The Billionaire's Embrace (The Silver Cross Club)

by Bec Linder

  Chapter 6

  I spent the rest of my shift worrying about it, and most of that night, and all day Tuesday: while I rode the subway to work, while I waited tables, while I rode the subway home in the evening. Did I have anything to wear? I could probably just wear my work clothes, but even though they were completely innocuous business attire, I was sure they would scream “I work at an expensive strip club.” Maybe Sadie could loan me something. Maybe Carter could loan me something. I was sure he had things stashed in his closet that had been left by prior girlfriends or one-night stands.

  I had a hard time falling asleep that night, and when my alarm went off on Wednesday, I felt pretty out of it. I made coffee and settled at my laptop. I hadn’t checked any of my usual lifestyle blogs in a few days. I was still trying to turn myself into a fashionable tour de force, but it was just so hard to make myself care about what celebrities were wearing. No progress without struggle. I sighed and opened a new tab.

  I scrolled idly down the page, skimming through the headlines. The season’s hottest new lipstick color; supermodels wearing sweatpants; blind items; Carter Sutton—

  Stop. Rewind.

  “CARTER SUTTON STEPS OUT WITH MYSTERY WOMAN! WHO KNEW HE LIKED ART???”

  A shot of pure adrenaline hit my veins. My face turned hot. My temples felt like they were pulled taut, like my scalp was too small to contain my skull.

  I clicked the link.

  I shouldn’t have. I regretted it even as I did it, but the motion was automatic. It wasn’t a conscious decision. My hand moved and clicked the button, and the page opened.

  The picture was grainy, like it had been taken from across the room and zoomed in as far as it could go. Someone with their phone, probably. But the quality wasn’t so bad that the people in the photo were unrecognizable. One of them was definitely Carter. I recognized his sweater, and the way his hand rested possessively at the small of my back. And I recognized myself, head tilted up to look at him.

  We were standing in front of a marble statue, smiling at each other, ignoring the artwork.

  It was the Greek wing in the museum. I remembered that room—all of the half-naked sculptures, and Carter cracking mild jokes about the ways of the ancient Greeks. We had been laughing about a corrupt art dealer Carter used to know, who would chop the hands off modern sculptures and claim they were thousands of years old.

  And someone took a picture of us. I hadn’t even noticed anyone else was in the room.

  I should have stopped there, closed the browser, shut down my laptop, and tried to put it out of my mind. But I didn’t. How could I? I’d opened Pandora’s box, and it was too late to turn back.

  I ran a search for “Carter Sutton museum,” and blindly clicked on the first link that came up. It was something innocuous about his mother’s work with the board.

  Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

  I went back and clicked the second link.

  “CARTER SUTTON: YELLOW FEVER?”

  It wasn’t as bad as I thought. It was worse.

  I didn’t know what to do. I called Sadie.

  She picked up. “Girl, this had better be important. I’m at work.”

  “There are pictures of me,” I choked out. “On the internet.”

  A pause. “What?”

  “With Carter. We went to the museum, and someone—took pictures of us. And everyone’s trying to figure out who I am, and—”

  Sadie exhaled. “Oh, honey. Well, it was going to happen. He’s a pretty big deal, and if you’re seen in public with him, sooner or later someone’s bound to get curious.”

  “They’re saying he has yellow fever.” My voice cracked, and I closed my eyes.

  “Shit,” Sadie said. “People are racist assholes. Look, you already knew that. Don’t let it get to you.”

  She was right, but it was getting to me. I couldn’t help it. “I don’t know what to do,” I said.

  “You’ve got two choices,” Sadie said, and this was why I had called her, why I always called her when I was having a crisis: she went into matter-of-fact problem-solving mode, and talked me down from the ledge. “You can stay with him, and accept that public notoriety is part of the deal. As long as you’re dating him, people are going to be interested in you, and you’re going to have to give up your privacy. Or you can break up with him.”

  I didn’t like either of those options. “I don’t want there to be pictures of me on the internet,” I said. I heard the whiny note in my voice and despised myself for it.

