once had her pick of suitors-- from the son of the owner of the largest electric company in the country, to the son of a landed cattle rancher. Instead, she'd settled on a handsome civil engineer with beautiful black eyes and no family money whatsoever. Roberto Velasco was resolutely middle-class in a country of extreme wealth and extreme poverty. The Velascos lived happily enough in Campinas, and her mother contented herself with ruling over the small provincial society, but she wanted more for her daughter, which was why she'd sent Jacqui to live with her grandmother in Sao Paulo to attend a private school in the city where Jacqui would rub shoulders with the daughters of the ruling branco class.

But Jacqui's beautiful face and Coke-bottle curves had only made the rich girls envious, and Jacqui had made few friends there. For a while, she'd dutifully dated the arrogant scions of landowners and the sugarcane gentry, but that soon bored her, and she'd found that true adventure lay in the arms of their married, older fathers.

Then Luke van Varick--her Luca--had come into her life. A cool American boy with a lazy grin and a huge backpack, she'd met him while he was traveling over spring break and had fallen hard for him. After their two-week spring fling, he'd told her he loved her and then disappeared. She'd tracked him down all the

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way to the Hamptons, but it turned out her Luca had actually belonged to someone else the whole time.