The Price You Pay (1993)

Barbara Summers's 1993 novel moves between the New York fashion and cosmetics business and Santa Monica. Nicky Knight, a first-year student at New York University and the daughter of the actress Becky Knight, is waiting for her habitually late mother at lunch when the book introduces her; a modelling agency's open house and a fragrance called Aurora are already in the story. (Open Library)

Watches

Ebel watch: Nicky, who cannot understand where she got her compulsion to be on time when both her parents are chronically late, sips iced tea in a Santa Monica restaurant and checks the Ebel they gave her for Christmas. Had she known Becky would be this late she would have gone on window shopping on the Third Street Promenade. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: Nicky checked the Ebel watch they had given her for Christmas. If she had known Becky would be this late, she would have taken her time and done more window shopping. (Barbara Summers, The Price You Pay, scan cataloged as Amistad, 1993, p. 20; her parents are identified in the same passage and Becky Knight arrives on p. 21; Internet Archive scan OCR)