Nina raised a brow as she forked a few pieces of asparagus onto her plate. “She’s average height for her age. Don’t you have a niece at home? And five sisters?”
“Sofia’s three. My other sister’s kids are all boys. I guess I don’t remember what a nine-year-old girl looks like.”
She giggled at my apparent ignorance. Maybe she was right. I had grown up in a house full of girls. You’d think I would know all about it.
“Olivia is nine,” she repeated. “Her father and I were married the year before she was born. We’ll celebrate our tenth anniversary this June.”
I gaped. Ten years. Ten years. Nina didn’t look old enough to have a nine-year-old kid, much less to be celebrating a fuckin’ tin anniversary.
What did they say about the tin man? That he didn’t have a heart?
Maybe it fit after all.
“So you, what, stay at home? Take care of her when you’re not doing…whatever a socialite does?”
More wisps of conversation were coming back to me.
“She attends a boarding school outside of Boston,” Nina said. “When you saw her, she had just arrived home for the week. Her spring break.” She offered a grim smile. “She goes back Sunday.”
I had heard of people doing that sort of thing, of course. Rich people shipping their kids off so they didn’t have to raise the kid themselves. But frankly, it surprised me. Nina didn’t seem the type.
Just showed how little I really knew the woman at all.
My bewilderment must have shown, because Nina set down her fork and sighed.
“Matthew, if you’re determined to hear my entire life story, I’ll tell it to you. But it’s not very interesting. I truly have nothing to hide.”
I took a big bite of asparagus, then a long drink of wine. “All right,” I said once I finally composed myself. “I’m ready to listen.”
Chapter Nine
Some of the story I already knew from our first meeting. Some I’d pieced together this week after discovering her real name.
She was christened Nina Evelyn Astor, the only daughter of two distinguished New York families. Her father, yes, was a distant relation of the Astors the ones for whom half of New York was named. Apparently I wasn’t wrong in thinking the name was lifted from the street signs. As she told me the night we met, he had left her mother when she was a child and gone to live in London. Her parents never divorced, but Nina had only a passing relationship with her dad.
Her mother, of course, was Violet de Vries, New York socialite and only surviving child of the late Jonathan de Vries (gone before Nina was even born) and Celeste de Vries, one of the last great dames the city’s wealthy were still mourning since her death last fall. Violet was a lush—my word, not hers, but given the number of times Nina referenced white wine while describing her mother, I pieced it together. It was her grandmother, Celeste, who had raised Nina, along with a bevy of nannies.
Like me, she had been abandoned by the people who were supposed to love her. Like me, she had lost the ones who had. Only her loss was much more recent.
“Celeste, I’ve heard about from Eric. Well, him and the papers. Her funeral in November was massive.” I put a scoop of agnolotti on my plate, then served some to Nina. “No, you don’t get to wimp out on the pasta, sweetheart. It’s house made, and the sauce is a double brodo—this reduced stock that’s to fuckin’ die for.”
“I forgot how much you like food.”
Nina watched as I took a bite of pasta, looking, if I wasn’t mistaken, pretty damn jealous.
“Food is a universal pleasure,” I replied. “We only have five senses. Seems like a waste of this short life to deny one of them.” I looked pointedly at her plate. “Go on, then.”
Nina obediently put one of the lamb-filled pockets in her mouth and immediately closed her eyes in pleasure. “Oh my,” she breathed. “That is excellent. My compliments to your friend.”
I smiled with satisfaction. I sort of wanted to order another plate just to watch her make that face for the next hour.
“Celeste willed the company to Eric, right?” I asked as we continued to eat.
Nina nodded. “Yes. He was always the favorite.”
“Despite being the black sheep?”
She nodded again with more than a tinge of resentment. “Yes.”
