Nina frowned. “Calvin, was that really necessary?”
Her husband’s pale, shiny face gleamed with resentment. “I think it was. Otherwise what am I paying her for?”
“What are you paying her for?” Nina echoed softly.
Despite the fact that Calvin’s face turned roughly the color of an eggplant, she couldn’t help herself. It was the little things like that which had, frankly, come to drive her crazy over the last year. Calvin seemed to have forgotten the terms of this arrangement. He had forgotten whose fortune really paid for this lifestyle.
Or maybe, Nina thought as she tried not to shy from his insipid glare, he hadn’t forgotten at all. Perhaps he had just begun to hate her for it instead.
Denial was a powerful, powerful thing.
Nina swallowed and turned to her grandmother. “I’ll only be a moment,” she said as Olivia continued to squall, tiny arms flailing.
“That won’t be necessary.” Celeste beckoned to the nurse, who had just appeared in the room behind Marguerite. “You there.”
“Her name is Greta,” Nina put in, only to receive sharp glances from both Celeste and Calvin.
“Take the child,” Celeste spoke louder, her voice dripping with disdain, as though Olivia’s cries were personal insults toward her. “I assume you have formula and anything else you might require in the nursery. Please feed the child and bring her back when she is less…obtrusive.”
Nina’s mouth dropped. “Grandmother, perhaps you misunderstand. I’m still nursing. She won’t take a bottle, so I need to breastfeed her—”
“Nina.”
Celeste’s voice was a gavel on the heavy wood dining table, the judgement clear. The de Vrieses were masters of propriety on the outside, scheming and vengeful underneath. Denoted under Nina’s name was a clear message: we do not talk about such things in polite company.
Violet chuckled, her rings clinking lightly on the wineglass she had already helped herself to from the table.
“She did the same to me,” she whispered conspiratorially as she came to look at her granddaughter. Almost happily, as if finally she could pass on the misery of being Celeste de Vries’s daughter to someone else. Her wine sloshed over the rim of her glass, narrowly missing the baby’s head.
Nina clutched Olivia closer, and the baby whimpered and burrowed into the silk, looking for a breast.
“Good God, Nina,” hissed Calvin from the other side of the table, where he had taken Nina’s seat and was already serving himself a full plate. “Don’t embarrass us.”
Next to him, Caitlyn’s eyes glimmered with sympathy. Or maybe it was pity.
Nina opened her mouth to argue. To put her foot down. But before she could, the child was lifted from her arms, the Celine bag picked up from the floor. Olivia immediately started screaming.
“Please remove her before I grow deaf,” Celeste snapped at Greta, who left the room with a very unhappy baby.
Everyone sat silently while Marguerite scurried around setting three extra plates. Once Olivia’s cries were no longer audible, the rest of the party relaxed, though Nina could only stare at her plate, biting back tears and the instinct to sprint after her child.
“Thank you, no,” Celeste said when Marguerite tried to pour her a bit of wine. “But perhaps a glass of Perrier…”
“I’ll get it.” Calvin sprang up from the table, faster than the lap dog Nina thought he was imitating admirably. “Give you, er, a moment to talk.”
He and Marguerite both left the room in a hurry.
Caitlyn put her napkin on the table as if to leave as well. “Should I…”
“No, no, don’t be silly,” Violet chided her. “You’re practically one of the family. Mother, look at all this new blonde in her hair. Caitlyn and Nina could be twins!”
Caitlyn preened, as though the thought made her shine a bit brighter, though Celeste remained as steely as ever.
Still irritated by what had happened with Olivia, Nina was too busy noticing Celeste’s less-than-immaculate appearance to reply. It wasn’t like her grandmother to refuse a glass of wine. Her Hermés scarf, her hair, her nails—that was all in order. But something about Celeste didn’t quite look her normally polished self.
“Grandmother,” Nina said. “Are you quite well?”
“Quite,” Celeste responded, perhaps a little too sharply. “Are you?”
