Olivia resumed her shrieking circle run as Neil and I headed back to the car. She stopped and held out a hand, opening and closing it and calling “Go bye-bye!” so she was clearly not traumatized at the prospect of our leaving. Tony waited, the door of the Maybach held open.
“Thanks, Tony,” I said as I got in.
“Still visiting the foundation, Mr. Elwood?” It was so weird to hear Tony call him “Mr. Elwood” on the clock and “Neil” the rest of the time.
“Um…” Neil glanced to me then away, again, as if he were ashamed. “No. I think…best not, today.”
Though it wasn’t unexpected, my heart still ached. His greatest achievement, the Elwood Rape Crisis Resource Center, had been realized the night Emma and Michael had died. The guilt Neil carried over the fact that the accident had occurred on their way to the gala had prevented him from returning to the building at all. Now that he was more or less back on his feet mentally, he’d been sitting in on board meetings via video calls, but he still couldn’t bring himself to return to the place physically.
I wouldn’t talk about it with him today. It was something he would deal with in his own time, and our conversations on the subject had reached the same exhausted conclusion. Instead, I focused on our interaction with Valerie.
“So, are you just tired of the peace and you don’t want to keep it?” I asked when Tony closed our door. I grimaced at the awkwardness. But one hill to climb at a time.
“Why would you say that?” Neil asked as he buckled his seatbelt.
“Your crack about the baby safety contractor,” I reminded him.
His eyes widened. “What on earth do you mean, crack? I was simply suggesting—”
“That Valerie’s house isn’t safe or that she doesn’t do as good a job at keeping Olivia safe as we do.” I wasn’t going to let him get away with that innocent act. “If she’d said something like that to you—”
“I would have been rightly offended,” he insisted. “But she’s the one who let Olivia roll down the stairs because she neglected to gate them off.”
“She rolled down like four steps, and she was fine. Kids are resilient. Toddler bones are stronger than concrete.” I shook my head. “I love you, baby, but you can’t turn every custody-related thing into a passive-aggressive battle.”
“It isn’t a custody-related thing. We have sole custody. We let Valerie take her for visits.” He’d mentioned that a few times before, and it never sat well with me.
It didn’t sit much better, this time, either. “Is it good for Olivia to see you speak to her grandmother that way?”
Neil made an annoyed noise and looked out the window.
I would not be deterred. “She’s a baby, now, but she won’t be forever. She’s going to notice the friction. And honestly, I can’t believe we’re at a point in our lives where I’m the one defending Valerie.”
Before Emma and Michael’s deaths, Valerie and I could barely stand to be in a room together. Part of it had to do with the fact that I’d done some shady stuff when I’d worked for Porteras, which she ran, now, but most of it had been rooted in unresolved and unrequited feelings for Neil. We’d had a full-on shouting match once, in a public restroom. Not my finest moment. But since Olivia had become the focus of our world—and since Valerie had fallen in love with her current fiancé—there hadn’t been a lot of room for hate in my heart where she was concerned.
“You spent years wanting me to dislike Valerie,” Neil said, an accusation and a reminder at the same time. “Now, I’m not being as warm toward her as you’d prefer?”
“You’re too smart to not know that there’s a difference between our past situation and our current one. Yes, I didn’t like it when Valerie was, like, aggressively trying to sabotage us. But she’s not a hundred percent bad. She’s been there for me when I’ve really needed her. We’re never going to be best friends, but I’m not going to let you treat her like she’s unworthy of spending time with her own granddaughter.”
Now, he looked hurt. “Do you really think that’s how I feel about her?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” I said with a shrug. “It matters how you treat her.”
He considered. “I suppose if you’re defending Valerie, perhaps there’s some truth there.”
“I would never steer you wrong.” I cast a glance to the intercom, to make sure it was off. I lowered my voice, anyway, even though the back of the Maybach was practically a sound-proof capsule. “Speaking of steering, we’ve got another problem to deal with.”
