Read Online Shopping With the Enemy by Carmen Reid - Free Book Online
Authors: Carmen Reid
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what was coming now.
‘One, you have to come back with a spring in your step, the girl we know and love …’
‘Well, I can try, babes.’
‘Two, you have to promise me that we will go away on our mini-break. We have to go away. I have to get one night, maybe even two of uninterrupted time with you or I am going to … burst!’
‘It’s a deal.’
Chapter Eight
New York
Fabian posing hard:
White linen suit (from Dad via Brooks Brothers)
Pink shirt (same)
Suede lace-ups (Gap)
Cream trilby hat (thrift store)
Green hair dye (drugstore)
Total est. cost: $470
ALTHOUGH THE PERFECT Dress office had closed for the day, Lana was striding through all the most interesting streets of Manhattan, camera phone in hand, still hard at work.
Ever since she’d flounced back from London, ahead of Elena, with her fate and the fate of the dress label unresolved, Lana had spent the hours between work and bedtime roaming the streets, supposedly in search of inspiration.
She wouldn’t admit to anyone, not even herself, that she was lonely. Since she’d ditched her last guy, Matt, she’d found that she didn’t particularly want to see anyone from the little circle of friends she’d made through him because it was still awkward.
Gracie was usually busy in the evenings with her friends, her family and her long-standing boyfriend, ‘Beefy’ Bingham. A nice guy, Lana had thought when she met him, but somehow not exactly the cool, fashiony, finger-on-the-pulse kind of man Lana had imagined Gracie would be with.
So in the evenings, Lana stayed out, away from the apartment phone that never rang now that she and her mother weren’t calling each other. Instead, Lana walked the streets and took pictures all over Manhattan, dreaming up inspiration and ideas for a project that now might never get off the ground.
She snapped cool girls with funkily styled outfits, edgy shop window displays, unexpected patterns, clashing colours, anything that might inspire a dazzling new collection of clothes.
‘East 28th Street,’ Lana whispered, but with determination. She was heading there because that’s where Parker had advised them to look for the very hottest store windows and the very coolest New Yorkers.
She was also going there because: ‘I like to hang out there myself …’ he’d told them, ‘there’s this one place, Blonde Tobacco, it’s immense: low key, laid back. If I have any free time, that’s where I like to be. Plus it’s real close to the hallway-with-a-camp-bed which I call home.’
Although it was almost two weeks since she’d first met and last seen Parker, Lana couldn’t get him out of her mind. He was the most attractive and most fascinating person she’d met in a long time. She’d tried to shake the memory of him off, but little details – his scruffy trainers, the clunky watch which slid around his smooth, olive wrist – kept flashing about in her mind.
So now, like a possessed person, she was walking towards the bar he was sometimes in when he had the time. Even though she knew he was not going to be there and she would be wandering around like some minor, wannabe stalker.
But still the street and the bar – Blonde Tobacco – were calling to her, luring her on.
As she turned and began to walk down East 28th Street, she tried to look nonchalant and relaxed but really felt as self-conscious as if she was wearing a T-shirt with the words:
Hello Parker, I am sooooo crushing on you
.
He won’t be here, she reminded herself. So she would just walk down the street, take photos of the shop windows and maybe of some of the people sitting around outside in the evening sunshine and then she would go.
No harm done.
Parker would never know.
She raised her camera phone and focused on a small group of Manhattan’s coolest sitting in a knot at a tiny metal table.
There was a guy in a small cream-coloured porkpie hat with bright green hair sticking out from underneath it. This was good; this had to be the
‘One, you have to come back with a spring in your step, the girl we know and love …’
‘Well, I can try, babes.’
‘Two, you have to promise me that we will go away on our mini-break. We have to go away. I have to get one night, maybe even two of uninterrupted time with you or I am going to … burst!’
‘It’s a deal.’
Chapter Eight
New York
Fabian posing hard:
White linen suit (from Dad via Brooks Brothers)
Pink shirt (same)
Suede lace-ups (Gap)
Cream trilby hat (thrift store)
Green hair dye (drugstore)
Total est. cost: $470
ALTHOUGH THE PERFECT Dress office had closed for the day, Lana was striding through all the most interesting streets of Manhattan, camera phone in hand, still hard at work.
Ever since she’d flounced back from London, ahead of Elena, with her fate and the fate of the dress label unresolved, Lana had spent the hours between work and bedtime roaming the streets, supposedly in search of inspiration.
She wouldn’t admit to anyone, not even herself, that she was lonely. Since she’d ditched her last guy, Matt, she’d found that she didn’t particularly want to see anyone from the little circle of friends she’d made through him because it was still awkward.
Gracie was usually busy in the evenings with her friends, her family and her long-standing boyfriend, ‘Beefy’ Bingham. A nice guy, Lana had thought when she met him, but somehow not exactly the cool, fashiony, finger-on-the-pulse kind of man Lana had imagined Gracie would be with.
So in the evenings, Lana stayed out, away from the apartment phone that never rang now that she and her mother weren’t calling each other. Instead, Lana walked the streets and took pictures all over Manhattan, dreaming up inspiration and ideas for a project that now might never get off the ground.
She snapped cool girls with funkily styled outfits, edgy shop window displays, unexpected patterns, clashing colours, anything that might inspire a dazzling new collection of clothes.
‘East 28th Street,’ Lana whispered, but with determination. She was heading there because that’s where Parker had advised them to look for the very hottest store windows and the very coolest New Yorkers.
She was also going there because: ‘I like to hang out there myself …’ he’d told them, ‘there’s this one place, Blonde Tobacco, it’s immense: low key, laid back. If I have any free time, that’s where I like to be. Plus it’s real close to the hallway-with-a-camp-bed which I call home.’
Although it was almost two weeks since she’d first met and last seen Parker, Lana couldn’t get him out of her mind. He was the most attractive and most fascinating person she’d met in a long time. She’d tried to shake the memory of him off, but little details – his scruffy trainers, the clunky watch which slid around his smooth, olive wrist – kept flashing about in her mind.
So now, like a possessed person, she was walking towards the bar he was sometimes in when he had the time. Even though she knew he was not going to be there and she would be wandering around like some minor, wannabe stalker.
But still the street and the bar – Blonde Tobacco – were calling to her, luring her on.
As she turned and began to walk down East 28th Street, she tried to look nonchalant and relaxed but really felt as self-conscious as if she was wearing a T-shirt with the words:
Hello Parker, I am sooooo crushing on you
.
He won’t be here, she reminded herself. So she would just walk down the street, take photos of the shop windows and maybe of some of the people sitting around outside in the evening sunshine and then she would go.
No harm done.
Parker would never know.
She raised her camera phone and focused on a small group of Manhattan’s coolest sitting in a knot at a tiny metal table.
There was a guy in a small cream-coloured porkpie hat with bright green hair sticking out from underneath it. This was good; this had to be the
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