Making Waves

by Laura Moore

  Lauren certainly had Piper’s number.

  “Excuse me, Tilly. I’m afraid I have to answer this,” she said by way of apology. Opening the back door, she stepped outside, and pressed the button on her phone. “Yes?”

  “I am beyond embarrassed. How could you do this to me?” Piper’s voice was shrill.

  “Do what?”

  “That I had to find out that you would be cleaning Windhaven’s toilets from Marcy Klein, of all people.”

  Dakota was surprised by how fast word had spread. “What would Marcy Klein know about anything?” she asked, hoping to distract Piper.

  “Plenty. You’ve been hired by Max Carr. He tried to sign you up for a charge account at Loaves & Fishes. You really wanted to rub our noses in it, didn’t you?”

  Dakota sighed. “I didn’t take him on as a client because I wanted to embarrass you.”

  “So why, then?”

  Dakota opened her mouth to list the benefits that would come from having Max Carr as a client. Piper cut her off.

  “I get it. He must be as hot as Marcy said.”

  What to say? Impossible to deny that Max Carr was handsome and very hot.

  “Just fuck the guy, Dakota. You don’t need to be his servant just because you service him.”

  A garbled noise—a verbal cringe that was a mix of “Gross” and “Ugh”—was all she managed.

  Piper was deaf to it. “Mimi is now beyond livid, angrier than I’ve ever heard her. And I’ve had a lifetime of her anger.”

  “Because you told her.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Of course I did. She’s my sister.”

  And I’m your daughter, Dakota retorted silently. But obviously the Hale reputation was more important to Piper than supporting her only child.

  “You have to quit,” Piper said.

  “What?”

  “You can’t be one of Windhaven’s staff.”

  “I can’t earn a living and grow my business?”

  “For God’s sake, run your precious business if you must. But just let me know when you’ve called him so I can get Mimi off my back.”

  “No.”

  “No?” Piper’s voice was blank with incomprehension.

  “No,” she repeated calmly. “I’m not going to quit working for Max Carr. This account is important to me and it’s vital to Premier Service.”

  There was silence at the end of the line. Then Piper said, “Mimi always did say you were a little bitch.” With a click the line went dead.

  Dakota stared at her phone in stupid disbelief. Why, she didn’t know. After all, she’d predicted how her family would react to the news. They were just being true to form. But, as always, the reality of their actions was like a slap across the face. No amount of prior warning or bracing herself lessened the sting or the shock.

  She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. Well, it was done. So much for her being an expert at riding waves, she thought. That had been a major wipeout.

  On the plus side, she had a hunch Piper wouldn’t be calling anytime soon.

  Dakota was used to working with rich people. Max Carr’s wealth left them in the dust. Had she been a different type of person, she would have spent his money like a lab rat that’s discovered the correct button for stimulating the pleasure center of its brain, pressing until the poor creature expires from euphoria.

  Her last name and her pride prevented her from running amok with limitless spending. She didn’t want Max to think that she was in any way taking advantage of him or somehow in cahoots with her family and retaliating for his having scooped up the family manse. To do so would be to stoop to the level of Piper and Mimi—who, three weeks after the phone conversation with Piper, had yet to forgive her for working for the “enemy.”

  Besides, as exciting as it was to stroll into H Groome in Southampton or Wyeth in Sagaponack or to drive into the city with Astrid Shibles, the interior designer she’d hired to help transform Windhaven, and roam the floors of the New York Design Center and SoHo furniture showrooms and order whatever caught her fancy (and then have it scheduled for express delivery, the ultimate in consumer gratification), she loved hunting for bargains. She and Astrid had found a number of good ones. Between them, they knew all the local artists and craftsmen and were able to buy some beautiful pieces, like the handcrafted dining room table and set of chairs made by a Sagaponack designer.

