Entry-Level Mistress - By Sabrina Darby Page 0,46

you’re here.”

“Hartmann!” A forty-something man, hair thinning at the top, in a brushed silk Hawaiian shirt and linen pants strode over to us, the liquid in his cocktail glass sloshing a bit. Another man in a suit, slightly younger, with another willowy blonde on his arm, came over as well. Before I was introduced, Stacia pulled me aside for a moment.

Leaning close, she whispered, “I don’t know if you realize darling, but there are a number of Hartmann’s exes here tonight. You seem like a sweet girl, so if you want to avoid the bitchfest—”

“Thank you, Stacia,” I murmured. I knew what the “mean girls” high school game looked like, and if reality television was anything to go by, I was sure the Hamptons social scene was simply a fractal expansion of that world—which meant this seemingly kind advice likely had ulterior motives.

After Stacia was gone, Daniel raised his eyebrows at the private tête-à-tête, but then slid me elegantly into the conversation.

Hawaiian Shirt Man was Anthony Blake, a Wall Street financier, and the couple comprised French businessman Claude de Turenne and his American wife, Dagney, Manhattan socialite.

There were dozens of people like that, rich but not anyone whose name I might recognize, and then there were the others who I recognized not only by name but also by having seen their images hundreds of times in my life.

Such as Fitzi, the diminutive pop fashion artist who was unmistakable with his yellow mohawk and his neon plaid shirt.

As I wandered through the crowd while Daniel talked to a business colleague, I spotted other celebrities, both A-list and minor.

And there were people whose names held near mythic status for me, such as Edward Ainsley, the sculptor-turned-museum curator whose exhibitions were near works of art themselves.

“I was a Barrows Farm alum myself,” he said shortly after we’d been introduced. The name of the art colony had instantly melted his impassive façade, and his face relaxed into genial fond remembrance of those days.

When Daniel rejoined me, his arm sliding around me as if he thought he needed to stake his territory, Ainsley’s facade went back up, and I found that moment revealing.

Then Gordon Fillmore joined us, and I knew his name from the bookstore shelves. He’d won the Booker Prize. Had a reputation for being morose, for getting kicked off of airplanes after drunkenly harassing the flight attendants or other passengers. He seemed well on his way to drunk this night as well. He didn’t know Daniel but he recognized him, mentioned that Daniel had good taste in women, and then eyed me. Ainsley made an attempt to bring the conversation back around to the previous topic by explaining that Fillmore had also been at Barrows Farm, where he had first met Ainsley.

“Ahh, Barrows,” Fillmore said with a wink at Daniel. “You know these art colonies, more like orgies.”

I didn’t know what to say to that but Daniel apparently decided nothing needed to be said. At his disparaging silence, the other man’s jocular amusement faded, his expression turning morose in a way that put me on edge. Apparently this unnerved Ainsley as well because he put an arm around Fillmore and whispered something in his ear as he guided the man away.

From across the room, a head of long honey-blonde hair cascading over a tall modelesque body came into view. I locked eyes with Tatiana, whose expression looked somewhere between outraged and horrified. Then she was stalking across the room toward us, that expression melding into some other mask. I wondered if there was a way I could transform that concept—the various masks all these people wore for each interaction—into an art piece.

“Daniel,” Tatiana interrupted, placing herself squarely in front of us. “I’m surprised to see you here.” But she was still looking at me intently, as if searching for something.

“Always a pleasure, Tat—”

“You look familiar. Do I know you?” Tatiana interrupted, drowning out Daniel’s greeting.

I straightened as much as I could, which meant I still had to look up to Tatiana, and smiled thinly. This was a conversation between exes and not my fight.

“I don’t think so,” I said simply, since one drunken encounter did not an acquaintance make. I spied Fitzi, his yellow hair a beacon. I might have been scared to introduce myself earlier in the evening but at that moment he looked like escape.

“Excuse me, there’s someone I’d like to speak with,” I said, disengaging from Daniel. His arm tightened around me briefly, and for a moment I thought he