China Rich Girlfriend

by Kevin Kwan

  Belinda Chu rushed up to Rachel, looking rather distressed. “Your floral designer promises that the wisteria will be at its peak tomorrow, just in time for the ceremony, but I’m not convinced. Look at how small some of these buds are. They won’t be blooming for days! You’ll need to put hair dryers on them! Tsk, tsk, tsk, you really should have used my guy, who does the flowers for all the best homes in Palo Alto.”

  “I’m sure it will be just fine,” Rachel said calmly as she winked at Nick, who was standing in front of the arch talking to Mehmet, Astrid, and one of the crewmen.

  Astrid greeted Rachel warmly with a hug. “Everything looks so beautiful, it makes me want to get married all over again!”

  Nick’s phone began to ring. Not recognizing the number, he ignored the call and put the phone on vibrate. The crewman standing next to Nick waved at Rachel shyly, and she realized with a start that it was Colin Khoo. With his shock of dark hair grown out to his shoulders, she hadn’t recognized him.

  “Look at you! Now you really look like a Polynesian surfer!” Rachel exclaimed.

  “That’s rad!” Colin replied as he gave the bride-to-be a kiss on the cheek. Araminta, who stood out from the crowd in her vintage Yves Saint Laurent safari jacket and gold leather caged thigh-high Gianvito Rossi sandals, was next to greet Rachel with a double-cheek kiss.

  “That’s the heiress whose wedding Rachel went to where all the trouble started,” Auntie Jin murmured under her breath to Ray Chu.

  “Who’s the fellow beside her in the torn jeans and flip-flops?”

  “That’s her husband. I heard he’s a billionaire too,” Kerry Chu whispered back.

  “It’s like all my patients these days—I never know whether the kid in my dental chair is homeless or owns Google,” Ray said gruffly.

  After everyone in the wedding party had been introduced to one another and Jason Chu had snapped enough pictures of himself with the supermodel and Nick’s hottie cousin Astrid—who he swore had to be that babe from House of Flying Daggers—Samantha began corralling everyone into position for the procession up the aisle.

  “Okay, after Mehmet has made sure all the guests have taken their seats, the procession can begin. Jase—you need to escort Aunt Kerry up the aisle first, before you come back for Mom. Once you get Mom to her seat, you’re done and you can take the seat next to her. Now, I need Alistair Cheng. Where are you?” Alistair identified himself as Samantha checked the chart on her iPad. “Okay, you’ll be escorting Astrid Leong up the aisle, since she is representing Nick’s family. That’s Astrid over there. Will you remember her tomorrow?”

  “I think so. She’s my cousin,” Alistair said in his usual laconic manner.

  “My bad—I didn’t realize you were a cousin too!” Samantha giggled.

  Nick’s phone started buzzing again, and he dug into his jeans pocket in annoyance. It was from the same number, but this time it was a text message. Nick scrolled to the text, which read:

  Sorry—tried everything I could to stop Mum. Love, Dad.

  Nick stared at the text again. What on earth could his father mean?

  Samantha began barking out new orders. “Okay, now it’s time for the groom and his best man to enter. Nick and Colin—both of you will be at the staging area to the left of the pavilion while all the guests are being seated. When you hear the cello solo begin, that’s your cue to walk down the path toward—”

  “ ’Scuse me for one sec,” Nick said, dashing away from the arch. He stood at the back corner of the forecourt, frantically trying to call his father. This time, it went straight to voice mail: “I’m sorry, but the person you called has a voice-mail box that has not been set up yet. Please try your call again later.”

  Damn. Nick tried calling his father’s regular Sydney number, an avalanche of dread suddenly beginning to engulf him.

  Colin came up to check on him. “Everything okay?”

  “Um, I don’t know. Hey, don’t you have security wherever you travel?”

  Colin rolled his eyes. “Yes. It’s a big nuisance, but Araminta’s father insists on it.”

  “Where’s your security detail now?”

  “There’s a team posted outside the gates, and that woman over there is Araminta’s personal bodyguard,” Colin replied, indicating a woman with a frizzy spiral perm seated inconspicuously among Rachel’s relatives. “I know she looks like a bank teller, but let me tell you, she’s former Chinese Special Forces and can disembowel a man in under ten seconds.”

