Sloane Sisters Read Free Page A

she couldn’t help gushing. “It’s incredible.” She gently touched the putty-colored leather.
    â€œMy mum got it for me. It was a present from one of her clients.” Stella eyed the bag and shrugged.
    Cate stared at Emma in disbelief. Swag? From clients? She’d never even thought of that. Maybe she could forgive Emma for dating her father, for moving to New York, for Lola, or Lulu, or whatever-her-name-was with the frizzy hair and bad tapered jeans. If this meant an unlimited supply of designer handbags, yes, she could definitely forgive her.
    Winston turned and kissed Emma on the forehead. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
    â€œGreat shoes.” Cate pointed to Stella’s red espadrilles. “Juicy?”
    Stella nodded and slipped the right shoe off her foot. She nudged it forward with her tiny toes, which were painted with a French pedicure. Cate carefully slipped her foot out of her black ballet flat and into the sandal.
    Cate held her breath. Stella held hers. As it had for Cinderella, everything depended on the shoe’s fit.
    Cate pushed her toe to the front and gently pressed down her heel. It was perfect. She clasped Stella’s hands and rocked up and down on the balls of her feet, imagining her wardrobe doubling.
    â€œIt fits!” Cate cried, and Stella let out a laugh, revealing her dimples.
    Stella slipped on Cate’s ballet flat and held out her foot, admiring the fit.
    â€œPerfect!” she exclaimed.
    You’re perfect! Cate almost cried, barely capable of containing her excitement. As soon as she thought it, she knew it was true. If there had been a Shopbop.com for stepsisters, Cate could not have picked out a better one herself.

WISH UPON A STAR…A VERY FAMOUS STAR
    T welve-year-old Andie Sloane walked up Fifth Avenue past the Metropolitan Museum, her cleats clicking on the concrete sidewalk. The museum’s stone steps were covered with tourists devouring foot-long hot dogs, arguing over guidebooks, and basking in the late-August afternoon sun. A crowd gathered around the long narrow fountain in front of the museum, watching in horror as a bereted street performer swallowed a whole set of Henckels knives.
    Andie stopped at the corner of Eighty-second Street and studied her reflection in the mirrored doors of the Excelsior, an apartment building that looked like a giant Tootsie Roll. She pouted her lips and put one hand on her hip, striking a quick pose. Sure, in her soccer uniform she looked more Nike than Nicole Miller, but she still had all the right moves.
    â€œGirlie, I told you these doors are two-way,” a doorman stuffed into an extra-small green uniform said, stepping outside. “You’re giving the lobby a show again.”
    Andie laughed and took off down the street. As of five o’clocktoday, she’d be sharing her town house with supermodel Emma Childs. She had to prepare .
    It was Andie’s dream to be a high-fashion model. She watched America’s Next Top Model religiously and took notes on what the judges said. Every night she practiced her poses in the full-length mirror on her closet door: She knew how to do editorial, she knew avant-garde. She pushed herself to be creative and think of outside-the-box poses.
    She couldn’t look through Teen Vogue anymore without throwing the magazine down, annoyed. She was just as good as any of those models. So what if she was four-foot eleven (fine…four-foot ten and three-quarters)? That was why she idolized Kate Moss: She wasn’t six feet tall, and yet she was one of the most famous models on earth. Andie always asked herself, WWKD (What Would Kate Do)?
    But now she could ask, WWED (What Would Emma Do)? And then she could ask Emma herself.
    Or her daughters.
    Andie stopped in front of her family’s five-story brick town house and smiled, imagining herself lying out in the garden with Emma’s fashionista daughters. The two mini Emmas would tell her