  “I love clients who trust you to do the job you’ve been trained to do. This house is going to look amazing. I’m so glad he’s allowed us to give the old place a makeover rather than razing it to the ground. Too many old homes are being lost.” Astrid raised her camera and snapped a shot of Max’s newly transformed bedroom. She was taking pictures of the finished rooms—there were five to date—for her portfolio. Dakota had already cleared Astrid’s photographing his new home with Max. Considering his penchant for privacy, it had been generous of him to agree.

  “The house looks better than it ever did, which doesn’t actually surprise me since you and I have better taste than my uncle Elliott and my grandparents. This room came out especially well,” she added, glancing about her in satisfaction.

  Gone was the ornate red wallpaper. It had been stripped, and after the walls had been repaired and prepped, they’d been painted a pale gray, with white for the woodwork. The light palette made the room appear even more spacious and contrasted beautifully with the dark espresso of the newly finished floors. Astrid had searched her design resources and found a platform bed frame and headboard in a gray velour that was a couple of shades darker than the walls. Dakota did her best not to imagine Max sleeping in it.

  Astrid crossed the room to snap a picture from a different angle. “I do like the window treatments, Dakota. They work. And the blue accents you chose are perfect.”

  Astrid had campaigned to put a patterned fabric by the windows, but Dakota resisted, remembering Max’s stated dislike of fussy patterns. They’d settled on a fog-gray textured linen.

  Dakota had scoured shops and found pieces in marine blue—throw pillows, white and blue porcelain table lamps—that added a splash of color and broke up the mix of grays without making the room look overdecorated or too feminine. Even with the addition of an oversized armchair and ottoman in a matching off-white twill, which she had decided would be the perfect spot to sip bourbon and contemplate corporate takeovers while staring at a dancing fire, the room was unmistakably masculine.

  “I hope Max approves.”

  “I’m sure he will,” Astrid said. “We lucked out, you know. If he were married, his wife would have taken over the decorating and most likely changed her mind half a dozen times over the color scheme. I love my own sex and I’m a card-carrying feminist, but the truth is, his being a bachelor is the only reason we’ve been able to accomplish so much in so little time.”

  Imagining Max with a wife made her strangely uncomfortable. “We’ve also had our crews working around the clock.” Starting at seven o’clock in the morning, the driveway was one long line of pickup trucks. The pounding of hammers and the buzzing of power tools competed from different parts of the house.

  “So what do you bet he’ll make another surprise appearance?” Astrid asked, straightening a faux sable fur throw that lay at the foot of the bed.

  The first couple of times Max had shown up out of the blue Dakota had been taken aback. She’d assumed that he’d stay away until the work on the house was complete, down to the last billiard ball. She should have recognized from his willingness to camp out at Windhaven with next to no furnishings and from his decision to hire her rather than one of the Southampton concierge companies that Max did the unexpected.

  Luckily, Astrid was as great a neat freak as she, and their crews knew to pick up after themselves. So except for a pile of folded drop cloths in the corner of the mudroom and some power tools lined up in one of the garage bays—leaving plenty of space for the screaming red Maserati should Max show up—the house was far from chaotic. And since
Dakota cleaned and dusted after the workers had left for the day, it was actually neater than it had been on the morning she’d toured it with Max.

  “No bets. But his office is set up and the wireless system installed. The library’s shelves are full and the pool table in place. The living room furniture looks great, and the kitchen now has a full set of dishes, glassware, pans, and gadgets—including his state-of-the-art coffeemaker. Thanks to Fred, his all-knowing assistant, I’ve gleaned vital information about his food preferences. He likes chicken potpies and rocky road ice cream. Both are front and center in the freezer.”

  “Chicken potpies and rocky road? I swear the man is perfect.”

  Dakota laughed at Astrid’s theatrical swoon. “Come on, you know he had you at carte blanche.”

  Astrid smiled. “True.”

  “The wine cellar now boasts a nice assortment of Italian, French, and California wines, and his liquor cabinet is fully stocked,” she continued. “He has towels for his bathroom and Egyptian cotton sheets on his bed. I hung the punching bag in his gym yesterday with one of the carpenters.” Indeed, she was so ready for one of Max’s surprise visits that this time she was sure her pulse wouldn’t soar into the stratosphere should he saunter through the door.

