Beautiful

  Beautiful is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2022 by Danielle Steel

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Hardback ISBN 9781984821645

  Ebook ISBN 9781984821652

  randomhousebooks.com

  Cover design: Mimi Bark

  Cover image: Magdalena Żyźniewska/Trevillion Images

  ep_prh_6.0_139713517_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Dedication

  By Danielle Steel

  About the Author

  There will come a time when you believe everything is finished.

  That will be the beginning.

  —Louis L’Amour

  Chapter 1

  The music was loud and throbbing as fifty strikingly beautiful models pounded down the white satin runner carefully laid out between the chairs meticulously placed in rows. Mirrors reflected the images of the models and spectators. The models intersected with one another in a carefully choreographed pattern at the Chanel ready-to-wear show during Paris Fashion Week in March 2016. The images of the rapidly strutting models mingled with those of the crowd and the bank of photographers captured each moment, each girl, each face in the crowd, showing the collection for the fall.

  Véronique Vincent was the first model they saw. She opened the show in a ruby-colored coat, and she was the last in a revealing black velvet gown, which trailed behind her and offered more than just a glimpse of her breasts. She was tall and thin, but not quite as emaciated as some of the others. Many of the girls looked dangerously thin, with severe expressions, flawless makeup, and sculpted hair. The atmosphere was pulsating with excitement, like the music. Véronique had the smallest hint of a smile as she sailed past the photographers. They knew her well. She was the star of every show she walked in, and had been for the past four years.

  She had started modeling at eighteen. She had dark chestnut-colored hair naturally, but let the casting directors dye it any color they wanted. She was famously easy to work with, and a consummate professional at twenty-two. Some of the girls were as young as fifteen. Most were in their late teens, as she had been when she’d started. Véronique had big green eyes, and a ready smile when she wasn’t working. Karl Lagerfeld, the famous Chanel designer himself, walked arm in arm with her when he took his bow at the end. She was a favorite of his, and the Chanel show was always the one Véronique liked best. It was flawless, just as she was.

  She walked in two or three shows a day during Fashion Week, and she had been dashing from one show to the next for the past four weeks. Fashion Week started in New York with the American designers, and moved on to London for a few days after that to show the work of British designers. After London, Fashion Week went to Milan, and the last Fashion Week was in Paris, for closer to ten days, with a heavy schedule for the most important models. Véronique had the same grueling schedule in September, when the designers in each of the four countries showed their spring lines. Other, lesser designers did presentations in which their clothes were modeled without a fashion show. The runway shows were major productions. They cost millions, and the décor was almost as costly and impressive as the clothes. Chanel was notorious for the most elaborate stage sets, designed by Peter Marino, who sat in the audience watching the proceedings, clad head to foot in black leather.

  The runway shows were a spectacle from beginning to end. The audience was comprised of magazine editors, store buyers, famous movie stars from around the world, the wives of heads of state, and illustrious figures from the fashion world. The haute couture shows, which were even more elite, happened in January and July, and Véronique was the star of those shows as well. She had been on the cover of every fashion magazine frequently for the past four years. It wasn’t an easy job, and required endurance and hard work. She was often in fittings the night before a show until two a.m. while demanding designers saw to it that each garment fit each model perfectly. There was pandemonium backstage at every show, while stage managers from the design houses oversaw every detail, and in some cases dressers stripped a model and redressed her in a matter of seconds, with all new jewelry and accessories to go with the change. Only their hair and makeup remained the same.

  Véronique took it all in stride. None of it was new to her after years of the same routines. During the rest of the year, she was constantly in photo shoots all over the world, and had worked with all the most important photographers. She was always in high demand, and had thrown herself into her career wholeheartedly, knowing that the crest of the wave wouldn’t last long. One day it would be over. She had made a lot of money, and turned it all over to her mother, who had a good head for business and invested it well. Véronique had total confidence in her. Her mother, Marie-Helene Vincent, was a lawyer, and Véronique was unusual in how close she was to her mother. Many of the young girls from Eastern European countries came to Paris unprotected to seek their fortunes, modeling for as long as they could, and hoping to find a man to marry or support them. The men who pursued supermodels were a special breed, addicted to beauty, wanting a young girl on their arm. Some of them were extremely generous, others less so. They used the girls as accessories to enhance their image. Many of the girls got into drugs once in the fast lane, but Véronique never had.

  Her beauty had been striking since she was thirteen. Men in the street stared at her, others tried to hustle her. She had been well protected and carefully brought up by her mother, who had insisted that her education came before her modeling career. For the first two years of her career, she had attended the Sorbonne part time, and majored in art history and French literature. She was halfway to a teaching degree she intended not to use until she was much older and had no other options. In the meantime, she had recently been the face of a well-known cosmetics line, and before that the face of a perfume. Jewelry houses clamored to have her in their ads, and she had been the primary model for an airline for a year. She never lacked for assignments, and had to juggle them all. She was part of an industry in which she was the commodity she was selling.

