LITMIR.BIZ

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What time is it?’ Predictably, he didn’t have a watch.

      Sophie shrugged. ‘Perhaps 9 o’clock.’

      He was due at the Rive party at 10 p.m.

      ‘Bugger. How far is the Marais? I have to be at this party for ten.’

      Sophie’s apartment was up eight flights of stairs in a run-down block overlooking Sacre Coeur. She shrugged again. ‘Ten minutes. Maybe.’

      He pursed his lips. He wasn’t exactly sure where Montmartre was but he had a clue it was in the north of the city. The Marais was also on the right bank but closer to the Seine. Fuck it, he had to trust the local when she said it was close by, didn’t he?

      ‘Are you sure about that?’

      Sophie didn’t even bother to shrug this time, simply rolled towards him and took his nipple between her lips.

      ‘Ooh,’ he smiled to himself, ‘no reply necessary.’

      He put his arm behind his head and watched her slide off the futon.

      Light poured in from the illuminated Sacre Coeur behind them. She had a beautiful long body, a slim, sinuous back and smooth round buttocks that looked like marble in the half-light.

      ‘Do you want some … ’ow do you say in English – GHB?’ she said, fiddling with a glass vial on her cluttered dresser.

      Tom guffawed. ‘Shit, you get better all the time.’

      Then he froze. There was a head poking round the bedroom door.

      ‘Allo.’

      Tom sat up and grabbed the duvet to cover his exposed body.

      Christ! Who’s this? He thought in a panic, imagining all sorts of knife-wielding boyfriend scenarios. Then he got a better look at the intruder. Hey, she’s a corker.

      ‘This is Sabine,’ said Sophie distractedly.

      Sabine was even more startling than Sophie, her black hair looked as if it had been cut with a pair of shears into an uneven bob, but her face was exquisite enough to take it. She walked into the room holding a ginger cat which Tom could see had three legs.

      Sabine saw Tom looking and smiled. ‘She fell from the window there onto the street. She survived so we call her Lucky.’

      He liked this one too.

      ‘Er. Who is she?’ he asked, turning to Sophie. ‘Your flatmate?’ It was, however, a one-bedroom apartment.

      ‘My girlfriend,’ she said casually putting the GHB into a small tumbler of water and handing it to him before lying naked across the bed.

      Blimey, thought Tom, I can’t remember getting a hard on again so quickly.

      Sabine put the cat on the floor and kicked off her shoes before joining them on the bed, reaching over to kiss Sophie gently on the lips.

      ‘What time did you say it was again?’ said Tom, in no rush to leave.

      Sabine looked at her watch. ‘9.15.’

      The Marais was only ten minutes away Tom thought to himself as he moved forward to lie beside Sophie. She reached towards him and curled her black-tipped fingers around his hand and Tom knew that, for a short while at least, he wasn’t going anywhere.

      Giles Banks, Rive magazine’s editor-at-large, stepped from the limousine outside the gorgeous Parisian hôtel particulier and offered a hand to the woman still in the car. As one pale caramel Manolo heel hit the pavement, even Giles, who had no interest in the opposite sex, recognized that she was a magnetic beauty. Dozens of flashbulbs went off like firecrackers. He stepped back out of the line of the cameras, knowing that nobody wanted a picture of him. This was Cassandra’s night. The final part of a quartet of big nights held during the international collections that had seen her host parties in New York, London, Milan and Paris to celebrate Rive’s tenth anniversary. Sure, Giles himself had been the one she had entrusted to organize the parties and it had been a mammoth operation pulling in every contact to make sure every A-list star in town was going to be there, but tonight it would still be Cassandra at the centre of everyone’s attention. So far the parties had all been enormous successes. The supper in New York, in a yet-to-be-opened restaurant in the Meatpacking District. In Milan, Cassandra’s good friends, the Count and Contessa of Benari, had lent her their pocket-sized palazzo on the shores of Lake Como, while in London she had taken over Spitalfields Market for the night, draping the vast Victorian warehouse with white silk. They had all been very, very exclusive with invitations strictly specifying ‘No plus ones’ and they had all been a triumph. His efforts had been worth it.

      Giles was aware that his boss had a difficult reputation; she was the most demanding and particular woman he had ever met, but she was also brilliant and had been good to him: very good. He had learnt so much from her, been given so many opportunities and in helping transform UK Rive he now had an international reputation as one of the most talented fashion journalists in the world.

      He watched Cassandra’s face break into a small composed and elegant smile as they walked through the doors of the beautiful hôtel. Its grand atrium was twinkling in the glow of a thousand tea-lights. Huge glass vases were filled with scarlet and gold pomegranate halves and the perfumed air smelt like spiced nectar, sweet, rich and heady.

      Giles could see Cassandra’s eyes scan the crowd, looking for names. There were plenty to choose from. Françoise Henri Pinault and Salma Hayek. Sonia Rykiel, perched on a hot-pink sofa laughing with a friend. Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH and his beautiful daughter Delphine were talking to John Galliano whose elaborate plumed hat set him apart from the crowd – as usual.

      Everyone knew the importance of tonight’s party. Paris was fashion. All its main players were here. Nothing could go wrong.

      ‘Oh, darling. Everybody’s here.’

      Cassandra kissed him on the cheek.

      ‘You’ve outdone yourself,’ she purred, swinging her dark hair over her shoulders. ‘Although didn’t Muffy Dayton have pomegranate vases at her divorce shower?’

      Giles flushed a little. ‘Did she?’

      Still looking nervous, Giles’s eyes darted behind her.

      ‘Look out. Toxic is coming this way,’ he said quickly.

      Cassandra had just accepted a flute of pink champagne from a waiter when her publishing director Jason Tostvig, also known as ‘Toxic’ due to his unpopularity with the editorial team, appeared at her side.

      He kissed Cassandra on the cheek and shook Giles’s hand awkwardly. Despite – or perhaps because of – his job, Jason was not a man completely comfortable in the world of fashion. He’d been drafted over from newspapers, was resolutely heterosexual, bullishly macho and seemed to think that even talking to somebody openly homosexual would somehow impact on his own masculinity.

      ‘Quite impressive,’ he smiled thinly looking around the room before raking his eyes over her dress. ‘How much is this shindig costing me?’

      ‘Whatever the invoice says, it’s worth it,’ smiled Cassandra, still glancing around the room. ‘Throwing parties is a branding exercise.’

      ‘Yes, but did we need four of them in as many weeks?’

      ‘Perhaps you don’t want to send the message that Rive is rich, exclusive and international. Perhaps I’ll bring that up with Isaac Grey next time I see him,’ she said, namechecking the CEO of their company.

      Jason narrowed his dark eyes. Traditionally publishers and editors were mortal enemies, regarding each other as tight-fisted Neanderthals and irresponsible decadents, respectively. But Cassandra had a particular loathing for Jason. Not only did she think he was mediocre at his job, he had no handle on the fashion world beyond his cack-handed attempts at picking up models.

      ‘Is

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