Dixon cut his gaze to the right. “Oh. Uh, I had a question about the accommodations for the guests. For my parents, I mean.”
Corinne squinted at him. “I had a long conversation with them about that last week.” She’d invited Herman and Gwendolyn Shackelford to stay at the estate in Meriweather, where the rehearsal dinner and wedding would take place, but they’d decided to stay in Edgartown instead.
Dixon tugged at his collar. He looked like he was about to say something, but he was interrupted by the return of the waitress, this time bearing three plates of food. “Lobster soufflé,” she said as she set them down.
Corinne frowned. “We didn’t order these.” The waitress smiled mysteriously. Corinne peered at Dixon and Avery. “You guys ordered without me?”
Avery just shrugged. Dixon’s throat bobbed. “Try it.”
Corinne shrugged and took a bite. The consistency was creamy, and the lobster was fresh and perfectly seasoned. It reminded her immediately of something she’d eaten in Meriweather. “Amazing,” she murmured, scooping up another bite.
Dixon glanced at Avery, and his friend gave him a knowing nod. “I’m happy to hear you say that, because the chef is going to do our wedding.”
Corinne set down her fork. “But we already have a caterer. The chef from L’Auberge.” Everyone wanted the new French chef on the Manhattan culinary scene. His three unmarked restaurants around the city had already been awarded Michelin stars. Evan had secured him more than a year ago.
Dixon cleared his throat. “Don’t freak out, okay? But there was an issue. That’s why Evan called me today. He had to back out.”
“Back out?” Corinne’s heart sped up. “But our wedding is in less than a month!” Her fingers sought out the hem of the tablecloth. Slowly, she began to pick at a loose thread.
“I know,” Dixon said calmly. “Evan knows too. Like I said, she sent us here. Everyone who’s been to this place loves it. And get this: the chef used to work on the Vineyard—he knows the local fishermen, he knows all the good spots for produce, and he’s free the weekend of the wedding. He and I have already talked, and everything’s set as long as you’re cool with it too.”
“Seems like a decent guy,” Avery piped up, and then had the good sense to stand and excuse himself for the bathroom.
After Avery was gone, Dixon peered into Corinne’s eyes. “Problem solved, right? Right?”
“I don’t know,” Corinne said, feeling scattered.
“Well, I do. This is going to be great.” Dixon handed Corinne her fork. “Now, take another bite of soufflé.”
Corinne did as she was told, chewing it thoroughly before swallowing. “You and Evan have known about this all day, and you didn’t tell me?” she asked, hurt. She looked at Avery’s empty chair. Even he’d known. She imagined Dixon prepping him beforehand. Man, she’s going to panic. Help me talk her down.
“Hey.” Dixon reached out and caught Corinne’s hand. She looked down. Unconsciously, she’d unraveled a whole line of the tablecloth’s stitching; a long red thread dangled to the floor. “Evan didn’t want to worry you,” Dixon said gently. “And neither did I. You’ve been working really hard. And really, the chef here is going to kill it—in fact, there he is now.” His gaze moved past Corinne, toward the back of the restaurant. “He wanted to introduce himself.”
Corinne turned toward the bar and watched as a figure in chef’s whites walked toward them. At first his face was in shadow, but then he walked into the light, offering them a mild smile. Corinne took in his broad frame, his chiseled face, his slender nose and deep-set eyes. He had dark, wavy hair, some stubble on his face, and the kind of smile that seemed slightly teasing, like he knew something you didn’t.
Corinne’s jaw dropped. She actually felt herself shrink down in her chair. It was a man she hadn’t seen in years but had never forgotten. His face was less tanned, his hair longer, his body a little more toned, if that was even possible.
For a second she was transported back to that summer in Meriweather, when Dixon had broken up with her and she’d felt so lost, realizing for the first time that no matter how much she planned, how right they were together, she couldn’t force him to want her back, no matter how many unanswered messages she left on his cell phone.
