But Nash wasn’t Sol. He was sensitive and he listened.
“There’s a girl,” Alex said, trying to be careful.
“Oh? That’s good. Mama always says you need to settle down.”
“I . . . wait, she does?”
Nash nodded, turning his face just long enough to flash him a smile. “She said you’re a family man, you just haven’t figured it out yet. I agree. You’d do well with a wife and children. You’re very loving, Alex. Loyal. I think you’d make a great husband and father one day.”
Oh.
That’s . . . that’s nice to hear. I would like those things one day.
Alex actually felt his face flush hot, but he kept his eyes pinned on the road before him anyway. “Yes, well, thank you. But my immediate problem is that she’s not a local girl. She travels a lot and I’m afraid if I don’t take advantage now, I may not have the opportunity to get to know her better before she’s gone. She’s the first woman I’ve been interested in for a long time, and I can’t seem to help myself around her. I want to escalate things. Far quicker than I should.”
He wasn’t sure if he was being polite or clever with his generalities, but in either case, it didn’t matter. Nash was too damned smart not to catch on.
Not that this was immediately evident. “Do you vote a Democrat or Republican ticket? Are you registered one party or the other?” he asked.
“Yes, but what does that—”
“Do you agree with everything on your party platform? Every little thing? Or do you allow for differences in opinion on certain issues?”
Alex didn’t immediately answer, but of course he allowed for differences. People often weren’t neatly categorized by party platforms even if they voted one ticket. It was a matter of majority agreement, but there was almost always dissension to some degree.
Nash continued. “The point I’m making is, with politics, with faith—with any foundation based on belief that was penned by anyone other than you—you’re going to have points of contention. Everyone practices faith differently because everyone is different. Your Catholicism is going to have a different set of foci than, say, our great-grandmother’s. Churches are run by men, and men are flawed. How can we be sure that creeds against birth control exist for reasons other than to ensure forever-full pews, for example? Other than the whole infallibility thing, of course. I’m not criticizing the institution, Alex, simply suggesting you are allowed to have your reservations about certain edicts and it doesn’t make you a bad Catholic. It makes you a human being capable of critical thought.”
Alex wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he held his tongue, which gave Nash the opportunity to add, “Sex is a basic biological function for most people. Have sex if it makes you happy. Just respect yourself, your partner, and your body, and I think you’ll be fine. Frankly, if there is a God—and I’m personally still debating his existence—but if there is one, I’d be quite disappointed if he had any interest in our bedroom matters. There are so many other, more important things to worry about. Who’s inserting themselves into other people seems petty when looking at war and misery and environmental catastrophe.”
“Environmental catastrophe,” Alex repeated.
How did we get here from Theresa? Oh right. Because, Nash.
But he has a point, I’ll give him that.
“Thank you,” Alex said. “I think I needed to hear that . . . I think.”
“Of course.” Nash settled into his seat, stretching out his long legs as far as the tiny foot wells would allow. “You know, just last week I was reading an article about the ozone layer. Scientists are speculating it’ll be healed over by 2050. Isn’t that marvelous?”
“Yes, marvelous,” Alex said, putting on his signal and peeling off the highway. “You know what else is marvelous?”
“No, what?”
Alex managed a grin. “Ice trucks.”
TWELVE
THE PENTHOUSE OF The Seaside was a spectacular thing to behold. The living room was black and white from top to bottom, with leather couches placed over thick shag rugs and a white marble standing fireplace beneath a large flat-screen TV. Decorative accents filled the room: silver vases with fresh flowers blooming on the mantel. A gilded ministatue of Lady Luck on an end table. Tiffany lamps, a scallop-shell mirror bigger than Theresa, colorful wall prints with ornate chrome frames. Everything fit the aesthetic of the hotel, which was some parts art deco, some parts the New Orleans of yesteryear. It was very precise and very pretty and very Designer magazine.
Then there were the discordant notes.
