Gilt - Hardcover

Brenner, Jamie

 
9780593087824: Gilt
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593087828 ISBN 13: 9780593087824
Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

A luxurious and richly compelling new novel from the bestselling author of Blush, about a famous family jewelry dynasty and the hidden past that could topple it all.

One perfect diamond is all it takes to divide a family. Could one summer be enough to fix it?

The Pavlin family built an empire on love. As the first jewelers to sell diamond engagement rings, they started a tradition that has defined the industry ever since. But when an ill-fated publicity stunt pits the three Pavlin sisters against one another for a famous family jewel, their bond is broken. No ordinary diamond ring, the Electric Rose splinters the sisters, leaving one unlucky in love, one escaping to the shores of Cape Cod, and the other, ultimately, dead. 

Now, more than a decade later, the only Pavlin granddaughter, Gemma Maybrook, is still reconciling the reality of her mother's death. Left orphaned and cast out by her family after the tragic accident, Gemma is ready to reclaim what should have been hers: the Electric Rose. And, as a budding jewelry designer in her own right, Gemma isn't just planning on recovering her mother's lost memento, she's coming back for everything.

From Manhattan’s tony Fifth Avenue to the vibrant sands of Provincetown, Gilt follows the Pavlin women as they are forced to confront the mistakes of the past if they have any hope of finding love and happiness of their own.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jamie Brenner is the author of six novels, including Blush and The Forever Summer. She grew up in suburban Philadelphia on a steady diet of Jackie Collins and Judith Krantz novels, and later moved to New York City to live like the heroines of her favorite books. Jamie now divides her time between Philadelphia and Provincetown. 

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1
 
New York City, 2004
 
She reached for her mother's hand, excited and just a little bit afraid. The sun was beginning to set on Fifth Avenue, and cars were at a standstill. Reporters crowded the sidewalk and onlookers pressed against metal security barriers.
 
"Over here, over here," photographers called out, and her parents stopped for a moment, her mother leaning down to whisper to her, Smile for the camera.
 
"Paulina, show us the ring," someone called out, and her mother flashed her left hand. A woman stepped forward holding a copy of a magazine and asked for an autograph.
 
It seemed to take forever to reach the jewelry store on the corner of Fifty-Third Street, a seven-story limestone and granite building her grandfather called a "monument to love." The entranceway was engraved with her family name. Tonight, display windows were filled with black-and-white photographs of legendary couples: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio, Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier. And in front of each photo, a Pavlin & Co diamond engagement ring, just waiting to be bought by a customer with a love story of their own.
 
It was the tenth anniversary of Pavlin & Co's most famous diamond of all, a thirty-carat pink stone called the Electric Rose. Her grandfather Alan gifted the treasure to the first of his three daughters to get engaged: her mother.
 
That afternoon, her mother had let her try it on. It was so beautiful she couldn't take her eyes off it, the color of a pale rose petal but also clear like a drop of water. Gemma had to clamp her small fingers tightly together to keep the ring from tilting over.
 
"One day it will be yours," her mother said.
 
The thing was, while everyone in the family loved talking about the ring, no one seemed to ever want to talk about her parents' actual engagement. Or wedding. Or anything about her parents at all. Gemma was too afraid to press with questions. Sometimes she worried things were too perfect. That it could somehow all disappear.
 
Gemma and her mother spent all day getting ready for the party. A stylist visited their apartment, piling her mother's blond hair into an updo and blow-drying Gemma's until it hung down her back like a golden sheet. Both of their gowns were white and embroidered with butterflies, each delicate wing hand-sewn by another visitor to the apartment earlier that week, a man with a white ponytail and dark glasses and an accent, who her mother called "Mr. Lagerfeld."
 
"We're twins tonight," her mother said with a wink. "No one will be able to tell us apart."
 
When the car arrived to whisk them down Fifth Avenue, her father looked at them both and said, "You two are more beautiful than any diamond in the world."
 
Gemma's parents guided her inside Pavlin & Co, the vast sales floor transformed into a wonderland of sparkling diamonds everywhere you looked: in glass display cases, on the hands of the glamorous guests, and in the framed photos on the walls.
 
