“We couldn’t have done it without him,” Evelyn said.
51
Nathan
“Merry Christmas!” Zoey cried, jumping out from behind the Christmas tree to startle me. With both hands completely full of tinsel and a somewhat crazed look in her beautiful eyes, Zoey looked like an adorable, deranged, extremely tall Christmas elf in a green dress and Santa hat.
In response to her terribly timed, not at all scary surprise attack, I grabbed her by the waist and pulled her under the mistletoe that had been conveniently positioned next to the mantle. Planting a passionate kiss on her warm, cherry red lips when she stopped giggling, I marveled at Zoey. She was the best Christmas present that anyone could ever receive.
That being said, it was only November twenty-ninth.
“Isn’t it a bit early for the Christmas tree?” I asked in confusion, looking around my transformed apartment. There were Christmas decorations everywhere I looked. Zoey had been very busy. In fact, she must have worked nonstop all day to get this place decorated so quickly. Vaguely, I wondered if the Christmas wonderland was confined to the living room and entry or if it had consumed the entire apartment. “I didn’t even know they sold Christmas trees this early.”
“It’s never too early for Christmas,” she insisted, pouting at my bewilderment as I took in her elaborate handiwork. “As long as it’s after Thanksgiving and before New Year’s, it’s Christmas time. Why? Do you hate it?”
“No…” I said tentatively, looking at the lights that had been strung across my living room from the exposed ceiling beams, and the questionable snowman decals that had been applied to the windows and to block out the nice view of the Philadelphia skyline, “I’m just surprised. It’s all very… merry.”
Zoey grinned. She was obviously thrilled by the arrival of the Christmas season. Yesterday there had been turkeys, pilgrims, and harvest-themed things everywhere. Over the past six months I’d realized that Zoey loved decorating. She was a minimalist in her personal belongings, but the woman loved holidays. Now that she had the space to decorate for them, she did. My formerly Spartan bachelor pad had been transformed under Zoey’s hand. It was her apartment now, I just lived there. Which was completely fine with me as long as I got to keep my office a Zoey-decorations-free zone. So far, our compromise was working beautifully.
We had just gotten back from spending the Thanksgiving holiday with Zoey’s family in Florida. It had been an eventful, fascinating, and very informative trip. Zoey’s parents were about as different from my own family as possible. They were warm, friendly, funny, and welcoming to me. It was also apparent that Zoey had inherited her love of holiday cheer from her mother.
I’d really enjoyed my time with them, which came as something of a surprise to me. I had fully expected her father to hate me for ever touching his daughter, or her mother to blame me for Zoey not returning home to Florida to work for the Picayune. Instead, they both just seemed happy to see that Zoey was happy. I’d never met a girlfriend’s family before and was pleasantly shocked that it was not a painful experience at all. I wished that Zoey’s first interaction with my own family had been as painless.
My parents liked Zoey quite a bit, but their mannerisms were so much more formal and stuffy that she’d cried after meeting them for the first time. She’d been convinced that they hated her, when in reality they were very pleased to meet her and thought highly of her. We’d made some strides over the last few months and were keeping the interactions short and structured while Zoey and my parents figured out how to communicate with one another. That relationship was still very much a work in progress.
“Did you see the verdict today in the Hunt case?” Zoey asked, returning the bulk of her attention to the half-decorated Christmas tree as I flopped down on the couch and opened a beer. “It was the most exciting day in a while.”
“I did,” I admitted, rolling my eyes at the coverage of a melodrama that just wouldn’t die, “she’s going to appeal losing all that money until the end of time. I feel bad for Albert Hunt’s kids.”
“Don’t feel too bad for them,” Zoey replied, carefully picking through a box of brightly colored glass ornaments for just the right one to put on the tree next, “they just became multi-billionaires. I think they’re pretty happy.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I conceded, “but they haven’t seen the end of Angelica. Not by a longshot. She’ll haunt them, and every last cent, until either she dies, or they spend it all. You know how she is.”
