by July Hall
“It’s not a date,” Charles said, though he couldn’t deny a surge of gratification. At least she got jealous. “Josephine is an old friend, nothing more. I’ve made sure Stephen and Rosalie both know that.”
“Does Josephine know?” Sandra asked. “And, uh…Josephine who?”
“Josephine Banks. One of the Bankses of Lower Merion. Her ex-husband made a fortune in Silicon Valley. Now she’s enjoying half of it.”
“The Bankses of Lower Merion,” Sandra muttered. “Wow. So you two used to be a thing?”
“A long time ago.” Charles did the math in his head. “Nearly eight years.” God, really? Where had the time gone?
Sandra’s eyes widened again. “That is a long time. Why would Stephen and Rosalie want to dig her up now?”
“Dig her up?” Charles asked incredulously.
Sandra turned red. “Oh, you know what I mean. You’ve dated other women since then, right? Why her?”
“I grew closer to her than anyone else,” Charles admitted. “We got along well. But it ended.”
“How come?” Sandra asked in a small voice, as if she didn’t really want to know the answer.
Then she shouldn’t have asked. He wouldn’t lie to her. He could have said that he hadn’t found Josephine attractive or suitable as a long-term partner. Instead, he said honestly, “It was too soon after Eleanor’s death. I wasn’t ready for anything serious, and if we’d stayed together, that’s what it would have become.”
Sandra blanched.
“Sandra, these things happen. We parted on good terms. I remember her fondly.”
He hadn’t meant that to be provoking. But Sandra’s face shuttered, and she looked at him with the same polite, perfect smile she gave any stranger. “Just as well,” she said. “It’s not like we would have been able to hang out at the wedding anyway.”
“Sandra,” Charles growled. Jealousy was all well and good, but not this façade, this retreat. “I haven’t spoken to her in years. She’ll sit next to me at the head table. After that, we might not speak for several more years. That’s all there is to it.”
To his relief, Sandra’s perfect smile cracked a little. “I…I know,” she said.
He reached out and tugged gently at a lock of her hair. Soft as silk. “That’s all there is to it,” he repeated. “All right?”
Sandra’s empty smile vanished, and she sighed deeply. She sounded embarrassed when she said, “Sorry. Of course I trust you, Charles. You’re not—” She cut herself off and blushed.
“I’m not what?” Charles asked. He rolled his eyes. “A rake?”
“You’re not Bradley,” she said. That brought him up short. “You’re up front with me. I appreciate it. I’d rather know the truth than if you sugarcoated it or something.”
“Yes,” Charles said. “I’m well known for the way I sugarcoat the truth.”
That broke the tension. She laughed softly and looked down into her lap. Then she looked back up at him with a warm gleam in her eyes that took his breath away.
“You could be a rake,” she said. She unfurled, relaxed, and put her arms around his neck. “If you wanted to. You wouldn’t even have to try. They’d be lining up for you.” She slid a hand through his hair, making his scalp tingle.
Oh, no. She wasn’t doing this again. He’d just about dragged himself off the ledge, into a place where he could be reasonable and think rationally. He wasn’t about to let her turn his brain into a hormonal soup.
Comparing him to Bradley? Really?
“I doubt it,” he said. He put a restraining hand on her hip before he could lose himself. “You’re sure your sister won’t make trouble?”
Sandra froze. The playfulness went back out of her eyes; he hadn’t been prepared for a sudden feeling of loss. “I’m pretty sure,” she said. “She told me she wouldn’t.”
“She told you that she wouldn’t tattle,” Charles pointed out. “There are other ways of making trouble.” Like encouraging Sandra to have second thoughts. Making her feel bad about herself and her choices.
“Kristen’s got her own stuff to deal with,” Sandra said. “Let me worry about her. I’ll tell you if I think there are going to be any problems, I promise.” She rested an uncertain hand on his shoulder. “I’ll be up front with you too. I don’t want any lies or misunderstandings. Being in the dark sucks.”
