Page 53 of Ten Beach Road

“My friend got a call for a commercial shoot in Miami this morning and she’s leaving within the hour. She says she’s been trying to reach me.”

“Now? But . . .”

“Yeah, I know,” Kyra said.

“What wrong?” the manicurist asked. “You try relax.”

Right.“Can’t you go with her?” Nikki asked. “Or maybe stay at her place while she’s gone?”

“No,” Kyra said. “She’s taking the place of an assistant camera operator who got sick and she doesn’t know anyone on the shoot. And I can’t stay at her place; apparently her roommate got all freaked out about having a complete stranger in the condo all weekend.”

There was no time for making other arrangements or putting Kyra on a bus; she doubted Palm Beach possessed anything as pedestrian as a bus station, and she didn’t have time to look for one here.

The manicurist removed the remnants of Nikki’s polish and began to slough the dead skin from her feet, but Nicole’s brain was racing down the possible courses of action.

“You’ll just have to come with me to Bitsy’s,” Nikki said when nothing better presented itself. “After lunch we’ll figure something out.”

“Bitsy?” Kyra wrinkled her nose. “Really?

“Really. And when you’re worth the kind of money Bitsy is you can be called anything you want. Like Smuckers for rich people.”

“Who is she?”

Nicole sank lower in her chair and tried to relax, but all she could think about was how to explain Kyra and how much more carefully she’d have to tiptoe around the truth once they got to Bitsy’s.

“She’s a former client of mine. One of the few who isn’t embarrassed to admit I helped her find her husband.”

Kyra nodded. “Out in L.A. people pay plastic surgeons tons of money for a service and then want to pretend it never happened.”

“Exactly.”

“That would make you the plastic surgeon of love. The Botox of boogie. The . . .”

The nail tech giggled.

“Kyra, please,” Nikki said.

“Hmmm?”

“I’d really like to enjoy this experience in silence.”

“Got it.”

Now if only her freaked-out brain would get the message to slow down and shut up.

An hour later they’d passed Worth Avenue and were in a residential area where the gates and walls covered increasingly large acreage and you were lucky to catch a glimpse of a roof line off in the distance. Nicole looked Kyra over briefly, wondering if she should have taken the time for the girl to have a manicure, but it had seemed somewhat pointless since it was unlikely Kyra had anything approximating an appropriate ensemble stashed in the duffel bag she’d thrown in the trunk of the car.

“Listen,” she said as she slowed the Jag. “There are a few things we should discuss.”

Kyra turned to Nicole. The girl was lovely in a completely unaffected way, the recipient of enough natural gifts that she didn’t need to put much effort into enhancing them. “You’ve worked in the movie business so I’m sure you understand that sometimes, actually many times, perception is more important than reality.”

They were at Bitsy’s gate now. Nicole hesitated briefly before punching the intercom button. “I’m going to introduce you as the daughter of a friend. I’m not planning to offer a lot of information.”

Kyra’s brow furrowed. “You’re not going to tell anyone that you’re spending the summer on St. Pete Beach working on the house because that’s all that’s left of what you had invested with Malcolm Dyer?”

Nicole was careful not to wince since she could no longer afford Botox or collagen injections to repair the resulting damage. “Not exactly.”

Kyra didn’t respond, but she did pull out her video camera as the curved wrought-iron gate opened inward.

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