He paused. Rain waited for him to speak again, understanding without being told that Cylan didn’t often talk about personal things. He fussed while he talked, curling the edge of the paper, keeping his eyes averted from her, toying with Freckles’s nonexistent tail.
Another long breath and he continued. “One of her favorites was Gigi. We watched it so much the tape wore out and she had to get a second copy. I could probably recite it from memory, twenty years later. Have you seen it?”
“No, I can’t say that I have.”
“It’s about a girl who’s born into a French family of . . . well. Mistresses, I suppose, by today’s standards,” he said. “They were kept women who never married. Gigi is young and rambunctious and not suited for the consort lifestyle, but her aunts push her into it when a rich friend of the family wants to take her as his lover. Gaston is the character’s name, played by Louis Jourdan.”
He swept his hand over his short black hair. “One of her aunts trains her on how a consort is expected to behave. It changes Gigi for the worse, and both she and Gaston determine that the person she has to become to fit the lifestyle doesn’t appeal to either of them.”
“Does he leave her?”
“Yes, eventually, but they reconcile and she says something—it’s the whole reason I told this stupid story.”
“It’s not stupid,” Rain said quietly, touching his hand. Cylan’s fingers flexed around her note in response.
“You’re kind to say that, but . . . what Gigi says to Gaston, right before they reconcile, is, ‘I’d rather be miserable with you than without you.’ I think it’s relevant here, at least for Sol. Maybe I’m wrong, but it might matter to you, too.”
He had nothing else to add so he stood and walked to the door. When Freckles tried to follow him, he picked him up and deposited him on Rain’s lap without a word. Rain hugged the dog tight, watching Sol’s best friend go, a lump the size of a basketball lodged in her throat.
I don’t want to leave him. I want to see where this goes.
“I’ll be back,” she said to his back, voice warbling. “I promise, but I have to try to fix this. I might be the only one who can.”
Cylan turned his head just enough so she could see his profile and the tight smile playing around his mouth. He held up the paper with her hand-scrawled note. “I trust you.”
THIRTY-ONE
THE BED WAS empty.
“Kitten?” Sol rolled his face into her pillow, catching a hint of her perfume and his shampoo. Sunlight—earlyish sunlight at that—glimmered throughout the room because he’d forgotten to close the drapes the night before. He extended his arm, intending to scoop up some blond and roll her his way for a morning snuggle, but there was no blond to scoop.
He slapped around in fruitless search.
Blankets, bundled sheets. Rubber alligator.
He flung the alligator to the floor.
“Rain?” He sat up. Footsteps outside the bedroom door, and he smiled, but that was short-lived when Cylan popped his head inside, hand lifted, a note wedged between two long fingers.
No. Please, no.
“She’s gone. She left a note.”
It would have been kinder if Cylan grabbed him around the neck and squeezed all the air from his body. He lifted his hands to his face and rubbed, hard, like maybe it’d jostle him out of a bad dream, but no. When he opened his eyes, Cylan was still there, still holding a note, and now approaching the bed in his usual funereal attire.
What time is it?
A quick glance at the clock. Nine.
“She’ll be back, I think,” Cylan said.
Sol vaulted out of bed and snagged the note from his hands to read it. Two words. Two simple words that were supposed to what? Reassure him?
Trust me.
Trust her to what? Trust her to leave? Trust her to insist on handling their shared problem all by herself?
Didn’t I try to do the same thing?
Yes. Damn it, yes, but he’d had his reasons for keeping it to himself, and her sneaking off to confront her mother on her own was one of them. She was vulnerable there. She was a fly walking into a spider’s web. She was good and sweet and she was going up against someone not good and not sweet who would probably convince her that less than a week in New Orleans wasn’t worth all this trouble.
Trust me.
How? How could he when at the first sign of distress, she fled?
“Well, that was fun while it lasted,” he quipped.
“She’ll be back, Sol.”
