“Not me, Baba!” Amal called back.
Neil kissed my forehead. “Don’t worry about us. We’ll be back in a couple of hours. All of our parts intact.”
“Mmm, I hope so,” I teased, giving him a little push.
“No.” Amal turned and walked down the beach, adding another, “No!” for emphasis at a distance of about fifteen feet.
I glanced out at the boat. Molly stood at the bow, watching Amal head back toward the picnic site.
“That’s disappointing,” Neil remarked. “She was just saying that she loves snorkeling.”
“Maybe she’s smarter than the rest of you?” I suggested bitterly. How could the man who freaked out if Olivia sneezed more than three times in a row actually think tossing her in the ocean would be a good idea?
“She’s like you. She needs to unwind after too long with too many people.” Neil gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze and grimaced. “Perhaps you should see about a massage.”
“Good idea.” Maybe Amal would want to join me. Although, that would defeat the purpose of being alone. “Please, be careful. All of you.”
Neil leaned down, inclining his head to kiss me as I rose on my tip-toes in the sand to meet him. We kept things PG, but leaned toward the PG-13 when he put his arms around me and brought me up against his chest. My white bikini and sheer caftan cover-up were a little too close to being naked.
With a final peck on the tip of my nose, he stepped back. “You said you’d trust me.”
“It’s the sharks I don’t trust,” I grumbled. I held his hand until the very last second as he walked away, and he turned back to wink at me.
I trudged over to the wood and canvas beach chairs Amal had retreated to.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go with them?” I asked when I got close enough to be heard. I nodded toward the boat. “I’m going to be boring while they’re gone.”
“Yeah. I could use some boring.” She said, watching me almost suspiciously as I dropped into the chair beside hers. “Please don’t interpret that as a slight against Molly. It wasn’t.”
“I know.” Neil was right; she’d stayed behind for the same reason I had. Well, besides the sharks, at least. “You’re just peopled out.”
She nodded and pulled her sunglasses down, tilting her head up to the sky. After a brief silence, she said, “You don’t think Molly thinks I don’t like her, do you?”
I frowned. “Because you didn’t snorkel?”
“Yeah. And I thought about how it looked like I was storming off.” She chewed her thumbnail and fell silent again. After another long moment, she said, “I just wanted to make sure. Sometimes, I come off as cold.”
“Do you?” I asked dryly.
Her wounded look triggered a shame response in me that made me absolutely hate myself. She was just a kid. It was sometimes difficult to remember, but that wasn’t an excuse to be callous about her feelings.
“Sorry. It was a bad joke,” I tried to apologize, but the hurt had already been inflicted.
Softly, she said, “I’m not a mean person, Sophie.”
I rolled onto my side to face her fully. “I know you’re not. I know that.”
“It’s just that Rashida is so…”
“Like a puppy?” I suggested.
“Yes! And I’m more like—”
“A cat?”
She arched an eyebrow. “I was going to say I’m more like a porcupine.”
“A porcupine?” I could relate. “Let me guess. Because you’re guarded, even prickly, but if someone gets close enough, they can see how cute you are eating one of those little pumpkins?”
Amal’s pained expression was much more familiar than her hurt-feelings face. “I think that got away from you at the end.”
“It really did”
“But you’re not totally wrong,” she went on. “If you’d stopped before the pumpkin bit, you’d have gotten it. It’s not that I want to be rude or blunt or push people away. I just do it because it’s in my nature. And I don’t know why. I’ve had a marvelous childhood; Mama dotes on us and I know that Baba is so strict because he worries. Nothing made me like this. Like the porcupine, I was just born with natural defenses that I’m wary about surrendering.”
“I am not unfamiliar with that.” I frowned. “Is it because of the broken home thing? Granted, your parents got divorced, and mine never married—”
“I don’t consider our home broken. Our parents’ relationship changed, not their relationship to us.” She seemed a little offended at the implications of my terminology.
