The Winters(18)

What could I say? My epic self-sufficiency, my resistance to anyone’s generosity melted away. His words had also planted a small, noxious seed of pride in me. You’re not some temporary girlfriend; he wants you to be his fiancée, his wife. He was once married to Rebekah Winter. Now he chooses you.

“I want to go to Asherley,” I said, “with you.”

He grabbed me and kissed me, then lifted me around in a circle. I threw my bag into the backseat of his car and we sped off. I insisted he drop me at the end of the pier so I could tell Laureen.

“You don’t want me to come with you?”

“No. I can do this alone. I’ll meet you at the bungalow,” I said, before kissing him.

I walked slowly to the end of the pier, savoring the smells of lunch and the sound of seagulls circling overhead looking for sandwich crusts or potato chip crumbs scattered about the dock. I thought of how I wouldn’t have to clean any of these boats anymore, or hose off those paddleboards or lug that rental canoe back into storage.

When I entered the office, Laureen looked up from the desk. “Oh good Lord.”

“Laureen, I came to tell you something. It turns out I can’t go to St. Barts,” I said. “Max Winter and I have . . . well, we just got engaged.”

She fell back into the office chair and closed her eyes. “I worried something like this would happen.”

“There’s nothing to worry about. We fell in love, and I’m going to America with him in a few days.”

She gave me a look, one eyebrow up, mouth set in a weary, crooked line. I wanted to believe she was jealous. Here she was, a woman who had worked all her life to build her wealth, and I was lazily marrying into it. Yet I got the sense from her expression, the softness around the eyes, that in fact she pitied me. Fine, I could live with that, because the man I loved was waiting for me in his bungalow. After this, I’d never, ever have to see her or set foot in this nasty little hovel again.

“I know you don’t believe me right now, kiddo, but I was actually trying to save you from this very fate.”

“Stop calling me kiddo. And I don’t need to be saved. I’m a twenty-six-year-old woman engaged to be married to a man I love. And I’m sorry if my leaving makes your life harder.”

She sighed, looking me up and down. “Actually, it’s your life that just took a more difficult turn. If you seriously think working for me is harder than marrying a man like Max Winter, and living in a big, old drafty mansion, and trying to raise a nightmare kid like Dani Winter, you’re kidding yourself. I’ve taken you for a lot of things, some I was right about, some wrong. But I never took you for stupid. And what happens after he gets sick of you? Or the kid chews you up and spits you out? Then what? What’s your life going to look like then?” Her voice lowered. “Tell me, has he made you sign anything?”

I bristled at the baseness of her question. “No, he hasn’t. But I’d sign anything. I don’t want any of his mon—”

“Sign absolutely nothing until you get a lawyer. You want some goddamn guarantees that he’ll leave you a little better off than he found you.”

“I’m sure I’ll be all right.”

“Ha! Men. They kill me. They’ll do absolutely anything not to be alone in the world with their sad little memories. So weak.”

I was finished listening. I turned to leave.

“After it all goes to hell, and it will,” she said, “don’t come crawling back here. I’ll be over in ‘I told you so’ land, making my own money, earning my own keep.”

I slammed the door behind me.



* * *



? ? ?

We relocated to a suite at the Ritz and spent the next several days in a rush of errands. Max had a few more meetings. I needed to get my paperwork together, close a bank account, say goodbye to a few people. It was difficult to find appropriate winter clothes in George Town, never mind a diamond ring both small enough for my liking and serious enough for Max’s.

“It’s the first place Dani will look,” he said, dismissing anything below two carats. “And I want her to know we mean business.”

Still, we both had to laugh when I slid the simple solitaire onto a finger left scarred and calloused by ropes, its nail bed permanently damaged by an errant anchor.

“I feel like a grave robber,” I said, watching it glint in the sun against its ruddy background.

The next day, I was strapping myself in for my first-ever jet ride. I’d island-hopped on small props from the private strip but had never before been on a plane that sat more than twelve people, including the pilot. I looked around at the murmuring crowd settling in. There was no denying it now. I was leaving the Caymans to live in America. I was going to be Max Winter’s wife.

Before takeoff, while Max got up to fetch more blankets, his phone, tossed on the seat next to mine, pinged a text that flashed across the home screen. If you bring ur fucking fling home daddy ill kill myself. When Max returned with his bounty I feigned a sudden fixation with something on the wing, my face scarlet with upset.

“I cleaned them out,” he said as he tucked one of the blankets around my bare ankles. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him pick up his phone and read the text, his reaction that of a man checking a weather app. He dropped the phone in the pocket of the seat in front of him, took my hand, kissed it, then settled back into his seat and closed his eyes. If true, that she would rather die than have me come live at Asherley, then Max, who knew her better than me, looked perfectly content to call her bluff. If her own father didn’t take her threats seriously, then why on earth should I?