The Wedding Dress

by Danielle Steel

  “But they kept the family mansion,” he said, digging for clues to who she really was, what she came from, and what was important to her. It was easy to believe that she was very spoiled, given who her father was. And there was a hard shell around her. He wanted to know what was beneath it. Ice or fire. He hoped the latter.

  “No, they sold the house,” she explained, “and everything they had. My great-grandparents started the antique store with furniture from the house they sold, and my great-grandmother became a decorator after the war, when my great-grandfather was wounded and lost his legs. Before that, when they lost everything, she was a teacher, and he became a bank clerk when he lost the family bank in ’29.”

  “That sounds impressive. Brave people,” he said admiringly.

  “I guess so,” she said, pensive. “My father bought back the family mansion when he married my mother and gave it to her as a wedding gift.”

  “Wow! Generous man!” Ross was intrigued by her family history. He knew her father could buy many mansions if he chose to, and yachts, and planes.

  “Very generous!” Kendall confirmed proudly.

  “And how do you fit into all that?” Ross asked her, searching her eyes for clues. She was outwardly cool, but he sensed someone warmer inside, or hoped there was. He wasn’t sure.

  “I want to be like my father and be a genius like him and blow everyone’s minds,” she said and he smiled at her honesty.

  “And live happily ever after in a cottage with the man you love and two adorable children, or maybe three or four?” That was what he wanted one day, Kendall made a face the minute he said it.

  “Definitely not.” She laughed at him. “No kids, and I don’t think ‘happily ever after’ matters all that much.”

  “No? How so?” She was becoming more intriguing by the minute.

  “My parents don’t get along and never have. I think they stayed together for us, or whatever reason. My mother probably likes being married to a legend like my dad but doesn’t admit it. And I’m not sure traditional families are all that important. My mother’s mother died right after she was born. She was kind of the bad seed of the family, or black sheep or whatever. And my mother’s grandparents raised her, and were wonderful to her.”

  “The ones with the antique shop?”

  “Exactly.” He was bright and fun to talk to and interesting, and very good looking, and she couldn’t understand why he had such meager ambitions. “What about you?”

  “Son of an artist and a building contractor. Put them together and you get an architect.” They both laughed at that.

  “Your father was the contractor and your mother the artist?”

  “Nope, which is why I don’t believe in traditional roles. My mother is the contractor. She inherited the business from her father, and she runs a tight ship. I use her occasionally for my clients.” He smiled at Kendall. “And my father is the artist. Stuart McLaughlin.” He was a well-known contemporary artist and she was impressed. “And both families were pissed when they got married. My mother’s family thought my dad wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans. And my father’s fancy East Coast family thought that my mother’s family were a bunch of redneck construction workers. And they did live happily ever after and had me. They got it right on the first try, so I’m an only child. And I’m looking for the woman of my dreams and I’m thirty-three. It’s a shame your mother’s not single. She sounds like just my type with the gardening and the orchids.” He laughed. And Kendall very definitely wasn’t, with her fierce ambitions and determination to outdo her father. He had picked up on that immediately. She behaved like a shark, and he wondered if there was something meeker under the armor. If not, he wasn’t interested.

  They were intrigued by each other, dated for six months and had fun together, and then the man of Kendall’s precious dreams really did come along. Cullen Roberts worked for her father and was exactly the kind of man she had always wanted to be with. Ross had finally admitted to her that he was falling in love with her, and a month later she dumped him for Mr. Ambitious. Princeton undergraduate, Harvard Business School. He had impressed her father who had hired him in New York and lured him to San Francisco. He was as tough as nails and a computer genius like her father, and Kendall fell head over heels in love with him and they lived together for three years. He had as little interest in marriage as she did, and neither wanted kids. A match made in heaven, with their careers as their first priority. Then she figured out that dating the boss’s daughter was part of his scheme for success, when he bragged to his coworkers that he had his future sewn up and how little she meant to him, but it was a small sacrifice to make to get ahead with her father. It got back to her when someone anonymously sent her a string of his text messages for her perusal. She was twenty-six years old and it was her first serious emotional beating. She was still licking her wounds and bitter about it when she ran into Ross again at a party in Marin six months after she and Cullen had broken up.

  “How’s Mr. Wonderful?” She had told Ross exactly why she was leaving him when she did, that she had met the man of her dreams. She had left Ross flat, and it took him a while to get over her. He had dated a few women since but no one he cared about particularly. He looked around to see if Cullen was at the party with her, but he didn’t see him. He hadn’t seen Kendall in almost four years. She was beautiful, but she had been heartless with him and he was leery of her. He didn’t have a penchant for mean women and didn’t want to get one now.

  “Not so wonderful after all,” she said honestly.

  “Ah. When did you figure that out?”

  “About six months ago.”

  “And you never called?” He seemed good humored about it. “How’s your interesting brother who makes the furniture in England? I wanted to meet him.”

  “Still there, and making money at it hand over fist,” she said sheepishly. “There’s a market for what he does in England. Old-fashioned craftsmanship. He says he’ll never come back here to live. He thinks all people care about here is money, and they have no soul.”