She’d gone out with Poppy in town one evening, drinking too much rosé at a bar overlooking the water. When they finished a bottle, another appeared, then another, all gratis; Poppy had that effect on people. The hours went on in a blur of silly conversations with guys who stopped by to meet her cousin, a blend of laughter and inside jokes that would never be as funny again. But whenever she looked up, there was someone watching her. Will, he finally introduced himself, but it wasn’t until he was leading her under the dock, the Atlantic lapping at the sand, that she realized he had been waiting for her the whole time.
She kicked off her loafers; the sand was cool and grainy under her feet. Dizzy with wine, they leaned toward each other and kissed. It felt strange for Corinne to kiss someone new after only being with Dixon for so long. And the kiss was so different from Dixon’s. She wanted more, but she restrained herself, breathing hard and staring at him. “I don’t do things like this,” she’d announced.
“Neither do I,” Will said.
Corinne laughed. “You seem like exactly the type who does.”
Will shook his head. “You don’t know who I am.”
“You don’t know who I am,” she challenged.
Will had stared at her. “Yes, I do. Everyone does.” And then he’d kissed her again.
“Hello, Miss Saybrook.”
Corinne blinked, suddenly back in the dim light of the restaurant. She unthinkingly spun her wedding ring around so that the yellow diamond faced the inside of her hand. “H-hi.”
After so many years together, Corinne sometimes thought Dixon could read her mind, but when she looked across the table, he was only smiling bemusedly. “You know each other?”
Will glanced at Corinne, then looked away sharply, angling his body more toward Dixon. “Yes. We do.”
“Well, that’s even better.” Dixon extended his hand to Will. “Thanks so much for helping us out, man. You’re all for this, right, Corinne?”
Corinne swallowed. The scar on her torso started to itch. But she couldn’t just sit there, saying nothing, so finally she looked at Dixon and smiled. “I can’t believe you kept this a secret.”
Will gazed steadily at Corinne. “It’s amazing what secrets people can keep if they want to,” he said.
And then, just like that, he nodded and returned to the kitchen.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollinsPublishers
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6
Later that evening, Rowan fumbled with the lock to the penthouse apartment on Horatio and Greenwich Avenue she’d owned since graduating from law school. She collapsed on the cognac-colored leather couch in the living room, her head buzzing from the two Maker’s on the rocks she’d had with a guy from her running team. Greg was in great shape and could run a sub-3:30 marathon, but his conversational speed was slower than her grandmother’s. She’d ordered the second drink just to get through it, James’s words looping through her mind all the while: You have to give people a chance. But she simply couldn’t help comparing Greg with James and coming up short. Poppy always said that more dates increased the odds of finding someone great, but Rowan feared that more failed dates just proved that she would never find someone who measured up.
A large shape darted into the living room, claws clacking against the wood floor. “Jacks,” Rowan groaned as her one hundred-pound Bernese mountain dog, Jackson, jumped into her lap. Bert, the Chihuahua, appeared next and yapped at her feet. Rowan gently kneed Jackson back down and patted Bert’s head. Both animals took off down the hall and started barking in the be
droom.
Rowan shut her eyes, knowing they were dying for a walk. She could have paid someone to do it in the evenings, but she liked going herself. West Side Park was so peaceful at night, and she could let them off leash. But it was almost ten, and she was too tired.
A light shone from Rowan’s office, which was off the living room. The computer monitor was still on, probably from her housekeeper Bea’s dusting earlier in the day. Even from her couch, Rowan could tell that the Blessed and the Cursed was on the screen. Bea swore she didn’t read it, but Rowan knew better. The lure of the site was akin to passing a traffic accident—you couldn’t not pause and look.
Rowan rose, walked to her office, and peered at the screen. Pictures and gossip items about her family members took up the entire page. “Aster Saybrook Is Out of Control,” read the bold-print headline at the top. “This girl’s life is most definitely cursed,” read a comment beneath the article. “I’d bang her,” wrote another commenter; two hundred and six comments followed. Below that, there was an article about Corinne’s upcoming wedding: “Sink or Swim: New Coxswain Chef to Navigate Waters of Meriweather Wedding.” After that was a photo of Rowan’s twin brother, Michael, on his way to his dermatological practice in Seattle, and a shot of her other brother, Palmer, with his family at their estate in Italy, where Palmer headed up marketing for the Ferrari Formula 1 team. The website speculated that Rowan’s brothers didn’t work for Saybrook’s because Papa Alfred didn’t think they were smart enough, but that wasn’t true—they just weren’t interested in jewelry.