  “Tough,” Sadie said mercilessly. “Get rid of him, then. Look, I really can’t talk. Do you want to meet up after I get off work? We can eat some ice cream and watch bad television.”

  “I can’t tonight,” I said. “Thanks, though. I’ll be okay.”

  “Okay,” she said, sounding skeptical. “Don’t do anything crazy. I’ll talk to you later, baby girl.”

  She hung up. I got up and stared out the window, looking at nothing, seeing nothing, my mind racing.

  Maybe Carter would know what to do. He dealt with the tabloids all the time; maybe he could get the pictures taken down. I texted him: Someone took pictures of us at the museum.

  He didn’t respond right away, so I poured myself another cup of coffee and stood over the kitchen sink to drink it. My phone buzzed, and I looked at the screen.

  I know. Saw them a few days ago.

  I stared at my phone in disbelief. You knew about this and didn’t tell me?

  My phone buzzed again. Carter was calling me. I picked up and said, “Hi.”

  “Hi,” he said. “Regan, I’m sorry. It didn’t occur to me to let you know. I deal with these pictures all the time, and I don’t think about them much anymore. I forgot that you probably aren’t used to seeing your face plastered all over gossip blogs.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I was just—they’re saying horrible things, and—”

  “I know,” he said. “I wish I could protect you, but I can’t. If I make a fuss and get them taken down, everyone will think I have something to hide, and they’ll start digging. It’s best to just ignore it.”

  “It’s going to happen again, isn’t it,” I said. “Any time we’re in public.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid it is.”

  I fell silent. I didn’t want the pictures, but my other choice—to break up with him—was even less appealing. Rock, hard place. I had never been good at thinking on my feet, and presented with an impossible decision, I felt myself shutting down.

  “We don’t have to be seen together in public,” Carter said. “If you aren’t comfortable with it, I’ll do everything I can to protect you.”

  “I just—need to think about it,” I said. “For a little while.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Are we still on for dinner tonight?”

  I drew in a deep breath. I had told him I would go; I wouldn’t back down now. I would be brave. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Great,” he said. From the warmth in his voice, I could tell he was smiling. “I’ll come pick you up at 7.”

  We hung up, and I rubbed both hands over my face. God. What was I going to do?

  * * *

  I spent the day reading. Getting absorbed in a book was the best way to keep myself from worrying about things I couldn’t control. I had gone to the library a few days earlier and had a big stack of novels to choose from. I picked the one on top and started reading, and all of my concerns fell away. Before I knew it, my phone alarm went off, and it was time for me to start getting ready for dinner.

  Despite my reservations, I ended up wearing a dress I used for work. It was black, knee-length, and conservative enough that I couldn’t imagine Carter’s mother objecting. Just to be safe, I pulled on a cardigan. I would be polite, demure, and totally irreproachable. I would speak only when spoken to, smile a lot, and compliment her decorating. What could go wrong?

  Well. Everything.

  When my door buzzer rang a little before 7, I threw on
my coat and ran down the stairs.

  Carter was waiting for me in the vestibule. He gave me a kiss and said, “You look great. My mother loves it when people dress up for dinner.”

  “You should have told me that!” I said. “What if I’d worn jeans?”

  He grinned. “You know, it didn’t occur to me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in jeans.”

  I thought about it. “That’s not true. I wore jeans when we went to Sadie’s.”

  “I stand corrected,” he said. We walked out to the waiting car, bickering cheerfully about who had worn jeans and when. It was snowing lightly, fat flakes drifting down from the dark sky, and I turned my face up toward them. No matter how long I lived in New York, I would never get tired of seeing the snow fall.

  Carter, holding the car door open, smiled at me. “That’s right. You probably didn’t see much snow, growing up in California.”

