Everything had its place.
Mother’s heels clicked smartly on the hallway tiles, her footsteps approaching with the fury of a tornado. The speed of the strides indicated that she was ready—nay, eager—to level anything in her path.
There was no knock, only the hard push on the bedroom door before it crashed off the opposite wall. A lean, golden shape filled Rain’s doorway. Rain turned just in time to see a cell phone whip her way and then go wide, smashing into pieces against her bureau.
“How could you?”
Rain cringed, eyeballing the dead phone littering her carpet.
At least the leopard-fur case is intact. That’s good. Leopards are an endangered species.
Focus, Arianna.
“I see you’ve heard.”
More footsteps from the hall, also brisk, also near, also unwanted. Richard, probably.
I really didn’t want an audience. Not for this.
“If you think I don’t know what you’re doing, you’re wrong. That merger is in two weeks, Arianna. What the hell is your father supposed to say to Victor? ‘I’m sorry my daughter sucked off a gardener while she’s dating your son. Here, sign this’? Do you know how much money is on the line? Where’s the video? Is it on your phone or his?”
“We’re not dating,” Rain corrected quietly. “It was only a few dinners and I don’t like him. The video’s safe, I promise.”
“For a hundred million dollars you’ll learn to like him. If that means you give him a thousand apology fucks for this stunt, you’ll do it. What do you mean by ‘safe’?”
Mama’s pimping out the daughter for business mergers now?
I’d love to be surprised. And yet.
“I have it under control.”
“Pardon me.”
Big brother loomed in the doorway, his blue eyes flitting between Rain and their mother. Up to Mama, down to Rain, from tall to short, from lean to, well, not. They all looked alike, though Rain often felt like the ugly duckling by comparison. Richard had that polished Robert Redford thing going. Mama resembled a queen on the storybook page. Rain was short and shaped like a potato cinched at the middle with a belt. Pretty, yes, but much to her mother’s chagrin, round all over.
“There’s no need to scream,” Richard said. “If Harwood pulls the contract because of something so trivial, we’re better off not in business with them.”
Mama whirled so fast her hair clip fell out, yellow strands dribbling down from her so-perfect bun. “That’s not the point. She had one job and that was to not jeopardize this transaction. If your father has another heart attack, whose fault will it be?”
“Filet mignon, like his last two heart attacks.”
Rain cast Richard a grateful smile before returning to her packing.
“Charles is rude,” Rain said. “And handsy. I’ve tried to tell you that. I don’t want to see him anymore.”
It was the Wrong Thing to Say.
“So you fuck the staff and hold your family hostage with the evidence?” Mama crossed the room in three strides, oozing rage lava at her youngest child. Rain tried to remain calm, folding a pair of white linen pants into a perfect rectangle, but her hands trembled. The moment she tucked the garment into her suitcase, Mama grabbed a stack of her clothes and threw it across the room.
“You’re not going anywhere. Not with the paparazzi looking for a copy of that video. Tell Vaughan the trip’s off, Richard. Maybe some time at home will remind Arianna that she’s a Barrington and that comes with certain responsibilities.”
Rain eyeballed the colorful confetti of clothes on her floor. “But LA’s my graduation present.”
“You should have thought of that before you sucked cock in my garden!” Mama shoved the suitcase over to the other side of the bed. It struck the floor with a thud, startling Freckles so much he yelped in his dog bed and ran behind the settee.
“Oh, oh, puppy. Come here.” Rain chased after the corgi to scoop him up, her mother snorting in disgust before shoving past Richard to be furious elsewhere. Freckles licked Rain’s chin with adoring kisses. It helped a little. Not much—Rain had really wanted to go to LA with Vaughan—but a little.
The door thundered closed behind her mother.
“I know why you did it,” Richard offered a moment later.
Right. He’s still here.
She turned, Freckles pressed to her chest, the dog using the shelf of her bosom like a pillow.
