Crazy for Loving You: A Bluewater Billionaires Romantic Comedy
Pippa Grant
One
Daisy Carter-Kincaid, aka a (semi-self-made) billionaire who’s never met a challenge she couldn’t take down in a dance-off while wearing Manolos and shooting Fireball. Until very, very soon…
When I die, they might not call me the classiest lady to ever live. Or the smartest. Or even the richest.
But there’s nothing like a funeral with very few tears to inspire a person to at least want to be missed.
“I wonder if she would’ve given the flowers one star for the orchids being peach instead of apricot,” my mother murmurs over her mai tai.
I choke on my own Bahama mama, smuggled into the funeral in black metal water bottles to make them look somber. “Mom.”
“What? I wouldn’t speak ill of the dead if the dead didn’t give me so much ill to speak of. And panning your spa in Arizona on her awful website because of a shade of orange on the curtains was petty as fuck.”
“It was,” the mayor of Miami agrees. Mom and I are in the family receiving line in my grandmother’s carefully-cultivated tropical garden outside her South Beach fortress, and the mayor’s just reached us to offer his condolences on my cousin’s passing. “She once told me that my dog was ugly. Not surprised that she’d be just as mean to family.”
His wife nods as she tugs on the collar of her black crepe dress. “She told me I needed a nose job. Also, is that Rafe’s mistress lurking over by the bougainvillea? I’m sure Julienne would’ve given her a one-star review for her performance in bed.”
“God bless you both, and don’t ever change,” Mom says. “What’s in your heart is what matters.”
We trade hugs, and they move on to the rest of my cousins and aunts and uncles.
“Julienne wrote on her blog that the sculpture I designed for the children’s hospital was an eyesore,” an artist I vaguely recognize murmurs. “May her judgmental and tasteless soul rest in peace.”
“Amen,” Mom agrees.
“Did you do the three dancing girls statue in the lobby?” I ask.
He nods.
“I love that! It’s so bright and happy!”
“Hence the problem,” his partner replies. “She called us just to tell us that her Instagram post tearing the sculpture to shreds got more likes than the number of people who’d otherwise see it in a year.”
We all hug and they continue down the line.
I lean closer to Mom. “Julienne and Rafe didn’t make many friends, did they?”
“Why make friends when you can live off trust funds and tear other people down?” Mom sips her drink and slides a glance at a waiter passing out elegant butterfly-shaped canapés, then leans forward to check out the head of the receiving line in the winding garden path.
The Dame, aka my grandmother, is in all black at the edge of the koi pond, standing stoically and welcoming the last of the mourners beside my dead cousin Julienne’s in-laws.
Her mother-in-law was the only person other than Julienne’s newborn baby to cry at the double funeral for my cousin and her husband. His father—aka The Creepy Asshole whom I’m keeping as much distance from as possible—kept checking his watch like he was going to miss a tee time.
And I’m very glad to have my bodyguard with me today.
Mom leans closer and lowers her voice. “I don’t know what her will says about a guardian for the baby, but this might be the best thing to ever happen to him. Unless Rafe’s parents get him, and then the world—and that child—are all doomed.”
She has an unfortunate point. “Poor thing.”
We both stare out over the flowers. I love bright and happy, but “celebrating the lives” of a serial cheater and his bitter wife feels so wrong. For so many reasons.
Mom takes another sip, then turns to me again. “You have to wonder if she would’ve objected to the silver glitter casket. I thought she would’ve gone for gold.”
Clearly, she’s still not over Julienne’s review of the first spa I designed for my grandmother’s real estate empire. “It was platinum glitter.”
“Platinum glitter while her husband is laid to rest in a casket that was shinier than a sports car. One star.”
God, this is depressing. I hate depressing. “I don’t like to one-star things, but I’m one-starring my boob sweat. Who approved a heat wave in October, and when do we get in the pool?”
“Never. Your grandmother planned this, not you. Remember?”
“I hate being overruled.”
But my grandmother overrules everyone. On everything.
Mom sighs. But she doesn’t fidget, because she is The Dame’s daughter. So she’s impeccably dressed in a svelte black Caroline Herrera that shows off her cleavage without being too much, her makeup perfect, her hair demure, her expression sad but not weepy.
I look just like her, except the part where her chicken legs are actually chicken legs, whereas mine are compressed since I’m six inches shorter than she is.
Damn paternal genes.
“I severely dislike funerals,” she says. “Even though they were both horrible people, I’m still sad they’re gone. All those years they could’ve found their souls on earth, and now they’ll never get the chance to redeem themselves.”