I’d heard the basics of Eric’s re-entry into his family multiple times at this point. Crazy, rich-people drama, the kind you’d expect to see on one of Nonna’s daytime soaps. Rich matriarch gets a bee in her bonnet about the family legacy. Promises the whole kit and kaboodle to the prodigal heir, but only if he gets married.
She didn’t, apparently, anticipate Eric and Jane being targeted by a homicidal maniac as a result.
“And your mother? She wasn’t available to take things over instead? I mean, why Eric?”
Nina shook her head. “Mother has never been the most…reliable person. I would be shocked to learn if she had ever been under consideration. Her skills now generally revolve around Sancerre consumption and auction attendance. Uncle Jacob—that’s Eric’s father—was the one who was supposed to take things over, but of course he passed when we were children…” She shook her head. “I honestly don’t think the family ever recovered from that, you know?”
I frowned. I had heard that story too. The fact that Eric was the only son of the only son, and that his father had died in a tragic sailing “accident” when Eric was just a kid.
“So Eric loses his dad, the family never recovers, and he takes off as soon as he can only to be rewarded for it ten years later. Have I got that right?”
Nina gave a curt nod.
“But you were the one that stayed around?”
“For the most part. I was actually at Wellesley for school and spent part of that time abroad before I got married. But I was still home quite a bit.”
“And you already had a kid, an heir to the family. Plus, you changed your legal name to de Vries after your dad left.” I tapped my fork on my plate, thinking. “I guess I still don’t understand why Celeste didn’t leave everything to you. Why drag Eric back into the family kicking and screaming when she had another grandchild ready and willing? Didn’t she care at all about loyalty?”
“I thought she did.”
I paused mid-bite of pasta. Like any good prosecutor, I knew when to press a witness, and when to wait for them to speak on their own. Nina was staring at her plate, but the wheels in her head were turning so hard, they were practically shaking the room.
“I asked her once,” she said quietly. “Before she died. I didn’t want to. After all, it was her fortune. She didn’t technically owe me any of it, and the terms of her will didn’t exactly leave me destitute. But Calvin—my-my husband, I mean—he pointed out that I deserved an explanation. After everything I had given her, all the time I had spent with her. He said it should have been me. And I thought perhaps he was right.”
Calvin, huh? Well, that cast a different light on things. Derek was still working on his report on Nina’s husband, but I already knew from my own poking around that the guy was relatively clean. Calvin Gardner’s origins were still a mystery to me, but he had existed on the periphery of New York high society for years. First as a student at NYU’s business school, then later as an investment banker, hopping from firm to firm, fund to fund, until he made his fortune during the late nineties dot-com boom. After he married into the de Vries family, it seemed he checked out of the finance world for good. To do what, I still wasn’t sure.
Now I was starting to wonder…
“So,” Nina continued, “after Eric came back, I asked her why.”
“And?” I couldn’t help it. She was talking so quietly, I was afraid the story would get buried in the din of the restaurant.
“According to Grandmother, I wasn’t a de Vries anymore,” she said. “Not once I became a Gardner.”
“She didn’t like Calvin?”
Nina’s gaze sharpened. “What?”
I shrugged. “I
was just asking. This seems like a punishment.”
“She thought…she thought Calvin was perfectly acceptable, under the circumstances.”
“And what circumstances were those?”
Her gray eyes flashed like a blade. “Matthew, I know you’d like me to say that my husband is a terrible person, but he’s not. The circumstances were that he asked me to marry him, and I said yes. I was young, but it was a good match. And frankly, it still is.”
Is that why you ended up in bed with me? I wanted to snarl. I couldn’t fuckin’ help it. Every instinct I had was telling me that Calvin Gardner was a piece of shit, and I didn’t even know the guy. Something was very wrong about him ending up with Nina, but I couldn’t see what it was.
Maybe it’s you, you jealous fuck.
I cleared my throat. I needed to remember the real reason I was here. It wasn’t to go into a jealous fit about the pretty woman across the table. I had one purpose, and one purpose only: to figure out this family’s connections to John Carson. Whatever they might be.
