Indiscretions - Elizabeth Adler [46]
Tears spilled down her face and she dashed them away angrily as Venetia and India helplessly watched.
“I’m sorry,” sobbed Paris. “I didn’t mean it, really I didn’t.” She fished a Kleenex from her pocket and dabbed her eyes. “You’re right, Vennie. She’d earned it the hard way and she had the right to do what she wanted with it. She was foolish, that’s all—and alone, and vulnerable.” And, she added silently, nobody understands that better than I do.
Venetia stared out of the window at the expanse of ocean and the evil yellow haze of smog on the horizon. A typical Hollywood day. Every time she returned to this town she knew again why she could never live here. Hollywood’s blue skies and sunshine and laid-back casual life-style was the surface that camouflaged the scheming and striving for its glittering show-business prizes. The city enclosed the vulnerable in its luxurious tentacles with a gripping relentlessness, until they were trapped in its tinsel values. Jenny had fought against it—and sent her girls away from its seductive pressures—but in the end she had conformed; for her, too, God lived in Hollywood.
Venetia longed suddenly for the anonymous, rain-washed freedom of London and the casual give-and-take of the Lancaster household. So, what next? She would be all right; she had her diploma and she’d meant to begin work catering directors’ lunches in the City, and doing parties and dinners. Kate Lancaster had told her of a good agency to use. She imagined India would continue doing what she was doing—things seemed all right with her, except for Fabrizio Paroli, of course, but that was part of the game. It was Paris who was going to be most hurt by this situation. She was so completely alone. As far as Vennie knew there was no man in her life, all she had was her ambition, and even with her undoubted talent it was going to be a long, hard struggle to make her name as a designer now that even the hope of her mother coming to her help had gone. There was just ten thousand dollars for the three of them. Ten thousand dollars …
“Paris,” she said, startling her sisters from their brooding silence, “I want you to have my share of the ten thousand. Maybe it’ll help toward putting together your collection.”
Paris’s dark blue eyes lit with a gleam of hope. But no, she couldn’t. “It’s sweet of you, Vennie, but I can’t let you do that. You’ll probably need it yourself one day.”
“You can have my share too,” said India. “Didn’t you say you were a better investment than Jenny’s young men? You’ve got the only talent in this family, Paris, and all of Jenny’s ten thousand dollars will go to underwrite the first Paris Lines collection!”
Paris Lines … ten thousand … it wasn’t nearly enough to do it properly—but it was all they had, and it was a hell of a lot more than zero, which was all she had had before. Oh, God, they were marvelous, her sisters. Paris flung her arms around Vennie and then India in an enormous grateful hug. “Only if you’re sure?”
“Of course we’re sure.”
“It’s such a responsibility—all the family money.” Paris looked at them nervously, her silken black hair framing her anxious face. What if she weren’t good enough after all? No! She was good, she was sure of that. But so many things could go wrong.
“Don’t worry, Paris,” said India reassuringly, “the money’s yours, with no strings attached. If you choose to spend it on riotous living, that’s your affair—we don’t want to know. No strings, okay?”
“No strings,” repeated Paris. She would repay them, she’d be the success she’d always known she could be, and then she’d take care of them both—the way Jenny should have done.