by Laura Moore
Dakota smiled. “Me too. But here’s the strange part. Piper accused Max of being just like this Diego. I can’t figure out who he could be. If this guy left such an impression on her, I should know a ton about him, including his favorite position.”
“Huh.” Lauren was silent while she digested this last bit. “You’re right. That is odd. Very un-Piper-like. So are you going to ask her?”
Dakota sighed. “I don’t know. I’ve been avoiding her. There are only so many comments about swollen ankles and the wonders of support hose for women like me that I can take.”
Lauren snorted. “Support hose? She’s scraping the bottom of the barrel with that one. Just in case you haven’t passed a mirror lately, let me tell you, you look amazing. You’ve got the glow, although I’m not sure whether it’s from your pregnancy hormones or the effect of falling in love with your brand-new spiffy husband. Just remember when she starts playing her mind games that beneath her tan and the layers of Crème de la Mer she applies to maintain that youthful glow, she’s green with envy.”
—
It was a wifely thing, Dakota decided, to wake up hours before dawn and make Max a bracing cup of coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs and toast before the car service arrived to take him to JFK airport. It was on par with watching him pack his bag and sneaking peeks while he shaved, dressed, and knotted his tie, and she secretly relished each, storing away the memories.
She was touched that he’d chosen to stay with her at Windhaven rather than head back into the city, where the drive to the airport would have been shorter and he could have traveled with his team from the Summit Group.
He picked up his coffee and drained it. “You’ll be careful on the water?”
“If I go out at all this week. The surf report’s so-so at best. And I have a ton of stuff to do over at my house before Jarrett moves in.” She’d decided to rent the house to Jarrett and his girlfriend, Kyra, preferring having locals who worked in the Hamptons living in it to some Goldman Sachs–Sloppy Tuna type who’d only want it for the season. While she wouldn’t be making as much money on rent, she’d be able to continue to store Premier Service’s equipment in the barn behind the house. A big plus. “And at some point I’m supposed to drop by Dunemere Lane.”
Her mother had called, asking her to come over with the Land Cruiser. She had boxes of books for the East Hampton Library.
“So are you going to ask her about this guy Diego?”
“Maybe, probably.” A part of her felt like it had to know. While she’d strived to gain emotional independence from Piper, for twenty-eight years her mother had been the single greatest force in her life. How could she not be curious about a mysterious man who was apparently exactly like Max? Yet another part of her was reluctant to go anywhere near the topic. Asking would only feed Piper’s egomania. And Dakota knew only too well what a colossal energy suck listening to her mother’s description of a present or past lover could be. Was it really worth it?
“Well, be sure to give her my regards,” Max said dryly as he stood up from the breakfast counter. “Gotta grab my bags. I’ll be back in a sec.”
She put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, wiped down the counter, and was making herself another cup of mint tea when Max returned.
“The car’s here,” he said.
She nodded, biting her lower lip lest a plaintive request that he call her slip out. He hadn’t even left and already she was missing him.
They walked to the front door. Drawing a breath, she said, “Hope the closing goes well. And have a good time celebrating with your team and AB1.” There, that sounded upbeat, even though she was fully aware of the sorts of places newly flush Silicon Valley techie types frequented.
He put his bags down and stepped forward, framing her face with his hands, and kissed her. He tasted of toothpaste. Clean and minty and hot. She moaned in pleasure, kissing him back urgently.
“I’ll call you,” he whispered roughly when he broke off the kiss.
Thank God. “Okay, that’d be nice. And you’ll be taking a helicopter from JFK to East Hampton on your return?”
He nodded.
“Let me know when you take off from JFK so I can meet you.” She paused, then decided, To hell with it. “I’ll miss you.”
His teeth flashed as he grinned. “Good.”