  “None at all,” I said. “I was eighteen the first time I saw snow.” I shook my head, and got into the car before Carter got sick of waiting for me. I still remembered my first snowfall: I left the windowless building where I was working at the time, some crummy temp job for an insurance agency, and stood in the middle of the sidewalk, staring up at the falling snow, until a passerby cursed at me and told me to get out of the damn way. Most people in the city hated the snow, the way it turned into gray slush and made traffic a snarled mess, and I always nodded and agreed that, yes, it probably wouldn’t melt until July, but secretly, I couldn’t get enough. I would be happy if it snowed every day from October until April.

  Carter’s mother lived on the Upper East Side. It was a long way from my apartment in the hinterlands of Brooklyn. We sat together in the roomy back seat of the car, one of Carter’s arms wrapped around my shoulders, and talked about nothing in particular, the kind of rambling conversation that happened so often when you were first growing close to someone: childhood pets, favorite movies, secret aspirations. Carter told me about a man who showed up for a meeting with a boa constrictor in his briefcase, and I laughed until tears streamed down my cheeks. I told him about a woman at my first job who kept a dead cat in her freezer for three years because she couldn’t figure out where to bury it.

  We sobered, finally, speeding along FDR Drive, the East River a black expanse to our right. Carter said, “I should have warned you about the pictures.”

  I shrugged, uncomfortable. “It just took me by surprise.”

  “It’s surprisingly easy for me to forget that this is all new to you,” he said. “In the past—” He exhaled. “Well. When I was younger, I mainly dated women who sought the exposure that came with dating me. My girlfriends since then have all—well. Let’s say that they’re friends of the family.”

  “You mean they’re rich,” I said. “They know the rules.”

  “Right,” he said. “So I forget. Forgive me. I don’t want this to be a trial for you. I don’t want you to have any reason to decide that dating me is too much trouble to be worth it.”

  That was exactly what I had been thinking about, but I leaned against him and said, “It’s worth it.”

  Was I lying to him? Maybe. It was worth it, except when it wasn’t. If only he weren’t who he was. If only we could be anonymous nobodies together in Brooklyn.

  I didn’t want to think about that anymore.

  His mother lived in a huge building on Central Park East. We got out of the car and I stared up at the marble edifice, too intimidated to speak or move. I’d had a job, for a while, cleaning apartments on the Upper East Side. I knew what was waiting for me, and that made it even more intimidating.

  The doorman held open the door for us as we approached. “Good evening, Mr. Sutton,” he said.

  “Hello, Reginald,” Carter said. “I hope you’re keeping warm.”

  “Best kind of weather there is,” the doorman said. “Your mother asked me to tell you that the gravy boiled over.”

  Carter laughed. “Thanks for the warning.”

  We walked into the lobby, Carter’s hand at the small of my back. “That’s a code,” he said. “It means she broke out the good Scotch.”

  “Sure,” I said. I was too busy gawking at the opulent lobby to say anything worthwhile. Rosy-cheeked cherubs frolicked on the ceiling, and the marble floors echoed with our footsteps.

  We got in the elevator, and Carter pushed the button for the top floor. I said, “Did you grow up here?”

  Carter shook his head. “My mother downsized after my father died.”

  Downsized. To a penthouse overlooking Central Park. I shoved my hands into my coat pockets. I didn’t think I would ever get used to this.

  The elevator opened into a small foyer with a console table and a solid wooden door. Carter pushed a doorbell, and the door swung open almost instantly to reveal Carter’s mother. She had been waiting for us.

  She was small and trim, her gray hair cut in a fashionable bob. She was wearing a low-cut dress and heels and jewelry that probably cost a small fortune. She looked like someone who had seen everything the world had to offer, and decided that not much of it was worthy of her attention. “Carter, darling,” she said, holding out her arms, and Carter bent to give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. She turned to me, and said, “And you must be Regan.”

  Was I supposed to hug her? That seemed too familiar. “Pleased to meet you,” I said, and held out my hand.

  She looked at it like it was a dead fish, and then limply clasped the tips of my fingers. “I’m so glad you were able to join Carter this evening.”

  So. I had screwed up already.

