“She’s calling for backup security. I told her to.”
Cylan, emerging from the hall. Sol whirled only to see his favorite accountant glowering at the swarming press. He’d managed a pair of khakis and a polo shirt, which was a step up from his earlier pajama party. He carried his creased Wall Street Journal under one arm.
“That’s the most boring newspaper in America,” Sol said.
Cylan never lifted his head. “Your point?”
“Next to Nash, you are the most boring man in the world.”
“And you’re the biggest asshole in the world. We all have our character flaws.”
“I’m sorry,” Sol said to his friend. “To interrupt your night. I had no idea.”
“It’s not your fault.”
Sol jammed his fists deep into his pockets. “They’re moving Rain’s stuff out of her room? How?”
Cylan winced watching one of The Seaside’s security staff shove back a too-eager reporter snapping pictures of Sol. “Monica in housekeeping. I already spoke with her. Elise talked a good story, showed her identification and told her she was visiting her daughter. Monica shouldn’t have done it, but she’s new. She understands not to do it again.”
“How did Elise get upstairs?”
“She walked right in. Dora didn’t think to stop her until she was already in the elevator. She called you, and then she called m—” Cylan didn’t finish the sentence because a slender brunette man with a sleek navy suit, a silver tie, and a buzz cut carried a quivering Freckles out of the elevator. Sol was about to intercede, but he wasn’t given the chance. Cylan beat him to it, closing the distance between desk and dognapper in four strides.
“Give me the dog.”
The man paused a moment, eyed Cylan, and attempted to sidestep. “Miss Elise’s orders, sir. I’m her assistant.”
Cylan’s face remained impassive. “I said give me the dog.”
“He belongs to Miss Rain and will be returning with her to Connecticut.” There was something so smug in the man’s voice, so absolutely certain that Elise’s will usurped everyone else’s there, Sol wanted to shove his head through the front window, but before it came to that, Dora ended her call.
“Shall I call the police?” she asked flatly.
“Oh yes. Mrs. Barrington wants scandal, we’ll give it to her.”
Dora started to dial but paused to eyeball Sol. “I didn’t realize who it was at first. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he said.
“I’m not so sure of that.”
“No. You did well.” Sol patted her on the shoulder, not even taking it personally when she brushed him off with an irritated flick of her wrist. He drifted away from the desk as Dora dialed. He grabbed his own phone and texted Brutus, letting him know there was yet another situation requiring his lawyerliness, before heading over toward Cylan who was, yet again, demanding the return of the agitated corgi.
“For the last time, give me the dog,” Cylan said calmly.
“You really should give him the dog,” Sol called out. “He has that tone.”
The assistant sneered in Cylan’s direction. “Who do you think you are?”
The knee that came up to clock the assistant in the jewels took him completely off guard. He yelped, free hand clutching his testicles as Cylan wrestled the corgi away from him. Sol covered his mouth with a closed fist to hide the utter delight stretching his grin from one ear to the other.
I made the mistake of asking Cylan “Who do you think you are?” once, right before my wedding pictures with Maddy.
Those were some ugly wedding pictures.
Cylan ignored the crotch-holding man. He walked back to the office to keep Freckles safe until Rain and Vaughan appeared. The elevator dinged and Sol whirled, expecting Brutus, but no, it was something altogether worse. She was blond and petite and surly looking, in a Jackie-O–style skirt suit and smart black pumps. Elise Barrington didn’t have a hair out of place. There was no wrinkle on her fabric and her makeup was just so. Her lapel pin was perfectly aligned with the straight line of her pearl buttons. Her purse was the same dye lot as her designer clothes.
Seeing her perfect veneer, Sol deduced that she was in fact an evil robot sent to destroy his beloved hotel. And take away his beloved kitten.
“Where’s my daughter?” Her voice was clipped as she glanced over at her writhing assistant, her pocketbook swinging out to smack him on the tailbone. “Get up, Stuart. Where’s the dog?”
