Sun-kissed (The Au Pairs 3)

Eliza wiped the tears from her eyes. "Sure." She nodded.

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who will have the last laugh?

VISITING THE DORMDEBAUCHERY WEB SITE HAD BECOME

one of Jacqui's regular habits since kissing all three of its founders. But when she logged on to the site after arriving back from the city, she found that the home page displayed the same jokes it had shown for the last week. None of the gags had been updated, and the newest video, which showed an intoxicated starlet smiling clue-lessly into the camera while her strap fell and exposed her left breast and plastic surgery stitches, was already old news.

She clicked off the screen, wondering if something was wrong.

When she arrived at the Reynolds castle that evening, she was surprised to find that, for the first time that entire summer, it was dark: the lights were off, the windows shuttered. There was no sign of the nightly debauchery--no hordes of Hamptonites angling for entry, no girls engaging in wet T-shirt contests on the lawn, no booming hip-hop music, no Beirut tournament. What was going on? Had somebody died? She opened the door, calling out softly, "Grant? Ben? Duffy? Where are you guys?"

She found the three of them sitting glumly on the sofa, each nursing a can of beer. Grant was listlessly throwing darts at the

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board across the room but missing the target by miles; the carpet was strewn with fallen darts. Duffy was picking at a crusted wound on his elbow from the pogo-stick fall. Ben was immersed in a video game but didn't seem to be doing very well; the voice on the television kept intoning, "Please reload. Please reload."

Grant stopped mid-throw, and the dart hit Ben on the knee.

"Watch it!" Ben said, annoyed, throwing it back at him, but it hit Duffy's sore elbow instead.

"Hey!" Duffy bellowed.

They all looked up at Jacqui with gloomy faces, a marked contrast to their usual manic excitement.

"Oh, you're here," Duffy said without his usual enthusiasm.

"Jacqui, Jacqui, Jacqui." Grant shook his head.

"What do you want?" Ben asked a bit brusquely.

Jacqui sat on the arm of the sofa. "Everything all right?"

"No." Ben sighed. "The site's tanking. We've got nothing new, no new jokes or videos. And our hits dropped way down. We lost, like, seventy percent of our market share."

"There's some new site now where kids can put up their own videos and jokes. Goddamn Internet economy. Everything moves too fast," Duffy explained.

They explained that the lack of eyeballs had cased their advertising revenues to take a free fall, and the cost of throwing insane weekly parties had almost bankrupted them.

"We might have to sell the Black Hawk!" Grant cried.

"Why don't you put up some new jokes, then?" Jacqui asked.

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"We can't think of any." Duffy shrugged. "Nothings come to mind. Nothing seems funny anymore."

"I'm depressed," Ben admitted.

"We're doomed," Grant declared.

"C'mon, guys, it can't be that bad! It's just a speed bump; you'll think of something. I know you will. Duffy--Ben-- Grant--come on--"

"We know, you know," Ben interrupted.

"Excuse me?" she asked, leaning forward.