Chapter One
LONDON
THE RING LIGHT WASdoing its job.
Sebastian had put my extensions in four days ago for the Paramount premiere — three hours in his chair, a color refresh, and a blowout that made me look like I’d stepped off a yacht in the south of France, which I had not, but that was the entire point of good hair. The premiere had been a triumph. I’d worn the Valentino, worked the carpet, smiled for every photographer on the press line and the paparazzi stacked six deep behind the barriers, because that was just Tuesday in my life.
The after-party had been even better documented. Technically off the record, which in practice meant more paparazzi, no publicist telling anyone to put their phones away, and significantly more interesting angles.The Daily Mailwent with “Heiress Gone Wild: London Grant and Mystery Man Set After-Party Ablaze.”Page Sixwas less poetic.TMZsimply posted the video, which I thought showed excellent range. Twelve million views by noon. My best week in six months.
I was arranging three green juices on the Carrara marble island for a flat lay — Bree, my personal assistant, had my morning calendar blocked through eleven — when my phone rang.
THE MANAGEMENT on the screen.
I let it ring twice. On principle. Then I picked up.
“Hi, Daddy.”
“London.” No hello back. Warren Grant didn’t believe in hellos. He believed in directives, quarterly earnings, and the certainty that I was a PR crisis in Prada. “I’ve spoken to legal.”
This was never a good opening.
“There’s a sensitivity around the Harrington merger,” he said. “I need you out of the tabloids for the next two weeks.”
“I’m barely in the tabloids.”
“Three publications this morning.”
“The Daily Mailisn’t a publication, it’s a mood board for people who want to feel superior to strangers. And thePage Sixthing was completely out of context — Gregory and I were just—”
“I don’t need the context.”
“I’m sending someone to handle your public presence,” he said. “He’ll be at your door at ten. You’re not to leave without him.”
I considered the juices. Then the ring light. Then the penthouse — custom furnished, windows floor to ceiling, forty floors of Los Angeles laid out below me — and thought: a babysitter. My father was sending me a babysitter.
“Of course, Daddy,” I said.
My father had been issuing directives since 1998 with a perfect track record of believing they’d been received. I had an equally perfect track record of receiving them on my own terms.
I had until ten o’clock.
Corporate handlers were, in my experience, a very familiar category of person. Smooth, forgettable, ambitious in the specific way of someone who genuinely cared what my father thought of him. Thirty minutes, charm offensive, he’d be eating out of my hand before the elevator arrived. I had done this before. I was excellent at it.
I went to change.
The silk slip was fine for content. For a negotiation I needed something with more range. I found the Zimmermann — the good one, the one that photographed like a dream and landed differently in person — and put it on. Lip gloss. One spritz of the perfume that had arrived last month with a very sincere note from a brand whose name I wasn’t yet at liberty to share because the partnership wasn’t finalized, and which smelled like money had learned to apologize.
I was ready by nine fifty-eight.
THE BABYSITTER WASnot what I expected.
I opened the door with my best version of warm and collaborative already in place — the smile that made photographers add ten minutes to a shoot, the posture, the general impression of someone who was very happy to see you and also always arrived like this.
What I got was six-foot-four of former something — military, I was fairly certain, from the way he took in the doorframe like he was solving for its structural load — with dark hair slightly too long and a jaw that made my next breath arrive a full beat late. He was wearing worn dark jeans, a canvas overshirt, and boots that had seen actual terrain. He swept the room in one pass — ring light, marble, forty floors of window — and his eyes came back to mine with no verdict in them whatsoever.
I already had my phone in my hand, which told me something about my nerves I chose to ignore.
“London Grant,” he said, like he was reading off a list.
