by Nic Saint
The moment the fourth date had rolled around, he and Grover had exchanged excited text messages. And on the occasion of the fifth date, they’d even dared hope against hope that their dream would finally come true.
When the engagement had been announced, champagne had flowed, and for the first time in years, Falcone had actually shed a tear. Since everyone had assumed he was one of those medical anomalies who don’t possess tear ducts, this had taken even his closest relatives by surprise.
And now this. A curt text by his daughter, announcing her engagement was at an end, and the wedding, which had promised to be the social occasion of the season, was off!
He’d been on his way to Long Island when the message came in, and he’d almost landed his Lamborghini in a ditch. Oh, God, he lamented. What had he done to deserve this? Well, he knew the answer to that, of course. For years he’d been so busy building his empire that he’d fatally neglected his family. Charlene hadn’t even known she had a dad until she turned three, having always figured that Nanny Velma who had been raising her was her mother, and Velma’s husband Fred—coincidentally Falcone’s gardener—her dad.
While Charlene was growing up, Falcone had been jetting the globe, or confined to his office expanding his empire.
And then there was Rick. He’d been a surprise gift from his first wife. The young man had often remarked he’d been quite surprised that his father wasn’t the wizened butler he spent so much quality time with, but the sour-faced man who dropped by once or twice a year to hand him an FAO Schwarz gift card.
Like his first marriage, his second had run its course, but Falcone wasn’t the kind of man to be thrown off his game by two failures, and had gone on to marry again, yet again, and then once more. The third, fourth and fifth Mrs. Falcones hadn’t borne him any children, and now at an age where his fortunes were secure, and a man starts thinking about his legacy, he’d belatedly realized he should perhaps have paid a little more attention to his offspring.
When reaching out to Rick, this had proved disastrous. The young man, having adopted his mother’s surname, seemed to have developed some sort of aversion to his father, and had gone out of his way to tear him down, even going so far as to launch a personal vendetta in the New York Chronicle, and gearing up for a series of scathing articles denouncing the well-known billionaire.
And then there was Charlene. He’d managed to make up for the years of neglect by showering her with gifts and everything her little heart desired, and had grown quite fond of the young woman.
Now if only he could marry her off to young Bomer, his deepest wish would be fulfilled.
He rolled into Happy Bays, his mind a whirlwind of emotion, and decided that he needed to tackle this thing one errant child at a time. First he needed to stop Rick once and for all, and then he could start thinking about Charlene, and convince his infernal daughter that Bomer was the right guy for her after all, if only because his last name was Calypso.
Chapter 30
“You’re Falcone’s son. And you only mention this now?” She was feeling that Rick was holding all the cards, and occasionally allowed her a small peek at his hand, before whisking them out of reach again.
“I’ve never told this to anyone, and have asked my father not to mention the fact either, so you’re pretty much the first person ever to learn about this.”
This sobered her a good deal. “You mean it’s a secret?”
“Not a secret, per se. More like one of those family skeletons. The kind you want to leave in the closet and never take out.”
“But if you’re Falcone’s son, then why—”
“Am I dead set on exposing him as a fraud, a cheat and a scoundrel? Good question.”
“I thought so,” she said, well pleased. She was starting to think like a reporter, she felt. Pretty soon she would be grilling POTUS about what he and FLOTUS had for dinner last night.
“Well…”
They’d arrived at Casa di Amore, the love nest that Bomer’s father had once built, and Felicity said, “Don’t tell me. It’s a long story, and we just ran out of time, right?”
“Well, it is a long story.” He turned to her, and fixed her with a lively stare, his blue eyes boring into her. “Would you like to have dinner with me?”
Her eyebrows rose, and so did the corners of her mouth. “I would love to,” she said before her critical mind had the chance to kick in. “And then you will tell me all about this secret son business?”
“I promise that I will spill all my secrets, as long as you spill yours.”
She snorted. “I have no secrets to spill, I’m afraid. My life is…” She was going to say ‘boring’ but managed to restrain herself. “…an open book.”
“Well, it’s a book I would love to read,” he said earnestly.
For a prize-winning reporter he didn’t stint on the clichés, and it encouraged her. If even the prize-winning reporters of the world were allowed to make a linguistic boo-boo, she had nothing to fear.
“Only if you’ll read my next article and critique it,” she added quite reasonably. Striking while the waffle iron was hot was a Bell family motto.
He smiled. “I promise.”
They stared at each other for a bit, then finally Rick said, “I promise I will go easy on you.”
The moment the words had left his mouth, his cheeks reddened and he looked away. If he hadn’t, he would have noticed that Felicity was blushing too. It hadn’t escaped her attention that the atmosphere in the van had hotted up considerably, and that the butterflies were flitting merrily about in her stomach.
At that moment, her long-cherished beliefs about men and women were nothing but a distant memory, and there flitted before her mind’s eye the appealing prospect of being clasped in Rick Dawson’s arms, being kissed by Rick Dawson, and even being wildly and passionately made love to by Rick Dawson.