  Nick showed Colin the text message from his father. “Can you please call your security people and request extra backup for tomorrow? I’ll pay whatever it takes. We need to go into full lockdown and make sure that only the people on the guest list are allowed onto the property.”

  Colin grimaced. “Um, I think it’s a little too late for that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look dead ahead. Twelve o’clock.”

  Nick stared for a second. “No, that’s not my mum. That’s a cousin of Rachel’s from New Jersey.”

  “I mean look up. In the sky…”

  Nick squinted into the bright blue sky. “Oh. My. Fucking. Hell.”

  • • •

  “Viv, is Ollie ready?” Samantha said, bending down to give Rachel’s little toddler cousin the blue velvet pillow for the wedding rings. The boy took hold of the pillow for two seconds before it suddenly blew out of his hands. The branches on the towering oak trees began to tremble, and a deafening hum filled the air. From out of nowhere, a large black-and-white helicopter zoomed over the portico and hovered above the great lawn as it slowly began to land. Samantha and Rachel stared in horror as the wind gusts from the giant propellers began to tear apart everything on the portico like a tornado that had just touched down.

  “Get away from the trellis! It’s coming down!” a workman screamed as everyone began running for cover. The arch toppled over just as the trellis began to collapse. Parts of bamboo began blowing off the structure at high speed, and the wisteria buds were blown clear off their stems. Aunt Belinda screamed as a big clump of jasmine hit her in the face.

  “Hiyah, everything is ruined!” Kerry Chu cried.

  When the propellers of the AgustaWestland AW109 finally ground to a halt, the forward door opened and a burly man in dark sunglasses jumped out to open the main cabin door. A Chinese woman clad in a chic saffron-colored pantsuit stepped out.

  “Jesus, of course it’s Auntie Eleanor!” Astrid groaned.

  Rachel went absolutely numb as she watched Nick sprint across the lawn toward his mother. Colin and Araminta rushed up behind her, followed by a Chinese lady with a bad perm, who was for some reason brandishing a gun.

  “Let’s get you back to the house,” Colin said.

  “No, no, I’ll be fine,” Rachel replied. Witnessing the sheer absurdity of the situation, a sudden realization had come over her. She had absolutely nothing to fear. Nick’s mother was the one who was filled with fear. She was so afraid of this marriage actually taking place that she would go to all the trouble of chartering a helicopter and landing right in the friggin’ middle of their wedding site! Rachel found herself involuntarily walking onto the lawn toward Nick. She wanted to be by his side.

  Nick stormed up to his mother in fury. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Eleanor looked at her son calmly and said, “I knew you were going to be mad. But there was no other way to reach you since you refused to return any of my calls!”

  “So you think you could stop my wedding by launching this…this invasion? You’re out of your fucking mind!”

  “Nicky, stop using that kind of language! I did not come here to stop your wedding. I have no intention of doing that. In fact, I want you to marry Rachel—”

  “We’re calling security—you need to get off the premises right now!”

  By this point, Rachel was beside him. Nick glanced at her quickly in concern, and Rachel smiled at him reassuringly. “Hello, Mrs. Young,” she sai
d, finding a renewed confidence in her voice.

  “Hello, Rachel. Can we please speak somewhere private?” Eleanor asked.

  “No, Rachel is not speaking to you in private! Haven’t you already done enough?” Nick interjected.

  “Alamak, I’ll pay to have everything fixed. Actually, you should be thanking me that rickety bamboo thing came down—that was a lawsuit waiting to happen. Listen to me, I’m really not here to ruin your wedding. I came here to ask for your forgiveness. I want to give you my blessing.”

  “It’s a bit late for that. Please just LEAVE US ALONE!”

  “Trust me, I know where I’m not wanted, and I will gladly leave. But I felt that I needed to make things right for Rachel before she walks down the aisle. Do you really want to deprive her of meeting her father before her wedding?”

  Nick stared at his mother as if she was deranged. “What are you talking about?”