“Welcome to The Seaside, Mrs. Barrington. I see you’ve brought a Greek chorus with you.” Sol motioned at the sweating throng on the curbside holding their cameras like offerings to their dark Barrington god. “And the dog is in back, waiting for Rain. She’ll be upset if you displace him, hmm?”
“My nuts,” Stuart rasped.
No one cared.
“Then where’s my daughter?” she demanded.
“Oh, she’s around.” Sol smiled, his voice laced with so much sugar, cotton candy was jealous. “I would recommend having her things put back in her room now, as I’ve called the police, and I’d really hate to have to press charges for theft. It’d be sticky for all of us.”
Elise, being a robot, didn’t react beyond a slight lift of her brows. “I want my daughter, hotel man.”
Hotel man.
Does that mean I get to call you bitchface?
If we’re being honest with each other, that is.
“I’ll get her. Pardon me a minute.” Sol tipped an imaginary hat and slipped behind the counter. He’d just entered the hall when he spotted Rain and Vaughan coming his way from the garage, hand in hand. “Your mother is as charming as a rabid Doberman. I believe your things were moved to her limousine. Cylan intervened before they absconded with Freckles.”
Rain eyed him miserably. “Oh. Thank him for me.”
“You can thank him yourself later. I think he’s busy wiping Stuart’s balls off his knee at the moment, though.” Sol leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead.
Rain didn’t quite get it, but Vaughan did, and he sniggered beneath his breath. “I hate that twerp.”
“Now he’s an emasculated twerp. Party hats for all.”
Rain broke away from them and approached the foyer housing her mother. Sol followed, closer than was appropriate for a regular guest, but he wanted Rain to know he was with her. That there was solidarity if she needed it.
The moment she emerged, Elise motioned at the car. Technically she pointed at the frenzied reporters between the hotel and the car, but Sol was pretty sure she meant the car.
“Go. Now.”
Rain swallowed past the lump in her throat and shook her head, saying nothing. Elise didn’t like that, and for a fleeting moment, the collected carapace cracked to expose the tentacled she-beast lurking below. She recovered quickly, though, tilting her chin up, her nostrils flaring.
“Now, Rain, Vaughan, go get your things.”
“Can’t. Got arrested. Court next month!” Vaughan replied cheerfully.
“I’m sure you can fly back befo—”
“Naaaah.” Vaughan walked up to Rain’s side, slinging an arm across her shoulders. “We’ll wait it out. Droplet might have to testify on my behalf, so she’ll stay with me.”
“No, no, no, no!” The last rang out like a bell, echoing through the lobby and up three stories to the domed ceiling. Elise charged toward her children, reaching for Rain’s arm and hauling her forward. “Enough. Enough of you embarrassing this family. Harwood’s already publicly disparaged you, and what, now you’re going to run off to New Orleans for some tryst? I won’t have it.”
Sol didn’t think, he just acted, jerking Elise’s hand away from Rain’s arm and squeezing her wrist. “If you touch her, I will have you removed from the premises and you will never set foot in here again. I want to be clear on this,
Mrs. Barrington. You will not manhandle my guests.”
“Stop, Mama,” Rain whispered. “I’m staying.”
It was impossible to tell whom Elise was more angry with: Sol or Rain. Her eyes were wide, her mouth set in an ugly grimace that robbed her of her polish. She swatted Sol’s hand out of her face. “Have it your way, Arianna. If you can’t be bothered with your family’s comfort and well-being, your family can’t be bothered with yours. You had better hope this . . . hotel man is willing to provide for you, because I certainly won’t after today.” She snorted at Vaughan. “You as well. You owe the entirety of your free and easy existence to Barrington money. You should at least pretend to be grateful. I’m freezing your accounts until the two of you understand what loyalty means.”
“ ‘Loyalty,’ she says, disinheriting her children.” Vaughan smirked. “Fuck off, Ma.”
Something feral glinted in Elise’s eye, something cold and mean and slithery that made Sol uneasy. His body reacted instinctively, identifying her as a threat to him and his, the hairs on his arms standing on end, his feet twitching to leave or, conversely, attack—he wasn’t sure which. It worsened when she shifted her focus his way, levying all her upset onto him like somehow everything that was wrong in her Barrington world was Sol DuMont’s doing.