Nina felt guilty about Eric’s persecution. And I still didn’t have a solid reason why.
“If you don’t mind me saying, you’re taking being passed over pretty damn well.” I took another tack. Return of the good cop, so to speak.
Nina sighed, but relaxed visibly. “At first…well, I won’t pretend I was pleased. But Eric and I grew up together. He’s more like my brother than a cousin. Even after he left…well…I think it’s fair to say that I could never hate him. And he didn’t ask for any of this.”
I tipped my head. “Seems a little odd that the two of you would have been so close. You’re what, three, four years younger?”
“Not quite three.” She shrugged. “We were all each other had.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “Back up. When I met you, you said you were twenty-nine.”
She raised a brow. “And I was. For three more weeks after that too.”
“I missed your birthday.”
For some reason, the idea really fuckin’ stung. Not because Nina wasn’t some twenty-something ingenue anymore—honestly, that never really fit the bill for her anyway. It was because the idea of missing any of her milestones gutted me. Like I should have been there. That I should continue to be there. For the big moments, like turning thirty. For the small ones, like a haircut.
When it came to Nina de Vries, I didn’t want to miss a fuckin’ thing.
Except she’s not yours to miss.
I offered my glass in toast, hoping the bravado would mask the sting. “Well, happy birthday, Mrs. Gardner. And to thirty more, and thirty more, and maybe even thirty more after that. Cincin.”
Nina waited a moment, then clinked her glass to mine with a sadness she didn’t bother to hide. There was something about her response that made me wonder if anyone had bothered to celebrate with her.
“Your husband,” I said. “What does he do? Is he involved in the family business too?”
It hadn’t escaped me that in telling her story, Nina had avoided the biggest elephant in the room. She’d touched on all the major highlights of her life—her illustrious family, her daughter. But beyond our brief exchange, the man hadn’t really come up.
“Calvin?” she asked.
“Yeah, good old Cal.” I hated his name already.
She frowned. “Calvin.”
“How did you and Calvin meet?” I pressed on, though the idea made me sick. “Lots of mutual friends?”
“Not exactly.”
I waited, but it soon became clear she wasn’t going to offer any more than that after she stuffed two agnolotti into her mouth, then two more in quick succession. So I decided to fuck civility and pull out my phone for a quick Google search. Not just of him this time. Of them both.
Photos of the two of them immediately came up, thought nothing yet about their courtship. It was probably buried by features on the Gardners at symphony premiers. Hospital benefits. Gallery openings. Everywhere you’d expect two wealthy benefactors of the city to show up.
Nina, of course, looked stunning in every shot. The woman couldn’t take a bad picture.
“You look like Grace Kelly here,” I said, pointing at one. “That dress is like the gold one she wore in To Catch a Thief. More white, of course, but with that same gleam.”
Her husband, however, was a far cry from Cary Grant.
He wasn’t as terrible looking as I’d originally thought. Just incredibly…ordinary, but like a man trying his absolute hardest not to look ordinary. He had a snub nose and a mustache that came and went depending on the year. His skin had that orange, weathered tinge of someone who spent too much time at tanning salons, with a reddish nose that betrayed a penchant for too much booze. His suits always fit just a little too tight around his midsection, and his hairline conspicuously grew about an inch forward about five years back. Plugs probably. And dyed too. When Nina wore heels—and she should always wear heels with those legs of hers—she had about two or three inches on him, which only enhanced the feeling that he was compensating for something.
As always, it was impossible to hide my shock. This was the guy who snagged the goddess of the Upper East Side? This guy bagged the work of art in front of me?
Ten years they’d been married, she said. Ten fuckin’ years chained to a guy who looked like a round of stale focaccia.
“Put it away.”
I looked up to find Nina watching me. Her expression wasn’t surprised—maybe just disappointed. My reactions had clearly been playing all over my face, and she didn’t like what she saw.
