Chapter Thirty-Two
Elizabeth
“You need more sleep.”
My step falters. The way Dominic speaks, the words he says, remind me of the way Tolyan usually nags at me to take better care of myself. Shaking my head inwardly, I resume my way to the table set up by the room service staff in the living room. In a fluffy white robe, his hair damp from a shower, Dominic comes inside from the balcony. My hair’s still wrapped in a towel, my body nude under my own robe.
He pulls out a chair, and I sit, arranging the robe and placing a stiff white cloth napkin on my lap. He takes the seat across the table, which is laden with breakfast staples—bacon, scrambled eggs, pancakes and toasted egg bagels with cream cheese. I look inside the silver bowl and smile a little when I see the cheese is whipped.
He remembered.
I pour him a cup of coffee, black and strong. “I slept well enough,” I say, pushing the cup his way, then serve myself.
“You still have dark circles.”
“Which you’re supposed to pretend not to see. You were doing a good job of that, too.”
“I didn’t notice them earlier.” He frowns.
“Makeup. It does wonders if you know what you’re doing.” L.A. has tons of artists, and I made a point of mastering all the techniques to disguise fatigue and blemishes. I can be sickly and pale, but with a few layers of foundation, concealer, blush and contouring, I can project an image of vibrant, glowing health.
“Better just to get more sleep,” he says.
“I got plenty. It’s rare for me to nap and get over seven hours of sleep later the same day.”
Usually, when I’m stressed or worried, I’m up for a day or two before I can crash. I don’t use sleeping pills or see a therapist for the problem. Pills are temporary and can become addictive, and I can’t see myself opening up to a stranger, even one sworn to secrecy. There’s no such thing as a secret that stays a secret forever. The greater the number of people who know, the faster it’s going to come out.
I reach for half a bagel and spread a generous helping of the cream cheese on it, all the while waiting for him to ask about last night. The vodka’s gone, along with the corkscrew, but surely he has questions.
But he doesn’t say a word, quietly eating his eggs and bacon. The lack of probing bothers me more than an inquisition would.
I put down the half-nibbled bagel and take a strip of crisp bacon from his plate with my fingers. “The hotel probably won’t give me a separate room tonight, either,” I say to fill in the silence and to give him the opening he’s probably been looking for.
A dark brow rises. “Oh?”
“Ming Ming’s behind this. She’s notoriously meddlesome when she decides she wants to be ‘helpful.’ She’s been trying to set me up with men since I was sixteen.”
“Ming Ming?” Outrage, disbelief and something else I can’t quite catch fleet over him. “This is going too far, don’t you think?”
“Yes, but she won’t see it that way. She’s helping.”
“Doesn’t she know you and Nate are—” Abruptly, he clicks his mouth shut.
“We’re just friends. Very close ones…but that’s all.”
Dominic’s eyes narrow, and I can sense his doubts and annoyance.
He doesn’t trust me.
Suddenly, the bacon turns to sawdust in my mouth. “I should check in with my office.”
“It’s Saturday.”
“We’re in year-end holiday mode, which means people are working weekends too.”
I push my chair back and stand up. I pad quietly over the cool floor and pull out my phone from the purse on the coffee table. I have a couple of texts from Rhonda.
Not sure if you saw it, but there’s an article about your brother Elliot and your former stepmom. It also has some photos from the charity dinner at the Sterling mansion. Thought you should know.
Elliot and one of my former stepmoms? I stop, then remember Annabelle Underhill. But as far as I know, they didn’t hang out together at the event. Rhonda’s second text contains a link. I tap my thumb on it.
The phone immediately pulls up a lurid tabloid site with garish red and purple flashing GIFs. I skim the so-called article.
It chronicles how Elliot and Annabelle Underhill, a.k.a. Julian’s Wife Number Three, used to date, but she left him for our father and a fatter bank account—back then Elliot did all right, but wasn’t sitting on a pile of money like he is now. She apparently had sex with Elliot on her wedding day in some closet. Now, having divorced Julian and married a second husband who’s old enough to be her father, she’s realized what a mistake she made and is after Elliot. The pictures accompanying the article show her touching him, showing him bruises on her arms, and so on.
I press my forehead with the heel of my hand. Good God, what a mess. I’ve always known Annabelle is a crass, classless opportunist, but this is too much. At the same time, I don’t doubt the truth of the article. The details are too specific.
Annabelle has nothing to gain by making all this public, which means Elliot’s behind it. He didn’t think twice about releasing a sex tape, so this is nothing—pretty tame, actually, compared to a homemade porn movie.
I text him.
What’s the meaning of the article, Elliot? Are you trying to provoke Dad and Stanton?
I’m not too worried about Stanton Underhill, Annabelle’s current husband. He understands what kind of woman he married, and if she embarrasses and annoys him, he can simply divorce her, using the prenup he undoubtedly had her sign to protect his assets. But Dad is another matter. He’s inordinately proud and vindictive. He won’t take kindly to learning he’s been cuckolded by his own son.
Elliot ignores my text. Since he’s never without his gadgets, it means he’s either avoiding me—hey, truth hurts, especially coming from his sister—or swimming or spending some private time with his wife. I hope it’s the last. That poor woman deserves some serious TLC to make up for another scandal bomb in her married life.
“Problem?” Dominic asks from the table.
I shake my head, then call Rhonda, moving to the bedroom for more privacy.
“Hello, Elizabeth. How’s Hawaii?”
“It’s all right. I miss L.A.”
“Already?”
“Miss work, really.”
Laughing softly, Rhonda updates me on the progress, her voice soft yet brisk. She’s a single mom in her mid-thirties. I hired her as an assistant three years ago. She was living in a homeless shelter with her young daughter, and despite a lot of experience as an event planner and personal assistant, she couldn’t land another job after she was let go.
Rhonda is one of my best people—conscientious and reliable. She hasn’t taken a single sick day since she was hired, and she truly believes in what the foundation does. It isn’t just a steady paycheck for her.
“Patrice wants to talk to you,” Rhonda says.
“Sure. Put her on speaker.”
“Hi, Elizabeth,” comes Patrice’s voice. Husky and deep, it has the gravelly undertone of a smoker. She’s been with the foundation for almost twenty-five years, and I depend on her to run every drive smoothly. “You have a box from Detroit.”
“Detroit?” I don’t know anyone there.
“It’s the afterschool program you funded,” Rhonda adds.
“We funded,” I correct her, recalling the cause and smiling. Those kids were tiny, most of them in kindergarten or early elementary school, and the school district didn’t have enough money to continue a lot of extracurricular activities. Although the politicians argued there was no reason to expose the children to music, art, sports and computer science and programming, I disagreed.
“Is it food?” I ask. The last time, a different group sent us a box of home-baked cookies and brownies that were left for too long and ended up with ants crawling all over them.
“I don’t smell anything.” Rhonda sniffs. “But let me put this on camera, so you can see.”
“You want me to open it?” Patrice says.
“Sure. I’ll go ahead and hold the phone.”
My screen changes to the foundation’s office in L.A. The video jerks around a bit, but soon closes in on the box and Patrice’s big-knuckled hands. She runs a box cutter along the taped edges, then opens the box. Lots of pink and green peanuts fill up the cardboard interior. She scoops out the peanuts, then suddenly stops. It’s hard for me to make out what’s on the small screen…but then I see it, too.
Blood seems to geyser upward to my head, then plummet down to my feet. The room spins, and I reach out, placing a hand on the wall to steady myself, my phone landing on the rug with a dull thud. My temples thrum and my gorge rises. I press a hand against my mouth, and run to the toilet, then puke up everything I had in the last twenty-four hours.