“You,” she growled. “You will learn your place.”
Sol grimaced. “I know my place. I’m in hospitality, and at this moment, I’m defending a patron, personal relationship aside. It’s that simple.” Elise looked ready to unleash a tsunami of vitriol, but then the reporters outside parted, allowing two NOLA police officers through the front doors. Seeing them, Elise bit back any further contribution to the dialogue.
Rainbows and unicorns, no doubt.
Sol motioned the officers close and gave Elise his nastiest smile. “Excellent. You were going to have Arianna’s things returned, yes? So we can put this unpleasantness behind us?”
Elise said nothing and turned on her heel, undaunted as she smashed her way through the roiling paparazzi to duck into her limo.
Two minutes later, Stuart the Ball-less braved the press to return Rain’s bags to the front desk, limping all the way.
“Get her drunk,” Vaughan suggested. “Three glasses of wine and she’ll be out. Best thing for her.”
Sol watched the bathroom door warily. Rain had gone in five minutes before to wash her face after a lusty bout of sobs and had yet to resurface. He’d knocked twice already, asking if she was okay, and her warbly, pathetic voice insisted she was fine and she’d be out soon. It made him unhappy. He didn’t like a broken kitten.
I wish Cylan had kneed Elise Barrington in the hoo-ha instead of the corgi-napping assistant.
Vaughan stood with a sigh. “I’m going to call Richard and ask him to handle this shitshow. He’s the only one of us Ma listens to and my father’s as useless as tits on a bull, soooooo . . .” Vaughan raked his fingers through his hair. “You got Rain while I take care of family drama?”
“I’ll do what I can,” Sol said.
And what he could do was, in fact, wait for her to reappear and order a bottle of fruity zinfandel from room service. Vaughan wasn’t kidding; three drinks in and she slurred like her tongue was two sizes too big. He stroked her hair, he held her hand, even as she babbled on and on about how her mother had never liked her and how being a Barrington was as much of a curse as it was a blessing, and “oh, listen to me, poor little rich girl.”
Then she’d passed out, midsentence, head lolling like she had no spine. Sol swept the hair from her face and pulled a fuzzy blanket over the lump of slouchy kitten. For a girl just over five feet, she snored like a goddamned grizzly bear.
She’s adorable.
Sol swirled his whiskey around in his glass and sipped, trying to find pleasure in the familiar burn, but there was none. He was listless; he didn’t trust Elise. She’d all but threatened him, and if she wanted to put pressure on him, how would she do it? Through Rain, certainly, but she’d already cut her off. What else was there to do other than thrust her out of her life?
My brothers. My mother. The hotel.
I put nothing past her.
The malaise was a cold, dead lump in his middle, and before he knew it, he was reaching for his phone to contact his other favorite outlet—the one who wasn’t Cylan-shaped and currently baby-sitting a corgi while Rain cavorted through pink-wine-flavored drunk dreams.
“Maddy,” he said when she picked up after a pair of rings.
There was a long inhale, Her Gloriousness obviously nursing her e-cigarette—or her bong because that wasn’t out of character—before she erupted in a raspy torrent of giggles. “I was going to call you tomorrow! Good to hear from you, dove. Kiss kiss. How’s your cupcake?”
“Passed out. And wonderful. I adore her. Truly. But there’s been a hitch.”
He kept the explanation brief, which wasn’t tough to do because Elise hadn’t been explicit and there was the possibility that she’d simmer down and let the whole thing go, especially if Richard intervened on Rain’s behalf.
“My God, she’s a thundercunt,” Maddy said. “Well, you know if she gets meddlesome I’ll always help, but maybe she’ll go home and get laid. Blow a gardener, etcetera, etcetera. It takes the edge off, I’ve heard.” Maddy groaned and there was the squeal of furniture shifting beneath her. Sol could picture her sprawled out on one of her white overstuffed leather couches in her private library, the tiger at her feet. Or maybe she was on the divan she kept by the French doors overlooking her hedge maze, because of course she had a hedge maze, she was Maddy Roussoux, and damn it, if she wanted a hedge maze she’d damn well have one.