There was also a segment that cited new evidence in the plane crash that had killed Poppy’s parents two summers before. Bullshit. If the experts had finally found the black box in the depths of the Atlantic, Rowan and her family would be the first to know, not this idiotic blog. And finally, at the very bottom, was a piece about Rowan herself, jogging in the park. “Ro on the Go.”
She clicked on the link, enlarging the photo. Her face looked confident, and her legs were strong and supple. Whenever she saw paparazzi pictures of herself, she felt as though she were looking at someone else altogether—someone more glamorous, more together than she actually was. She closed out of the site, wishing she could turn off the public’s fascination with her family with the same ease.
The doorbell rang, and the dogs barreled back into the foyer. Rowan hurriedly shushed them as she walked to the door. A familiar face appeared in the peephole. “James?”
“Hey, Saybrook.” Poppy’s husband offered a boyish smile when she pulled open the door. His hair was unkempt in a messy-hipster way, and his nails were bitten to the quick, something he used to do before his band, Horse and Carrot, performed.
Rowan looked past him into the empty hall. “Where’s Poppy?”
“Actually, it’s just me.” James shifted his weight. “I came from work—I had a late night finishing up on a launch.” He had given up film to work as a creative director at a tech company. “You mind if I come in for a sec?”
Rowan stepped aside so he could enter. Jackson bounded up and put his paws on his shoulders. “Oh, Jackson,” Rowan scolded.
“He’s fine.” James patted the dog’s fluffy head.
Rowan walked into the living room, and James followed. He sat down on the couch and looked around. The grandfather clock in the corner ticked noisily. “Did you redecorate?”
“Two years ago,” Rowan admitted.
“It’s very you.”
Rowan tried to see her apartment through his eyes. She had several leather pieces and distressed-metal side tables. There was a large propeller from an old Charles Lindbergh–era plane on the wall, and an antique metal plaque for a defunct brand of cigarettes hung near the window. Compared with Poppy’s feminine touches in their own place, it looked like the inside of a cigar bar. It wasn’t lost on her, either, that James hadn’t seen this place in years. He and Poppy rarely came over—with two small kids, they found it much easier to entertain at their house.
She cleared her throat. “Can I get you something to drink? I have water, lemonade, beer—”
“What about Scotch?”
She held his gaze for a moment, then crouched down to the antique cabinet where she kept bottles, as though this were all completely normal. There was a half-drunk bottle of Glenfiddich; she grabbed that and two crystal tumblers. The amber liquid burned her nostrils as she poured them both a few fingers’ worth.
She handed one to James. He belted it down. “So what’s going on?” Rowan asked casually. Her heart, she realized, was pounding, though she wasn’t sure quite what she was anticipating.
James cocked his head. “Can’t an old friend come see his buddy?” He shifted on the couch. “It was fun hanging out at Skylar’s party. I miss you.”
Something inside Rowan wrenched. She raised her glass and clinked it to his. “Well. Cheers.”
James slugged it back. Then he raised his head and wiped his mouth. Rowan handed him the bottle, and he poured more. A few moments of silence ticked by. “Remember that time we skipped the bill at the Plaza?” James suddenly said.
Rowan blinked at him. “That was years ago.”
James shut his eyes. “I forgot my credit card. And you were like, Hey, let’s ditch! I’ve never laughed so hard in my life.”
“It was your idea, not mine,” Rowan chided. A bartender, dressed in a tuxedo and tails, had dashed out after them. James and Rowan looked at each other, and each swore the other had paid. After the bartender left, cash in hand, they doubled over in laughter, imagining the headlines in the paper the next day.