“Sorry. It’s an archaic term, I guess. But that’s a great way to look at it.” A wistful ache swelled beneath my ribs. “I wish I would have had you as a friend back when I was a teenager. I could have used some of that perspective.”
Amal nodded. “Molly told me what happened with your father. It must have been difficult for you.”
It had been, but it didn’t seem fair to dump those issues on a teenager. “You and Molly are getting along, then?”
“Yeah,” she said quickly, pulling her sunglasses down. “Your sister is pretty cool.”
“She gets that from me. It’s genetic.”
Amal shook her head vigorously. “No. You got that from Becky. From what Molly has to say, the less you got from your dad, the better.”
“What?” I sat up straight.
“Oh, it just sounds like he was kind of...not a super great dad.” She quickly added, “He didn’t hit them or anything! He just wasn’t as interested in the girls as he was in all the forestry and conservation stuff he was into.”
It struck me then that Amal knew more about my father than I did. That was not a top-five all-time feeling.
So, I changed the subject. “Well, anyway, I’m glad Molly will have a friend in New York when she comes back for school.”
“About...that.” Amal cleared her throat and fidgeted with the edge of her plush towel. “What would you say if I told you Molly and I were...heading toward more than friends?” She shrank back a little, clearly bracing herself for the worst.
My jaw dropped, and I laughed in disbelief. “Amal! Are you going to ask your aunt out?”
“She is not my aunt,” Amal protested. “You’re not my—”
“I’m kidding!” I raised my hand. “I think it’s kind of cute. Do you want me to see if she likes you?”
“Oh, um.” She cleared her throat. “I already know she likes me. She’s the one who...made the first move.”
Flashing red lights and klaxon sirens went off in my brain. “What kind of moves are we talking about here?”
“Sophie, please. Do you think I’m going to hop into bed with a girl I only met a week ago? On a family vacation with my parental figures?” Amal clucked her tongue. “You could think better of me, you know.”
“Excuse me, but I’m a young, modern woman,” I argued. “I don’t care about your sexual activities. I just care about my sister’s sexual activities. Preventing them, I mean. And not because I’m a prude. I’m just in charge of her while she’s here and everything in our puritanical culture insists that the most important thing to protect is her virtue.”
“I just thought that before my crush on your sister gets any worse, I should...ask for your blessing? I’m not sure. I’ve never had a girlfriend before.” Her voice sounded so small and helpless, for a moment, I thought maybe I’d stumbled over the wrong Amal by accident.
“If you were looking for advice on the matter, always tell each other exactly what you’re feeling. Especially if they aren’t nice feelings.” I’d had to learn that lesson over and over again, and it still hadn’t stuck, so maybe I wasn’t the one to be giving that advice.
“Therein lies the problem.” She sighed. “Porcupine.”
I leaned back in my chair, chewing my bottom lip in thought. Though Amal had stayed behind to be alone, she seemed chatty now. And it was rare in the extreme that we bonded at all. Maybe it was pushing it to extend the offer, but
I had to. “I was thinking about having a massage at the spa while the rest of them were away. Wanna join me?”
To my surprise, she accepted. “Why not? My shoulders are permanently locked up from hearing that same fucking BTS song over and over again. Which, by the way, will be a major relationship hurdle for your sister and me.”
Though it was a cute remark, innocent and light on the surface, the potential complications of a teen romance began to set in as we walked across the sand toward the main house. “Look, I know that young love is...strong and fraught and complicated. If this goes wrong—”
“Don’t worry. If we break up, I won’t make things weird when Molly comes to visit. Again, porcupine,” she reassured me.
“And you have to tell your dad,” I added quickly. “You have to tell him because I can’t know something about you that he doesn’t know. That would be weird.”
She rolled her eyes. “You really, really don’t know how to be a mom.”