“We won’t have to see her at the party tonight, will we?” Zoey asked warily, now visibly torn between the two blue glass icicle ornaments she held in either hand. She ultimately selected the larger one and hung in on a branch before abruptly switching it out for the smaller one. Then she switched it back and smiled in satisfaction. The two looked virtually identical to me, but what did I know?
“I’m not actually sure,” I told her after a moment, remembering she’d asked a question, “but she probably will be there if I had to guess. She’s still the senator’s daughter.”
Zoey made a comically scrunched up, disgusted face. We’d managed to avoid seeing Angelica for months, but it was bound to happen sooner or later. Despite the fact that The Philadelphia Monitor hadn’t run the Albert murder story, Angelica was much too clever to believe that Zoey hadn’t been involved at all. According to her sister Clara, Angelica placed all the blame for her fall from grace firmly on Tara, but I was dreading the inevitable confrontation between Zoey and Angelica.
“Well in that case,” she said, “I might need to do some work tonight instead of going over to the Ellis house party. You know, edit some stuff, write some stuff, important news work. Urgent too.”
“Clara and Jack will be there,” I offered, trying to convince her. Mostly I was selfishly just trying to avoid going to the party alone. “And Alexander, Madison, and the baby too.”
Zoey sighed dramatically.
“Ok,” she conceded, “I’ll go. But only because I want to see baby Alexander. He’s already getting so big.”
Alexander Durant IV had been born in a Haitian hospital two months ago, and was probably the ugliest, loudest, most obnoxious infant I’d ever encountered. Zoey absolutely loved him, and insisted he was in fact beautiful and sweet. She also got along swimmingly with my cousin-in-law Madison Durant. Zoey was still warming up to my cousin Alexander III, which was only fair; I was still warming up to Alexander III, and I’d known him for thirty-four years.
“Should we put a star or this little Santa thing at the top of the tree?” Zoey asked, brandishing two tree toppers at me. One was a traditional silver star tree topper and the other was a hideous, huge Santa-head that would turn our entire tree into a limbless Santa.
“Star,” I replied firmly, “most definitely the star.”
She handed it to me and I got on my tiptoes to put it atop the massive tree Zoey had somehow procured in less than twenty-four hours. Zoey cheered and clapped when I got it in place.
“Good job!” She told me unnecessarily, but I still basked in her praise. She seemed just as pleased that I had put a star on top of a Christmas tree as she had been when my mission to dock the Starflier with the International Space Station last month had been successful.
“What about your brother?” Zoey asked a moment later, when she had returned to the important business of ornament selection, “Will he be at the party tonight? It’s awful that he had to miss Thanksgiving with your mom and dad.”
I shook my head.
“No,” I replied, “he’s still out in Los Angeles.”
Poor David’s show had been in development hell for the last six months. He was fighting hard to be able to actually cook now and then on his show, but the producers seemed fixated on it being a pure talk show format. As far as I could tell, he was losing the fight.
Despite my attempts to convince him to scrap the idea entirely, David thought the opportunity to transition his wild success as a restaurateur and ch
ef into a media empire was too good to pass up. I loved my brother and believed he could do pretty much anything he put his mind to, but I also recognized that the stress of the past year was taking a serious toll on him. He should have just stuck to cooking. He enjoyed that. He clearly didn’t enjoy the TV business.
Zoey, oblivious to my worries about David, was now happily adding a bunch of little red balls in strategic positions on the tree. She was a very efficient tree-decorator.
“What time do we have to be at the party tonight?” She asked absently as she circled the tree.
“Not until seven,” I said, glancing at my watch to confirm that it was still several hours away, “we have some time.”
“Hmm,” Zoey replied, cocking an eyebrow at me as she rustled through her boxes of Christmas decorations, “do you think we have enough time to take a nap together?”
“I think we might,” I said, smirking and knowing she had no intention of napping, “are you tired from all your decorating?”
“Yes, I am,” she answered, faking a yawn dramatically, “you have no idea how difficult it is to deck these halls properly.”