“Oh?”
“Tony. We can’t let him keep driving for us when he’s about to become a part of the family.”
“Why not?” Neil asked, his brow creasing.
“Because it’s weird. How am I supposed to treat him like an employee when he’s my step-dad?” Ugh, that sounded so bizarre. “Am I supposed to be like a teenager asking my parents for rides?”
“Am I supposed to fire an employee who’s been with me for years right before he gets married?” Neil countered. “I understand this puts us in a strange position, but I can’t justify letting him go. What will he do for work?”
“Be a chauffeur to someone else?” There were plenty of rich people in New York who needed people to drive them around, and plenty of companies who hired drivers to do that. “I’m betting there’s some weight behind a personal reference from Neil Elwood.”
“Then, he would have to move into the city. And your mother would go with him,” Neil pointed out.
Oh, right. There was that.
I ignored that part, for now. “Look, Tony already knows a little more than I would like a family member to know about our private lives. Can you blame me if I don’t want that to continue?”
“Tony is bound by a non-disclosure agreement,” Neil reminded me, not for the first time.
“Families shouldn’t have non-disclosure agreements!” I rubbed my temples. “This shit is bananas. B-a-n-a-n-a-s.”
“Oh, dear. We’ve reached frustration level Stefani. This must be quite serious.” With a long-suffering sigh, he relented. “I will carefully consider all of this. And I’ll try to…tactfully discuss the issue with Tony. But only after their vacation. I don’t want to spoil it for them.”
“I don’t think we could possibly spoil Vegas for my mother. And she is going to freak when she gets there.” Since the trip was a gift, I’d really gone overboard.
“I hope you didn’t go overboard,” Neil said, reading my mind, as usual. “It isn’t the money, of course. I just don’t want your mother to feel she has come to us and say, ‘Oh, that was too much,’ is all. She’s very uncomfortable taking our money.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, but does she take it?”
Neil chuckled.
“I got them a great trip. Huge suite, VIP status, Britney Spears tickets—”
“Which I’m sure Tony will appreciate.” Neil looked like he’d swallowed a thumbtack at the prospect.
“Well, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t find any mopey hipster bands playing the Strip.” I reached over to playfully smack his shoulder. “Seriously, the Marcus Aurelius Villa at Caesar’s Palace? They are going to die.”
“It just occurred to me that we’re always sending people off on lovely trips, and we hardly ever go anywhere ourselves,” Neil mused aloud.
My laugh stuttered in my chest. “Excuse me, but what? We go all over the place, all the time. We just went on a trip.”
“To Calumet, for your class reunion. And before that we were in Iceland.”
“No, that can’t be right.” I chewed my thumbnail. Neil and I had gone on all sorts of lavish vacations, hadn’t we? But as I ran through it in my brain, I realized that he was right. The last real vacation we’d gone on was our honeymoon, and before that, a New Year’s trip to Paris. All the other traveling we’d done had been for business or illness or family. My heart swelled with possibilities—we could take Olivia to Disney World!—before deflating entirely.
&n
bsp; “I can’t take the time off work, right now,” I said with an apologetic wince.
“I wasn’t suggesting it as something we should do right away,” he said uneasily. Which told me that, yes, he absolutely wanted to run off and do something.
“Let’s make a plan, okay?” I suggested. “For a real family vacation somewhere. It doesn’t even have to be anyplace fancy.”
His eyebrows rose. “You mean, you and I and Olivia?”
I hesitated. “Um…yeah? She’s a part of the family.”
“Of course she is,” he said quickly, almost offended at the suggestion that he thought otherwise. “I was just assuming we’d go away somewhere, the two of us.”
As nice as that sounded, would we be bad people for not taking Olivia on vacation with us? Would we stick her with Mariposa or Valerie?
“I don’t know… Both sound fun,” I answered vaguely. “We’ll have to discuss it down the road.”
“Yes, we will. We have more important things to worry about this week.”