Squeaky dog toys, including a well-loved hedgehog and a T. rex that’d had its short arms chewed off, littered the floor. Dog beds, both in leopard print and Bedazzled with names—the left one reading Freckles, the right, Doodle—flanked the fireplace. One of those pink fleece Snuggie things they advertised on TV was strewn across an armchair, with Freckles the corgi curled up in the nest of soft fabric. Cat slippers that looked like poached, stuffed cartoon characters were abandoned by the bedroom door. Six thousand romance novels filled the bookshelves, and the shower curtain in the main bathroom, which probably should have been decorated with something elegant like the rest of the room, had rubber duckies all over it.
Rain has happened to this place, and it’s better for it.
“It’s ruined,” Rain moaned. “Completely ruined.”
“We’ll get through it, love.” Theresa had a soggy Barrington stretched across her lap, the little blonde’s head nestled against Theresa’s middle. Doodle, the poorly named corgi puppy, snuggled next to Rain’s stomach in a similar fashion.
“It’s just a little more complicated than we expected,” Theresa added.
“The press is always annoying, but you know what has me the most upset?” Rain’s mouth pinched tight, her lips flattening into two white, wormlike lines. “I haven’t spoken to my mother since I moved in with Sol. She’s disowned me. Having the paparazzi there lets her snoop on me from afar. Every picture allows her to metaphorically shit on my wedding cake. Pardon my French.”
Theresa swallowed an untimely bark of laughter. “Well, no one wants Elise Barrington shitting on their wedding cake, now, do they?”
Rain muffled a miserable squeal in Theresa’s lap. Theresa stroked her head. The stress was getting to Rain; she looked tired all the time and said she was prone to fits of weeping. Theresa completely understood: she’d been Rain’s college roommate when Rain’s father got caught in some call girl-slash-cocaine scandal. The press had hounded Rain for weeks. They were everywhere, to the point Rain needed twenty-four-hour security surveillance to ensure that no accidental nude shots were taken by weirdo photographers hanging out in trees beside their dorm. It’d been horribly stressful. The threat of the same paparazzi crashing Rain’s wedding was harrowing to say the least; the last thing a bride needed right before her high-profile affair was a swarm of hungry, circling sharks.
Theresa threaded her fingers through Rain’s glossy hair, her fingertips grazing the bejeweled choker at the base of Rain’s throat. There was a heart at the bottom initialed not with an A for Arianna but a K for Kitten. Theresa didn’t understand everything about the Sol and Rain dynamic, but she had a pretty good idea of how it worked. The last phone call she and Rain had shared, she’d heard jingling on the phone line.
“Oh, is that Freckles? Say hi for me,” she’d said.
“Hmm? Oh, no Freckles. It’s the bell on my collar. I wear it around the house sometimes. It makes Sol giggle.”
“Oh.”
And then Theresa had changed the subject because she was a coward. An intrigued coward, but a coward all the same.
Her finger found the small metal loop under the heart on Rain’s choker and flicked it.
That’s where the bell attaches, I bet.
“The closer it gets to the day, the less convinced I am we can
fix this,” Rain said, drawing Theresa back to the topic at hand.
“There’s still hope. Sol’s working hard to get you situated elsewhere, and even if he can’t, Vaughan will come up with something to protect you from the press. Your brother loves you and wants you to have a good day.”
Rain rolled onto her back, positioning the snoozing corgi puppy on top of her, the dog’s head nestled between two big, pillowy boobs. The corgi looked content enough, but Theresa worried the poor dog would drown in all that tit.
“Richard said he’d help, too,” Rain said, fussing with Doodle’s ears. “He’s coming down tomorrow with Spencer to see if they can do anything.”
“Good. Are any of your other brothers coming?”
Rain’s face brightened. “All of them. Even Mitchell, though Richard said if he misbehaved he’d let Vaughan punch him in the face again.”
