Dangerous Pleasures (13 page)

They adjourned to the juice bar, which was set up on the stone terrace overlooking the bay. With the Grecian architecture all around them it almost didn’t seem like Egret Pointe at all, Annie thought. “Apricot and celery, and maybe a little carrot,” she told the juice maker.

“Carrot and apple for me,” Devyn said.

They drank their juice, and then Devyn suggested they take a walk before she had to get ready for dinner.

“Why aren’t you well-off?” Annie asked him. “Tell me more about your family.”

They walked through the Spa’s beautiful gardens. The air was a bit heavy with late-August humidity. Now and again a monarch butterfly flitted by, and there were large bumblebees hovering over the many flowers. Then they moved down to the beach.

“Well,” he began, “my father’s first wife committed suicide when my brother, really half brother, was eight. Less than a year later my dad married Mom. She had been his secretary. Six months later their
premature
son was born, weighing in at eight pounds even. That’s me. At that point the gossip began, Mom said. She told me before she died that she had worked for Dad for four years, and it wasn’t until Madeline died that they became involved. When she got pregnant he made the decision to marry her. They were really good friends. But the gossip didn’t stop.

“My mother was very beautiful, and Madeline hadn’t been. Everyone knew my father had married his first wife for her money and her connections. But he had always been good to her, and he had never embarrassed her. But all that went by the boards. All anyone could think of was that Dad had married nine months after Madeline died, and the secretary he married was pregnant when they married. Everyone assumed Dad had been carrying on with my mother while he was still married to Madeline. And then they began to say that the reason Madeline had committed suicide was because she had found out about dad, his secretary, and the pregnancy. No one considered the time line, that my birth had occurred fifteen months after Madeline had died.”

“Your poor mother,” Annie sympathized.

“My mother had a sense of humor about the whole situation,” Devyn said. “She said if it had all happened like everyone was saying it had, she would have had a longer gestation period than an elephant.”

“Your mother sounds like a really nice woman,” Annie told him.

“She was. She said it didn’t matter what anyone said or thought. Her conscience was clear. Unfortunately my older brother, Phillip, heard the rumors too. He was nine years older than me, and he’d never gotten over his mother’s death. He’s the one who found her hanging in the stables. He wanted someone to blame for Madeline’s death, and he got that someone when he heard the rumors.”

“What happened?” Annie asked. “No, wait. I shouldn’t be asking you that.”

“Nah, it’s okay,” Devyn said. “I was almost three when it happened. My parents had a dinner party, and our nanny brought Phillip and me down to say good night. I don’t remember the incident, but my father said everyone made a big fuss over me, and said what a fine boy my brother was. Phillip then told everyone that I had something to say. Everyone looked to me, and Dad says I said, ‘Mama is a whore.’ There was this stunned silence, and then the nanny fainted dead away. Dad said it took nearly fifteen minutes to revive her. My father asked me who had told me to say that, and I answered, ‘Philly teached me.’ At that point my mother took me upstairs and put me to bed before returning to her guests. Phillip was sent to my father’s library.”

“The dinner party went on?” Annie asked, unable to restrain her curiosity.

“Of course. The Scotts are perfect WASPs. We ignore the elephant in the room,” Devyn said wryly.

“What happened to your brother?” Annie queried. “And the poor nanny?”

“She retired home to England, and Dad gave her a reference on the chance she still wanted to work. He said she was a decent woman, but perhaps not as watchful as she should have been. As for Phillip, he was sent off to a military school two days later. I didn’t see him after that night for many years. Dad wouldn’t have him in the house. His school, St. Cuthbert’s, named after the fighting bishop of Lindisfarne, had a summer camp too. Phillip went from school to camp for the next six years.”

“What about his other vacations? Christmas? Easter?” Annie asked.

“He stayed at school,” Devyn said. “Dad wouldn’t even let him go home with friends over those times. My mother didn’t like it at all. It was the only time she ever argued with my dad, but it came up every Christmas. She forgave Phillip. She said he was just a kid and didn’t really understand what he had done. My father thought otherwise. He said Phillip was too smart for his own good, and damned well knew what he had done. You see, my mother was three months pregnant with her second child when this incident occurred. She miscarried a week later. Dad blamed Phillip for that, too. Especially when the doctors said my mother would be unable to have other kids.”

“How sad for you all,” Annie remarked. “What happened to your brother?”

“Well, after he graduated from St. Cuthbert’s he went to Harvard. And during the summers he was in college, my father made him work in one of his businesses. One summer he worked packing waste in one of Dad’s wool mills in Scotland. He had to live with the foreman of the mill. He was paid what any waste packer would be paid, and half of that had to go to the foreman for his room and board. Whatever was left at the end of the summer was his to keep. He had to use it for his expenses at college, but my mother insisted that Dad buy him clothing once a year and pay for his books. The second summer, Phillip went to work in one of Dad’s offices. His supervisor was so complimentary about his work that my father took an actual personal interest in my brother for the first time in years.