  Astrid had crossed the room and was taking pictures of the spacious bathroom. She glanced over her shoulder. “In case he forgets to say it, you and I have done a damn good job so far.”

  “This is true. We make a good team.”

  “Remind me again why I haven’t approached you about becoming my partner.”

  A partnership. Joining forces with Astrid would mean that she’d probably never have to worry about getting through the cold desert of the off-season in the Hamptons. But it would also mean relinquishing total control over her business. And if Astrid were her partner, she’d never be able to look back on her success—and she was determined to succeed—and say that she’d done it all on her own.

  “Thank you, Astrid. That means a lot to me. But I like being the master of ceremonies of my traveling three-ring circus a little too much. And you’d miss living on that razor-thin edge of having it all under control and losing it completely.”

  “You’re so right,” she said with a rueful laugh. “We alpha females and this compunction we have to take on the world…Still, if you ever change your mind, you’ll let me know?”

  “Absolutely.”

  —

  Max was in a conference room in Watertown, Massachusetts, with the members of his team, which included his firm’s corporate lawyers, on his right. The conference room was at the research and development headquarters of Chiron, a company he’d acquired for Chris Steffen, the head of Bentech, another pharmaceutical company. Chris wanted Chiron because of Zeph3, a drug it had developed. Zeph3 had already gone through its clinical trials and was awaiting the results of its new-drug application from the FDA. According to Chris, Zeph3 had the potential to be a breakthrough drug in targeting melanoma tumors and shrinking them. If his prediction was correct, Chiron’s stock would soar when the drug hit the market. Buying Chiron meant that a ready-made profit generator would be in place. In addition, the company had a number of other drugs in its portfolio that Chris considered solid workhorses—a neat bonus.

  Two months ago, when Max had presented the strategic plan he and his team had devised to restructure Chiron while Chris handled Zeph3’s rollout, all he’d needed to do was recount Chris’s previous coups in the industry for Max’s Summit Group partners and the firm’s limited partners to begin salivating. It had been unnecessary to explain that being early to market would mean cornering it, or how profitable it would be to own the patent to a breakthrough cancer drug.

  And now it was happening. The lawyers representing them and Chiron had marched them through the agreement page by page. Beside him, he could feel Chris expanding, pumped with triumph and glee.

  Max supposed he was just as pleased. This deal was going to make him a very rich man. Max’s CEO, Bob Elders, had called earlier in the morning, as Max was on his way to the airport, to congratulate him once again.

  “Kudos on the Chiron deal, Max. You’re going to get a big piece of the carry.”

  Somehow, though, in spite of the hefty performance fee coming his way, in spite of Bob Elders’s ringing approval, Max felt a strange sympathy as Mike Kauffman, Chiron’s CEO, signed his name and then sat back in his chair with a bittersweet expression. The bucketload of money Kauffman was making today couldn’t offset his chagrin at not having been able to steer his company more successfully, or protect it from being snatched away by the likes of Chris Steffen.

  It was well known that Kauffman didn’t like Chris Steffen. Who did? The guy was a brash ass who liked to get into pissing contests just so he could whip out his dick. But that didn’t stop Chris from being eagle-eyed at spotting the drugs that promised to be very lucrative. Thanks to the PR company Chris hired to tout his accomplishments, Forbes, Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal treated him as if he were a cross between Gandhi and a Nobel-winning biochemist.

  Those who had regular dealings with Chris knew better, Max thought as he watched him sign his name with a flourish on the document making him the new CEO of Chiron and leaving Kauffman to twiddle his thumbs for the next year, due to the non-compete clause Chris had insisted he sign.

  The meeting officially over, everyone around the gleaming conference table stood. There was a lot of handshaking and backslapping on his and Chris’s team.

  Max went through the motions.