I tilted my head. “That might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
Chapter Twelve
Molly’s visit to us wasn’t just about sun and sand and pretending everything in the Kingdom of Scafatiwood was sunshine and roses. The purpose was college—and her audition for the American Music and Dramatic Academy. I had to make good on my promise to help her nail it. Holli put me in touch with a top Broadway musical director to give Molly a two-hour lesson in perfecting her audition song. While she studied with him, Amal, Rashida, Mom, and I set out to find the perfect audition outfit.
Well, Amal was in charge of actually picking out the outfits; I was just there to hold my tongue and hand over the credit card.
“I can’t believe you’re not letting this poor girl pick out her clothes,” Mom said, shaking her head as she picked at a blouse on the rack.
“She said she trusts Amal with fashion advice more than she trusts me.” That still stung my pride. “Me, the woman who worked for Porteras and founded Mode.”
“You, the woman who’s thirty-two and still wearing last season Marc Jacobs.” Amal looked away from the Jonathan Simkhi cropped sweater in her hand to give me a pointed once over before walking off again.
My mouth hung open and a fully-offended, “uh!” came out.
Mom patted me on the shoulder. “Teen girls are the cruelest creatures on the planet. Don’t take it personally.”
“I will, thanks. Because I was a teen girl once. So were you. And we never started any world wars or shot up a supermarket,” I reminded her. “I think the ‘cruelest creatures’ award goes to white men.”
“Fine,” she surrendered, raising her hands. “But trust me, I didn’t give your grandmother an easy time of it. And you didn’t give me one, either.”
“Yeah, but she cursed you. ‘I hope you have a daughter just like you!’”
Mom repeated my grandmother’s oft-used hex right along with me, adding, “And that’s why you have Amal.”
I didn’t argue that she wasn’t my daughter. If I’d ever had a daughter, she would have been like Amal. Quibbling over a title was pointless when she was my karmic payback already.
Rashida bounded up to me with a golden-yellow leather Oscar de la Renta ankle-length skirt. “Sophie…”
“How much?” I interrupted her wheedling tone.
“If you have to ask, you can’t afford it,” Rashida said with a sweet smile.
I quirked my lips. “Mmm, no. I think it means you can’t afford it because you blew through all of your allowance money already this month.”
“What must these kids get in allowance?” Mom muttered under her breath.
It wasn’t that Mom hated the girls or anything. She didn’t even really have a problem with how they spent their father’s money like water or held lofty opinions on worldly matters. She blamed El-Mudad for “spoiling” them.
How she expected a man who’d received a tiger for his fourteenth birthday to raise frugal daughters who weren’t materialistic, I had no idea.
I wasn’t a parent, so I was allowed to spoil them in a tiger-free capacity. “I’ll buy it. But you have to tell your father that you’re out of money. I thought he was trying to teach you how to budget?”
“The man with an airplane hanger full of supercars is going to teach me how to budget?” Rashida asked, sounding far, far too much like me.
I snatched the jacket. “Whatever. Now scram.”
“Scram and find more clothes,” Rashida teased. “Got it.”
Mom watched over my shoulder at Rashida bouncing away. When she was out of earshot, mom leaned in and said, “Is there a secondary airplane hangar she was referring to, or did you just call Neil her father?”
“They’re doing that now.” I took the sleeve of a sheer green blouse and held it against my arm. Not my color.
“And how do you feel about that?”
The question stopped me. How did I feel about it? Was I supposed to feel a way? “I’m not sure I get to have feelings about it, do I?”
“Of course, you do,” Mom said, intentionally stressing the reasonableness in her tone. “Not necessarily feelings that should influence the situation, but you’re allowed to feel them.”
I shrugged. “I guess it never occurred to me to have feelings beyond ‘awww!’ and…nope. Don’t think I have any.”
“That’s fair. And good. I was worried that you might freak out since you have that strict ’no children’ policy.” Mom and I had been around that particular busted-ass Ferris wheel many times. She wasn’t slick.
“Are you actually concerned about my relationship and family, or are you trying to get me to admit that I changed my mind about having kids?” I folded my arms over my chest and waited for her answer.