“Heiress Dines and Dashes?” James said now, clearly thinking the same thing.
Rowan snorted. “Ro-Ro Has No Dinero.”
“That old guy could move fast, though.” James took another slug of Scotch. “Though not as fast as Jell-O Shot Alex.”
Rowan groaned. “Jesus. Are you trying to make me want to kill myself?” Alex had been in the philosophy department at Columbia and had asked Rowan to a party he was throwing. Despite the fact that he could debate the pros and cons of Foucault and Derrida, he’d downed a batch of Jell-O shots in under a minute and then tried to grope Rowan.
“I don’t know why you went out with that guy,” James scolded.
Because I didn’t have the courage to go out with you, Rowan wanted to say, taking a drink instead.
She thought back once more to the night she threw the party for him at Meriweather, when she almost had said something. Poppy had found her in the bathroom. “You’re missing all the fun!” she’d said, bursting in as Rowan sat on the edge of the tub, trying not to cry. Poppy had leaned over the vanity to touch up her makeup, but then she seemed to sense Rowan’s distress. “Are you okay?” she’d asked, blinking hard. “Am I hogging James?”
“Of course not,” Rowan sputtered.
Poppy got on her knees on the bath mat and looked straight in Rowan’s eye. “Ro. Is he just a friend?”
Rowan swallowed hard. Had Natasha said something? Was it obvious? It was humiliating, suddenly, especially because James clearly wasn’t interested in her. She wasn’t the kind of girl who pined. And she wasn’t the kind of girl who came in second.
A hard shell formed around her, blocking off her feelings. “Of course he’s just a friend,” she said firmly, returning Poppy’s gaze. And that was that. She’d made her choice.
Now, she and James drained the bottle of Scotch, and Rowan found some red wine in the kitchen. As she poured them glasses, they talked about how they’d once crashed a girl’s bachelorette party and wound up in her limousine. They reminisced about James’s band and their most memorable gigs, including the time they rented an inflatable bounce house to sit next to the stage. “Ah, the sex hut,” James said, clasping his hands behind his neck. “One of my best ideas yet.” A faraway look crossed his face. “That bounce house was like a water
bed.”
Rowan flushed. They hadn’t talked about James’s conquests in years; she was out of practice. “Ew,” she said, mock-disgusted.
James grinned. “She didn’t think so. Until I punctured the thing.”
“You punctured it?” Rowan recalled how the bounce house had leaned left toward the end of the night, one of the castle turrets limp. Like a penis, had been the joke.
“My keys were in my pocket,” James explained. “The thing almost swallowed me up. I had to hunt for my pants butt-naked.”
Rowan pictured James trapped inside the bounce house without any clothes on. Then she felt a guilty twinge. Was it a betrayal to talk about James’s player past like this? She wasn’t sure Poppy knew about it—she had never asked, and Rowan hadn’t shared. Rowan wasn’t sure why she hadn’t told, except that it seemed manipulative, as if she was hoping it would make Poppy like James less. Besides, he had changed because of Poppy; she’d made him better, as she made everyone better.
A renewed sense of drunken euphoria swept over Rowan, and she decided she was making too big a deal about all of this. She looked at James and blurted: “I forgot you were like this.”
“Like what?” James cocked his head. “A great deflator of bounce houses?”
“Well, yes. You tell a good story.”
“Well, I haven’t forgotten that you can hang,” James said, leaning forward and placing his hand on her thigh.
Rowan stared at his hand, thinking how she used to marvel over his long, slender fingers. He wouldn’t be touching her right now if he weren’t drunk.
But then he leaned toward her. A sizzle darted up Rowan’s spine. Out of the corner of her eye, she spied a photograph of herself and Poppy on the mantel, their arms around each other’s shoulders, ecstatic smiles on her faces.
She pulled away. “I think we’re wasted.”
“I’m not.” James’s voice was suddenly sober. He placed his hands on his knees, a pained expression on his face. “Rowan . . . I think Poppy’s cheating on me.”
The Heiresses Page 6