Her gray eyes glinted as she cast up and down Nina’s body, clearly looking for remnants of Olivia—a bit of spit-up, maybe a stain or two. No luck. Not this time, anyway.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Celeste continued, “when your husband mentioned you were still doing…that”—she waved a disdainful hand in the direction Olivia had gone—“after more than six months. You’re depriving that child of solid food, Nina.”
Nina reared, dander raised all over again. “Grandmother, the doctors say Olivia will need milk or formula as her primary food source until she is at least one.”
“Then formula it should be. You were raised on it, as was your mother. I won’t have you ruining your looks just for the sake of your child whose needs can be met otherwise. This family has appearances to keep up, girl.”
And there it was. The outright decree that first and foremost, the purpose of the de Vries women was to look pretty and act properly.
“So, of course, when your husband mentioned your habit, we came straight over,” Celeste concluded.
Nina nearly choked on her bite of salad. “Calvin reported me to you for feeding my own daughter?”
Violet snorted in a most unladylike way, but quickly covered it before she caught too much of her mother’s ire. “Goodness, no. He came because he wanted more of Mother’s money. Another ten million dollars at least, he said.”
Nina’s mouth opened and closed several times. “He wanted what?”
Caitlyn studied her plate, rearranging her vegetables in row after row. Violet snickered behind her wineglass.
Celeste, however, merely arched a silver brow. “You didn’t know?”
“Didn’t know what?” Nina asked. “About today’s request? Or that they amounted to that much?”
“About the multiple monetary requests your husband has made over the past year.” Celeste tipped her head. “After the gift you made from your own trust, I assumed you were aware of the others. Now that he has exhausted the allowances the board gave him from your fund, he has come to me.”
Nina shook her head vigorously as she took a long drink of water. “No, I—no, Grandmother, I assure you I did not know.”
“What is this business he’s doing, Nina?” Violet wondered. “It was very strange the way he appeared. He was sweating all over Garrett when he came into the parlor to talk to Mother, but when he saw me there, he didn’t want to say.” She tossed back a bit more of her wine and giggled lightly to herself. “It took us ages to get anything out of him.”
Celeste rolled her eyes while Caitlyn hid a smile behind her napkin.
“His business, Nina,” Celeste said. “What is it?”
Nina sighed. Most of the time her mother’s semi-permanent state of minor intoxication was only slightly annoying. Right now, though, Nina wanted to shove her back into the elevator.
“I—it’s a real estate venture, I believe,” she said, stumbling slightly.
“Yes, I know that. But I failed to see how anything in the business proposal he submitted last year explains a need for the kind of additional funding he wants. Do you know what it is?”
“It’s—I—” Nina’s cheeks reddened. She really knew very little about what Calvin was doing with their money beyond his claims of “flipping properties,” largely because she simply didn’t care. “He needed something to do, Grandmother. How is this any different from Mother’s charities, or even my father’s ventures?”
Violet coughed into her drink. “Your father?” she asked. “Are you really comparing your husband of less than a year to a man I’ve been married to for more than twenty-five?”
“Well, at least Calvin is here,” Nina snapped, hardly believing that she was defending him. Still, her parents’ so-called marriage was a joke, and everyone knew it.
He’ll be gone in a month! she wanted to shout. You don’t need to worry about this anymore! But of course, no one in this room knew of the arrangement. No one ever could know.
“Nina Evelyn Astor de Vries Gardner,” pronounced Celeste, emphasizing the final name as if to remind Nina that she was not technically part of the de Vries family any longer. “Do you mean to tell me that this family has funneled nearly ten million dollars to your husband, and you have no clue what he has done with it?”
It was a trinket compared to her family’s vast fortune, but the reality was that there was only one way he could have gotten twice what she had conceded, by somehow forging her signature on the request to the board.
“I—I—I—” she stuttered, only reinforcing her grandmother’s impression of her idiocy.
“Nina’s right, it is real estate,” Caitlyn’s cheery voice interrupted the detente, causing everyone at the table to swivel toward her. She blinked, looking around at her sudden audience. “Calvin and I ran into each other at lunch last week, and I—well, he told me a bit about it. Would you…like me to share?”