“How do you know? Maybe, if she’d left the dog, I would have more reason to believe that. But a stack of luggage is hardly a promise, nor is a paper saying precisely nothing. Less than nothing. She could have at least left me a voice mail or—”
“Knock it off!”
Cylan never shouted, and Sol paused, turning to look at his friend. Cylan’s brows were knit together, nearly touching at the center. His cheek twitched and his mouth made an odd, pursed I smell something bad shape.
“She deserves a chance. You keep saying she’s a nice girl. This time I agree with you. She is.” Cylan pointed at the paper in Sol’s hand. “Do you have that little faith in her? Are you not telling me something?”
“No! It’s just . . . I don’t like it. Her mother is clearly looking to drive us apart, and Rain’s young and naive and—”
“So it’s not that you have no faith. It’s that you have no faith for reasons. Listen to yourself.”
Fuck.
Sol eyed the paper with its pretty script, the corners curled up. Cylan was right. He wasn’t saying he had faith in Rain. He was giving a laundry list of reasons why it was okay for him not to have faith.
I don’t want to hope because I don’t want to be disappointed.
“What do you want me to say?” He dropped the note onto the end table and watched it flutter off the side and hit the floor. “I’m not happy that she’s gone. It was good. Is good.”
“I know, and frankly, neither am I. She made you less obnoxious if only because she distracted you from annoying me all day long.” Cylan walked into Sol’s closet and snagged a suit. The black he chose was far too casual, and Sol waved him off, choosing something gray and sleek with a charcoal tie instead.
“You can’t even dress yourself, Gomez. What are you doing?”
“Making sure you’re ready for your meeting with the levee committee. As long as you’re getting dressed, I can leave you alone.”
He thinks I’m going to crumble again.
For fuck’s sake. I’m not that fragile.
“Do me a favor? Get me a pair of black socks, third drawer down,” Sol said, motioning to the bureau on his right. Cylan spun and, without thinking, opened the drawer.
Only to see about a half dozen dildos, a bunch of leather, and a sordid selection of edible lubricants of varying flavors.
“You asshole.” Cylan stomped from the closet, muttering curses beneath his breath as he stalked from the bedroom.
Sol felt like shit about Rain leaving New Orleans. He worried she wouldn’t be back. He worried he wouldn’t kiss her or hold her or touch her again. He dreaded this meeting with the Washington lawyer. He dreaded looking at Tempy for too long lest she light him on fire. He didn’t want any of his hotels or the hotels of his brothers and co-managers in peril. But goddamn it, the expression on Cylan’s face when he realized there were no socks in the third drawer? Sol let out a chuckle despite his otherwise black mood.
Amazing.
Krazinski was a tall, pasty ginger with a suit almost as nice as Sol’s but not quite because he was a sad man with a sad lack of Andres the amazing tailor. He talked fast with a hint of New York to his words. Or maybe New Jersey—Sol could never tell the two apart. It was all razor blades and grit to his ears.
Neither Tempy nor Brutus said mu
ch, not as Krazinski talked about the failing of the levees during the storm. Not during the presentation with the diagram showing exactly how they’d reinforce the levees postdemolition of The Seaside. The legalese sounded impressive, though Sol couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Every once in a while, Brutus’s eyebrows lifted or Tempy checked her watch, like Krazinski was wasting her precious time.
At her rates, it was more Sol’s precious time. He’d be bankrupt by the end of the meeting.
Maddy was also there for moral support. She sat behind the table, hands crossed, fifty-billion-watt smile blazing at Krazinski. She wore a red wraparound blouse that showed off a tiny, lacy black tank top and enough cleavage to stow a Rolls-Royce if she wanted to. Heels. A black power skirt. Dark stockings. Krazinski noticed everything about her, from the patrician tilt of her nose to the crimson paint on her lips.
She’d eat you alive and not even have the decency to burp afterward, you cock.
