Sun-kissed (The Au Pairs 3)

"Working hard?"

She shrugged.

"Good luck with it," he said, shaking his whiskey glass. "It's my last night here."

"Oh? You're not staying in the Hamptons this summer?"

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Garrett laughed as if it were the funniest thing he'd ever heard. "Oh no, of course not. The Hamptons are so over. We're renting out the house. I'll be in Cape Town, where the real action is." He smirked. "But you have fun--I know you'll find some way to get into trouble."

His condescending and dismissive attitude did little to dampen Mara's spirits. Garrett was an ass, and she was glad to see the back of him. She wondered how on earth she'd ever found him attractive.

She suddenly missed Ryan, who was sure to be asleep with the TV turned to Aqua Teen Hunger Force. She thought about heading home and crawling into bed next to him, but Lucky Yap called her over to introduce her to Jill Klompenhower, the only real A-list celeb in the joint--an Oscar-winning actress who was rumored to have recently annulled her two-week marriage to a Christian rocker. Suddenly Mara was too busy trying to remember every detail of Jill's story to pine for her sleeping boyfriend.

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as heidi klum would say, eliza is "in" and paige is "out"

ELIZA HELPED ANOTHER MODEL WITH HER OUTFIT, TWEAKING it so that the girl wore the newsboy cap at a rakish angle and the lacy camisole over the dress instead of vice versa. Then she moved on to the next one and the next, making little adjustments, adding earrings here, a pair of fishnet stockings there--and before she knew it, she'd changed the entire look and feel of the collection.

There! Eliza thought. Now, that's more like it. The clothes all displayed an overall theme, with a sexy, beachy, jet-set vibe. More like the Sydney Minx collection of old. She had to say so herself--she was a genius!

"What do you think you're doing?" Paige demanded. She had walked out of Sydney's office and only just noticed that almost all of the models were wearing their outfits ever-so-slightly differently.

"Oh, Paige!" Eliza pouted. "You scared me."

"Sydney, look what she's done!" Paige called out ominously. "Everything is different!"

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The designer emerged from his office. He frowned and cupped his chin in the palm of his hand. "Let me see."

Eliza froze. She held her breath. All her bravado momentarily left her. It was easy to feel confident and inspired when the models cooed and aahed over her changes, but they were just models--what did they know? Most of them couldn't even spell their own fake names.

"Good, good," Sydney said. "Continue," he told Eliza. "And Paige, give her a hand."

It was a moment of triumph Eliza found bittersweet. Because while she took it upon herself to feverishly spray-paint, shred, and accessorize each outfit, Paige stood to the side, bored, unhelpful, and seething with barely controlled passive-aggressive rage.

"Can I get a glue gun, please?" Eliza called to her as she pulled on a model's skirt and began pinching the fabric in a ruched pattern.

"Here," Paige said, throwing it down.

The clatter made Eliza jump, causing her to cut into the fabric with her scissors.

"Jesus!" the model yelped.

"Oh, fuck!" Eliza said, noticing the hole. She looked over at Paige, who looked the picture of innocence. She knew Paige had done it on purpose, but there was nothing Eliza could do about it.

Eliza had a thought. "Hold still," she told the model, cutting

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another hole in the skirt and another and another, creating a sexy peekaboo design.

A few minutes later, there was a ruckus in the back of the room. "It's too small!" the model complained. The coffee-colored leather dress she was wearing was so short it barely covered her bottom.

"What's happened now? I warn you girls, I cannot have another crisis! I'm already out of Xanax!" Sydney shouted, storming over to assess the situation.