One Dangerous Lady Read Online Free PDF

Vermillion wasn’t there that night.
    â€œThe reason Max isn’t here is because Russell disinvited him,” Miranda said. “Russell practically had a conniption fit when he found out Max was coming.”
    â€œWhy?” Betty asked.
    Miranda paused for effect. “Because Max has been dating Lulu ,” she said with a knowing air.
    Lulu Cole, of course, was Russell Cole’s vindictive ex-wife.
    Betty’s jaw dropped. “You are fucking kidding me! He’s dating the Chiffon Bulldozer? I don’t fucking well believe it. How did she get her claws into him so fast?”
    Betty always referred to Lulu as “the Chiffon Bulldozer” because of Lulu’s airy determination to control whatever environment she was in. Lulu Cole was just the opposite of her ex-husband. A taut, resolute woman with a strict sense of style, Lulu threw herself into everything she did and at everyone she met—particularly when it was in her best interests. This quality was both her strength and her weakness. Lulu got a lot done, but made many enemies in the process. She had a knack of stepping on other people’s toes and not saying “excuse me.” However, even her detractors—of which there were many—said she was a “capable” woman, brimming with generosity, energy, and organizational talents.
    As Betty and Miranda discussed this new development, my mind drifted back to the days when the billionaire Coles first moved to Manhattan in the early nineties. Russell was then married to Marylou Cole, or Lulu, as she was called. Primed in the ways of social climbing, they bought an expensive apartment in one of the best buildings on Fifth Avenue, hired a chic decorator, donated ostentatiously to “fashionable” charities, and, most importantly, gave grand parties to which everyone yearned to go, if only to see Van Gogh’s Irises , for which Russell Cole had paid a record sixty-five million dollars at auction. Lulu discovered Paris couture and became a great supporter of the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute. She bought signed vintage jewelry from Pearce, the glittery shop on Madison Avenue that was then in its heyday, and she arrived on the Best Dressed List in short order.
    Photographed at chic opening nights and benefit galas, the Coles quickly became stars in Nous magazine, society’s scrapbook. In her “Daisy” column for the magazine, Miranda herself had recoined the phrase “a Lulu of a party,” paying homage to Lulu Cole’s formal dinners. In short, the Coles made all the right moves and soon reached the highest-level social life in the city, in a position to judge newcomers with the same catty eye by which they themselves had once been judged.
    But as anyone who has ever endured the charity ball circuit will tell you, the smiles of social life are often masks for deep unhappiness. And Russell Cole was not happy. His rugged, midwestern good looks were bruised by melancholy. In conversation, his considerable charm was tainted by detachment.
    As Lulu’s interest in social life increased, Russell’s interest waned. It seemed the more he marched, the more he tired of the parade. People who saw the Coles together often remarked on the lack of intimacy between them, and on the fact that Russell looked terminally bored. Betty said to me way back when, “You’d be bored, too, if you were treated like an accessory.”
    Then, six years ago, Russell Cole bolted, with no warning. He left his chic and proper wife to marry Carla, who was then Carla Hernandez, an exotic widow with a murky past, more than twenty years his junior. Rumor had it Russell fell for Carla at a gala benefit when she flirtatiously started a bread fight with him from across the dinner table. He had asked her to dance and that apparently was that.
    But Lulu was a fighter with a lot to fight for. She’d been married to Russell for over twenty-five years