Between work, getting her house in order for Jarrett and his girlfriend, Kyra, and Piper’s erratic schedule, Dakota didn’t get to Dunemere Lane until Friday, which she decided was all to the good; nothing Piper said or did could make her more miserable. A week without Max had left her in a thoroughly cranky mood. Texting, FaceTiming, and engaging in some admittedly steamy phone sex, while all well and good and exciting, came nowhere near the pleasure of being with him. She wanted to touch him, kiss him, at the very least reach out and smooth the furrow between his brows when he’d told her yesterday that he had to cut their conversation short. In a weird coincidence, Chris Steffen, the CEO of Chiron, was in San Francisco for a conference and wanted to meet up with Max. If she hadn’t already been predisposed to dislike Chris for his endless demands—Max had mentioned that the man, while smart, was also a bit of a diva—his stealing her precious FaceTime with her husband guaranteed it.
The fact that she’d be picking Max up at the airport later in the evening was the bright spot on her horizon. But too many hours remained.
Dakota let herself into her mother’s house, calling out, “Piper, I’m here.”
“Dakota?” her mother’s voice came from upstairs. “I’m getting dressed. Down in two shakes. The boxes are in the garage.”
Dakota turned around and headed back outside to the garage. Maybe she could simply put them in the Land Cruiser and drive off. Why waste her time trying to ferret information out of Piper? She punched in the code for the garage, and when the door had finished its rumbling ascent, she saw the boxes. All empty.
She rolled her eyes. Why hadn’t she realized that when Piper said she had boxes of books to donate to the library, it meant that there were boxes and that Dakota was supposed to fill them, schlep them to the SUV, and then drive them to the library while Piper luxuriated in being Piper? With a sigh, she picked up six empty wine cases and went back inside.
Piper was in the smaller living room. “Oh, there you are.”
“Yes, here I am.” Dakota set the boxes down and looked at the books lining the built-ins. Piper had yet to remove from the shelves the ones she intended to give away. Why should she when Dakota could? “You haven’t sorted the books.”
“I’m getting rid of them all.”
“All of them?”
“I’m in the mood to redecorate. I want a fresh and airy look for this room. Uncluttered. And no one actually reads books anymore, do they?”
“That’s a lot of boxes.” Not to mention work hours.
“I’m sure I have some more in the basement,” Piper replied.
“I don’t know whether I can get to all of them today.” Unable to help herself, Dakota indulged in a little passive aggression. She waited, not making a move toward the bookshelves, wanting to see whether Piper planned to pick a single title off the shelf.
“I’ll be here all day Sunday.” Piper sat down. “Lord, I am utterly exhausted. I’ve been running around all day and I’m going into the city tonight to meet Miles. Have I told you about him?”
Dakota gave her a long look and then with a shake of her head went and plucked book number one off the shelf and stuck it grimly inside a box.
By box number three Dakota had learned a lot about Piper’s newest boyfriend. Miles was an entrepreneur of some sort—Piper was vague on the details—and had recently sold his business for an astronomical sum. He liked to spend money on her. They were going to St. Thomas for a few weeks, so Piper would need Dakota to check on the house.
Dakota had reached the shelves behind the TV. She had to move gingerly so as not to get entangled in the cable wires. “I do have a life, you know,” she said through gr
itted teeth. “I have a business. I have a husband—”
“Yes, I met that husband of yours. Quite delicious. I was surprised. You don’t normally go for that type. Did he tell you how well we got along? I think we’ll be good friends.”
Dakota was about to turn and tell her to keep the hell away from Max—yes, Piper had gotten under her skin in near record time—when her gaze landed on the gold spine of Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying. The book occupied the same spot it had for all these years, all the way back to the night Piper had pointed to it and then recounted her own fabulous zipless fuck with Dakota’s father.
And suddenly, in a horrible epiphany, she knew. She knew. Her mother’s story was precisely that, a fiction to rival Erica Jong’s.
She shifted, turning around just far enough to see Piper’s face. “Who’s Diego?”
The truth was there in her mother’s reaction, in the way her gaze shot to Dakota, then ricocheted away; in the quick blankness that came over her face; in the studied vagueness of her voice—when anyone acquainted with her understood there was nothing vague when it came to Piper Hale’s interest in men—as she asked, “Diego? Who in the world is that?”