  Eleanor ignored her son and looked Rachel straight in the eyes. “I’m talking about your real father, Rachel. I found him for you! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell the both of you for the past month!”

  “I don’t believe you!” Nick said defiantly.

  “I don’t care if you believe me. I met Rachel’s father’s wife through your cousin Eddie when I was in London last year—you can ask him yourself. It was all a complete coincidence, but I managed to put two and two together and confirmed that he really is her father. Rachel, your father’s name is Bao Gaoliang, and he’s one of the top politicians in Beijing.”

  “Bao Gaoliang…” Rachel said the name slowly, in utter disbelief.

  “And right now, he’s at the Four Seasons Biltmore in Santa Barbara, and he’s hoping to see your mother, Kerry, again. And he’s dying to meet you. Come with me, Rachel, and I’ll take all of you to him.”

  “This is another bullshit scheme of yours. You’re not taking Rachel anywhere.” Nick was seething.

  • • •

  Rachel put her hand on Nick’s arm. “It’s fine. I want to meet this guy. Let’s see if he’s really my father.”

  Rachel did not speak during the short helicopter ride to the hotel. She clutched Nick’s hand tightly and looked pensively at her mother sitting across from her. She realized from her mother’s expression that all this was much more difficult for her, since it was the first time in more than three decades that Kerry would be seeing the man she had been in love with, the man who had rescued her from her abusive husband and the terror of his family.

  As they disembarked from the helicopter, Rachel had to pause for a moment before continuing into the hotel.

  “Are you going to be okay?” Nick asked.

  “I think so…it’s all happening too fast,” Rachel said. This was not how she had imagined it would happen. She didn’t really have a set vision of how things might unfold, but after the disappointment of her last two trips to China, she had begun to lose hope that she would ever find her father. Or else, it would happen years from now, after making a long, arduous journey to some far outpost. She never thought that she would meet him for the first time at a resort in Santa Barbara on the day before her wedding.

  Rachel and her mother were led through the mimosa-scented lobby, then down a long Mediterranean-tiled corridor, and outside again. As they walked through the lush gardens toward one of the private cottage suites, Rachel felt as though she were floating through some strange, nebulous dream. Time seemed to have sped up, and everything seemed so unreal. It was all too bright, too tropical for such a momentous occasion. Before she could fully collect herself, they were at the front of the cottage, and Nick’s mother was giving the Mission-style wooden door a few rapid knocks.

  Rachel took a deep breath.

  “I’m right here with you,” Nick whispered from behind, giving her shoulder an affectionate squeeze.

  The door was opened by a man with an earpiece who Rachel assumed was some sort of bodyguard. Inside the room was another man in an open-collared shirt and a pale yellow sweater vest, sitting in front of the fireplace. His rimless glasses framed a vibrant, fair-complexioned face, and his jet-black hair, meticulously combed with a part on the left, had a few graying streaks at the temples. Could this really be her father?

  Kerry stood at the doorway hesitantly, but as the man got up and came toward the light, she suddenly put her hands to her mouth and let out a small gasp. “Kao Wei!”

  The man came up to Rachel’s mother and stared into her face searchingly for a split second, before scooping her into a tight embrace.

  “Kerry Ching. You are even prettier than I remember,” he said in Mandarin.

  Kerry broke out in loud, violent sobs, and Rachel found her eyes flooding uncontrollably with tears as she watched her mother crying against the man’s chest. Managing to collect herself after a few moments, Kerry turned to her daughter and said, “Rachel, this is your father.”

  Rachel couldn’t believe she was hearing those words. She stood by the doorway, suddenly feeling as if she were five years old again.

  Standing outside the cottage, Eleanor turned to her son and said in a rather choked-up voice, “Come on, let’s give them some privacy.”

  Nick, a little misty-eyed himself, answered, “That’s the best thing I’ve heard you say in a long time, Mum.”

  11

  FOUR SEASONS BILTMORE

  SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA

  Comfortably ensconced in the hotel lounge with her requisite cup of hot water and lemon, Eleanor proceeded to recount to Nick the full story of how she came to discover Rachel’s real father.