He couldn’t help a rough chuckle. Well, just so long as they knew where they stood with each other.
Maybe it didn’t have to be so bad, settling. He hadn’t had anything like this in his life for ten years. Sandra brought him so much pleasure. He had no business grinding his teeth because she didn’t want to give him her heart and soul on a plate a month after they’d met.
It was still so early, and Sandra wasn’t Eleanor, who’d been born in Charles’s world. This was an adjustment for her. Her reaction to the jewelry proved as much.
“I was wondering something,” Sandra said. “Uh, I was thinking earlier and I realized I don’t know what your mom’s name was. No big deal or anything, I’m just curious.”
“Patricia,” he said. An odd question, but not an outrageous one. He wondered why she seemed hesitant to ask it. “Patricia de Koning, before she married my father.”
“De Koning? Sounds…” She pursed her lips. “Dutch?”
“Oh, yes.” He felt a sudden, surprising pang of longing for a woman who’d died nearly thirty years ago. “I remember Father calling her his little Dutch girl. She had everything but the pigtails and the cap.”
“Blonde and blue eyes, huh?” Sandra edged a little closer to him. He found himself putting an arm around her, and she settled against his side. “But she was American?”
He nodded. “My father was the second son. Not in much of a position to attract international heiresses.” Maybe that was why he’d been so bad at business, too. Leon had grown up not expecting to take the helm. But if that was the case, how the hell did you explain Bradley? Had that gene just skipped a generation?
“No, but you are,” Sandra grumbled. She rested her head on his shoulder. “I bet you could wander into somebody’s castle and walk back out with a princess.”
Charles kissed the top of her head. “I don’t really ‘wander’ anywhere.”
She chuckled and put her hand on his knee. For a moment, they sat together peacefully, looking into the fire. Charles’s urge to eat her alive had vanished, at least for the moment. Sandra was at his side and happy to be there. That was enough. After the Hong Kong roller coaster, some peace and quiet was just what they needed.
Sandra’s stomach growled loudly enough to wake the dead.
“Oh!” She sat up at once, putting a hand over her abdomen. “Sorry. Kristen and I never did get around to eating lunch.”
Charles checked his watch just to make sure he wasn’t imagining things. No, it was well past eight. “You haven’t eaten since breakfast? When was that?”
“Six thirty,” she said sheepishly. “I’ve been kind of running on adrenaline. I guess I didn’t notice.”
Maybe that was another reason she’d looked so pale when she arrived. Charles frowned at her. She shouldn’t be careless with her health. “I’ll have something delivered.”
“You have three refrigerators,” she reminded him. “And don’t tell me that there isn’t a box of cereal in that whole kitchen.” She stood up and smiled down at him, her copper hair framing her face and glowing in the firelight.
Charles rose to his feet, took her in his arms, and kissed her. She melded to him instantly with a sigh.
“Hello,” he whispered against her mouth.
She gave him a silly, happy smile. “Hi.”
How could any man not be content with this? Nobody else held Sandra this way or tasted her kisses. It didn’t always have to be about more, more, more. This was enough.
As he followed Sandra to the kitchen, Charles wondered how much longer he’d be able to lie to himself.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
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��You didn’t take any pictures of Hong Kong?”
Her mom sounded disappointed. Cathy Dane loved to travel, and while she loved running the family lumber business even more, Sandra knew she regretted all the lost chances to get out of town sometimes. And she’d always wanted to go to China.
“Sorry,” Sandra said while she loaded plates into the dishwasher. There were a lot of plates. Her parents had hosted Thanksgiving this year, so the house had been swarmed by grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins, most of whom had wanted to know when Sandra and Kristen were going to find themselves some husbands. Grandma Anne, their maternal grandmother who’d also moved upstate, told them that she’d seen on the news that some women reached menopause really early.
Sandra and her sister didn’t usually find many occasions for solidarity, but they’d managed it today.
“I didn’t even know you were going until you were already back,” Mom complained. “Such a short trip. You went halfway across the world for two nights?”