“Harwood is an asshole. Pardon my French.” She nuzzled Freckles’s head and sat on the settee, a blue blouse crumpled beside her, a victim of Mama’s tantrum.
“I know. He didn’t touch you, did he? Not—” Richard’s voice caught. He stroked a big hand down the front of his teal polo shirt, smoothing away the wrinkles. “Was he inappropriate?”
Yes, tell Richard that Harwood aggressively felt me up so he can go tell the other five brothers and they can make nesting dolls of stupidity. No thanks.
“No,” she lied. “Just an asshole. Pardon my French. Again.”
“You don’t have to say that every time you curse.” Richard glided into the room, gingerly picking up her garments along the way. When he noticed the peach thing in his hand was a satin negligee, he tossed it at the bed like touching it would give him a disease.
Ever so proper, her Richard.
“I wanted the vacation.” Her voice was quiet because the tears were rising, threatening to bubble up and ruddy her pink skin. It was unnecessary—she’d live without LA—but she’d worked hard for her master’s in social work, and this had been her incentive to finish the grueling hours and the more grueling thesis. She’d get to spend a week and a half enjoying the city with her brother, away from her mother and the noxious mix of chaos and tedium that accompanied being a Barrington.
And then, in theory, she’d finally be able to focus on her career. Rain had few illusions about her chosen field. The work would be hard and the hours long, so she counted on her vacation to recharge her for the Next Big Thing. It was a change she looked forward to, mostly because she was eager to start helping people in need, but also because working was far better than staying home under Elise’s perfectly manicured claw. It was exhausting to be punished, again, for trying to squirm out from under it. Mother’s mood dictated whether or not her children had access to the money she kept tightly bottled up in trusts. A nine-to-five sounded like heaven by comparison.
Rain had thought that graduation would appease her mother’s need for control, but it’d only gotten worse after she got her bachelor’s. Elise disapproved of her chosen major, and when Rain had been accepted into the master’s program she wanted, Elise billed her for four years of Wesleyan for what she deemed a “failed investment.”
Richard had had to talk her out of that, too.
She brushed at her cheek with the back of her hand.
“You’re ugly when you cry. Stop that,” Mama would say.
I don’t know that I actually care right now.
“I know, and graduation is a big deal. But.” He came to sit beside her. Rain scooched over, feeling far too ample next to him. The other Barringtons were lithe and graceful, but for her, carbohydrates were hips in larval form.
“She’s not wrong about the paparazzi. If word’s gotten out about the video, and I’m sure it has, they’ll be writhing,” he said.
She nodded because she couldn’t manage words.
I won’t cry. I won’t cry. I won’t cry.
Crap. I’m crying.
It’d been a shitty month—pardon her French—first moving back home from school and having to deal with her mother every damned day instead of on the obligatory phone call once a week. Elise wasted no time setting her up with Harwood, who assumed things he ought not to assume after one dinner. She’d gone on a second date because her mother effectively made a Harwood-Barrington playdate
wherein the two parties were expected to exchange fluids and, hopefully, eventually, rings to cement a beautiful new business partnership! Except Rain would have rather shaved both herself and Freckles bald before committing to another minute with Charles Harwood. How one man could talk so much and be so boring, she didn’t know.
Plus he has roaming eyes. That waitress with the legs to her ears. Mother might not mind Father’s trysts, but that’s not for me.
Richard slid an arm across her shoulders, pulling her close so she could goo up his nice shirt with tears and other face orifice unpleasantness. He was a good man despite what Vaughan called the “fifty-foot pole shoved up his ass,” and he awkwardly petted her head in much the same manner as she might pat Freckles when he was upset by the mailman or that redheaded maintenance man he hated so much.
“Let me get you a napkin.” He eyeballed the smear of snot on his shoulder and extricated himself to retrieve a roll of toilet paper from Rain’s en suite bathroom. Rain tore off a sheet and sniveled into it, her face burning like she’d rubbed it against cement.
“I don’t want to see him again.”