Perhaps a good thing for her, then, that Rick Dawson opened the van door, and after a brief grin stepped from the vehicle and walked up to Casa di Amore.
She was still staring after him when she realized her mouth was ajar. Not an appealing sight. She closed it with a click and, putting the van in gear, drove away from the house, feeling as if the skies had suddenly opened and a fleet of angels with harpsichords had fluttered down, strewing rose petals in their wake.
It took her a while to put a name to the strange sensation she was experiencing. It was love, she was quite sure of it, and it took her by surprise. Having never experienced the elusive emotion before, she was surprised to find it both sweet and achingly painful, like a loose tooth that you can’t help worry with the tip of your tongue.
Rick’s handsome features filled her mind, and she thought how ironic it was that love would finally enter her life in the form of the man she’d despised, then had despised even more, before falling for him like a ton of bricks.
Wasn’t it always like this, though? Just when you think something can’t be further removed from your grasp, and you decide to give up, it suddenly falls into your lap with a soft thud and smiles up at you, gives you a cheeky wink, and says, “Didn’t see that coming now did you?”
No, she definitely hadn’t, but now that love had come to town, she planned to make the most of it. And with a mind filled with possible outfits to wear, makeup to apply, hairstyles to try out, and clever comebacks to practice, she stomped her foot on the accelerator, and headed straight into Happy Bays.
She needed to find Alice and she needed to find her now. She couldn’t pull this off without her best friend giving her moral and logistical support. And she knew just where to find her.
Parking in front of Charlie’s Funeral Delight, she stepped from the van and headed inside.
Chapter 31
There is much to be said for a refreshing drive in the country, especially when living in a city as congested as New York. And yet all Chazz Falcone could think about when he arrived at Casa di Vitae, his home in Happy Bays, was how to approach this family business tha
t had been preying on his mind all through the drive over.
He wandered through the house, a perfect copy of his friend Grover’s Casa di Amore, and opened the sliding doors looking out across the North Atlantic. As he lowered his bulk onto a bench on the patio, he heaved a weary sigh. He rarely came down here, the last three of his wives preferring to spend their holidays in more popular spots like St. Barths, the Maldives or Saint-Tropez in the summer and Aspen or Davos in winter. But he’d recently divorced Mrs. Falcone the fifth, and suddenly felt a strong urge to make this place his home.
He’d been gradually slowing down lately, entrusting the various CEOs of his companies with more and more of the day-to-day duties, and finding himself with more leisure time on his hands as a consequence. So he’d been thinking about taking up his old hobby again. To throw out a line and then peacefully sit back and wait for the fish to bite had been the joy of his younger years, long before another, more time-consuming hobby had captured his imagination: that of collecting greenbacks.
And he sat there, tranquility stealing over him, when his phone rang. Picking up, he saw that it was his friend.
“Grover.”
His friend’s gravelly voice assaulted his eardrum. “What’s all this nonsense about Charlene breaking off the engagement?”
“It isn’t nonsense. She broke it off all right.”
“I know. But why?”
“Probably some lover’s tiff.”
“Tell her to get over it.”
“I can’t. She won’t listen to me.”
“I’ll have a word with Bomer. Perhaps he can enlighten us.”
Whether Bomer was capable of enlightening anyone was a point of contention, but Falcone disconnected and returned to his musings on the quiet life. Before long, Grover was back with more news from the front line.
“Chazz.”
He held the phone away from his ear this time. “What gives?”
“I talked to the boy and he gibbered on and on about some misunderstanding. Apparently he decided to lay low in Rick’s apartment.”
“Rick?”
“Your son. Remember him?”
How could he not? “What did he do a stupid thing like that for?”
“He said he needed peace and quiet to finish this project I’ve handed him.”
“Oh, right.” Falcone had felt from the start that to hand that idiot Bomer a project of such importance was an obvious sign that Grover was getting weak in the head. Even though the young wastrel had managed to pull himself together over the course of his recent engagement, that still didn’t change the fact that the boy was an intellectual prawn. Charming enough, but not much going on as far as brains was concerned. Not that he’d ever mentioned the fact to Grover.
“He was working on his project when Charlene breezed in.”
“What was she doing at Rick’s place?”
“Apparently Bomer had been playing hide and seek, dodging her phone calls, and she didn’t like it.”
“I can imagine.” Charlene was the kind of woman whose calls you dodged at your peril.
“So she decided to talk to Rick, seeing as he and Bomer have always been pals. Imagine her surprise when instead of a friend she found a fiancé. She immediately jumped to the conclusion he had about a dozen girls tucked away.”
“And had he?”
“Had he what?”
“A dozen girls tucked away?”
“No, he hadn’t. At least that’s what he tells me. Of course with Bomer you never know.”
“Messy business.”
“Very. So I decided to do the sensible thing and call Rick.”
Falcone rose from his chair so quickly he was hit by a dizzy spell and forced to sit down again. “You what?”
“I talked to Rick. What else could I do? He’s the only one who will give it to me straight. You know Rick is not a liar.”