I ignored her command.
“He just looks…different than what I imagined.”
Nina’s eyes narrowed. “He looks exactly how a man of forty-eight should look.”
I was right. That was quite a little age gap there. Which would have made him thirty-eight and her…twenty when they got married. Which meant she was probably a teenager when they actually met.
Nina. A doe-eyed eighteen or nineteen-year-old.
Then walking down the aisle with a moth-eaten motherfucker old enough to be her father.
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
We examined each other for a moment, both of us obviously aware that we were about to have two separate conversations simultaneously—one on the surface, the other in subtext.
“Well,” I said as I tucked my phone away. “Now I know what kind of guy ends up with Nina de Vries.” Your husband looks like he lives under a bridge.
“He’s changed a lot over the years. As most of us do.” He wasn’t always an ogre.
I took a bite of pasta. “So, how did you meet?” How did Shrek land a twenty-year-old goddess?
“Mutual acquaintances introduced us.” It was practically arranged, but I’m not going to admit it.
“Was it a big wedding?” Did your family hate him as much as I already do?
“Not like Eric and Jane’s, but it was nice. We were married at St. Mark’s and had a small reception at the Waldorf. Just family and a few friends.” No one was excited to watch me kiss an orc.
“And Olivia?” Was it a shotgun wedding?
“She was born the year after.” Maybe, but I’m not going to admit that either.
“Why haven’t you had any more kids since then?”
Nina set her fork down on her plate. “Are you finished with the third degree, Matthew?”
I dropped mine too. “Actually, no, I’m not. I have a lot more questions, Nina. And I’m going to keep asking them until I get the whole story.”
“What whole story?”
“The one you’re not telling. By my count, I’ve pursued at least four separate lines of inquiry tonight that you’ve completely ignored.”
“What in the world does my marriage have to do with helping my family free themselves from John Carson?”
“I don’t know yet. But those connections have a way of making themselves clear under the right circumstances.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake.�
�� She pushed several pieces of pasta around on her plate until finally sitting back with a huff. “Just what do you think I’m hiding?”
“I don’t know. You look like you. He looks like him. Something doesn’t add up.”
“You clearly haven’t spent much time in my part of town,” she said dryly.
“It’s the norm for a jailbait socialite to run off with a guy who looks like a shoe?”
“My husband is middle-aged,” Nina snapped. “It happens. Does that mean I should love him any less?”
“Maybe not if I thought you loved him at all.”
“Stop it.”
“Come on, Nina. Women like you don’t just marry men like him,” I rattled on. “You were the heiress, not the other way around, so it’s not like you needed the money. If anything, old Calvin’s the gold digger in this situation.”
Nina pushed her chair back with a screech that startled a few other people eating around us. The restaurant dimmed slightly as she stood.
“I think I’ve had enough,” she said. “Matthew, it was definitely not a pleasure. And if you want to do any more digging into my personal history, you won’t have my help. Good night.”
Before I could answer, she turned on her three-inch heel and walked away.
“Nina,” I called as she strode out of the restaurant. “Goddammit, Nina, wait!”
“Is everything all right, sir?” The hostess appeared.
I watched Nina yank her coat from the rack at the front of the restaurant. “Shit. I mean, no, thank you. We’re going to have to cut this short.” I flipped a couple of bills onto the table. “That should cover the meal and the tip. Tell Noel I said hello.”
“But, sir, your second course.”
“Box everything up. I’ll come back for it.” I dodged around the tables and servers, grabbed my own coat and hat off the front rack, and chased Nina onto Tenth Avenue.
Chapter Ten
“Hey!” I called as I caught up with her. “I’m getting a little tired of chasing you onto the street, Mrs. Gardner!”
Nina whirled around with a face full of fire. “Well, I’m getting a little tired of you throwing insults at me like Molotov cocktails, Mr. Zola!”
The Other Man (Rose Gold Book 1) Page 10