Dakota grabbed the copy of Fear of Flying and stepped out from behind the TV. She was icily calm. It wouldn’t last, not with the blistering fury roiling inside her, rising, ready to erupt. “Diego, the man you said Max was like. Who is he?”
“Oh, him.” Piper tried a shrug. “Nobody important.”
Dakota let the book fall on the glass coffee table. It landed like an angry slap. “Remember the story of the zipless fuck you told me and anyone else with two ears, the one that resulted in my coming into the world nine months later? That wasn’t really an anonymous encounter, was it, Mom?”
She could tell how much Piper wanted to deny it, wanted to continue with her perfect story where she had the starring role, where no one else had a line, let alone a name.
The rage engulfed her. She felt it shooting from her eyes and was surprised Piper didn’t burst into flames on the linen-covered sofa.
“Don’t give me that high-and-mighty look, Dakota.”
“I have the right to look at you however I want. Who was he?” she demanded. “Did you even meet him at the Dakota?”
“Of course I did,” she snapped, her tone affronted.
Dakota gave a mocking snort. Derision was far preferable to devastation. “Do tell.”
Piper’s pretty blue eyes narrowed. “Fine. You want to know about your biological father? Here you go. We met at a party at the Dakota, just as I described. Diego was there with a group of friends, like me, only his pals were all foreigners. Polo players. He was on the team, too. They were having some matches here in the U.S. He and his friends were enjoying a weekend in the city before heading home.”
Her heart was pounding so hard it hurt. “Did you get his last name? Where he lived?”
Piper rolled her eyes like a teenager under interrogation. “His last name was Salinas and he was from Argentina, and no, I don’t remember what town he came from. It wasn’t Buenos Aires, that’s for sure. Besides, he told me he traveled constantly. He came and played in Bridgehampton once.”
The casualness with which this last was delivered left Dakota reeling. Her father had been nearby, mere miles away? “When was this?”
“Years ago. You were barely three.”
“But he was here and you didn’t tell him about me?” Dakota’s throat felt raw.
“As if an international polo player would want to be saddled with a toddler. And what if I had brought you to that match so that during halftime while everyone was stomping on divots I could present him with his by-blow? Then I’d have had to share you.”
“But maybe you’d have marri—”
Piper cut her off with an incredulous laugh. “Married him? Are you for real? We’re not talking Prince Charles here. A Hale would never marry a Salinas. What would my friends have said? It would have been like marrying one of the Latinos who shovel shit at your bestie’s barn. Diego might have been a very talented fuck, but after all was said and done, he was little more than a gaucho with a big stick. I was bored stiff after a weekend of listening to him—”
“You spent a weekend with him?”
Wrapped up in her tale, Piper seemed not to hear her. “Everything was about him. Such colossal arrogance. I should have known better than to see him again after our bathroom romp, but, well, that big stick of his…”
“You never cease to amaze me,” she said, her voice dripping with disgust.
“Why? Because I’m honest?”
Dakota’s jaw dropped. But she didn’t even manage a strangled laugh before Piper was speaking again.
“Even if Diego weren’t a complete nobody, I’d never have married him. Why would I shackle myself to a man who’d only tell me what to do, and expect me to cook and sit at home like a good little wife, a patient Penelope, while he traveled the world having all the fun, riding his precious ponies and partying with his polo buddies? I’m not that woman—I’m Piper—and I live my life precisely as I choose.”
Dakota tried to breathe. It was funny; she was gasping, yet she couldn’t seem to draw any air into her lungs. “What about me?”
“What do you mean, what about you?” Piper asked.
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe I would have liked to have a father?”
“Don’t be silly. You had me. You came out just fine—”
“And that I wouldn’t have cared if he were a Latino groom, a Jamaican line cook, or a Moroccan rug merchant? He’d have been my father and a far better parent than you. I always considered you at best a mediocre mother, but I forgave you because I thought you were weak and spoiled and that deep down inside you regretted never knowing my father’s name. Now I find out you’ve been lying to me my entire life, depriving me of a chance to have a relationship with him. All these years I thought Mimi was the vicious sister. I was wrong. You’re far more cruel and vindictive. I hope you enjoy the rest of your miserable life.”
