Diva by Jillian Larkin Read Free Book Online

necklines and only tiny shorts to cover their tanned legs.
    Gloria might have felt like a prude in her modest black swimsuit with its delicate overskirt, but on the other side of Glamour, Ruby Hayworth was sunbathing in an almost identical suit—only hers was sapphire blue. What was good enough for Ruby was good enough for her, Gloria decided.
    Ruby let out a heavy sigh and put down the thin script she’d been reading. “Ugh, this musical Marty’s been bugging me to read is just horrible.”
    “I don’t know why you don’t sign on to do Forrest’s musical already,” Glamour replied in her low, sultry voice. “You’d make him the happiest man on Long Island.”
    “You wouldn’t have to do his musical to do that,” Glitz added with a suggestive waggle of her eyebrows.
    All four of them laughed.
    A little embarrassed, Ruby just shook her head. “Marty says this is a very important time in my career. I have to consider all my options.” She dug through her canvas beach bag and frowned adorably. The girl probably even looked pretty when she cried. “Drat. I left the other script in my room, and I need to let Marty know what I think by tonight.” Ruby smoothed back her dark hair, still damp from a recent dip in the pool, and laced up her bathing slippers. “Enjoy the sun, ladies.”
    Ruby made her way across the lawn, and Glamour and Glitz leaned close.
    “I can’t believe the leash that husband of hers keeps her on,” Glitz observed, her lavender-blue eyes narrowed. “Forcing her to work on vacation! Wettest blanket I’ve ever met. And I’ve dated politicians ,” she added dramatically. “I really don’t know what she sees in him.”
    “A whole lot of green— that’s what Ruby sees in Marty,” Glamour said. She gulped down her third gin and tonic of the morning. “Her show needed financing and he needed a pretty dame. Bingo!”
    “So she doesn’t love him?” Gloria asked. “She only married him for her career?” Gloria had only known the actress a few days but Ruby didn’t strike her as the gold-digging type.
    “I should do that!” Glitz called out. “It’s as good a reason as any to shackle yourself to a man, eh, Glam?”
    “Sure, but it only works if you have a career in the first place,” Glamour replied.
    “Hey!” Glitz exclaimed with a pout. “I’m a model.”
    “A model rube . You were in one magazine.”
    “It sold out!”
    “Only because those biddies from the Women’s Christian Temperance League bought all the copies to burn those pictures of you in that sheer skirt.”
    Glitz gave a delighted giggle. “There’s no such thing as bad publicity, Glam.”
    Glamour straightened her red polka-dotted swimming cap and peered at Gloria. “Maybe you should marry some fat cat who produces musicals. I’d suggest Forrest, but he only has eyes for Ruby. She just leads him on and he follows her around like a puppy.”
    “A puppy with a diamond collar!” Glitz chimed in.
    Gloria worked hard to match their smiles with one of her own. But it wasn’t easy. All this talk of marriage kept turning her eyes toward her own empty left ring finger. On her release from prison, Jerome’s engagement ring had been returned to Gloria. But Hank had forbidden her to wear it around Forrest.
    “His lips won’t be anywhere near as loose around you if he knows you’re off the market,” Hank had said.
    So now Gloria could wear the ring only when she went to bed at night, strung on a gold chain around her neck. Each morning she deposited the ring in the drawer of the oak vanity in her room. And each night she slipped it on before going to sleep.
    After five days in Great Neck, the huge guest room hadalready started to feel like home. The mattress on the four-poster bed was cloud soft, and the artwork on the walls was strange and beautiful—“By this young Spaniard named Picasso,” Forrest told her. But Gloria would’ve gladly gone back to the lumpy bed with its poky springs in her old Harlem