“That’s how they live in the fast lane, pumpkin,” Dad said, grunting as he lugged a full garbage bag through the kitchen and toward the back door. He stopped to give his wife a kiss on her temple, where her red hair mixed with gray. “Sandra’s part of the jet set now.”
“No, she’s not,” Mom said. “She’s our baby.”
“That too,” Dad agreed. They both turned fond smiles on Sandra, who grinned in spite of herself.
Maybe she was hiding a huge chunk of her life from them, but she still had awesome parents. And awesome genes, too—if Sandra looked as good as her mom at fifty-two, then she’d offer sacrifices to any and all gods who had something to do with it.
They wouldn’t have much else in common. Where Sandra was quiet and reserved, even shy, her mom was all fireworks and skywriting. She’d tried to help Sandra when she was being bullied in school, but hadn’t been much good at it; Cathy Dane’s M.O. was to walk right up to trouble, look it in the eye, and say, “Oh yeah?” She hadn’t been able to understand why Sandra couldn’t do the same.
Sandra’s dad was different. Franklin Dane was the quiet type. When Sandra came home crying from school, he didn’t tell her to stand up to the bullies or go tell a teacher. He didn’t tell her that boys picked on her because they thought she was cute. He held her tight and counseled patience, and when patience only led to a busted lip, went to the principal. It didn’t make Sandra any friends, but the active torment stopped, and when she finished middle school, he’d pulled some strings to get her a fresh start at another district in ninth grade.
She’d learned all her lessons in the meantime. Kids were animals, and she hadn’t seen a whole lot of evidence that adults were much different. They just learned to hide it. They gave it new shapes and names. Instead of punching you, they’d stop talking when you entered a room. Instead of calling you ugly or stupid, they’d make passive-aggressive remarks.
Since she wasn’t her mom, the only way Sandra knew how to deal with that was with courtesy. Keep smiling, keep your chin up, never show weakness. Never let them see you sweat.
It had worked, and her parents were proud of her success. She could see it in their smiles. When she’d won the fellowship to Paris, her mom had called everyone she knew to brag.
Now, as Sandra’s dad took the garbage bag through the back door toward the trash cans, Mom said, “I can’t believe you went all that way and that man wouldn’t even buy what you found for him.”
“No, I told you, that’s not how it works,” Sandra said. She pushed a strand of hair from her face and then realized she still had dish soap bubbles on the edge of her hand. “Mr. Zhou and Mr. Magister had to agree to trade something, and they didn’t.”
“Some people have more money than sense.” Mom squirted dish detergent into a roasting pan and began filling it with hot water. Sandra watched the bubbles rise. Then Mom gave her a steely-eyed look. “Are you sure this isn’t punishment for dumping Bradley?”
“Punishment?” Sandra shook her head. “I don’t think comping me on an international trip where I made new business contacts” —she managed not to wince— “counts as punishment. I even stayed in a really nice hotel,” she added, wondering if the lobster burger would help.
But her mother was not to be distracted. “It just seems fishy to me. Sending you to China on a wild goose chase when you could have been working for that nice old Greek man instead.”
“Mr. Mykoulos’s penthouse is coming along fine,” Sandra reassured her. “He wants everything to be ready in time for a big Christmas party. He gets in on the twenty-first from Athens. The whole place will be, uh, shipshape.”
Pun most definitely intended: he’d made millions in the shipping industry. And he did indeed seem like a nice old man. Prone to making off-color jokes, but that was all. When he’d met Sandra months ago, he’d clasped a hand over his heart and demanded to know who the vision of loveliness was. He’d done the same thing with the real estate broker and the housekeeper. Where Richard Zhou had wanted to fuck her for a piece of porcelain, Alexios Mykoulos called her koritsi mou: “my girl.”
Charles had handled that a little better when she told him about it, but he hadn’t been thrilled.
The memory stung her unexpectedly. “Let me do that,” Sandra said, pushing in front of her mother to take over scrubbing the pan.
“Let it soak for a little while first,” Mom suggested.