  “Harsh, but possibly right,” Ross said, thinking about it. “I think that’s where we parted company. You thought my small dreams to do tasteful houses with fine craftsmanship was pathetic and unambitious of me.”

  She winced when he said it. She vaguely remembered telling him that, but she was younger and tactless then.

  “Still working for your father and striving to be like him?”

  “Yes.” But in the meantime she had seen how he ran over people and used people, and how cruel he could be, although she didn’t say so to Ross. Her father had hardened over the years and lost the innocence that her mother had originally loved. A fortune in billions had corrupted him in some ways. He was used to getting his way, and expected nothing less.

  “Are you happy working for him?”

  “Sometimes.” And then she added, “Not really. It’s hard to mix that kind of success with the milk of human kindness.” It was the gentlest way she could think of to say it. Ross nodded and knew it was true. People like her father scared him. He had had clients like that and hated doing business with them. You always came away with your wings singed and the taste of ashes in your mouth.

  “I’m going to start flipping houses one of these days. I can afford to do it now. I couldn’t when I met you. Some dreams take longer than others.” He smiled at her. He had a warm easygoing style that was irresistible to most women, even to her. And he was the opposite of Cullen Roberts in every way, and her father.

  She opened the subject cautiously. “I might be interested in doing that sometime, as an investment, flipping a house.” He nodded and didn’t leap at the opportunity. She had been harsh with him before, but she was still a beautiful, intriguing woman. He wondered if Mr. Right had knocked the wind out of her sails a little. He told her it had been nice seeing her, but didn’t ask for her
number when he left. He wondered if it had changed.

  It gnawed at him for days after he ran into her. He liked her, but he didn’t want to get burned by her again if another Mr. Right came along from the business world. She had seriously disappointed him the last time. And then he figured what the hell, what did he have to lose except his sanity and his heart, and he called her. The message was the same so it was still her number. He left a brief message and then forgot about her. He had a busy few weeks finishing up two houses for clients.

  * * *

  —

  Her father had left for the boat in the meantime, after telling Kendall how tired and lonely he was. Her mother was almost always in Tahoe now, ever since her grandmother had died seven years before. Kendall felt sorry for him, and decided to surprise him over a long weekend, and she had nothing else to do. He had looked so sad when he left. It was a big trip for her, but she decided to do it. She flew to Nice and got a driver to take her to Antibes where he said he was going. At least he wouldn’t be alone. She knew her mother hadn’t been to the boat in years. She wouldn’t go near it. Her brother, Nick, wouldn’t either. She was the only family member who occasionally joined Zack on the boat, when invited, which wasn’t often, but she enjoyed it. It was a fabulous two hundred and eighty foot yacht.

  She saw the boat immediately when she got to the dock in Old Town, Antibes. It was the biggest boat there. She paid the driver she’d hired at the airport, and carried her small bag on board. The boat was quiet and there was no one around, except a deckhand on the dock to keep strangers from coming aboard. He had greeted Kendall courteously, and had seen her when she spent time on the boat with her father. She walked onto the passerelle and on board, and headed downstairs to her father’s cabin. There were no other crew around, and she wondered if they were having dinner in the galley. She headed toward her father’s suite, and opened the door to stick her head in, and found herself inches away from a naked woman. Her father had her against the wall and was having sex with her as the woman moaned, and her father stared into Kendall’s face with a look of horror as the girl had an orgasm and screamed with her eyes closed. Kendall slammed the door closed and ran to her cabin. Her father pounded on the door five minutes later, and Kendall looked mortified when she opened it.

  “I’m so sorry, Dad…I had no idea…” He thought there was no one on board to interrupt them, so he hadn’t locked the door. The crew knew he had a woman with him. They were used to it, since it was a frequent occurrence. The boat was the perfect place to bring women. It always impressed them.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he shouted at her.

  “You looked so lonely and upset when you left, and you complained that Mom never comes on the boat anymore. I spent my weekend and my money coming over to see you to cheer you up. How was I supposed to know you had a woman with you?” She was angry and hurt, confused and embarrassed. She had misjudged the situation entirely, and had been misled by her father. It wasn’t the first time.

  “Do you expect me to check my guest list with you?” He was still shouting at her, and she was fighting back tears. The woman hardly looked like a “guest” to Kendall. She looked like a hooker or something very akin to it.

  “Is she staying on the boat?” Kendall asked in a shaking voice.

  “Obviously. She’s here from Paris for the weekend. She’s an old friend,” he said gruffly, which only made him seem more ridiculous.

  “Are you leaving port tonight?” Kendall asked, still horrified that she had caught her father having sex with a woman in his cabin.

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll go back to San Francisco in the morning.”

  “I’m sorry you made the trip for nothing,” he said, but he didn’t want her there either. It would spoil the weekend for him.

  “I’m sorry I walked in on you,” she said meekly.