“Please,” said Celeste with a sharp look at Nina. “Since Nina is apparently too caught up with rattles to pay any attention.”
Caitlyn swallowed heavily. “Well, um, it’s this project he’s doing. He buys in outlying areas around New York. Towns that are starting the upswing as commuter areas, but where the market hasn’t quite followed yet. Basically, he’s flipping properties that have turned commercial, but he’s using his, um, knowledge of the area to do it.”
“Why wouldn’t he just do it all in one part of town?” Celeste wondered. “How can he manage property all over New York? And now I gather this has already expanded into the greater New England area. Isn’t that spreading himself a bit thin? He’ll need a different accountant for every state.”
“Um, I think it’s diversifying, he said?” Caitlyn stumbled around the language, ending her sentences as questions. “Better than putting all his eggs in one basket?”
Nina studied her friend, who did not meet her eye. It must have been quite a lunch she had had with Calvin. Particularly since she didn’t think to mention it to her.
Celeste also seemed to think so. She turned to Nina. “I expect you to learn more about this before the family gets further involved. I will not write another check or approve any other requests from your trust until we see a full business plan.”
“But, Grandmother—”
Celeste only held up her palm. “That’s final. I’ll not speak any more about money. It’s crude over lunch.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” Calvin’s voice boomed as he strode back into the room and deposited a chilled bottle of Perrier next to Celeste, then made a big show of pouring it into her water glass.
Celeste’s lip curled as she watched, almost as though she were disgusted by the idea of touching the water after Calvin had.
“Thank you,” she said when he finished, though Nina doubted she meant it.
It didn’t matter. She had no intention of writing any kind of business plan with Calvin anyway. One more month, she thought as she reached for the middle of the table to serve herself some pasta. The ten million could be written off as a divorce payoff. Ending marriages had certainly cost other family members more. Like exile, for one.
Nina sighed. She wasn’t sure taking a break from her family would qualify anymore as a punishment.
“Pasta, princess? Really?”
Everyone turned toward Calvin, who was busily forking several pieces of bloody steak onto his plate. Not for the first time, Nina wondered again how a human being with so many resources could always look so ill-fitted to…everything. The arms of his navy jacket pulled around the shoulders, and because he had forgotten to unbutton it at the waist before sitting down, it also tugged oddly around his stomach and the sides. Nina wondered if he was aware that his pants were black and therefore mismatched.
Incredible, she mused. In the last year, she had watched Calvin jump into the trappings of her family’s wealth and circle with all the grace of a cow diving into a duck pond. He had acquired all the visual things he perceived as hallmarks of the upper class: the stodgy driver, the ugly heirloom furnishings, the tailor who had last serviced Nina’s grandfather in the early eighties. And still the man managed to make ten-thousand-dollar custom suits look like polyblend discount rack fare.
“What’s wrong with pasta?” she asked through her teeth.
“What isn’t wrong with it?” Violet babbled, then laughed to herself before taking another gulp of wine. Her plate was completely empty.
Calvin added two more pieces of steak to the mountain he’d already gathered. “That depends. Are you trying to turn back into a refrigerator?”
Violet cringed. Celeste’s face didn’t move.
“Cal,” Caitlyn said, who somehow managed to be friendlier with one syllable than Nina ever could. “It’s just a bit of pasta. Plus, Nina and I had spinning this morning. Trust me, she earned it.”
“What she earned is the right to get rid of those last few pounds,” Calvin grumbled. “You heard your grandmother. You have to watch your appearance as a part of this family.”
Nina didn’t even bother reminding him or anyone else at the table that she was somehow thinner now than she had been before the baby. Depression, she suspected. Not to mention the constant desire to escape her house had her walking all of Central Park with the stroller almost daily.