“I’ve got it.” Sandra put on rubber gloves, grabbed the sponge, and began rubbing the rough side against the pan with all her might.
It felt good. Worked off some tension. She hadn’t seen Charles since Sunday, when she’d spent the night at his place—at least now she didn’t have to make up stories for Kristen, though her sister was still wary. Their time together should have been as sweet as always: they’d eaten, talked, made love, fallen asleep in each others’ arms. In the morning, they’d left by separate entrances for work, and she’d tried not to think about how she’d left a toothbrush in his second bathroom. A toothbrush was not symbolically significant. You could get them in a pack of three at Duane Reade.
It should have been fine. Charles had explained why he’d given her such an extravagant present, and it had nothing to do with Sandra being a shameful secret, as she’d feared. He’d wanted her to look as dazzling as the moneyed women at the wedding. She should have known it would be a competitive thing with him. Charles approached life on a scale she couldn’t even imagine, but he hadn’t meant anything sordid by it.
And yet the night had felt off, somehow, as if they’d both been trying to pretend that the emeralds, or Richard Zhou, or Kristen making her feel cheap hadn’t happened. She and Charles had never needed to try before. Everything they did together usually felt natural, even inevitable. Something was still off-kilter.
Sandra was horribly afraid that it was her.
That was Sunday. It had now been three nights since they’d been together, and she was getting antsy. She was so hungry for him that her skin seemed to tingle, and it didn’t feel like it was all about sex.
“Stop thinking about him.”
Sandra almost jumped. She turned around to see Kristen packing leftovers into plastic containers for refrigeration. Thankfully, their mother had disappeared.
She didn’t bother pretending. “Sorry,” she said, letting all the sarcasm into her voice that she wanted. “Excuse me for missing him on a holiday that’s supposed to be all about family when I can’t even tell ours about him.”
“Boo hoo. That’s your choice.” Kristen forced down a thick lid over a container full of green beans. “Where is he spending the holiday?”
“At the North Shore house.” Rosalie had insisted. She called it a warm-up for the wedding, “spiritually preparing” the home to be filled with guests and well-wishers in just over a week. “And it’s not just my choice.”
“He’s not here to hold a gun to your head, is he?” Kristen put the green beans in the fridge and began spooning the remains of yam casse
role from its dish into another plastic container. She seemed to struggle for a second and then glanced at Sandra and said, “I think you should tell Mom and Dad.”
Sandra stared at her. “Are you serious?” she hissed, glancing around. But Mom was nowhere to be seen, Dad was still messing around in the backyard, and Scott was vacuuming the dining room. She could hear the whirring noise.
Kristen shrugged. “They’d probably be better about it than I was.” She looked ashamed for a second. “And it’s not like they’re going to hate you. Maybe they’d understand.”
Sandra looked at her for a moment in disbelief. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll tell them about Charles right after you tell them about smoking up with your study group.”
Kristen made a face.
“What? They were our age once. They probably experimented. Why would they judge?”
“Fine, fine,” Kristen growled, and returned to the yam casserole. “I get it.”
Silence fell, no easier than it had ever been between them. The last week had been awkward. But…still, they were the only ones who knew each others’ secrets. And even if they cooperated based on a policy of mutual destruction, it was still a kind of sympathy, wasn’t it?
“Uh, you know,” Sandra offered, “I’m going to get a blowout and a mani-pedi on Saturday before the wedding. Indira said she might, too. You could come with us if you wanted.”
Kristen stared at her.
“What?” Sandra said. “It’s fun. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”
“I can paint my own nails,” Kristen said. This was true. She’d spent most of high school painting them black. “And we have a hairdryer. Why would you pay someone to do that for you?” Her voice dripped with scorn.
While the color mounted in Sandra’s face, their mother swept back into the kitchen. She looked between her daughters, sighed, and said, “What now?”
“Nothing.” Sandra returned to scrubbing the pan, aware that she probably sounded sullen. “I just invited Kristen to go to the salon with me before the wedding on Saturday. She’s not interested.”