  His mind was focused elsewhere, on the eastern tip of Long Island. He wondered what Dakota had done to the house this week, and what she was doing now. It was strange that she knew so much about him, down to what brand of toothpaste he used, while she remained an enigma. An elusive enigma. Every time he arrived at the house, she managed to disappear—after checking that everything was to his satisfaction, of course. He was wondering if he’d have to start manufacturing bizarre needs and oddball requests in order to get her to stick around.

  He’d bought Windhaven for a number of reasons besides impressing his unmovable father. The property allowed him to diversify his portfolio and, once all the renovations were finished, both the house and location would be an asset when it came to entertaining associates. In terms of wooing a potential business partner, an invitation to a weekend at an East Hampton estate that was steps away from one of the most beautiful beaches in the world ranked right up there with a case of Dom Pérignon and tickets to an Adele concert. A weekend at Windhaven could seal many a deal.

  Numbers worked for Max. So did clear-eyed cost-benefit analysis. But somehow his attitude toward Windhaven had changed since he’d bought it. He no longer thought of it in utilitarian terms or as the place to cement lucrative ventures. Even though she’d yet to finish all the rooms, Dakota had managed to make the sprawling house feel like a welcoming refuge…a place he could escape to. A home.

  He hadn’t even known he wanted one.

  “So, Max, you up for some serious celebrating?” Chris Steffen asked, rubbing his hands together. It was one of his signature gestures. A slight man with dark hair and eyes, he tended to overcompensate. Steffen was always ready to get cracking. “I’ve booked a block of suites at the W for the weekend. We can party upstairs and then head down to the Tunnel or the Rumor. I’m flying Elena and the girls in. On Sunday we can catch the game. A friend’s lending me his skybox. The Pats are playing the Jets—can’t-miss football,” he said, as if Max needed instruction on what teams to follow.

  Max had done this kind of partying—weekend blitzes of alcohol, women, and strobe lights—many times before with Chris. Everything done to the nines, or to the “Max Carr,” as Chris would drunkenly crow. And the mention of Elena, Chris’s girlfriend of two years, and her female posse, was a guarantee of tanned limbs exposed in miniskirts and halter tops. The women would be made up with pouty lips and heavily mascara-coated eyelashes, with notes of Chanel No. 5 clinging to them.<
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  Briefly he considered accepting Chris’s offer. The prospect of a night screwing his brains out with an equally ravenous woman and then being able to walk away the next day without a single promise made or string attached nearly outweighed having to listen to Chris bray about his general awesomeness.

  Perhaps sensing his hesitation, Chris said, “Want me to call Ashley? I remember she really dug you.”

  Ashley would be Ashley Nicholls, of the failed million-dollar shakedown. Max only now remembered that he’d met Ashley at one of Chris’s parties. He wondered how Chris would react if he told him one of the girls had tried to blackmail him. Probably bust his gut laughing and then say something like from what he remembered, Ashley’s blowjobs were totally worth a mil. Maybe more.

  The guy might have graduated from Caltech at nineteen; he might be widely hailed as a genius in the pharma world. It didn’t make him any less of an asshole. Max didn’t believe Ashley would be so stupid as to show up anywhere near him after he’d sicced Roger Cohen on her—the lawyer was as ferocious as any attack dog—but he didn’t intend to find out.

  “Thanks, Chris, but I have a previous commitment.” Utter bull, but Max could lie with the best of them when the situation called for it.

  “So reschedule. This weekend’s going to be epic.”

  “I wish I could. Really.” He shook his head regretfully. “But I know Andy and Glenn would be totally up for partying with you and taking in the game. Glenn grew up in Beantown.” He glanced over to where Andy Reynolds and Glenn Howard were talking to the lawyer who’d handled their end of the negotiations. Ambitious and determined to climb the corporate ladder, they were equally hungry for the glittery perks that went with the job.

  Chris’s mouth tightened at the prospect of hanging with two junior members of Max’s team—second-string players—but since they’d just helped hand Chris a new drug company on a gold platter, there wasn’t much he could do about it.