She walked out, leaving her mother with her lies and her books and taking the shattering truth with her.
—
Max was still in a foul mood when the helicopter landed in East Hampton. Chris Steffen and his endless BS were to blame. He’d wasted a night dealing with him, making him “happy” when he could have spent it coaxing Dakota into giving him a FaceTime strip show, his new favorite long-distance activity, and then later have met up with the guys on his team to celebrate a good week’s work.
Instead, he’d been forced to cut short his conversation with Dakota and send Andy and Glenn off to a dinner on him at Quince, all so he could go stroke Steffen’s ego. Hoping it would improve his mood, he’d walked from the Fairmont, where he was staying, to meet Chris at the Ritz. It didn’t.
The lighting in the hotel bar had been muted, but Chris was on the lookout and waved him over imperiously. Sitting down at the table, Max realized it wasn’t Chris’s first whiskey of the night. He knew the signs. With enough alcohol sloshing about in his system, Chris, unlike some people, didn’t get loose-lipped or sloppy. He got aggressive, even more competitive than normal.
Chris was in town for a conference, a big pharma event, all well and good and part of his job description as CEO of Chiron. Something major must have gone down—a meeting with another pharma honcho or perhaps a stirring keynote speech—and it had triggered Chris’s very smart brain and rapacious soul.
“We’re going to make a killing, Max. An absolute fucking killing.” Chris raised his glass and clinked it against Max’s as yet untouched Grey Goose.
Generally those words were music to a private equity partner’s ears. When uttered by Chris with a nasty gleam in his eye, Max wasn’t inclined to start dancing. “You mean with Zeph3, the melanoma drug?”
“Yeah, that too,” was Chris’s cryptic answer. He raised his glass, toasting himself. “And when Chiron’s raking in the bucks and we get gobbled up by a lovely pharma giant be
cause our profits are through the roof, maybe you’ll remember to thank your old friend. Maybe you’ll remember how to be a friend. ’Cause you’ve been a real disappointment lately.”
Max gritted his teeth and smiled. “Who’s sitting here with you right now? Cheers, buddy,” he said, and took a slow sip of the icy vodka, hoping it would temper his urge to squash Chris like a bug. “So you’ve come up with some new angles to make Chiron even more profitable? Let’s hear ’em.”
Chris smiled again, and Max wondered whether he’d been enjoying some white lines along with his whiskey. “You know what? I think I’ll save sharing my ideas for our meeting in New York with Bob Elders.”
Max cocked his head. It wasn’t like Chris to be coy. “That’s scheduled the day before the board meeting. Doesn’t give us a lot of wiggle room if we need to tweak anything. Don’t you want to run some numbers, make sure your projections are airtight? We’ve always gone over the playbook together in the past.”
And they’d had some good runs, with impressive scores, he and Chris. Max wasn’t sure what had happened. Had Chris simply grown more insufferable with each company he helmed, or was it Max himself who had changed?
Chris seemed to be mulling over the same question, only he had an answer. “Yeah, but that was then. You’re not passing the ball to me anymore. It’s like you don’t trust me to carry it into the end zone. That hurts, Max.”
“Hey, didn’t I help you get the keys to Chiron?” Which he now regretted.
Chris ignored the comment. “I’m not the only one who feels burned, you know. I was talking to Ashley—”
“Jesus, Chris.”
“She thought you and she had something real. And then you went and handed Ashley her walking papers. Harsh, Max. Really harsh.”
“What can I say? I realized she wasn’t my type.”
Chris tossed back his whiskey and signaled to the waiter for another. “Oh yeah? That’s funny. I thought you looked real good together.”
His glass halfway to his lips, Max froze. Chris’s smirk was telling. He wasn’t talking about how Max and Ashley had looked standing side by side or even how they’d moved on the dance floor. He was referring to different positions altogether. No clothing required.