“I know,” he said, clutching his head. Whatever his faults, Rick was a paragon of honesty, one of the many points of contention between father and son. Whereas Falcone felt you can’t make a success of yourself in life without bending a few rules, Rick had always been a stickler for sincerity. “And what’s the verdict?”
“Apparently Bomer really did ask him to lend his apartment so he could work on his project. And as far as Rick knows, there are no other women in the picture. Looks like the boy turned his life around when he fell for Charlene.”
“Good for him,” muttered Falcone, still thinking dark thoughts about Rick. Though he was probably exaggerating things, he personally blamed his son for ruining Charlene’s upcoming nuptials. What did he have to go and lend Bomer his apartment for? That was simply asking for trouble.
“So I asked him to look into the matter and he has agreed to do just that one thing. He’ll talk to both parties, and see if he can’t make Charlene see the light.”
“Did he now?” Just in that moment the front doorbell jangled, and he remembered he’d arranged to meet Jerry Vale and Johnny Carew. “I’ve got a meeting, Grover, but keep me informed, will you?”
“Will do. Oh, and Chazz?”
“What?”
“I asked Rick to drop that piece on you. Again.”
“And?”
“No dice. He’s still as pissed off as ever, I’m afraid.”
“Thanks, Grover,” he grumbled before disconnecting.
As he walked to the door, his mood hit the depths. It wouldn’t be long now before Rick published that silly exposé of his and spread it all over the internet. And even though Falcone had his finger in a lot of pies, he didn’t have the power to stop a story from going viral.
Chapter 32
Bomer was glad when the tense conversation with his dad was finally over. It was as if Dad couldn’t understand a simple thing: Charlene had ended the engagement, not Bomer. And yet it was as if Dad was blaming him. But hadn’t it always been this way with the author of his being? Whatever happened, Dad just naturally assumed Bomer was to blame.
But this time it definitely wasn’t, and he’d said so as forcibly as he dared.
Over the course of the past few hours, he’d gone from incredulity to confusion to the realization that he was well out of it.
It was something his friends had told him over and over again: that he was making the mistake of a lifetime by getting hitched up with Charlene. He hadn’t listened. Too infatuated for his own good. Too much under that formidable girl’s spell. But now that the spell had been lifted, he saw that they were right all along.
For the first few months of their engagement they’d never been apart for more than a few hours, and even then Charlene had kept in touch via a constant monitoring system of hourly phone calls, Facebook messages and a never-ending stream of updates. Only when his father had put his foot down and had issued his ultimatum and he’d gone into hiding, had he slowly emerged from her spell. And he’d understood that the Bomer Calypso the world had known and loved had morphed into the man Charlene and his father thought he should be.
As he sped his Porsche along the Long Island Expressway, he began to see that by breaking off the engagement Charlene had actually done him a good turn, and gradually, like a tortoise emerging from its shell, he felt life start to course through his veins again. The top down and the wind in his butter-colored hair, he took a whiff of the ocean air, and finally felt he could breathe again.
He flicked a button on his steering wheel, pressed his phone’s bud into his ear, and soon found himself listening to the familiar voice of Rick Dawson.
“Brother Rick! Prepare yourself for a great feast, my friend.”
“Feast? What feast?” asked Rick, sounding a little alarmed.
“The eye of the hurricane is about to strike fear into the hearts and minds of Casa di Amore with a feast of revelries!”
Neglecting to correct his friend’s mixed metaphors, Rick cut to the chase. “You’re not thinking of joining me, are you?”
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking. Now that I have finally
been released, we need to celebrate, brother Rick.”
“Could you please…stop calling me that.”
“You sound ill pleased, bro—I mean Rick. I thought you would be ecstatic.”
“Well, the last time you phoned you were about to jump out the window of my apartment on the sixteenth floor. I practically had to talk you off the ledge. So I’m just wondering what happened to turn you from a suicidal wreck into this…whatever this is.”
“It just dawned on me that I had a very narrow escape. I was a slave and now I’m free. I was a prisoner and now I’ve been released.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The engagement. It got me into all sorts of trouble, you see. Because of my promise to marry your sister—”
“Half-sister.”
“Whatever. Because I promised to marry Charlene, I had to accept Dad’s proposal. Without money, Charlene would have dropped me like a dead fish.”
“I see that you’ve got her number.”
“I did, and do. Without the family fortune Charlene would have never given me the time of day. And now that she’s kicked me to the curb, I’m finally free!”
“What about your dad’s project?”
“Hang Dad and his stupid project! Bomer Calypso is nobody’s slave!”
“But if you don’t do that project Grover is going to cut off your allowance.”
“So?”
“Which means you’ll have to find a job. You know—work for a living?”
Bomer thought about this for a moment. It was an aspect of the matter he hadn’t given his full attention yet. “Mmmm yes. I see what you mean.” Then he hitched up his shoulders. “Let’s not dwell on that for the present. I’m so glad I’m a free man again that I want to share my joy with all the world.”
“By posting a message on Facebook?”
“By throwing the party to end all parties!”
“Well, as long as you exclude me, whoop it up as much as you want.”