“I like unleashing them in there when they’re drunk. It’s like mice in a lab experiment,” she’d said once, sipping a Riesling and standing on her veranda. Two Oscar winners and an Emmy nominee had been calling out helplessly midmaze, all looking panicked that they might encounter a minotaur at the next turn.
Sol had smirked around his cigarette. “Ever a voyeur, dear.”
“Always.”
Sol snapped back from his reverie. “Talking to you is bad for my health. You always make me want a cigarette,” he said, reaching into one of his forty pockets because Andres was a madman. Finding them all dolefully empty, he hit the carton in his desk, tiptoeing out onto his private terrace. His eyes never left Rain’s huddled form.
“Something’s going to kill us. We might as well enjoy ourselves in the meanwhile, hmmm?”
“Cheerful!” Sol lit the cigarette and groaned in rapture at the first collision of minty smoke and lungs. “So where are you anyway? Beverly Hills?”
“Mmm. Though I miss my boat. I’m thinking about setting sail again. You should bring the cupcake out for a visit. I can meet her, try and steal her from you, and then we’ll have oodles and oodles of sex. It’ll be like the old days.”
“This is different, Maddy. I’m serious about not sharing,” he said quietly. “I’d like to keep her.”
“Ohhhhh? The sex is that good? That’s delicious! Does she know yet?”
Sol peered at Rain through his haze of menthol smoke. Less-than-genteel roars rumbled from her chest. Spittle pooled at the corner of her mouth. Hair covered half her face and some was sucked up into her nostril every inhale. Her dress was askew, exposing creamy skin and a splash of freckles. Everything about her was such a clusterfuck. She was a clusterfuck. It was the most excellent thing he’d ever known. “I think she does, yes, and it’s more than the sex, though that’s fantastic. It’s . . . well. It’s her. She’s amazing. Sweet and smart and funny and off-kilter. She’s my new favorite drug.”
“Oh dove.” Maddy’s voice was so soft that for a moment he worried that she was sad, like the admission of him moving on had injured her, but then she followed it up with, “Then I will move heaven and earth to make sure it happens for you. Whatever
I can do to help, it’s yours. Even if I have to feed Elise Barrington to a crocodile, I will.”
“Promise?”
Maddy giggled, utterly delighted. “Anything.”
TWENTY-SIX
RAIN GROANED AND rolled over. She didn’t remember getting into Sol’s bed. She vaguely recalled sitting on his couch after blubber time and hitting a bottle of wine until she couldn’t feel anymore, but beyond that? Nothing. She still wore all her clothes from the night before, stain from dinner included, and when she sniffed it, it smelled like fish casserole. Her mouth felt like she’d stuffed it with sour cotton balls, and she certainly hoped she hadn’t breathed at Sol at any juncture or surely his face had melted off.
Like that scene in Raiders.
Focus, Rain.
But focusing huuuuuuurts.
The clock flashed noon and yet it was dark in the bedroom thanks to the thick velvet drapes. She pulled a pillow over her head and breathed in the scent of Sol’s cologne from the sheets. The last time she’d indulged in twelve hours of sleep had been when her mother was going every other month for “business meetings” with her art dealer, Hans, at the Riviera. That’d ended a few years ago, but oh how Rain missed Hans. He’d de-vinegared her life for a while.
Not anymore.
Mama’s as doucherific as ever.
The thought of her mother made her stomach hurt, but that wasn’t something lingering in bed could fix. Rain forced herself up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, desperate to put all of it behind her.
“Hello?” she called out, hoping she didn’t sound too pathetic. Three glasses of wine wasn’t exactly gin blossom territory, but her head felt heavy all the same.
“Rain.” It wasn’t Sol’s voice, but Cylan’s. There was a light tap on the closed bedroom door followed by a “May I?”
“Yes, of course.”
And this time I’m not even topless!
The King of Bourbon Street Page 19