  I shot Carter a pleading look, but he was looking at his mother. “Are we late? Traffic on FDR was horrible.”

  She scoffed. “Late? My child? Never. Dinner’s growing cold, but don’t fret about me, your poor, beleaguered, widowed mother—”

  He laughed. “Was the knitting circle especially tiring today?”

  They bantered as Carter’s mother led the way into the apartment. I hung back and gaped at my surroundings: pale wood floors strewn with rich carpets, antique furniture that probably came straight from Paris, oil paintings that—from what Carter had told me about his mother’s interest in art—were probably originals by famous artists. And the huge windows on every wall that opened onto the city skyline and the park.

  Agreeing to dinner had been a huge mistake.

  I didn’t even know what Carter’s mother’s name was.

  She led us to the dining room—a large space that contained a long table surrounded by chairs, and not much else in the way of furniture. One wall was lined with windows, and the other walls were covered with artwork. Three places had been set at one end of the table, and she herded us in that direction.

  “Sit down and have something to drink,” she ordered. “I’ll see about dinner. It will be just a moment.” She sailed off through a doorway.

  I immediately grabbed Carter’s arm. “What’s your mother’s name?”

  He looked startled. “Angie. Evangeline. Why?”

  “I can’t keep thinking of her as Carter’s mother,” I said.

  He smiled. “Well, I wouldn’t recommend referring to her as Angie,” he said. “Call her Mrs. Sutton, she’ll like that.”

  Mrs. Sutton. Right. Because it wasn’t as if we were both functioning adults. I swallowed my anxiety and smiled at Carter as he pulled out my chair for me. At least there was plenty of wine.

  Carter poured me a generous glass and took the seat opposite me. “You look pale,” he said.

  I glanced down at my left arm. “I still look brown,” I said.

  “So literal! It’s a figure of speech,” he said. “You’re too worried. She’s going to love you.”

  I didn’t think she was, necessarily, but I kept it to myself. Carter didn’t need to be burdened with my doubts. They were burdensome enough for me.

  Angie came back into the room, followed by a woman who was carrying a huge platter. It was the maid, I realized. Or cook, or whatever—pe
rsonal assistant—whatever her exact title was, she was obviously hired help. And here I was, essentially hired help myself, seated at the table, waiting to be waited on.

  I didn’t belong here.

  The maid set the platter on a sideboard and shot me a look that I couldn’t read. You don’t belong here? Stay away from these crazy white people? I feel your pain, sister?

  “I hope you like fish, Regan,” Angie said. “Carter wouldn’t give me any information as to your dietary preferences, so I was forced to guess.”

  “Fish is great,” I said. Had Carter told her anything about me? I was Pinoy; liking fish was practically genetic.

  And then it occurred to me: the only Filipinos this woman had ever spoken to were probably maids.

  “Great,” she said, like the word tasted strange in her mouth. “Well. We should have an enjoyable dinner, then.” She stood expectantly beside the chair at the head of the table, and Carter stood up to pull out the chair for her.

  It was like being in a parallel universe. Who took formal dining so seriously, when it was just your son and his low-class girlfriend?

  Angie sat, and Carter sat, and the maid set plates in front of us, Angie first and me last.

  I wondered if it was a hidden message.

  I unfolded my napkin and spread it across my lap. The plate was carefully arranged with three small hors d’oeuvres that I couldn’t even identify. The first course, then. How many courses would there be? Eight? Ten?

  “Carter, tell me how business is going,” Angie said. “You’re too important to give your poor mother updates.”

  Carter laughed, picking up one of the hors d’oeuvres and popping it in his mouth. It was meant to be eaten with the fingers, then. Good to know. He chewed and swallowed, and then said, “It’s going well, Mother. You know that. You read the quarterly reports.”

  “Yes, but that’s not the same as hearing it from the source,” Angie said. She picked up her wine glass and took a sip. “Your father would be very disappointed to know that you aren’t keeping me in the loop.”

  Carter rolled his eyes. “Fortunately, he’s dead, and doesn’t know.”