We did. And I was so counting the hours.
****
Having a long-distance lover wasn’t always as sexy and romantic as it sounded. Because of our vastly different lives, we rarely saw El-Mudad. He split time between his home country, Bahrain, and France, where his daughters lived with their mother. The girls obviously came first, like Olivia did with us, and it had been a while since our custody schedules had synched up. Now that he was about to arrive, time had obnoxiously slowed.
“Will you calm yourself, woman?” Neil teased as I bounced on the balls of my feet, trying to watch the sky from one of the kitchen windows.
Disappointed, I dropped my heels and made a face. “I wish he would just get here already.”
I’d dressed up cute and everything, in high-waisted denim capris and a sheer white blouse over a black Bordelle push-up bra. I’d accessorized with a big red bow around my ponytail.
Neil tugged it as he passed me. “You look like a gift.”
“Do you approve the wrapping?” I teased, then changed the subject before we became consumed with trite present-related innuendo. “What time did he say they were leaving the airport?”
“He texted an hour ago to say he’d just landed. But not that they’d left.”
I mentally calculated the time it took to reach our house via helicopter. “So, he should be here, like, any minute, now.”
“Exactly. So, perhaps calming yourself slightly might be a good plan?” he suggested with a smile as he got a bottled water out of the refrigerator.
“Do you think he missed us?” I asked nervously.
Neil laughed. “No. I think he’s only coming here grudgingly for an entire week.”
I rolled my eyes. “You really don’t do anything for my anxiety, you know that?”
The phone rang, and Neil picked it up. After a few short all rights and yeses, he hung up. “They’re inbound.”
I strained to hear the sound of rotors, but depending on the conditions, our house could be soundproof. “Let’s go out to the helipad. Please?”
He nodded toward the door. “Let’s go, then.”
The beautiful morning had blossomed into an explosion of sun and color. The crisp white light made the tops of the neatly clipped grass shimmer, and the sky was a shade of blue that seemed to exist only on truly happy days.
“Perhaps we should take a car,” Neil suggested. “He’ll have luggage.”
“Oh, but it’s such a nice day,” I protested, but even I wasn’t selfish enough to ask a guest to lug their suitcases across our lawn. “What do we have here?”
We crossed the large paved circle between the kitchen door and the eight-car garage, and Neil punched in the security code to open a door. Eight cars was just a sliver of his ridiculous collection. Most of it was housed in a huge hangar we’d had custom built on the property, but he did have some lovely practical options kept handy near the house.
“What about the Maserati?” he suggested, walking around the front of the nearest vehicle. “It’s a convertible.”
“Oh, yes, please!” I begged, hopping up and down a little.
Neil laughed. “We’re only going to the helipad.”
“But we’re going in a convertible.” No matter how much money we had or how many neat toys we bought, I would always be awed by some of them. Convertibles were a Midwestern sign of luxury and decadence, due to their impracticality as a year-round vehicle.
Neil found the key in the cabinet on the wall, where each hook corresponded to a numbered space in the garage. For some reason, he could keep everything neat and orderly, except paperwork and desk drawers. We got into the car, and I sighed as I settled into the comfy seat.
“Put your belt on.” We weren’t leaving the property, but Neil’s fear couldn’t be reasoned with.
As we pulled out of the garage, the air pulsed. I looked up, blinking in the blinding sunlight, and a shadow passed over my face. The helicopter glided above us, quickly outpacing us on the way to the helipad.
“He’s here! He’s here!” I squealed, clapping my hands. Neil laughed, and it struck me that, for the first time in a very long time, he appeared truly carefree.
I’d missed that.
“I’m not going to drive all the way down,” Neil explained, raising his voice to be heard over the chopping thunder. “I don’t need grass and leaves blowing into my lovely car.”
He stopped the car at the bottom of the hill that served as a noise-dampener between the house and the helipad, and we got out. The wind whipped around us as we crested the rise; the helicopter hovered just feet off the ground and slowly settled. It seemed only a second before El-Mudad pushed the door aside and climbed out, looking like a male model on the way to a photo shoot in some far-off place.