  “I don’t make a habit of this, you know,” he said awkwardly. But it was obvious even to his daughter that more than likely this wasn’t the first time, and she really didn’t want to know. And all of a sudden, as he walked away down the hall in his bathrobe, for the first time, she felt sorry for her mother, and wondered if she knew that he was unfaithful to her. If so, it explained a lot about their marriage, and her mother’s years of withdrawal, and avoiding her husband. Kendall had known more or less, or guessed, that he was unfaithful, but she had always blamed her mother for it. But seeing him with a girl who looked almost like a hooker cast a whole different light on it. She wondered suddenly if this was the cause, not the result of their unhappy marriage.

  She was hungry and went up to the galley a little while later, and helped herself to something to eat. The crew were either out or asleep. She made herself a sandwich, and took it out on deck to eat it, and minutes after she sat down, the girl who’d been having the orgasm came bounding up the stairs. She looked to be about twenty, and was considerably younger than Kendall. She was wearing one of Zack’s bathrobes, and looked delighted to run into Kendall, who stared at her father coming up the stairs behind her. This was definitely not her night. She kept running into them, although the boat was certainly not small. Her father rolled his eyes, and sat down at the table as the girl slid over next to Kendall.

  “Hi, I’m Brigitte. That looks so good. I’m starving, can I have some? Sex always makes me hungry.” She smiled and without a word, Kendall offered her half her sandwich. The girl had a low-class British accent. “The last time I was on the boat, they made us omelettes and caviar at midnight. Is there no one in the galley?” Kendall exchanged a glance with her father, the point was not lost on her. The girl had been on the boat before. “This is my third time here. We went to Portofino last time.” Zack looked like he wanted to strangle her. Kendall didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Portofino was one of Kendall’s favorite ports too. Meanwhile Brigitte had happily devoured half of Kendall’s sandwich. “We always have such a good time when I come here. Where did you come from tonight?”

  “California,” Kendall said, trying to keep conversation to a minimum so her father didn’t have a stroke.

  “Zack said he’ll take me to California sometime. Maybe to L.A. I want to go to Disneyland.”

  “Oh, you’ll love that,” Kendall said, and her father interrupted. Brigitte had done enough damage for one night. Kendall found it interesting that he had promised to take her to California, but to L.A., not San Francisco.

  “We should go to bed now,” he said sternly to Brigitte, and she giggled and acted like it was a sexual invitation, which it probably was. Brigitte got up and waved at Kendall, as she headed for the stairs and Kendall’s father followed her, without looking at his daughter or saying good night.

  “Nice to meet you!” she called back over her shoulder, and Kendall waved. She sat at the table for a few minutes, thinking about the whole experience.

  Her father’s head popped back up a moment later and he looked uncomfortably at his daughter. “You can stay if you want to,” he said stiffly, and Kendall shook her head. It would have been agony being on board with them, with all the sexual innuendo. Tonight had been bad enough. She didn’t want her mother to hear about it later and think that she had been in collusion with her father and his floozies.

  “I’d rather not, but thanks anyway.” He disappeared down the stairwell again, and she left a note for the captain to call her a cab at six in the morning, and she set her alarm for five. All she wanted to do now was get back to Nice, and from there she’d get a flight to either Paris or New York, to connect to San Francisco. It had been a totally wasted trip except that it gave her new insight into her father. She wondered how long it had been like this and if it was partially or fully responsible for the disintegration of her parents’ marriage.

  The cab showed up on time in the morning, and the captain saw her off. He seemed surprised to see her there, but less so at her rapid departure in the circ
umstances.

  She was at the Nice airport by seven, and caught a flight to Charles de Gaulle which connected to a flight to San Francisco. With the time difference, she would be back in the city by one-thirty in the afternoon, which would be ten-thirty at night for her. It had been an expensive escapade for nothing. After she checked in, she called her brother in the Cotswolds. She hadn’t talked to him in months, and wondered if he would pick up when he saw the call was from her. Their conversations were never pleasant, usually about their parents. He answered sounding guarded, and had let it ring, as if he wasn’t sure whether to pick it up or not.

  “Hi, I’m in Antibes, I thought I’d give you a call.”

  “Are you on the boat?” Nicholas asked her.

  “I was for about five minutes. I think I owe you an apology,” she said, “about our mother.”

  “What about her?”

  “I just dropped in on Dad, for an unscheduled visit. He came over for a long weekend, and he was whining about how lonely he was going to be, so I thought I’d surprise him and fly over and keep him company.”

  Her brother laughed and could guess the end of the story. “And you ran into him with one of his tarts on the boat, I assume.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because it’s happened to me. The first time when I was about sixteen. I’ve run into him a few times in other places too. Most of the time with girls closer to my age than his. I think he’s been doing that for years.”

  “What do you think came first, the chicken or the egg? Do you think he screws around because Mom shut him out? Or do you think Mom shut him out because he cheats on her?”

  “I’m pretty sure he’s been playing around for years. I ran into a woman years ago in London who got all dewy eyed and said she had an affair with my father. But when I figured out the time frame, I was about three at the time. I think Mom just got fed up with it. Who wouldn’t?”

  “Why do you think she stays with him? The money?” Kendall was always more practical than her brother, and harsher.