Where Beauty Lies (Sophia and Ava London)
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Authors: Elle Fowler,Blair Fowler
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contents
1
contessa your blessings
Mid-November
Soho House, West Hollywood, California
The girl at the door looked up from her computer sleepily and said, “Yes?”
It was 11:03
A.M.
on Sunday, so if Sophia hadn’t known better she might have thought the girl just wasn’t a morning person, but Sophia did know better and knew that Clarabelle would have looked exactly that slow and sleepy at 11:00
P.M.
or 2:00
A.M.
or anytime. It was part of the mystique about Soho House, the fact that the people who worked the door were so much cooler than the patrons that they literally didn’t have time to deal with them.
“Hi, Clarabelle. We’re meeting Hunter for lunch upstairs,” Sophia said, already moving past her toward the hall with the elevators.
“Reynard?” Clarabelle said, and a large bald man with a tattoo on his face stepped out of nowhere, blocking their path.
Sophia loved Soho House once you were inside, but getting in if you weren’t a member—it was, as her sister Ava said, almost enough to make you forget their excellent yogurt-strawberry cheesecake.
Almost.
“We’re meeting Hunter here for lunch,” Sophia said patiently. “I’m sure he called it in.”
“And your names?”
Her friend Lily couldn’t take it anymore. “Clarabelle, don’t make me remind you about third-grade PE. You know what I mean.”
“It’s protocol,” Clarabelle hissed at her.
“This is a club, not the White House,” Lily hissed back.
“Fine,” she said. “Welcome back, Miss London. Miss London. And”—she glared at Lily—“you.”
“Thanks, Spot,” Lily said, and Sophia couldn’t help noticing that Clarabelle’s face went from normal to flaming pink in one second. Lily had grown up in LA and seemed to be connected to nearly everyone there by either blood or secrets, which meant she could find a lever to get almost anyone to do almost anything.
“Why did you call her Spot?” Ava asked when they were in the elevator.
Lily gave her a sideways glance. She had cornhusk-blond hair, olive skin, light green eyes, and a face that made people’s jaws drop, which would have made her a tedious friend except that she had the sense of humor of a fourteen-year-old boy and was completely nuts. “Trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to know.” She looked at Sophia. “Don’t worry, it’s only 11:06.”
Sophia tried a smile. “I know.” The smile felt tight on her face and she could tell she wasn’t fooling anyone.
There wasn’t really anything wrong, it was just that she hated to be late. And she especially hated to be late for Hunter because it upset him so much.
“I worry when you’re not where you’re supposed to be,” he told her early on in their dating, with one of his knee-melting smiles. How could she argue with that?
She glanced for the fourth—or maybe fourteenth—time at the Cartier watch he’d given her two weeks earlier on their one-month anniversary. The face was gold with a little blue sapphire on the side, the same color as his eyes. Giving her the watch was so perfectly Hunter, so perfect period.
It was just another example of the way that he never chastised her if she did something he didn’t like, just came up with a solution that would charm them both. The watch was his thoughtful, elegant, and effective way of telling her that time mattered to him. He was seriously the ideal boyfriend.
He had been since their first date. That had taken place the day after the nightmare of the Pet Paradise fund-raiser. Just thinking about it sent a little chill up her spine.
After she and Ava had apparently doomed their makeup line with LuxeLife cosmetics by having a knock-down-drag-out sister fight during the big launch, they’d reconciled and poured themselves into organizing a benefit for the animal shelter where Ava had been volunteering. And it had gone spectacularly—until the very end, when they’d been led away by the police, accused of having stolen the money they’d raised. It took less than an hour to get it all sorted out and for the police to arrest Ava’s friend Dalton for the theft, but it had still been … unsettling.
That wasn’t the only unsettling thing about that period, if she was being honest with herself. She’d been surprised not to hear from Giovanni again. She’d seen him for the last time a few days before the benefit, outside the gallery where her photographs were debuting.
“Your work is wonderful,
stella,
” he’d said, his face all shadowy planes in the dim light of the parking lot. “It is just that you are more wonderful. What I see is a beginning most impressive. And the more you become comfortable to show of yourself, the more outstanding your pictures they will become. Do you understand?”
She had. “But I’m scared,” she’d admitted.
And he’d smiled at her and told her it was natural. “But you won’t let it stop you from doing what you want.” And then, knowing her too well, he’d added, “And do not say you don’t know what you want. You will when the time is right.”
That was the last thing he’d said to her, more than six weeks earlier, a compliment and challenge wrapped up together. As though he were saying he believed in her …
but.
