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.”