Mara raised an eyebrow at Ryan. "Lots, eh? How many were there?"

"Do we have to get into this now?" Ryan laughed. "It doesn't really matter, does it? I mean, we're together now." He noticed Mara looking downcast. "My sisters don't know what they're talking about."

He cupped Mara's chin and kissed her again. "You're the only one I want. Okay?"

"Okay." As long as they were clear on that.

The little girls sighed happily. It was just so romantic.

A few minutes later Jacqui appeared, wearing sunglasses and shorts and carrying a croissant and a coffee cup from the Hampton Coffee Company. She held several newspapers and magazines underneath her free arm.

"Who are you?" William asked on his way to the pool.

"I'm Jacqui-I've been taking care of you all summer!" Jacqui joked.

He looked puzzled.

She smiled when she saw Mara and Ryan together.

"Look what I found," Jacqui said, holding aloft copies of New York magazine, Hamptons magazine, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and the New York Times. There were photos of Mara everywhere, with photo credits from her friend Lucky Yap.

"The summer's latest IT girl-and she didn't have to run over the back wall of a club or tape a sex video to do it!" blared the always-restrained Page Six.

"Hey, you're more famous than me," Ryan said, noticing that the latest round didn't even mention the "Perry heir."

Mara paged through the magazines and newspapers with a thoughtful smile on her face. She felt confident and blissfully happy-not because she'd achieved in one season what most Hamptonites crave their whole lifetimes, but because she was with the guy she loved.

jacqui is a miracle worker.

JACQUI ROUNDED UP THE KIDS AND TOOK THEM TO the pool. She pumped up Cody's water wings and tugged them on his chubby arms.

"Let's go!" She whooped, jumping into the deep end.

Amazingly, he followed her in, splashing and kicking like a duck.

"Good boy! Good boy!" Jacqui said, laughing.

She didn't even realize how miraculous this was-Mara and Eliza had been trying to get him in the water all summer, but as far as ever-absent Jacqui knew, Cody was a born-swimmer. William jumped in the pool too, almost knocking out his brother.

"Be careful!" Jacqui chided.

The little boy stuck his tongue out. "DUNK!" He said, and pushed Cody's head under water.

"WILLIAM!" Really, that one was such a monster.

Chortling, William let his brother go and swam to the other end of the pool.

Cody kicked and splashed happily.

"Not bad," Kevin Perry said, kneeling down. "Hey, Jacqui, right? You want to hit the steam bath later? We just put in a new showerhead. It's amazing."

Jacqui swam to the edge of the pool. She was sick of being watched, being slobbered over, and after the night at the orgy party she'd had it with older men.

"I don't think your wife would appreciate you talking to me that way," she said evenly.

He looked confused. A lot more confused than he should have. "Sure. I'll, uh, see you around," Kevin said.

Jacqui nodded. She felt relieved. After years of kowtowing and bowing and scraping and flirting with men for a tip or a ride or another drink or an invitation to a party, she had finally stood up for herself.

It felt fantastic.

the second-best thing anna ever said.

ONCE AGAIN ANNA WAS SITTING AT THE HEAD OF THE TABLE when the au pairs trooped in for the weekly progress report. Did miracles never cease?

The three au pairs took their seats across the table.

"Where's Kevin?" Eliza whispered.

Jacqui shrugged.

Now that Jacqui had made it clear she wasn't going to tolerate his advances, Kevin had found better things to do with his time.

The girls were all a little tense. They were supposed to get their final payment at the meeting-that is, if they didn't get fired first. They still had no idea why the first batch of au pairs was let go-and Super Saturday was not their best moment.

But Anna was positively glowing at them.

"Well, I hope you had a wonderful summer," she said. "I certainly did." She had been asked to donate her tennis court for the annual Cartier tournament, putting her right up there with the Swids, Kravises, and Davises of the town. It sort of made up for the Super Saturday debacle. Sorta.

The girls nodded.

"I just can't be more pleased with your obvious devotion to the kids," Anna said. "In particular, Cody swimming this morning was amazing!" Anna held a hand to her chest. "To see him conquer his greatest fear-a mother couldn't be more proud!"

Mara and Eliza nodded, trying to figure how the hell Jacqui had done it.

"And that Portuguese book you're teaching Zoe, Jacqui! We were just hoping we could get her to read in English, but to have her bilingual to boot, it's spectacular. Her admissions counselor thinks this will put her over the hump for next year. She said Zoe is Dalton material for sure."

Again Eliza and Mara exchanged confused glances. When exactly did this happen?

"Better yet, Madison's lost ten pounds!" Anna cheered.

The kid had been eating them out of house and home all summer, and the weight loss was just from shedding baby fat, but none of the girls would tell Anna that.

"Of course, William's still a bit twitchy. But nothing's perfect. At least he's stopped biting people," Anna continued. "It's just so easy to get off track in the Hamptons. The social life here is just frenetic, what with the parties and nightclubs and all."

The girls looked a little guilty at that.

"I never told you guys this, but we had to let our first au pairs go for that very reason! They were out every night!"

The girls all exchanged sidelong glances.