Zoey was still poking around in her boxes of decorations, and I swept up behind her to hug her close to me. Her body melted against mine, instantly relaxing any tension left over from my workday. Holding her was like picking up a piece of me that had been missing all day. She sighed contentedly, and I wondered if she felt the same way.
“It’s very important to be properly rested,” I murmured playfully into her neck, kissing her over her pulse point until she shivered and turned in my arms to kiss me. Our tongues wrestled for a long moment.
“Besides,” she said with a smile, “if I have to slap Angelica into next week tonight, I want to have all my strength.”
52
Zoey
This was my first visit to the Ellis household, and I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it. As we crawled up the cobblestone drive to the huge, fancy house in the affluent Philadelphia suburb of Waterloo, I gaped.
“It looks just like the White House,” I said, “is that intentional?”
To my left in the driver’s seat, Nathan smiled.
“I forgot to mention that, didn’t I?” He replied with an eye roll, “I don’t know if The Senator built it to look like this, or if it’s just what attracted him to it, but yeah. It’s a tiny White House. The Senator knows what he wants.”
I giggled sporadically at the house ahead of me all the way up until we got to the front door. Apparently, Angelica’s flair for the dramatic didn’t come from nowhere.
I’d never been to a party at the real White House, so I can’t speak to whether the interior was a small-scale reproduction. It was fancy though, with lots of crystal chandeliers and that post-Martha Stuart grey-beige decorating everywhere that was somewhere between a Restoration Hardware and an Antropologie. It was pretty and uncomfortable looking.
Inside the house, a number of strangers in nice clothing greeted us by name. They looked important, but I don’t think I’d ever met them. Nathan, at least, seemed to know them. My role seemed limited to hanging on his arm, smiling, and allowing well-coiffed women that smelled like Chanel No. 5 to kiss me on the cheek.
“Madison!” I called out when I saw the tiny woman through the crowd, “Hi!”
She cut through the people around her and made her way over with the baby in her arms, and I darted as best I could toward her. She was small enough that she could just sort of weave through people’s conversations without interrupting. It’s much harder to do that politely when you’re tall.
“Hey there Zoey,” She said, hugging me with one arm. I inspected and cooed at the sleeping, pudgy faced infant she was carrying in the other arm until she handed him over to me. “Did you two have fun in Florida?” She continued.
“Yes, we did,” I replied, accepting the little, sleeping bundle of swaddling from her, “although I feel like we should never go anywhere and just follow you around all the time because baby Al doubles in size each time I see him!”
Madison looked at the baby affectionately, brushing her fingertips over his little, red cheeks. Alexander IV sighed in his sleep, his little eyelids flickering while he dreamed about whatever babies dream about. Boobs and milk, probably. Maybe pooping.
“I can’t believe how fast he’s growing,” she admitted, “I already sort-of want another tiny one. Is that bad?”
I shrugged.
“Why would it be?” I said, rocking him in my arms, “Who wouldn’t want more of this?”
Madison grinned at me.
A moment later, Nathan caught up to me, followed quickly by Alexander III.
“Nathan,” Alexander said, inclining his head to his cousin. Then he smiled pleasantly at me and said, “Hello Zoey,” in a much nicer tone.
“Alexander,” Nathan replied with matching coolness.
The relationship between these two men was really baffling and bizarre to me. There was no explicit animosity or vitriol between them, but they seemed to regard one another as friendly rivals rather than loving relatives. Madison merely rolled her eyes at their stilted greeting. She clearly thought the relationship was strange, too.
“Hi Nathan,” Madison said pleasantly, going up on her tiptoes to kiss him affectionately on the cheek, “happy Thanksgiving.”
“Thanksgiving?” Nathan replied with mock-incredulity, “That was ages ago. It’s already Christmas at my house. Zoey got us a tree and everything.”
“I can’t believe it’s already Christmas again,” Alexander said, shaking his head in disbelief, and looking at his son, “this year seems to have flown by. I wish time would slow down just a little bit.”