I looked to Neil and caught my bottom lip between my teeth, eyebrows raised in a silent plea.
He grinned. “Go on.”
I launched into a run across the grass. El-Mudad’s laugh reached me on the wind from the rotors, which whined to a stop as I bounded onto the edge of the pavement. He dropped his bag and opened his arms wide.
“You’re here!” I shouted, charging straight into his arms and knocking him back a step. I really wanted to jump up and wrap my legs around him, but we generally tried to be discreet. I settled for his crushing embrace.
“Oh, it is so good to see you, Sophie.” His lips brushed the skin of my bare shoulder, and he said, lower, “My love. I have missed you. Both of you.”
He released me, his gaze moving to Neil casually strolling toward us. I turned in his direction, and my breath caught.
“He is unfairly handsome,” El-Mudad observed with a laugh.
I pushed playfully at his chest. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
El-Mudad’s brown skin was a deeper bronze from his recent stay on the French Riviera, but he apparently hadn’t been slacking on his workouts while he was there. Beneath his gray T-shirt, his chest was rock hard. The weeks of southern sun had brought out deep topaz highlights in his silky black hair, which he wore carelessly combed to the side.
We walked to meet Neil on the grass, and they shook hands awkwardly. “Very good to see you.”
“You two, as well.” El-Mudad said, a teasing crookedness to his smile. He knew as much as I did how much Neil wanted to grab him and kiss him right there, helicopter pilot be damned.
Neil gestured to the small suitcase El-Mudad pulled behind him. “You didn’t bring much, for a week.”
“I didn’t think I’d be wearing much,” he replied. When Neil offered to carry it, El-Mudad declined.
Once we crested the hill and were out of view of the pilot, Neil stopped. Without a word, he took El-Mudad’s face into his hands and kissed him, long and slow. My heart skipped like a stone over water, watching them together. We hadn’t set out to find a long-term lover and beloved friend when we’d propositioned “Emir” in a French sex club. The whole point had been to pick up a stranger and do something
anonymous and dirty, and we had; I’d lain across his lap while he’d fingered me and made me come in front of Neil. None of us had assumed that, years later, we’d be aching with longing when we were apart and overflowing with love for each other when we were all together.
“You did miss me,” El-Mudad said with a laugh as he pulled back. He put an arm out to me. “What about you, Sophie?”
I let him pull me in close to his side. I tilted my face up, and he dipped his head to bring our mouths together; when they touched, I couldn’t hold back my little moan of relief.
“Later,” he promised with a chuckle.
We walked the short distance to the car together, El-Mudad’s arm around my waist.
“Guests get shotgun,” I told him, opening the passenger side door.
“Is this the 2017?” he marveled, running his hand reverently over the glossy white paint.
“It is.” Neil beamed with pride at showing off his new toy. “It’s my latest.”
“What?” El-Mudad sounded scandalized. “Are you living a frugal life, now?”
“Yeah, he only buys one expensive car every six months. We’re really cutting back.” I rolled my eyes and hopped over the side of the car into the back, ignoring Neil’s yelped admonishment to watch my shoes on the seats.
“Would you like to drive?” Neil asked.
El-Mudad shook his head. “I trust you to deliver us safely. But we’ll have to take some of your collection out while I’m here.”
Neil’s face lit up like the Eiffel Tower at dusk. I supposed I hadn’t needed to worry about keeping El-Mudad entertained while I was at work this week.
Neil drove us to the front of the house, not back the way we came. I wondered why that was, until we stepped into the foyer, and he gestured to El-Mudad’s bag.
“We do have a guest room made up for you,” Neil began cautiously. “Unless you’d like to sleep with us?”
“If you’d be more comfortable, please, don’t feel obligated to—” I began, nervous about a possible rejection.
The Sister (The Boss Book 6) Page 9