But the truth was, this had nothing to do with her weight and everything to do with the fact that she still had not, as of yet, allowed Calvin to touch her. The fact that he continued to stumble sporadically into her bedroom in the middle of the night, drunken and irritable after trying to woo prospective “clients” (or so he said) was an entirely different issue and not one she really wanted to take on.
Instead, she reached for the plate with the stubborn set of her jaw as if she were thirteen, not twenty-one. “I’ll only have a little.”
“Nina,” Celeste said just as her granddaughter was reaching for the pasta. “Have the salad. It’s nearly summer, and you can’t go to the Hamptons looking like that.”
Reluctantly, Nina dropped the platter and left it in the center of the table.
“What inspired this feast, N?” Caitlyn asked in an overly friendly voice, clearly trying to break the ice.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Nina said as she forked a few pieces of escarole. “Memories, I suppose.”
Calvin snorted before shoving enough penne into his mouth that the sauce dribbled over his lip. He looked like a sloppy vampire.
“Memories of what?” he asked, mouth full.
“Probably of Italy,” Violet tittered. “It is Italian food, isn’t it?”
Calvin tensed, but didn’t reply as he chewed. Celeste’s steely expression turned back on Nina.
Maybe it was the plate of plain lettuce that had somehow replaced the rest of her meal, but Nina suddenly felt emboldened. “Yes, I was thinking of visiting again this June. I miss it.”
“Oh!” Caitlyn replied. “For your anniversary? What a lovely idea. Are you going to show Calvin your Florence?”
Nina just took another bite of lettuce, wishing bitterly it were the fried artichokes. Calvin stopped sawing his beef; then too carefully, he made a production of unfolding his napkin and proceeding to tuck it into his too-tight collar.
“That will depend,” he said just before shoving another piece of bloody steak into his mouth.
“Depend on what?” Nina asked.
“Celeste, I wonder, has anyone heard from Eric lately?” Calvin asked over her question. “Some of my associates have been wondering about him.”
“Ooooh, no, no, no,” Violet murmured into her wine.
What associates? Nina wondered. So far as she knew, Calvin r
ented a one-room office space off Wall Street.
Celeste seemed to have the same question on her mind.
Caitlyn perked up, but Nina shook her head. She knew what was coming. This had been a particularly sore subject for her family. Calvin had continued to pepper her family about Eric’s whereabouts over the past year, and every time, he received escalating responses of the same sort: No, and it wasn’t any of his business.
She didn’t know why Calvin was so intent on contacting her errant cousin, but at this point, Nina had no desire to find him either. Yes, she missed the boy who had for all intents and purposes been a brother to her. Yes, she had wondered where he was and if he was all right. But at this point, his continued absence—treating her in particular like she was the same as the rest of their horrid family—was too painful to forgive.
“I have.” Celeste surprised everyone before taking a measured sip of her sparkling water.
Everyone turned to her in shock.
“You have?” Violet asked. “Mother, why didn’t you say?”
“Where is he?” Nina couldn’t help herself. “Is he all right?” Apparently she cared enough to know that much.
“A contact at Dartmouth informed me the boy is moving to Cambridge. He was in Hanover this week requesting recommendations from his professors.”
“But…why? Where is he planning to go?” Nina hated herself for the eagerness.
But Cambridge was outside of Boston. Only minutes from Wellesley, the school she had attended until just last year.
“Apparently he’s planning to apply to law school in the fall,” Celeste said wearily, as though the very thought of it tired her out. “So said Charlie Reynolds, at any rate.”
Charles Reynolds was the president of Dartmouth College.
“Another stage of his rebellion, I suppose,” Violet said as she delicately picked at a bit of her own penne. “This after spending the year backpacking across God knows where in South Asia, right, Mother?”
Nina gaped. She had heard no word about that trip either.
“If attending Harvard is the boy’s worst rebellion, he’s welcome to it,” Celeste replied curtly. “And if it makes him the man he needs to be in order to run this company, so much the better. His father did the same thing, you know, right down to marrying a girl raised in a hovel.”
The Perfect Woman (Rose Gold Book 2) Page 24