  Her mother was relieved that so far none of it had gone to her head, despite so much attention focused on her. Véronique treated it like a job she was serious about, and never let herself be distracted, as many other girls did, their heads turned by their own beauty. Her mother always reminded her that external beauty was fleeting and real beauty came from within. It was part of her now, like a hand or a leg. Her exquisite face was just another body part, and it served her well. She didn’t dwell on her looks, and never thought of herself as others did. She was paid well for what she did, like a gift she had received and had done noth
ing to acquire. She considered her beauty an accident of fate, like a beautiful singing voice, or the ability to paint. Her exceptional looks had turned into a lucrative career.

  She had paid no attention to it at all when she was younger, and to her it was simply a job. Modeling had opened doors for her, and she was well aware that she couldn’t take the men who pursued her seriously. She had no desire for a lasting relationship at her age. She had fun with the men she went out with, but their relationships never lasted for more than a few months. She was invited on yachts and on corporate trips by the companies she worked for. She was sometimes paid to go to parties for publicity purposes, and she never lacked for men to go out with. Her current “date” was Lord Cyril Buxton, handsome, from an excellent British family, and twenty-seven years old. He was meant to be working for his father at a bank in London, but spent far more time playing in Paris, and with her, and avoided his family as much as he was able to, much to his parents’ chagrin. Véronique had met them once when she was doing a shoot for British Vogue in London. They were grateful that their son wasn’t dating another greedy Russian model who was looking for a rich husband, but they weren’t warm to her. They wanted him to fast-forward through this stage of his life and get serious about his work and grow up. He had no interest in becoming responsible and giving up his fun life or dating the women they thought he should. They wanted him with a British aristocrat like himself.

  Cyril had as little interest in marriage as Véronique did. She wasn’t sure she’d ever marry. It seemed like an overwhelming commitment to her. Her parents hadn’t been married, and it had never bothered her. Her father was American, also an attorney. Her mother had met him while at a legal convention in New York. They had had a passionate affair for two years, until Marie-Helene got pregnant at forty-one, and realized it might never happen again. She decided to have the baby with Bill’s consent. She was forty-two when Véronique was born, and Bill Smith was sixty-one. He had died in a car accident when Véronique was six months old. Marie-Helene didn’t like to talk about it, and never told Véronique the details of her father’s death, only that he had died instantly in a car crash somewhere near New York, when a truck hit his sports car on a rainy night. So she had never known her father, only that her parents had loved each other deeply. She had grown up happily alone with her mother, and Véronique had always said that you couldn’t miss what you didn’t know. She knew her father only from the photographs around their apartment, several in her own room, and the stories her mother told her about him, and how in love they had been. Véronique knew it was true since there had never been a serious man in her mother’s life after him, and she could see from the photographs that he was a handsome man. Once in a while, she wondered what it would be like to have a father, when she saw her friends enjoying a special moment with theirs, but most of the time she was content with her mother, and spending time occasionally with her friends’ fathers growing up. They’d had a brief bumpy time when Véronique was in her early teens, but that ended quickly, and both women readily admitted that they were best friends. They were proud of how close they were, and respected each other.

  Véronique always sought her mother’s advice, and trusted her wise counsel, except about men. Marie-Helene still complained about the kind of spoiled, self-indulgent men Véronique dated. They were always after her for the wrong reasons, because of her fame as a supermodel, not for who she was as a person. But Véronique didn’t mind. She had fun with them, which was enough for now. She had her own apartment on the rue de l’Université in the fashionable seventh arrondissement on the Left Bank, which her mother had let her buy at twenty-one as a good investment. It was small, and useful for her to have her own place, but on weekends when she had no plans, she often stayed with her mother in the quiet, staid, residential seventeenth arrondissement where she had grown up. It was an upper middle class neighborhood for bourgeois families. Marie-Helene worked very hard in her law practice, and kept long hours too. They were both hardworking women, with an unusually strong work ethic.

  Her mother was sixty-four now, and hadn’t had a man in her life in a dozen years, and no one she had ever loved as she had Bill. With Véronique and her law practice, she said she didn’t have time, nor the interest. Véronique had asked questions about her father as a child, but Marie-Helene didn’t like to talk about him. She said it made her too sad since his untimely death, so Véronique learned not to press her about it, and didn’t want to upset her, even now that she was grown up. She didn’t want to make her mother uncomfortable, and she knew as much as there was to know about her father, that he was American and a lawyer, and sixty-one when she was born. She had never asked her mother why they didn’t marry. Several of her friends had unmarried parents while she was growing up, and it wasn’t considered unusual or shocking, so that didn’t bother her.

