Beach Lane - By Melissa de la Cruz Page 0,3

while her mind was elsewhere. She wondered where this was headed. In São Paolo she was so accustomed to being hit on by older men that figuring out how much she could get away with was a favorite pastime. As a salesgirl at Daslu, the most fashionable store in Brazil, she had zipped the country’s richest women into handmade Parisian ball gowns. She was no mere wage slave, either, more like a glorified stylist, as the store only employed girls from roughly the same social class as its customers. Jacqui’s family wasn’t rich, but her grandmother sent her to a prestigious convent school in the city, where Jacqui was a middling student. At Daslu she was adept at conducting ongoing flirtations with many of her patrons’ husbands. Keep them entertained while the missus spent most of his paycheck on Versace leather pants and she picked up that sweet commission. It was all part of doing business.

And it came naturally to Jacqui: Ever since she’d started filling out her C-cup bikini top, men had noticed her. Their eyes lingered on her chest, her hips, her long black hair, and Jacqui had come to believe that being beautiful was the only thing she was really good at. It was certainly the only thing anyone ever paid attention to.

But her life changed when she met Luca. Sweet, earnest Luca. The American boy she met in Rio during Carnival. Luca, with his goofy grin and his omnipresent backpack. He was the first guy she ever met who didn’t hit on her immediately. Like many revelers, she was masked at the time, but unlike most of her friends, who were staggering on the cobblestone streets trying to hold their liquor, Jacqui had been content to stand on the sidelines. After all, every year was the same wild frenzy. She didn’t know then, but she was dying for a change. She found it when Luca, an American high school senior, asked her for directions and then walked away, even when Jacqui gave him her warmest smile. They’d only exchanged a few words, but when he turned to leave, something in Jacqui wanted to follow him. And she’d certainly never felt like that before.

Unlike the overly obnoxious wolf-whistling boys from her hometown or the salacious older men from the city, Luca didn’t even seem attracted to her at first—which certainly piqued her interest. Jacqui had no false illusions about her looks. Her black hair fell in long, inky waves down her sun-kissed shoulders, and as for her body, let’s just say Giselle would have wept. The only reason Jacqui wasn’t a model was because she’d tried it once and it bored her. The endless standing around, the vacuous conversation, the asinine flattery. She had better things to do with her time than play photographer’s mannequin.

Luca was spending his spring break backpacking through South America—hiking in Machu Picchu and the Aztec trail—and seemed totally unimpressed by Jacqui’s glamour. He listened to Jacqui like he really cared what she thought, and she was quickly charmed by his lazy smile and enormous backpack. They spent a wonderful two weeks together—hitting the samba clubs, downing liters of cachaça, climbing the peak of the Corcovado, sunbathing in Ipanema. He had even convinced her to go camping with him in Tijuca one weekend. They had snuggled in his sleeping bag, kissing under the night sky.

Luca had told her the sexiest thing about her was her brain. Their first night together, Jacqui couldn’t go to sleep. She kept smiling to herself, not believing her luck. She tossed and turned, clutching at her stomach, feeling happy and frightened at the same time. So this was what love was like.

Then, after an amazing week, he just disappeared. He left without so much as a goodbye or a note with his e-mail address. She didn’t even know his last name. Jacqui was crushed. For the first time in her life, Jacqui was in love. The only key to his whereabouts was that he had once mentioned his family normally spent the summer in someplace called “the Hamptons.”

It was only two days ago that Jacqui logged on to the store computer and googled “the Hamptons” yet again. But this time she found something new: Kevin Perry’s classified ad for “the summer of her life” in East Hampton. She heard back from him almost instantly. (Jacqui’s head shot had that effect on people.) It was urgent; could she hop on a plane tomorrow to arrive in town by July