  “Bao Shaoyen was so grateful to all of us in London. Your hopeless cousin Eddie left after a few days, after getting fitted for his new suits, and Shaoyen didn’t know a soul in London. So we took care of her. We took her to visit Carlton every day in the hospital while he was recovering from his surgeries, we took her to eat at the halfway decent Chinese restaurants, and Francesca even drove all of us to the Bicester Village outlets one day. Shaoyen was in seventh heaven when she discovered that they had a Loro Piana outlet store there. My God, you should have seen how much cashmere that woman bought! I think she had to buy three big suitcases at the Tumi outlet just to fit everything.

  “As soon as Carlton was out of intensive care, I encouraged Shaoyen to let him do his rehabilitation in Singapore. I even called up Dr. Chia at NUH to pull strings and get Carlton into the best physical therapy program. So of course Carlton’s father came down to visit from Beijing, and I got to know the family well over the next few months. Meanwhile, Auntie Lorena’s private investigator in China went to dig up everything he could on the family.”

  “Auntie Lorena and her shady investigators!” Nick scoffed, taking a sip of his coffee.

  “Alamak, you should be grateful Lorena hired Mr. Wong! Without his snooping around and paying off the right people, we would never have been able to get to the truth. It turned out that Bao Gaoliang had changed his name right after he graduated from university. Kao Wei was always a boyhood nickname—his actual name was Sun Gaoliang. He grew up in Fujian, but his parents made him take the surname of his godfather, who was a well-respected party official in Jiangsu Province, because then he could move there and get a better start to his career.”

  “So how did you break the news to the Baos?”

  “At one point, Shaoyen had to go back to China to attend to some business, and Gaoliang was alone in Singapore visiting Carlton. One night, I took him to have kai fun at Wee Nam Kee,*1 and I asked him about his younger days. He started to tell me about his college days in Fujian, so at one point I just blurted out, ‘Did you ever know a woman by the name of Kerry Ching?’ Gaoliang’s face went white as a ghost. He said, ‘I don’t know anyone by that name.’ Then he suddenly wanted to finish his dinner quickly and leave. That’s when I finally confronted him with the truth. I said, ‘Gaoliang, please don’t be alarmed. You can leave if you want, but before you do, please hear me out. I feel that fate has brought us together. My son is engaged to a
woman by the name of Rachel Chu. Please let me show you her picture, and I think you will understand that something remarkable has happened.’ ”

  “What photo of Rachel do you have?” Nick asked.

  Eleanor blushed. “It’s the one from her California driver’s license that I got from the first detective I hired in Beverly Hills. Anyway, Gaoliang took one look at the photo and went into complete shock. He immediately asked, ‘Who is this girl?’ It’s just so obvious—the girl in the picture looks exactly like Carlton, but with long hair and makeup, of course. So I said, ‘That girl is the daughter of a woman who goes by the name of Kerry Chu. She now lives in California, but she used to live in Xiamen when she was married to a man by the name of Zhou Fang Min.’ And that’s when Gaoliang finally cracked.”

  “Wow. You should do this professionally,” Nick said with a raised eyebrow.

  “You can make fun of me all you want, but Rachel wouldn’t be meeting her father today if it wasn’t for my interfering.”

  “No, no, I wasn’t being sarcastic, I meant it as a compliment.”

  “I know you are still angry with me for all that’s happened, but I want you to know that everything I did, I did for your sake.”

  Nick shook his head indignantly. “How do you expect me to react? You almost ruined the love of my life. You didn’t trust my judgment, and you just assumed the worst of Rachel from the beginning. You thought she was a gold digger even before you met her.”

  “Hiyah, how many times can I say I’m sorry? I misjudged her. I misjudged you. Gold digger or not, I didn’t want you to marry Rachel because I knew that it would lead to heartache for you as soon as your grandmother became involved. I knew Ah Ma would never approve, and I wanted to spare you her wrath. Because once upon a time, I was that unacceptable daughter-in-law. And I was not even the daughter of a single mother from Mainland China! Believe me, I know what it feels like to suffer under her disapproval. But you never saw that side of her. I protected you from that. She adored you from the day you were born, and I never wanted that to change.”