the Overnight Socialite by Bridie Clark Read Free Book Online Page A

upset you like that. He's a moron--"

    "Hey!" Wyatt shouted. "I'm standing right here."

    "But I promise he wasn't trying to suggest anything sketchy."

    "You got the moron part right," said Lucy Jo, but her expression softened. She accepted Trip's umbrella with a thankful nod, and hurried off down the block.

    7

    please join parker lewis for a
holiday housewarming
86 laight street, sixth floor
tribeca
wednesday, december 2nd
10 PM

    T his is precisely why we need a driver," Fernanda Fairchild, thirty-one and counting, whined to her mother. The two stared glumly out the front door of Nello. Nightmare! The rain had started during the endive salad. Now it was coming down in sheets.

    "Always the nights I wear velvet," clucked Martha Fairchild, running a protective hand down the sleeve of her Chanel jacket. Maximilian, Fernanda's older brother, had gone out to hail a cab. He'd been at it without success for the better part of five minutes, and the ladies were beginning to panic.

    "I knew it'd be a disaster tonight!" Fernanda exclaimed. She'd honed a special gift for predicting disasters. "Is Max, like, getting out there? You've got to be aggressive to get a taxi on a night like this. You've got to throw yourself in front and dare the cabbie not to run you over!"

    "You know your brother," Mrs. Fairchild said pessimistically.

    For those who don't: Max Fairchild was thirty-four, gorgeous, outdoorsy, athletic, blond, and gentle natured. The only thing he was missing was a backbone, which his many female admirers generously forgave. He wasn't what you'd call brainy, either, but he did just fine at his uncle's firm.

    Fernanda, who took after their pale, beaky late father, pulled the ends of her jet-black hair in agony. "I knew we shouldn't have tried to squeeze in dinner after the Townhouse party. I'll be drenched and curly by the time I get to Parker's!" Fernanda's hair was her one vanity. Lovely and thick, it took a full hour to blow-dry during twice-weekly appointments at Garren. And that very afternoon--after a month on the waiting list, not to mention her entire week's salary at Christie's--she'd finally gotten her first cut-color-blowout appointment with the Lower East Side shut-in that Cornelia and all the girls raved about. The guy's musty apartment made Fern's skin crawl, but Cornelia insisted he was the best. She was totally right, of course. Cornelia was just lucky that her astronomical bills were handled--and never questioned--by one of her family's accountants. Anyway, it was too infuriating; now all Fernanda's effort would be for naught.

    A very wet Max suddenly emerged from the street, his cherubic blond curls matted dark against his brow, his ravaged black umbrella looking like an origami swan. "It's awful out--"

    "Did you get one?" Fernanda demanded, peering out through the cloudy glass.

    "I tried," Max said. "I walked over to Park, too, and then up a few blocks--nothing!"

    "So what do you suggest we do, Maximilian? Take the bus?" Mrs. Fairchild was only being sarcastic, of course, and was not pleased when Max fished out a yellow MetroCard from the pocket of his trench. "Stop being ridiculous! Go get us a taxi tout de suite !"

    "Hey, there's one!" Fernanda shouted, pushing her drenched brother back out the door and toward a barely visible on-duty light making its way up Madison.

    "Someone's got it already--" Max called over his shoulder, pointing toward a young woman who'd been desperately trying to hail a cab since he went outside. "That girl's been waiting--"

    " That girl is not wearing Carolina Herrera and python Manolos!" Fernanda shrieked. Nor, presumably, was that girl heading to the home of a man she'd been doggedly hunting for months. Fernanda couldn't be late for Parker Lewis's party. He was ideal husband material: forty-five, recently divorced, distinguished, social, wealthy. Not much to look at, but who cared? If Fernanda showed up late--well, she just knew that the circling hyenas would beat her