“You don’t have to.” Richard went back to picking up her things, attempting to fold them and failing miserably. It was a sad state of affairs when you’d had a valet since you were six and didn’t know how to properly fold clothes. She’d had to learn, of course, because she was a girl, but Richard was hopeless.
Plus he puts them back all in the wrong order.
Rain let Freckles go, the corgi jogging off to attack his toy bin. “I’ll get that, Richard. You should tell Vaughan the trip’s off. He’s probably still packing.”
Richard paused his folding failures to eye her, a crease forming in his brow. His lips maintained their stoic line when he said, “As well he should. You can’t go to LA, but you deserve your graduation gift.”
“But Mama said . . .”
“I know what she said. Keep packing.”
“I have to hand it to you, droplet. That took guts.”
Vaughan Barrington was a taller, less-broad version of Richard, only with gold hoop earrings and sleeves of tattoos from wrists to elbows. He also preferred Harleys to golf and was a black belt in Krav Maga.
Richard had, in his younger years, played a lot of tennis. He was also very good at croquet.
They weren’t exactly twinsies.
“Thank you.” Rain sat in her squishy seat with a sleeping corgi sprawled in her lap and fourteen trillion travel guides open on her phone’s browser. This wasn’t a Barrington plane, it was a Spencer plane; John Spencer, Richard’s oldest friend and the head of a multimedia empire, had been more than willing to donate his jet to Richard’s two younger siblings for their escape from Greenwich to New Orleans. They’d picked the Crescent City not because of its lovely weather this time of year—from everything Rain had read, it would be sweatier than day-old ham—but because it was touristy without being overly exposed. There could be press, yes, but it’d be few and far between.
“I’ve done a lot of things to piss off Mom over the years, but blowing someone takes dedication. What was his name again? Owen?”
“Brett. He’s nice.”
I think?
It hadn’t been romance. Brett was three years Rain’s junior and working at the Barrington estate to pay college loans. He was nice enough, and he looked good in jeans, but he and Rain never really connected. They didn’t have to, either; Rain knew she had to do something to get out of the Harwood thing, and Brett liked her boobs. He came, she didn’t, but that was okay. She’d never been particularly interested in “fumbling.” College taught her it was an avenue to sticky disappointment and vibrator rides when her roommate was out of the room.
“I hope he’s not angry he’s in the papers.”
“Eh. Anyone who sticks it to a Barrington does so knowing Perez Hilton’s only a click away.”
“Let’s hope.”
Rain stroked Freckles’s ears and dozed, the hours between Connecticut and Louisiana a rhythm of thrumming jet engines and Vaughan’s whiskey glass clinking against his tray table. She woke when he flicked her ear, her pink over-the-shoulder bag clutched in his hand.
“Here, carry this. I’m not Barbie.”
She yawned, exchanging Freckles for a leather pouch. Vaughan lifted the dog so they were eye to eye, noses nearly touching.
“Gotta pee, my man?”
Freckles wiggled all over, his fluffy, tailless version of a yes.
A stop to relieve the dog, retrieve the luggage, and get coffees, and they were on their way to the hotel. Rain peered through the tinted window of the limousine at the devastated carcass of New Orleans. A decade later, the destruction of Katrina lived on in the neighborhoods of skeletal shanties and cracked pavement. Sometimes kids played on the empty streets, but more often than not they were dilapidated ghosts of lives of old.
“Is the whole city like this?”
“Nah. But you gotta get through hell to get to the Garden District. I almost bought a place down here, but they say another storm will level it. Probably not a good investment.”
This is more depressing than that animal commercial with the Sarah McLachlan song.
It didn’t last. Crossing over from the ruined suburbs to the tourist area was like flipping a switch. Warped husks gave way to colorful historical buildings, courtyards, and trinket shops. It was a little bit Spanish, a little bit Parisian; NOLA’s streets were packed into a tight grid of dusky charm with gas lanterns and balcony gardens.
