Her plan was simple. She would find out what Christian looked for in a woman. (Big tits, pretty face, ditzy manner, IQ of dung beetle.) She would then transform herself into his ideal mate.

Lexi checked off the points on Christian’s wish list one by one.

My tits are nonexistent, but they’ll grow.

My face is already pretty, or it will be once the braces come off.

I’m smart enough to pretend to be stupid. So what’s left?

Ah yes. Ditzy and helpless.

If having Rachel around was a dating minus, Lexi’s deafness also provided some unique dating pluses. Because of her disability, boys tended to think of her as sweet and vulnerable-the poor little deaf heiress who needed their protection. Lexi quickly learned how to turn this misconception to her advantage. By ninth grade, she had her phony damsel-in-distress shtick down to a fine art.

“Rachel? Would you ask Johnny to help me with my books? I’m so tired this morning, I really couldn’t walk another step.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Thomas, but I’m afraid I couldn’t finish my assignment this week. I’ve been having terrible nightmares. Flashbacks about my ordeal.”

Lexi’s big gray eyes welled with tears. Rachel thought: She’s a fine little actress, this one. She’s got them all fooled.

Christian liked ditzy? Lexi would give him ditzy.

Right along with this stupid-ass virginity burning a hole in my panties.

Lexi was convinced she must be the oldest virgin at Exeter, if not in the whole of America. It was conceivable she was the oldest virgin in the world. Apart from nuns, obviously. And really ugly people like her aunt Eve.

Deep down she was afraid that what happened to her as a child might have spoiled her for sex. She still had nightmares about the pig. Is that the real reason I’ve been saving myself for Christian? Did I pick someone I knew was unobtainable because I was too scared to “do it”?

Whatever her true motivations, the wait was now officially over. Tonight was the night.

As the party drew nearer, Lexi’s nerves started to get the better of her.

What if he only likes girls with experience? I guess I’ll have to fake that, too.

Sometimes Lexi worried that she pretended so much she’d forgotten who she really was inside.

Maybe I want to forget?

“Oh, Max. Max! Don’t stop! Please don’t stop! I’m coming!”

Max Webster looked down at the girl writhing beneath him and felt ineffably bored. Her name was Sasha Harvey-Newton. Her father owned shipyards. Her mother’s father owned oil fields. She was eighteen years old, stunningly beautiful and sickeningly rich. She was widely considered to be one of New York’s most eligible young heiresses.

She was also a nymphomaniac.

“Harder, baby! Harder!”

Sasha Harvey-Newton arched her eligible, $20-million back for Max’s benefit and let out a whoop of ecstasy.

“Shut up.” Max put his hand over her mouth. She started sucking his fingers, and he fought back a powerful urge to ram them down her stupid, vacuous throat. Instead he forced her head down onto the pillow, muting her moans.

“Hey. What’d you do that for?”

Sasha looked up at him, her face flushed an unattractive strawberry red.

“You were making too much noise. What if your mom heard us?”

“What if she did? You know how many times I’ve had to listen to her and the tennis coach going at it? My mom’s a whore.”

Max watched Sasha get dressed, pulling on a pair of skintight jeans with no panties, and without bothering to wash first.

Like mother, like daughter.

Sasha smiled. “So. Does this mean I’m your date for your birthday party next weekend? I’ve always wanted to see Cedar Hill House.”

Max wrinkled his nose in distaste.

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?” The smile was gone.

“I mean no. I realize it’s probably not a word you hear very often. But we’re already at maximum capacity for the party, I’m afraid. Our security people have insisted, no more guests.”

“Your security people?” Sasha snarled. “Who do you think you are? The president? It’s a sixteenth birthday party, not a U.N. Security Council meeting. Uninvite someone if you have to.”

“Ah, but I don’t have to,” said Max. “You got what you wanted, Sasha. I’ll see myself out.”

Walking back to Park Avenue, Max reflected on his afternoon’s activities. He had not enjoyed the sex with Sasha Harvey-Newton, and he wondered why he’d agreed to go to bed with her in the first place. So he could boast about it? She was considered a good catch, after all. But to whom would he boast? It wasn’t as if he had a bunch of male buddies whom he tried to impress. Max Webster needed approval from one person and one person only. His mother wouldn’t give a damn that he’d wasted half a day balling some half-witted rich bitch who didn’t even turn him on.

That’s the problem. None of them turn me on. None of them can hold a candle to Eve.

Max loathed parties. He had only agreed to the joint birthday with Lexi because his mother asked him.

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, my darling.” That was Eve’s motto, at least where Lexi was concerned. She was always pushing the two of them together. “There will be a lot of important people at Cedar Hill House that weekend. Kruger-Brent board members, all the major shareholders and business heads. You can’t afford to let Lexi look like the star of the show.”

There wasn’t much danger of that. No one at Kruger-Brent took Lexi seriously. Not anymore. But, technically speaking, under the terms of Kate Blackwell’s will, she still stood a chance of being appointed chairman when she turned twenty-five. Until he, Max, was safely sitting in the chairman’s seat, he couldn’t afford to get complacent.

Max’s old familiar hatred of his cousin had taken a disturbing twist recently. Overnight, it seemed, Lexi had transformed into a sensuous, desirable woman. What made it worse, and more confusing, was that she was starting to look more and more like a young version of Eve. Lexi’s mother, Alexandra, had been Eve’s identical twin, after all, so perhaps it was inevitable that the likeness would be striking. Still, Max found this genetic irony upsetting. In fact, he found everything about his cousin Lexi upsetting.

The paparazzi had always loved her: the brave, beautiful Blackwell baby, the plucky kidnapping survivor. Eve had once contemptuously described her niece as “America’s favorite cripple” and she wasn’t far wrong. Now, thanks to Lexi’s butterflylike emergence as a society belle, media interest in her life seemed to have quintupled. She was no longer the Blackwell Baby, but the Blackwell Bombshell. Everyone wanted a piece of her.

She loves every second of it, too, Max thought bitterly. Last Christmas, when they’d briefly worked together at Kruger-Brent, he had sensed Lexi silently watching him. As if she were trying to catch him lusting after her, the way that everybody else seemed to.

Forget it. Not me.

Why can’t you just disappear? Go to deaf school, marry some other special-ed retard and get the hell out of my life?

Sasha Harvey-Newton didn’t know how lucky she was to be missing Max’s birthday party. He heartily wished he could have missed it himself.

“Quite a spread, isn’t it?”

Tristram Harwood, head of Kruger-Brent’s oil and gas division, was talking to Logan Marshall, who ran the mining businesses.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

Neither of them had been to the Blackwells’ Dark Harbor compound since Kate Blackwell’s funeral almost seventeen years ago. It was wonderful to see the old house bursting with life and vitality again. Everywhere you turned, America’s impossibly beautiful, privileged youth were laughing and talking and dancing with one another while their parents looked on, the mothers dripping diamonds while they gossiped, the fathers grumbling about the latest plunge in the Dow Jones and the new fortunes to be made on the Internet.