The meeting droned on, from Krazinski to some woman whose name Sol forgot to a balding accountant type talking about monetary compensations. Sol checked his phone hoping for a text from Rain, but there was nothing.
I miss her and she’s only been gone half a day.
I might be smitten.
“So, that’s where we’re at,” Krazinski said with finality. He sank into his chair, his finger swirling around inside the cuff of his suit coat as he peered from Sol to Tempy and over to Brutus.
He then settled on Maddy.
She winked at him, the tart.
Sol eyeballed his legal team, waiting for the dazzling legal magic to happen. Brutus reached into his briefcase to pull out a number-two pencil and a Chinese food menu, which wasn’t much of an impressive counter to the various and sundry reasons Krazinski laid out for why someone could, and should, steal Sol’s dreams.
“Cashew chicken, but really, maybe later?” Sol said dryly.
Brutus flipped the menu over and wrote two lines, right above the coupon for free fried rice with every pu pu platter. He slid the menu Tempy’s way.
She read it and tossed her head. The beads at the end of her braids clicked together as she reached into her briefcase and riffled through papers.
“March fourteenth,” she announced.
Krazinski reluctantly tore his gaze from Maddy. “Pardon me?”
“March fourteenth. New Orleans Historic District Landmarks Commission decreed The Seaside, a former Confederate hospital, a historic landmark. Brutus, how many historic landmarks has the landmarks commission allowed to be deconstructed for any reason, including the levees?”
Brutus held up his hand, his fingers curling to make a big ol’ donut.
Sol smirked.
Tempy slid a paper with the City of New Orleans logo Krazinski’s way. Sol’s signature was at the bottom of the page, so either someone was very good at counterfeiting, or it had been in a pile of things Cylan had given him to sign sometime last year and he’d flourished the Montblanc without a second glance.
I really should start reading my paperwork.
“How convenient,” Sol said. “Great meeting. Nice tie, Mr. Krazinski.”
Krazinski looked like he wanted to spit tacks.
Tempy closed her briefcase and made her way to the door, her heels clicking smartly on the black-and-white tile. “Call me after you get the landmark commission’s permission, Krazinski, though I wouldn’t hold my breath. Brutus, good to see you.”
“Thank you, Tempy!” Sol called after her. “Though couldn’t you have presented this twelve minutes in and spared us the morning?”
“Shut up, DuMont. You’ll get my bill in the mail.” For once, Sol let someone else have the last word.
THIRTY-TWO
THE CONNECTICUT SKY was as gray as steel wool with no sun on the horizon. It was bleak, it was dismal, and it didn’t look like it planned to get any less miserable anytime soon. It was also cold; thirty seconds in the drizzle and the chill had gone straight to Rain’s bones. She’d told Vaughan to turn up the heat inside the limousine so she wouldn’t shiver pathetically the entire ride back to Greenwich.
New Orleans rain was a half-hour affair and, because of the humidity, refreshing. It came, it relieved, it went on its merry way to give back the sunshine. It was a temporary setback, not a day ruiner.
Connecticut rain was a day ruiner.
I don’t want to be here.
Rain picked up her phone and called her mother again. Ten such calls in so many hours, since her departure from The Seaside, but every call went to voice mail. Her mother never went without her cell, which meant she was punishing Rain for her insubordination by ignoring her. She wanted Rain to wriggle about like a worm on a hook while she unleashed her fury on Sol and his hotels.
It was hard not to fret about what kind of damage she could do to Sol. It was hard not to think about Sol, period.
I miss him.
“She’s probably trying to force the conversation onto home turf,” Vaughan said, watching her slip the phone back into her purse. He closed his fantasy baseball magazine and threw it aside, startling Freckles from his limo-time nap.
Rain scooped up the agitated dog and bounced him until he calmed. “Well, she’ll get it.”
In a matter of minutes, in fact. The limousine had just passed security clearance at the gates of their property.