The baby woke unexpectedly then, gurgling in apparent surprise at his own return to consciousness. I offered the now fussy baby to Madison, but Alexander took him instead, rocking him expertly and speaking softly to him until he quieted. Alexander held his son almost reverently. Every time he looked down at the baby he seemed to be both surprised and delighted. Nathan watched Alexander interacting with his son curiously, but when he caught me observing him, he instantly looked away. The tips of his ears had turned red.
“When are you two going back to Haiti?” I asked Madison to make conversation. Hopefully, Nathan and I could go visit them there soon.
Madison, who was always happy to talk about Haiti, unexpectedly grimaced.
“Probably not for a few months,” she replied with resignation, “with everything that’s going on with the family, it’s not really the greatest time to leave the country. Hopefully we’ll get to go back soon. There’s a lot going on with the foundation right now. It’s hard to be away, but necessary.”
I nodded in understanding.
She wasn’t talking about the baby, or Christmas. The physical condition of Alexander Durant I, who was pushing up into his mid-nineties, had taken a turn for the worse. Although I’d still never met the man, his dementia was reportedly worsening dramatically, and he’d contracted pneumonia recently. No one wanted to say it, but he was obviously going to die very soon. Having been through the death of all four of my own grandparents, I only hoped his death was swift and painless.
Our moment of familial cohesion was abruptly interrupted by a familiar but deeply unwanted voice.
“Madison!” Angelica crooned, sweeping up to our little group with a big, fake smile plastered on her lovely features, “let me get a look at that little baby of yours.”
Angelica ignored me and Nathan as she was given the shortest glimpse of Alexander IV that Alexander III could manage before he pressed the baby back to his shoulder protectively. He clearly disliked her intensely. Madison watched Angelica with narrowed eyes. She looked like she might need to pounce on her with the wrath of a mother bear at any moment. Madison was probably only two or three inches removed from her height being a legal disability, but I wouldn’t bet against her in that match up.
“He looks just like you Maddie,” Angelica said, “are
you sure he has any Durant in him?”
My lips parted in disbelief. Rude. Nathan had told me that Madison and Angelica had known each other forever, and hated one another for just as long. It wasn’t hard to see why. Madison’s hands had balled up into fists at her side, and she took a big, slow intake of breath.
“We’re reasonably certain, yes,” Alexander replied shortly, cutting his wife off before she could unload on Angelica.
As the uncomfortable silence grew, Angelica’s strategy shifted.
“Zoey!” She ventured, turning to me instead. “Look at you. What a nice dress. You look lovely.”
“Thank you,” I said simply, not trusting any compliment from Angelica.
“Don’t you think Zoey looks nice, Madison?” Angelica asked, “Zoey could be a model, couldn’t she? She’s so tall, slim, and beautiful.”
Madison and I exchanged a look to acknowledge our mutual understanding that this was an Angelica trap of some type. Nevertheless, Madison nodded in polite agreement.
“Yes, Zoey always looks great,” she said.
“Do you miss your old figure, Madison?” Angelica asked, “Now that you’ve gone full mommy body, and have to take care of baby Al, I can only imagine it’s so hard to find time to work out and lose the baby weight. Maybe you should check out Weight Watchers.”
Madison had literally given birth just two months ago. Even if she’d gained a hundred pounds, it would be deeply inappropriate to mention it, but she was one of the few people that I’d ever seen who looked damn good right after a baby. She probably hadn’t put on an ounce.
I burst out laughing at the stupidity of that comment, and a breath later Nathan and Alexander joined in. Even Madison chuckled.
For once, Angelica looked lost and confused.
I actually felt a bit bad for her in that moment. Her efforts to divide and sow discord were so transparent and sad. She wanted nothing more than to assert her superiority over one of us, and she’d unwisely chosen Madison to unsuccessfully bully. The blow Angelica had suffered had been very public. The trial had gone down on the nightly news in front of the entire country, and Angelica had gone from being America’s princess to literally the most hated woman in America in a relative blink of an eye. It could not have been painless, even for her. Especially for her.
Kiss and Tell (Scions of Sin Book 2) Page 24