"So we just want to congratulate you on a job well done. Here's the last of your payment, with a little bonus inside." Anna winked.

Eliza sighed with relief. Those Visa bills had been piling up. She was going to make a dent on them this time instead of adding to the total. Seriously. As soon as she got her hand on the gorgeous tweed coat she saw at Scoop the other day. Hey, it was almost fall, and a girl needed back-to-school clothes.

Mara hugged herself. She had made almost ten thousand dollars this summer. Woo-hoo! College and a ten-year-old Camry. Life didn't get better than this! Sure, she'd gotten a bit more fabulous this summer, but underneath it all, she was the same small-town girl she'd always been.

Jacqui put her envelope away. When she got home, she was going to buy her grandmother the biggest statue of the Virgin Mary the old lady had ever seen-it was the one gift that would tell her how much Jacqui loved her, and that's exactly what she wanted to say.

But Anna wasn't done.

"By the way, we'd love to have you girls with us this Christmas. We always do two weeks in Palm Beach, and our regular nanny goes to England at that time, so we're strapped. Do you think you'd be interested? We'll pay five thousand dollars. We can all meet in New York and we'll go by our private jet."

Palm Beach? Christmas? Five grand? A jet? Where did they sign?

p. diddy knows how to throw a party.

IT WAS TIME FOR P. DIDDY'S ANNUAL LABOR DAY WHITE Party, the last big bash before the summer was over. Eliza had worked the phones for three days straight, trying to make sure they all got invitations. Kit had come through again, and Lucky Yap had sent over a couple, so they were all covered.

Mara hung out in Ryan's room, watching him change into a white linen suit. He buttoned up his shirt in the mirror and caught her eye.

"What are you looking at?"

"My gorgeous boyfriend," she answered, then caught herself. Did she just say THAT WORD? How could she do that? She didn't even know what he thought they were doing. Maybe they were just fooling around. Certainly she didn't want to label their relationship so early.

Seeing the distress on her face and knowing what put it there, Ryan turned and climbed up on the bed, then crawled up to kiss her on the cheek.

"I'd rather look at my gorgeous girlfriend," he whispered.

Mara leaned back, pulling him closer, tugging on the rawhide necklace he always wore around his neck. The pillows were still warm from their earlier activities.

Ryan kissed her closed eyelids, her nose, her cheeks. "Maybe we shouldn't get dressed yet," he murmured.

"Maybe not," she agreed.

Eliza looked at her closet askance. How could this be? Everything white that she owned was dirty, or yellowed, or stained. She had absolutely nothing to wear to the biggest party of the season.

Or did she . . .

She walked furtively to the main house. The diaphanous white Versace dress Sugar had asked her to send to the cleaners earlier that week was still hanging in her walk-in closet, waiting to be worn. But Sugar wasn't going to get back from her bikini wax for a while yet.

Sugar would just look washed out in it, Eliza thought. Really, I'm doing her a favor.

Eliza grabbed the dress. It was her last night in town. And didn't she deserve to wear it? She was the one who had taken such good care of it all summer.

Jacqui yawned as she put on her white shirt and a calf-length skirt. The most conservative outfit she owned. For once she didn't feel like attracting any attention to herself. Guys were just too much trouble these days. She was enjoying being single.

The group met at the driveway. Mara and Ryan walked out of the main house, holding hands, apple cheeked and glowing in their matching white pantsuits.

Eliza met them at the door in the borrowed (fine, stolen) Versace.

"Isn't that . . .," Ryan asked, thinking the dress looked familiar.

"It's mine," Eliza declared. At least for the night. If she couldn't have Jeremy, she could at least have a Versace dress.

Jacqui walked up from the garden pathway, looking devastating in her "conservative" outfit. "Everybody ready?" she asked.

Mara and Ryan took the Aston Martin, and Eliza and Jacqui thought it would fun to ride in on the Vespas. It beat having to worry about parking.

They drove to an imposing modern mansion on Settlers Landing with P. Diddy's initials carved into the wrought iron gates. Several billowing white tents were set up near the entrance to facilitate the guest check-in.

Eliza told them that she'd heard the entire city of East Hampton had to be insured for up to five million dollars against any incident related to the party and that Puffy had paid for an eleven-thousand-square-foot tent with a ten-inch plastic foam wall on one side to keep the dulcet tones of Funkmaster Flex from reaching a nearby neighbor.

"I heard he even had a whole orchard planted the week before to make it look more countrylike!" Eliza said.

At the receiving line they spotted Leonardo di Caprio getting patted down by several hulking bodyguards. Leo was a vision in white, from his cream-colored baseball cap to his snow white shoes. There was Topher Grace hanging out with Ali Hilfigger, Gavin Rossdale walking in with Gwen Stefani, and Eve, Li'l Kim, and Busta Rhymes mingling with Zac Posen, Paz de la Huerta, and Claire Danes.

The three girls held their collective breath as one of the huge bouncers waved their invitations underneath a laser. It seemed an eternity before it pinged as authentic.

"Go right in." The doorman in the pristine three-piece suit waved them inside.