Chapter 15

“Of course, I have to be here,” she said grandly, framing the space like a demented Erich von Stroheim with her fingers forming a rectangle. “Few people have my eye.”

“That’s for sure,” Quinn heard one assistant say, sniggering to another.

All her presence did was unnerve Quinn, who felt quite like Steve McQueen—the dog, not the movie star or British film director—-and enflame Elliott Gardener, whose onetime ad campaign for Dusk cologne with former tennis superstar Tariq Alí Iskandar Quinn had so admired. He had heard that Vienne had tried to seduce Iskandar, but he demurred, in part because she was so enamored of one of his rivals, Etienne Alen?on. Good for him, Quinn thought as he stood before her in a black-and-gold brocade Alexander McQueen robe that was one of the props.

“All right,” she said, eyeing him up and down, then whipping the robe from him as if she were offering him up in a sex club, “let’s not be shy. Let’s see you.”