Until the End of Time

Until the End of Time
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 © 2013 by Danielle Steel

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

D
ELACORTE
P
RESS
is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Steel, Danielle.
Until the end of time : a novel / Danielle Steel.
p.  cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-53865-9
1. Marriage—Fiction. 2. Publishers and publishing—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3569.T33828U58 2013
813’.54—dc23
2012015907

www.bantamdell.com

Jacket design: Shasti O’Leary Soudant
Jacket photograph: © Tetra Images/Getty Images

v3.1_r1

Love

    is a shooting star

      that lands

      in your heart,

         and lives

            forever.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Bill and Jenny: 1975

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Robert and Lillibet: 2013

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Dedication

Other Books by This Author

About the Author

Bill and Jenny

1975

Chapter 1

The atmosphere in a room off the ballroom of the Hotel Pierre in midtown New York was fraught with tension as forty-five tall, rail-thin, bare-breasted models were getting their hair and makeup done, while simultaneously trying on shoes, and dresses for last-second alterations. David Fieldston was looking them over carefully, while a cameraman filmed him for a documentary on Fashion Week, and he explained the inspiration for his winter line. He was a stylish-looking man in his late forties, with gray hair, and he had been an important name in the fashion world for twenty years. Two years earlier he had been on the verge of bankruptcy, and the fashion press said his designs lacked energy, his work was all déjà vu, and he was out of steam.

And now, thanks to a dynamo named Jenny Arden, he was back on the map. His last season had been his best one ever. His designs had taken off again, and his career with them. Every collection he’d done since Jenny Arden had begun advising him was vibrant, full of new, fresh ideas, and alive. He had taken off into the stratosphere
and was better than ever, and privately he credited it all to her, and had told his closest friends and associates that she was a genius. Jenny was more modest about it, since she didn’t do the actual designing, but she did research for him and came up with fresh inspiration for his line that made the collections exciting and really work. She met with him several times a week between seasons, and she was on hand, watching everything, when he presented the collection. And he paid her handsomely to do it. He wasn’t Jenny’s only client, but he was her most impressive success so far.

Jenny came by her love for fashion honestly, and had followed it since she was a small child. Her French grandmother had been a première in the haute couture ateliers in Paris, and her mother was a dedicated seamstress. They had had a small but respected business in Philadelphia while Jenny was growing up, where they had diligently copied the finest designs and gowns from the couture houses in Paris. And at eighteen, after watching them all her life, Jenny had gone to Parsons School of Design in New York hoping to become a designer. She had found the classes tedious to the point of agonizing, discovered she had no talent herself for the mechanics of draping and wrestling with fabrics, and no patience to do so. She was much more interested in the trends and the direction that fashion was going.

Her clients in recent years liked to say that she was psychic, and could smell a fashion before it happened. Jenny
made
it happen, and knew just what to do when it did. She was a style director, and a muse for the designers she worked for, and no detail was too small for her meticulous attention. Accessories, and the way a fashion was worn, were everything, she insisted. It wasn’t enough to design
a dress, a coat, or a hat—you had to turn it into a living thing, she insisted, that breathed on its own and was not just an object. She was passionate about what she did, and she infused her vision and energy into her clients, and that turned up on the runway when they showed their clothes, just as it was about to happen when David Fieldston showed his new line to the fashion press and store buyers during Fashion Week in New York. The crowd was waiting breathlessly for the show to start. And while David was being interviewed, Jenny was doing her job, threading her way through the models, watching the hair and makeup with a keen eye, tugging a dress as it was put on, lifting the collar of a jacket, snapping a bracelet on a wrist, changing a shoe at the last minute.

“No, no, no!” she said, frowning, as dressers put clothes on a model as though she were a doll. “The necklace is on backward, and she has the belt upside down.” She rapidly made the necessary changes, nodded, and sped across the room to a model who was being sewn into a see-through lace dress. They hadn’t had time to put the zipper in before the show. It happened all the time. And Jenny knew the dress would be a showstopper, you could see the model’s naked breasts and most of her body except what was concealed by a flesh-colored G-string, which kept the model relatively decent. David had been nervous about it, and Jenny had assured him that it was 1975 and the country was ready to see breasts, at least on the runway, if nowhere else. Rudi Gernreich had come to the same conclusion, and his bold designs were sensational and had been well received.
Vogue
magazine had been showing breasts for a dozen years, since Diana Vreeland introduced them when she was editor in chief in 1963.

Diana Vreeland was Jenny’s role model and goddess. Having realized that she didn’t want to work on Seventh Avenue and be a designer to earn a living, Jenny had started out as an errand girl at
Vogue
when she graduated from Parsons eleven years before. She had eventually become the keeper of “The Closet,” during Mrs. Vreeland’s regime as editor in chief. Diana Vreeland had started at
Vogue
four years before Jenny got there. The Closet was where all the fabulous clothes were kept, and for a young girl inebriated by fashion, and in love with it since her earliest memories, it was sheer heaven. She got to see and touch all the beautiful things going in and out, and how they were put together for every photo shoot. Jenny soon caught the attention of the illustrious Mrs. Vreeland, and worshipped at her feet and became her senior assistant.

Then Jenny decided to leave the magazine five years after she’d arrived. Everyone said she was crazy, she had the perfect job. But she wanted to start her own fashion consulting business, to advise designers and style photo shoots on her own. And remarkably, the only support she got for her project was from Mrs. Vreeland, who secretly told her she was doing the right thing. And much to Jenny’s amazement, Diana Vreeland left
Vogue
at almost the same time. She had become a consultant to the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and she was in the audience at the Pierre, waiting to see David Fieldston’s show that day. She had been incredibly good to Jenny, who was unfailingly loyal to her in exchange. Jenny had easily recognized the senior editor’s genius when she worked for her every day, and had learned much from her, although she had her own distinctive style.

Like a good puppeteer, so nobody would notice her as she worked the strings from backstage, she was wearing black from head to foot, as Mrs. Vreeland had. Jenny’s long, shining dark hair swept her shoulders in a straight blunt cut, she wore very little makeup, and her huge blue eyes took in the entire scene. The models were almost dressed by then, and she was still watching them like a hawk, thinking of nothing else. And seconds later she could hear the ballroom go quiet and the music come on. They were opening with a Beatles song, to keep the mood light. The clothes they were showing were for the following fall season, seven months away, so store buyers could order them now. And no one in the ballroom cared that it was the beginning of February and snowing outside. Orders had to be placed months in advance.

Jenny continued to watch the models, as they lined up and got ready to walk the runway. She was almost as tall as they were, minus the high heels. She was long and lean and beautiful herself, but she loved being invisible in this dazzling fashion world, always behind the scenes, making things happen. The producer of the runway show gave her a nod, and she signaled the first girl.

“Go!” she said, as their most beautiful model stepped through black velvet curtains onto the runway that ran the length of the ballroom and had taken two days to set up. It was made of copper, and Jenny had reminded the girls to be careful not to slip—no mean feat in six- and seven-inch-high heels. The shoes were only samples, usually made in only one size, as prototypes, pre-production, and often didn’t fit. And they had to make it look effortless as they crossed one leg over the other and sauntered down the runway. And
if one of them fell on the slippery surface in the awkward shoes, it wouldn’t be the first time. Whatever happened, they had to keep going.