Barrington House was built at the turn of the last century, the three-story estate designed by the same architect responsible for the Vanderbilts’ house, The Breakers, in Newport. It had much of the same aplomb: it, too, was an Italian Renaissance–style palazzo, with sixty rooms to The Breakers’ seventy. Thirty-five bedrooms in all, twenty baths, two dining rooms—the list went on. Rain had never understood the need for such excess, though she supposed it boiled down to status whoring. But what good was a house that was more museum than home? She could never really play in it as a child, her nanny far too worried Rain would smash in a glass-front antique case or break an heirloom vase to let her run free. Rain had been confined to her nursery on the third floor, at the very end of the west wing.
They’d renovated it when Rain turned twelve, the nursery rhyme frescos painted over to cotton candy pink, the furnishings and linens all pristine white. She’d lived in that room, alone, for over twenty years, separated from the rest of her family. Her brothers were clustered together on the second floor in the west wing. Her parents were on the second floor, east wing. Mama said crying children gave her migraines and Rain had been, according to her mother, an interminable crier when she’d been younger.
“It really was necessary to keep you apart from the rest of us. You were horrendous,” Mama explained.
I am so done with her. With all of this.
The chauffeur opened the car door and flourished an umbrella to escort her into the house. The butler, an old man named Gleason who’d served the family for more than thirty years, greeted her with a stiff bow.
“Hello, Gleason. Where’s my mother?”
“She’s not here, miss. Richard is in attendance in the study along with Mr. Spencer, however.”
Richard wasn’t quite as good as Mama, but he was close, and Rain power-walked down the hall to see him, corgi in hand, as she took a left and then a right, striding into an enormous room overlooking the gardens. The study—which had become Richard’s domain—had floor-to-ceiling shelves of old leather-bound books. A huge mahogany desk angled off at the back, with a tall-back leather chair behind it and a jacquard-printed dark green sofa in front of it. A fully stocked liquor cabinet occupied the corner, the offerings imported or platinum label or whatever it was they did to make booze more expensive. A cherry-manteled fireplace was centered along the right wall, a smattering of overstuffed chairs positioned so that people could admire the Monet above it.
Seated in two of the seats, next to each other, both drinking from a shared bottle
of bourbon, were Richard and John Spencer. Richard looked tired; he’d rolled up his shirtsleeves and loosened his tie without actually taking it off. His suit coat was hung over the back of his chair, his shoes were off, exposing gray-and-black argyle socks. His golden hair was less pristine than usual, tracks streaking from front to back like he’d been raking his fingers through it.
Spencer, who insisted on being called by his surname because it didn’t suit him to be the fifth John Spencer in a row, was still in his workday navy suit. He was Richard’s age but he’d gone gray early, around thirty, so he had a shock of silver hair over tan skin, gray eyes, and a well-manicured dark goatee that was more stubble than actual hair. He was a handsome man, broad through the shoulders and tall, and at one point, before Spencer had married Lucille, his terrible wife, Mama had tried to shove Rain his way as a potential playmate.
Rain had been eighteen to Spencer’s thirty-four. Spencer had politely declined.
And gone on to marry the world’s biggest stealth bitch that everyone hated, Spencer included, but that was neither here nor there.
“Arianna! You look gorgeous, as usual. Good to see you.” Spencer unfurled from the chair to wrap her and Freckles in a warm hug. He was avuncular toward her, but that made sense considering he’d been Richard’s partner in crime since preschool and had watched her grow up.
“John. Richard, where’s Mother? She’s not taking my calls.”
“She’s not taking anyone’s calls,” Richard replied. “I think she’s—hello, Vaughan.”
Rain craned her neck in time to see Vaughan stroll into the room and beeline for the liquor cabinet.
“How’s tricks, old man?” Vaughan asked.
“Tricks are, as they say, fuck awful.” Richard motioned Rain into the seat beside him. Rain didn’t really want to sit. She wanted to handle her mother and then get back to New Orleans, but if sitting would get her information on Mama’s whereabouts?
The King of Bourbon Street Page 24