“You know me too well.” Holly winked and looped her arm through Raffaela’s.

She felt a bit guilty about leaving Sabrina to deal with the music on her own, but Raffaela had asked for Holly’s help and since it involved shopping, she simply couldn’t resist.

Once outside and out of earshot of Sabrina, Holly addressed Raffaela, “So, do you have any idea what you’d like to get for Sabrina?”

“No.” Raffaela sighed. “I want to get her a special wedding gift, something personal and heartfelt, but I really have no idea what to get her.” She laughed. “That’s why I brought you along, so you could help me pick something out. You know her much better than I do.”

Holly smiled. “I’m sure we can find something.”

She opened the car door and slid into the passenger seat of Raffaela’s car. Raffaela pulled out of the driveway and headed toward East Hampton. Raffaela had told her earlier that Montauk didn’t have much to offer in terms of shopping, and that they would have more of a selection in East Hampton.

“I’m so grateful to you and Tim for introducing them,” Raffaela started. “I’ve never seen my son so happy.”

Holly smiled wistfully. If only Raffaela knew under what circumstances her son had met Sabrina, she would probably not thank her as enthusiastically. Most likely she’d be appalled. Horrified. Maybe even disgusted. Just as well that she didn’t know what she, Holly, did for a living.

“We thought they would be good together. And they are.”

Raffaela chuckled. “Yes, they are so cute together. It reminds me of when James and I met. We were just as much in love as those two. So how about you, Holly? Do you have anybody special?”

Holly looked out of the window as they drove along Montauk Highway. Windswept dunes interspersed with beautiful houses farther back from the highway caught her eye. Would she one day live in a house like that? She doubted it. After all, she didn’t lead the kind of respectable life these people did. Her life was so different. For the first time she wondered whether it was time to make a change, to stop what she was doing and turn her back on it.

“I?” Holly laughed to cover up her feelings of longing for a relationship. “There are too many fabulous guys out there. Who can make a choice and pick one? It’s like an endless buffet. There are so many goodies that in the end you don’t know what to eat.”

Raffaela laughed out loud. “You’re so funny, Holly! But you’re right. You’re still young. You should play the field and not settle for the first guy who comes along.” She leaned closer. “With your looks you can get anybody you want.”

Holly smiled. “That’s very nice of you to say.”

Certainly, her looks had made her one of the most requested girls at Misty’s escort service. She could command a high price for her services. But was the price that Holly had to pay getting too high? Was she wasting her best years in an occupation that would eventually lead into a dead end? She knew that none of the clients she met as an escort would ever look at her as marriage material. Because she wasn’t. She wasn’t respectable. What she did wasn’t only illegal in most states, it was considered indecent. And no man in his right mind would ever consider a relationship with somebody like her.

While not all assignments at the escort agency involved sex, many of them did. What man would pay the price her boss charged for just an evening of conversation? And even though Holly had the right to refuse a guy and back out of an assignment if she found the man in question distasteful, she couldn’t play this get-out-of-jail-free card every time—eventually Misty would fire her, because only bookings involving sex brought in the big bucks.

Sometimes Holly enjoyed her sexual encounters with the men who hired her, but it happened less and less that she felt good about what she did. If she didn’t get out of it while she still could, she knew what would eventually happen. She would have wasted her best years. And she would end up alone.

“So what do you say?”

Holly snapped her head back to Raffaela, realizing that she had tuned out while wallowing in her thoughts. “Hmm?”

“The jewelry store. I figured we’d go there first.”

“Jewelry is always a great idea,” Holly agreed and looked around.

They had reached downtown East Hampton. Raffaela pulled into a parking spot along the street and turned off the engine. “We’re here.”

“This is really quaint!” Holly exclaimed as she sauntered from the car.

Downtown East Hampton wasn’t large. In fact, it consisted of merely a main street lined by several shops and a few side streets. Surprisingly classy boutiques stood next to local eateries and Mom-and-Pop stores. Clearly, the rich New Yorkers who spent their summers in the Hamptons didn’t want to get withdrawal symptoms from shopping while they vacationed here.