And then felt immediately shitty at her genuinely hurt expression. “Honey, I am concerned. Because I know you haven’t changed your mind. I want to make sure you’re not being roped into something that you don’t want. Because when that happens…”
“I run away.” Not an unfair accusation; I’d met Neil when I’d been running away. When he’d nearly died, I’d considered not even seeing him at the hospital. My biggest fear about the wedding had been that I would bolt for some reason and leave Neil standing at the altar, which had been foolish since we hadn’t even had an altar.
“I get where you’re coming from.” I flicked through a few hangers, not even glancing at the sizes on the top I had no intention of buying. “I know that I can be flakey. But in all the situations where flaking could hurt people? I made the right choice. When I flaked out on the magazine, I quit before my laziness tanked the whole place and fucked up my friend’s life–”
“Language, we are in a public place!” Mom hissed.
I lifted my chin and said, loud enough for a nearby sales associate to hear, “So? If they don’t like my language, I’ll just buy the store, and then I can talk however I want.”
The salesperson approached with a broad, friendly smile. “Good afternoon! Is there anything you’d like assistance with?”
Mom gave me a proud smirk and pounced. “Our feet are tired. Could you bring us some chairs? Thank you.”
“And champagne?” I asked, just to be ridiculous.
“I’m sure we can arrange that, Ms. Scaife.” She nodded to both of us and darted off.
“Ms. Scaife?” Mom raised an eyebrow. “I thought she just saw your expensive purse.”
“I’m in here sometimes.” I walked away, dancing my fingertips across the top of a rack.
“Can you use your shopping addiction to get them to bring us some not ugly clothes?” Amal grimaced. “She’s auditioning for a drama school, not a Golden Girls drag tribute.”
“If we don’t find anything here, we can pick up Molly and head over to SoHo. But all the audition tips say not to look too edgy or contemporary,” I reminded her.
“That’s adorable.” She shook her head and smiled to herself, and it only felt a little condescending.
“But you’re going to
keep looking until I finish my champagne,” Mom added.
“Here she comes, I think.” I caught glimpses of blond hair passing a mirror. Then, the woman stopped, her eyes met mine, and I realized she wasn’t the salesperson at all.
It was the au pair from outside Olivia’s school. The same one who’d turned and walked the other way when I’d spotted her in the restaurant.
“Mom, watch the girls,” I said, and before she could ask why I took off running.
So did the woman.
“Security!” I shouted, trying to keep up in my too-high Alexander McQueen stilettos. “Stop her! Stop her; she’s shoplifting!”
I felt so dirty pulling out that trick. I wasn’t a snitch. But maybe it wasn’t snitching if the person wasn’t committing a crime.
Two men in finely tailored suits intercepted her. They wore name badges declaring themselves security.
“Don’t touch me!” She held up her hands and dropped her purse. “I’m not shoplifting. You can search me.”
“She’s not. Sorry.” I never took my eyes off her, ready to give chase at the slightest twitch. Fury had turned me into a merciless predator. Or maybe fear had turned me into cornered prey. Either way, I could sense the danger in letting her get away. “But she’s been following me. I’d like you to call the police.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” One of the security guards reached for her arm. “Come with us, please.”
“I’m not a stalker,” the woman protested with slumped shoulders. “You don’t have to call the police.”
“If you’re not a stalker, why did you know who I was when I was outside the school? Why were you at Le Bernardin a few weeks ago? And why are you here now?” I demanded. “I don’t know a lot of Long Island au pairs that can afford Bergdorf’s.”
“It’s just Bergdorf Goodman, ma’am. It isn’t possessive,” one of the guards interjected.
“Thanks for the grammar lesson in branding,” I snapped. “Go call the cops!”
“I’m a P.I.,” the woman said with a weary sigh. You can call the cops if you want but you’re just going to be wasting both our time.”
“A P.I.?” I glanced nervously at the guards, who took a few steps back but remained close. “Who hired you?”
Sophie (The Boss Book 8) Page 21