The photos were advertisements from the long history of Pavlin & Co, starting back in 1947 with a black-and-white picture-now recognized all over the world-of a man on one knee in the snow, slipping a diamond solitaire ring on the finger of a willowy brunette in a ball gown. Above them, in elegant script, the sentence A Diamond Says Love. With those four simple words, her great-grandfather had created the idea of the diamond engagement ring.
 
Her mother told her the story over and over again, the way other little girls were told fairy tales.
 
"There was a time when people didn't buy diamond engagement rings," her mother said, "not until our family made them important."
 
Gemma's eyes skipped forward eagerly, alighting on her favorite series of ads, the ones featuring her mother. She'd modeled for the 1994 ads wearing furs and her own pink diamond. Whenever Gemma looked at the photographs of her mother with her chin resting in her palm, the spectacular gem flashing on her finger, her big blue-green eyes staring directly into the camera, they didn't make her long to get engaged so much as they made her long to be Paulina. She was sure lots of women in the 1990s felt the same way. Buying a Pavlin diamond wasn't just buying a piece of jewelry-it was buying the promise of love.
 
They passed the orchestra playing near the gilded elevators, and her grandmother rushed toward them. Constance, with her eternally blond bouffant hair and head-to-toe designer outfits, seemed like a queen to her.
 
"You're late," Constance said. "Come along, everyone's waiting for you."
 
The rest of the family was assembled on the podium: Alan, looking distinguished in his tuxedo, and her mother's two older sisters, Aunt Elodie and Aunt Celeste. Like her grandmother, her aunts seemed regal and somewhat unknowable. Aunt Elodie was Alan's right hand at Pavlin & Co, while Aunt Celeste lived far away at a beach. Gemma wished she was closer with her mother's sisters. Maybe that would help fix the nagging sense that something was wrong. She was especially uncomfortable around Elodie. There was just something about the way her aunt looked at her.
 
Uniformed guards encircled the podium as her grandfather stepped toward the microphone. On either side of him, glass cases displayed glittering diamond rings in every shape and color, yellow and white and even a rare blue stone set in platinum. Of course, none of them compared to the ring on her mother's finger.
 
"Gemma," Aunt Elodie said in a loud whisper, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Don't you find it interesting that with all this security, a thief can still hide in plain sight?"
 
What?
 
"Oh, give it a rest, Elodie," her mother said.
 
"You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
 
Confused, Gemma looked between her mother and her aunt. Her stomach tensed, and that feeling came over her again-the sense of something terribly wrong.
 
"Gemma, go over there and stand with Grandma," her mother said.
 
"Why?" She didn't want to leave her side.
 
"Please just do it," her mother said, a rare flash of annoyance in her voice.
 
Biting her lip, she dutifully walked to the other end of the podium. What just happened?
 
She blinked back tears, then told herself she had no reason to be upset. Looking out at the crowd, she knew she was lucky to be exactly where she was in that moment. Everyone wanted to be a Pavlin, to have beautiful things and be surrounded by love. So what if her aunt Elodie and her mother didn't get along? It wasn't the end of the world.
 
But something deep down told her that it could be.
 

2
 
New York City, Fifteen Years Later
 
Gemma was the only student at graduation without some kind of family. She'd considered not even attending, but she'd been looking forward to the awards ceremony for a long time. And so, wearing her blue cap and gown, she took her aisle seat in the third row.
 
The auditorium was warm, teetering on the brink of overheating. Air-conditioning vents wheezed loudly, as if they hadn't been intended for a room filled to capacity.
 
She looked across the aisle at her classmate; Mae Yang.
 
Did you bring it? she mouthed.
 
Mae interned at New York magazine, and Gemma needed to borrow a press pass-the only way she was going to sneak into the Pavlin & Co centennial celebration tomorrow night. A party she hadn't been invited to.
 
The dean took to the stage. "Welcome, graduates, friends, and family . . ."
 
She slumped back in her seat, urging herself to...

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Verlag
G.P. Putnam's Sons
Erscheinungsdatum
2022
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593087828
ISBN 13 
9780593087824
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
384
Kontakt zum Hersteller
preigu GmbH & Co. KG
mail@preigu.de

Lengericher Landstr. 19
Osnabrück
Niedersachsen
49078
Deutschland

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