Hunter had come out of the gallery to find her then with the news that all of her photos had sold. He’d told her they were wonderful just as they were. That she was wonderful just as she was. There was no “but” with Hunter.
Which was why when Hunter had called the night after she and Ava came home from being arrested and asked her out on a date—“no more playing at just friends,” as he’d put it—she’d said yes without hesitating.
And she hadn’t looked back since. The next day Hunter had stood in the doorway of their apartment, the sun at his back making a golden halo around his head, and said, “I hope you don’t mind, I chose somewhere a little out of the way. I thought you’d like to avoid the press.”
Sophia had smiled, and before she could thank him, Hunter had said, “That. Right there.”
“What?” Sophia had asked, looking around.
“That smile. It’s what I’ve been waiting to see.”
From that moment he’d swept her off her feet so well that she hadn’t had time to think about anything except him. She remembered blushing and feeling like she was floating or in a movie, and being so distracted that she hadn’t even thought to notice where they were going until the car was turning into the driveway of the Santa Monica Airport.
“A little out of the way” turned out to mean a late dinner at a corner table at the quaint, candlelit garden of a French bistro—in New York City. Afterward, as the car drove them through Central Park toward his parents’ place, he got quiet and seemed distracted.
“Did I do something wrong?” Sophia asked.
He shook his head and when he looked at her, he looked like a little boy, his blue-blue eyes wide and vulnerable. “No. You’ve done everything exactly right. And I’m scared of messing this up.”
“You’re the perfect one,” she said. “This was the most amazing date I’ve ever been on.”
“Really?” he asked, as though he genuinely didn’t know.
“Really,” she told him honestly.
He’d leaned over and kissed her then and it felt warm and familiar and comfortable. Right. “I could get used to having you by my side,” he’d said, squeezing her hand.
“Me too.”
They had spent the night at his parents’ “little place in the city”—a four-bedroom apartment at the Plaza—and gone sightseeing the next day, before flying back to LA that night. The entire time, everything had just clicked, and by the time they touched down it felt like they’d been a couple for months, not hours.
Hunter was like a good-luck charm. Since they’d been together amazing things had been happening to her, and to London Calling. She couldn’t believe she’d ever thought about
not
dating him. In fact, the only thing not perfect about her relationship with Hunter was how little they got to see each other because Sophia was so busy.
Which made being even six minutes late for brunch with him feel even worse.
She knew he would understand, especially when she told him that what had really held them up was Ava waiting to Skype with Liam from the set of his latest movie in Romania. Or was it Slovakia? Sophia couldn’t remember, not because she hadn’t paid attention but because Ava hadn’t seemed sure herself.
She wasn’t positive what was going on with Ava and Liam—whenever she asked, Ava said they were just friends, and yet she seemed very eager to talk to him. Much more than “just friends” eager.
Although, looking at Ava now, Sophia thought that her sister didn’t seem sad that she hadn’t gotten to talk to him, the way she would have when they were going out; she seemed more frustrated.
Trying not to check her watch, Sophia ran her hand through her long blond hair and straightened the French cuffs on her pink minidress. “Is it me or is this elevator set to Sloth?” she said.
“It’s you,” Lily told her as it dinged a final time.
Sophia practically exploded out of the elevator and into the dining room. Her heart was beating fast as Massie, the hostess, showed them to the corner-view table that Hunter had reserved, but it slowed down when she saw that the table was empty.
Hunter was late, too. She hadn’t kept him waiting. Relief flooded through her.
Then she saw that she was wrong. He was there, only his head was on the table and he was dozing.
She rushed to his side and put her hand on his shoulder. “Hi, sweetheart,” she said. “I’m so sorry we’re—”
His blue eyes opened. “Well, don’t you look gorgeous,” he said, standing to take her in his arms. He pulled her close and ducked his head to kiss her in a way that was much more of an after-dinner than before-brunch kiss.
“Wow,” she said as they separated and only their noses touched. “You took my breath away.”
He smiled at her lazily. “Now you know how I feel every minute I’m with you.”
Sophia brushed the dark blond hair off his forehead, struck like she always was by how hot he was. There was a faint line of gold stubble over his square chin that caught the light and made him look like he was glowing. She ran her fingers along his cheek and said, “I wish we could just do this for the rest of the day.”
“Me too,” he told her. “Only maybe with fewer people around.” He yawned. “And I might need a nap.”
Sophia remembered that he’d been at a poker tournament the day before. No wonder he was so tired. “How was it? Did you win?”