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laughing, essentially sensuous charm. She was delighted to find him alone. She couldn’t have talked to him in front of anyone else and she hadn’t wanted to make an appointment to see him alone, because that would have sounded unnecessarily ominous.
    “Hi, got a minute, Spider?” Gigi asked, remembering vividly the day she’d first met him. She’d been sixteen, and she had arrived in California only the night before, seeking refuge with her father after the death of her mother. The very next afternoon she’d found herself transformed, dizzy and giddy with the excitement of Billy’s offered friendship compounded by her new haircut and new clothes, walking into an office at Scruples, where Spider and Valentine were, to Billy’s shocked amazement, wrapped in each other’s arms. The first word Gigi had said to him was “Congratulations,” when he’d explained that he and Valentine had just been married, and the first thing he’d said to her was that she was more sophisticated than Billy. He’d been so protective, so interested in her right from the start, this Viking of a man who’d become her hero from the minute, she laid dazzled eyes on him, this glorious guy to whom no woman, no matter how much she loved another man, could be indifferent.
    “Ah, Spider Elliott, damn it, but I’m really going to miss you,” Gigi heard herself blurt out in a voice laced with regret.
    “What’s the matter with you!” Spider jumped up from his desk in alarm. “Are you sick?”
    “No, of course not.”
    “You’re marrying Zach and leaving town?”
    “That’s not in the cards.”
    “Then why the fuck did you scare me like that? You sounded exactly like Ali MacGraw in
Love Story.”
    “Sorry … I … I’m … oh …” Gigi stopped, wordless. The only unspoken sentence that came to her mind was, “Spider, you’re not happy here.”
    “Gigi,” Spider said gently, taking her cold hands, “you’re not making sense. Sit down right here and tell me all about it. Whatever it is, I’m sure I’ve heard more lurid tales.”
    “I’m leaving Scruples Two for a job in an advertising agency.” Gigi said the words as quickly as possible.
    “The hell you are!” Spider’s eyes searched hers and, as always, reached into and understood a woman’s mind as rapidly as those of any man alive. “You are. Yep, indeed you are, and there’s not a thing I can do about it. I’ve always thought you were cautious to a fault, Gigi. That’ll teach me to take a woman for granted. You’ve changed without giving me warning. Or else I’m losing my touch.”
    “I didn’t know myself, Spider, until yesterday. I fired Sally Lou and then I fired myself …”
    “Could you be more specific?” When Spider laughed at her that way, with his sunlit blue eyes almost closed and the deep lines suddenly intensified at their corners, Gigi always felt she heard a clap of giant hands. Relief warmed her as she told him everything that had gone through her mind the night before.
    “And this agency, what’s-her-name Frost and the guys, you’re certain that they’re an outfit you can be happy with? After all, there are lots of other agencies in L.A.”
    “Archie and Byron are a terrific team.
Smart
. I’ve seen their work and I like them. The way I figure, they can only prosper. They’re billing about thirty million a year after a mere six months in L.A., and with the entire economy going wild, advertising’s a good place to be. I had Prince’s ad manager check them out on Madison Avenue, and he gave Archie and Byron a rave. It makes sense for them to want me for a swimwear account, it plays to my strong point,and after that, well,” she said, suddenly feeling shy in her ambitions, “I believe maybe interesting things could happen.”
    Spider got up and started prowling around his office, looking at Gigi as he walked back and forth, remembering that tremulous, oddball, mysterious little figure who had abruptly popped into their