Theresa winced. She’d met the brothers years ago, when she’d visited the Barrington mansion in Connecticut. She’d liked them for the most part, even Tommy, who had an IQ comparable to Freckles’, but Mitchell was a problem. Mitchell liked what Theresa looked like—a lot of people did, she was beautiful—but Mitchell wasn’t used to women saying no to him. He was moneyed and handsome and fit. Despite a wonderful wife named Demi whom Theresa truly liked, he’d spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get into Theresa’s pants. When he’d amped up his pursuit, eventually pinning her to the butcher’s block in the Barrington kitchen whispering illicit promises she had no interest in hearing, she’d had enough. She’d called for help, Vaughan had arrived, and there’d been a punch. And then two punches.
According to Rain, that was Vaughan’s modus operandi: punching arseholes. And Mitchell was a supremo arsehole.
Which is why he’s Rain’s mother’s favorite. Water finds its own level.
She must have worn her consternation on her face, because Rain moved the puppy to the cushion beside her and sat up, her arms wrapping around Theresa’s middle and squeezing. “Are you okay? I know Mitchell’s a sore subject, but—”
“I’ll be fine,” Theresa insisted. “I doubt he’d be so bold.”
“Well, he’s been warned, so maybe not!” Rain offered Theresa a pained smile, which suggested Mitchell might be so bold after all. The notion of Vaughan beating his ass a second time wasn’t much of a consolation, but Theresa would cross that bridge if and when she got there because she adored Rain, and the wedding would be perfect in spite of a trash Barrington brother doing his trash Barrington brother thing.
“We could tell him you had a boyfriend,” Rain offered. “I hate lying, but maybe it’d make a difference?”
“Doubt it. Mitchell’s married, and that didn’t stop him from coming for me the first time.”
“We could ask someone—I bet Alex would do it. Not outright lie, but he’d cover for you. He’s noble and stuff.”
Theresa’s face did a thing. It wasn’t a good thing because she really, really didn’t want to get Rain involved in all her personal stuff, especially not days before her wedding, but whatever expression she wore made Rain sit up so straight she looked like an alert prairie dog.
“What?” she demanded.
“I wouldn’t ask that of him,” Theresa said carefully.
“Why not? I mean, he can be coarse, bu— Oh my God what happened?” Rain grabbed Theresa’s hands with her much smaller ones, her eyes giant and blue in her pink face. “Are you all right? Do I have to kick him? I will, you know. Right in the dingdong. Hos before bros. Bro-in-laws. Whatever.”
I . . oh God.
Cats and bags.
“It’s nothing! Truly.” And she wished that was the truth, that it was nothing, but when a man says he can’t fuck you again and follows it up with an “I don’t need you,” it was something. Not a good something, but something nonetheless.
“We flirted some. He’s difficult, though. Obstinate. Rude.”
So very rude.
“Sol says he’s so uptight, if you shoved coal up his butt you’d get a diamond,” Rain said, snuggling in closer. “It’s weird how different they are. Not just personality-wise, either. Sol’s sort of a Don Draper meets David Bowie, you know? But Alex is . . .”
“A giant,” Theresa finished for her, a tight smile appearing in spite of everything. “A manicured giant.”
“Yeaaaah. That.”
There was a long pause.
“Do you like him?” Rain asked. “I mean, as much as you can on short acquaintance.”
“No!” She said it so emphatically that Rain flinched away. Theresa hauled her back into the hug with an awkward squeeze. “Sorry, sorry. Perhaps I do? A little? He’s attractive, and I . . . after we . . . last night? We . . . it’s nothing. Never mind.”
Rain sucked in a breath. “Oh my God . . . you fucked him, didn’t you?”
“Oh. Well. Oh.” Theresa’s face went hot, and hot meant tomato red. That was the problem with being as pale as paper—blushes sent you from one extreme to the other in short order.
“It’s none of my business,” Rain said. “But you can tell me if you want. Remember when I told you about the Sybian vibrator Sol has?”
Ah yes. The industrial beast of a sex toy. That I found myself browsing for on Google after you talked about how much you came.