  Marie-Helene’s parents had been straitlaced, old-fashioned aristocrats with very little money. The family chateau, art, and furniture had been sold even before Marie-Helene was born. Her mother had never worked, her father worked in a dignified, small private bank in Paris. They hoped Marie-Helene would marry well one day, one of their own kind, and were unhappy when their daughter chose law as a career, but it had been lucrative for her. They hadn’t lived long enough to know that she never married and had had a love child, which would have horrified them. Véronique never knew her grandparents. The only relative she had in the world was her mother and it was enough for her.

  They didn’t live extravagantly, but they lived nicely. Their apartment was genteel but not luxurious, and big enough for the two of them. It was decorated mostly with Marie-Helene’s parents’ remaining antiques. Véronique had no hunger for the glamorous life her own career could have provided her, and although she attended major social events in the fashion world, and had an apartment of her own, she was just as happy spending a quiet weekend relaxing and watching TV with her mother in the apartment where she grew up, that had always been home. It seemed perfect to her, and a safe refuge from the fast-moving world where she worked. Her mother was pleased that Véronique’s success hadn’t spoiled her, and she was always happy to come home. Her own small apartment never felt like home to her.

  * * *

  —

  Véronique undressed quickly as soon as she came off the runway, and pushed her way through the crowd backstage to a small changing room where she had left her jeans and T-shirt. She pulled on motorcycle boots and called her mother before she left the Grand Palais, which was a magnificent Victorian glass structure where many fashion shows were held, as well as antique fairs and art events.

  Marie-Helene answered on the first ring, as soon as she saw Véronique’s number come up.

  “How was it?” she asked, always pleased to hear from her. She knew how busy her daughter was during Fashion Week, and didn’t expect her to call. She never attended the shows herself, which were by invitation only to the fashion elite, but she watched the videos online of every show Véronique was in.

  “It was fine, nothing unusual,” Véronique said. “How are you?” In the madness of Fashion Week, they hadn’t spoken in two days, which was rare for them. They normally spoke at least once a day.

  “I’m fine, crazy busy too, though not as busy as you are.” Marie-Helene smiled. She had seen the madness of Fashion Week at close range while Véronique had still lived with her. She missed that now that Véronique had her own apartment, although she came home frequently, for a meal or to spend the night when she had nothing else to do. “I have to go to Brussels next week. I’ll probably be there for about ten days. You can come and see me if you have a break.” There was a fast train that got to Brussels from Paris in an hour and twenty minutes, and residents of both cities went back and forth with ease, for business or social events. Marie-Helene had several clients there, since many wealthy families had moved to Belgium and Switzerland when the socialists came into power in France, and the rich began to leave to av
oid punitive high taxes. So she went to Belgium frequently to see long-standing clients there.

  “I’m booked solid for the next two weeks, with magazine shoots,” Véronique told her. “I could come after that if you’re still there.”

  “Let’s do that, and then go somewhere for a few days. It would do us both good.”

  “I’d love it. I’ve got a shoot in Tokyo for Vogue after that, but I’ve got a window in between. It would be fun to get out of here and get some sun. I haven’t come up for air in a month,” Véronique said, glancing at her watch. “I’ve got to go, Mom. I’ve got a mototaxi waiting outside. I’ve got to be at my next show in half an hour for hair and makeup.”

  “I wish you didn’t take those damn motorcycle taxis. They’re so dangerous,” Marie-Helene complained.

  “It’s the only way I can get around on a tight schedule.” Her mother knew it was true.

  “How’s Cyril, by the way? Is he here?” Marie-Helene asked her.

  “Of course.” Véronique laughed. “He wouldn’t miss Fashion Week. We went to a party Chanel gave two days ago, and Dior is giving one tonight. I just want to go home and go to bed, but I know he’ll be upset if I don’t go.” He loved being seen and being in the press with her. It didn’t bother her. It was part of the territory, and came with who she was. He wouldn’t have been dating her if she weren’t a supermodel. It annoyed her mother, but Véronique didn’t care. They had a good time together. There was a carefree boyish side to him she thoroughly enjoyed. He acted like a kid at times.

  “Well, try to get a little rest here and there, and eat occasionally. I’ll start thinking about where we can go for a few days. Maybe Miami. It’s easy to get to, and warm this time of year.” Saint Bart’s and the Caribbean were more of a scene and Véronique would be recognized everywhere, which wouldn’t be restful for her. Her face was well known around the world.