Down Dauphine and then a right onto Decatur, and finally the French Market. They pulled to a stop in front of a gorgeous riverside hotel, a stone walkway etched with fleurs-de-lis from curb to front doors and The Seaside emblazoned in gold in an arch above. Fountains flanked each side of the walk, granite frogs spitting water onto green lacquered lily pads with carved white flowers. At the center of each flower was a bulb Rain suspected would glow at night.
Gas lanterns lined the facade, and above, on each floor of the hotel, terraces with wrought iron railings burst with orange, yellow, and pink flowers. It was lovely to behold. So much so that Rain didn’t even mind the musty odeur wafting on the air.
“What’s that smell?” she asked, taking the chauffeur’s offered hand. The moment she stepped outside, the sun blazed down on her golden head, and she hurried to protect her scalp with a floppy straw hat. Freckles bounded from the limousine to introduce himself to Rue Dumaine’s busy pedestrians and busier taxi drivers. She chased after him, whooping as she scooped him up in her arms. Her hat tumbled off her head and rolled down the street, sending Vaughan scrambling.
She hadn’t expected an answer to her question but it came nonetheless, called down from above in a musical southern drawl tinged with amusement.
“That smell, cherie, is the Mississippi.”
THREE
SOL FELT LIKE two pounds of manure in a one-pound bag. His head pounded, his vision swam. The sun poked at him through thin slats between his blinds, unerringly finding and then mercilessly stabbing at his throbbing retinas. He tried to roll over, but last night’s absinthe came a-calling, and he could no longer deny his bladder its relief. He crawled from the crypt at a half hour shy of noon, wishing he could justify sleeping through lunchtime.
And so it was that he stood on his veranda, overlooking the walkway of his favorite hotel. He was fond of the Dallas location, too, and he did sometimes visit if for no other reason than to check in with lesser DuMonts—his youngest brother, Alex, hated the term “lesser,” which was probably fair considering that he did a better job of running the DuMont hotels—but Sol’s true home was on the bayou on a sinking piece of delta land.
I like my sinking piece of delta land, damn it.
Hair of the dog demanded more absinthe to counter last night’s poison, but he’d drained the bottle during his postdivorce pity party, so he se
ttled for a mimosa and a steady stream of cigarettes. The sunglasses kept the sun from obliterating his eyeballs, and a balmy breeze kept him from sweating off his proverbials. It also tousled his already awful bed head, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
His sole plans for the afternoon consisted of drowning himself in the shower and not eating the toast Cylan would try to cram at him, but then the cupcake appeared. She was no more than five feet and small change. A pink sundress, gold hair, and fat that would be so much fun to watch when it bounced—up top, down and around, with a wasp waist between and heavy thighs. Her features were damned near perfect. Blue eyes, a narrow nose, and a plush mouth she’d glossed pink. She was a nice, squishy package, but that wasn’t what piqued his interest. No, that was the chaos of her arrival, from the explosion of corgi from the car, the wibble-wobbly run on impractical sandals, and the squawking at the runaway hat.
The other one’s nice to look at, too.
Sol glanced at the man beating the straw hat against his thigh to rid it of street dirt. He was lovely but altogether too normal. Pretty blond men with tattoos were a dime a dozen in New Orleans, but jiggly blond girls spinning in circles and peppering corgi muzzles with kisses? Those were a rare breed.
Wait, do I know her from somewhere?
The thought wasn’t given long to roost, because at that precise moment he heard her speak, her voice high and mewling with a hint of rasp.
“What’s that smell?”
Oh, this can’t get any better. Maybe I’m still drunk.
“That smell, cherie, is the Mississippi.” His booming voice pummeled his hangover in the no-no place, but getting his answer down four stories required volume. He winced and rubbed his temple, lifting his mimosa in salute. She tilted her head back, regarding him on the terrace, and he remembered that he’d only donned a bathrobe.
The King of Bourbon Street Page 2