“Well, yes, and I know I can trust you, it’s just—yes. I did. Last night.” She hadn’t intended to spill, but oh how she needed to talk about it with someone, and she knew she could trust Rain. She sagged against her short friend, the comforter becoming the comforted as Rain tsked and nuzzled her shoulder. “I don’t even know if I like him. I like looking at him certainly, but he’s difficult and crabby and he said we couldn’t do it again because of the Catholic thing—which, I’m a Catholic, too! I get it—but today he said he didn’t need me to go to the ice sculpture place with him when we’d made plans. It’s obvious he has regrets. So I’ll help with the wedding however you want, but he might not want me around, and after all the Scott crap, I’m not sure I want him around anyway.”
The tears were just as much a surprise to her as they were to Rain. It wasn’t like she’d known Alex for any length of time. She wasn’t that attached nor would she feign to be, but she’d been attracted to him enough that she’d let her defenses down, and crying for betraying her own vulnerabilities by turning into a big ol’ slut for a would-be deacon, of all people . . .
“Hey, hey, it’s okay. Don’t cry. I’m the only one allowed to cry around here.” Rain peppered her forehead with kisses and made soothing noises, her palm running up and down Theresa’s spine. It felt good, and helped to quell some of the rising misery. “Okay, so first? Fuck Scott. He was a huge asshole and I hate his books, so there. Second, I fucked Sol within a day or two of meeting him and it was totally intimidating. I blasted right past the three-date-no-nookie rule, but look where we are! Things happen for a reason. I have to believe that. Was it at least good sex?”
“Oh. Oh, aye. It was . . .” Theresa stopped talking to take a deep breath before collapsing back onto the couch and damn near crashing into a corgi puppy. The dog yapped irritably before circling once, twice, thrice, and licking her forehead. Theresa giggled, because there was no way to not giggle when a puff of a dog was laving you with wet affection. “It was fantastic. The best I’ve ever had.”
Rain sprawled across her body, her head plopping down onto one of Theresa’s boobs. “Tell me everything.”
“Rain!”
“Did you do it in the butt? I would have.”
“Dear sweet Jesus, woman.”
THIRTEEN
DALE THE CHAIN Saw Man was an artiste. Alex stood shoulder to shoulder with Nash in front of the ice truck, their hands wedged into their pants pockets, both of them gawking at the scene playing out before them.
One man.
One chain saw.
One pile of
raccoons.
Dale hadn’t turned around to greet them yet because he was busy carving a fourth bushy tail into the hunk of dead tree before him. The sculpture had to be seven feet tall, and to get the top parts done, Dale stood on a stepladder, wielding his tool with an odd, gratingly loud sort of grace. Ten minutes in, he climbed down so he could work on the rightmost raccoons, finally cluing in to the presence of the DuMonts. The chain saw stopped and the goggles were slid from the face and up to the top of the head.
Dale looked like Tara, from the dark skin to the heavy-lidded brown eyes, to the black hair and slight build. Alex halfway expected him to talk in that interesting dialect of Tara’s, too, but no, he had no accent at all—not even a southern one—when he said, “You must be the DuMont guy. I’m Dale. Nice to meet you. Glad Tara got the message to you.”
Alex extended his hand to shake, but Nash stepped in front of him, motioning at the statue. “This is remarkable. The detail, the way you work to incorporate the grain of the wood. Spectacular work, Mr. Dale.”
Dale smirked. “Thanks. Are you DuMont?”
“I’m a DuMont. I’m Nash.”
“I’m Alex,” Alex said, gently shouldering his brother aside. “The best man. We’re here to get the swan for our other brother’s wedding.”
“Right, that. Sorry about the wedding planner. That sucks the big one.”
“What big one?” asked Nash.
Alex gave him the side-eye. “Don’t worry about it.”
Dale set his chain saw on a picnic table before telling them where to pull up the refrigerator truck. Fifteen minutes later, they had an ice swan that weighed more than Nash situated in the back, the crate strapped in with bungee cords. Alex had made Dale take the top of the crate off so he could look at the sculpture. He was kind enough to comply, not really needing Alex’s explanation about the favor debacle, but Alex gave it anyway as to not be rude.
The Lady of Royale Street Page 10