“First he ascertained that the supervisor wasn’t just trying to kiss up to him. When he realized that Phillip was actually a chip off the old block, he began to treat him a little better. My mom died shortly after Phillip graduated from college. I was just fourteen. I hadn’t seen my brother since that night when he had had me say, ‘Mama is a whore,’” Devyn reminisced. “A couple of months after Mom died, Dad bought Phillip an apartment, and he’d come to dinner now and again.”

“So you and your brother were reunited,” Annie said. “That’s good.”

“Not really,” Devyn told her. “You see, I was everything Phillip wasn’t. He was cold, stiff, emotionless, and totally, seriously work-oriented. Dad always said he was more like his mother’s family than the Scotts. The Scotts worked hard, but they liked a bit of fun. On my fifteenth birthday Dad bought me a very expensive call girl so I could learn firsthand what sex was all about. First he showed me what to do with the girl as I watched, and then he watched as I made my first foray. He said I was a natural. After that I went with my dad more often than not when he wanted to have sex.

“When I turned eighteen he arranged for a long weekend for me and my friends on his private island with a group of expensive prostitutes. We had a fabulous time. As long as I kept up my grades in school and got into a good college, he indulged and spoiled me as he always had. The indulgences just became more for mature audiences. Phillip knew about it all, and he was jealous. It didn’t matter that Dad praised his business acumen. Phillip wanted Dad all to himself.

“When I graduated college I backpacked around Europe for two years, and then came home to learn my father’s many businesses. But I didn’t seem to be cut out for the business world. I really tried, but I kept screwing up. For the first time in my life my father grew impatient with me. He began to rely more on Phillip. When he died two years ago he left me a small inheritance in trust. Not enough to get into trouble, but just enough to be supported. The bulk of his wealth, the house, the island, it all went to Phillip. The first thing my brother did was kick me out of the house. Then he attempted to break the trust Dad had set up for me. When that failed he told me he didn’t ever want to see me again.”

“Oh, Devyn,” Annie said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, he’s the real bastard, not me,” Devyn replied. “One of my dad’s buddies took pity on me. He’s a friend of Mr. Nicholas’s, and he got me this gig here at the Spa. I like it, and I like what I do. I guess I’ve found my calling.”

“How old are you?” Annie asked him.

“You asked me that once before,” he said with a smile.

“I know, and you evaded me. How old?”

“I’m thirty-one,” Devyn answered her.

“You can’t be!” Annie exclaimed, surprised. “You look much too young.”

“It’s my baby face,” he explained. “And what’s worse, when I’m sixty, I’m going to look almost as bad. You can’t get rid of baby faces, I’m told.”

Annie laughed. “Men have all the luck, and they always look younger than the women around them. It just isn’t fair! Did your dad have a baby face?”

“No, I look like my mom. She used to say it was her baby face that got Dad,” he said with a smile of remembrance.

“What was your mom’s name?” Annie inquired.

“Joan,” he answered. “It was the simple name of a nice girl from a working-class family. Now, Phillip’s mother had an elegant name, Madeline. It suited her, I guess. A rich man’s daughter, his only child. But I’m talking too much—and about myself, which is worse,” Devyn decided. “Tomorrow you go home, but not until you’ve had another manicure, pedicure, facial, and a final massage from Lars. I want you to enjoy the remainder of your stay, Annie.”

“To be honest, I’m just really beginning to get used to all this luxury,” Annie admitted. “I wish I could stay here forever.”

“Hey, it wouldn’t be so special if it were an everyday thing,” Devyn told her.

“No, I don’t suppose it would,” Annie agreed.
And I do have my year’s subscription to the Channel,
she thought to herself.
The Beast comes home with me.

“It’s almost time for dinner, and it’s a farewell dinner tonight,” Devyn told her. “All the special guests are leaving tomorrow. We open officially right after Labor Day.”

They walked back up from the beach. The damp air smelled faintly salty, and above them the gulls soared,
skree
ing as they caught the whorls of the soft breeze. Annie had saved a pair of white silk slacks and a V-necked black tee for tonight’s dinner. She smiled at herself in the mirror as she slipped a silver cuff decorated in great chunks of turquoise on her wrist. Behind her, Mr. Eugene fussed with her thick chestnut hair as he fashioned it in a style he called a French twist.

“Have I lost weight?” she asked Devyn. “My face looks a little thinner.”

“According to your chart, you’ve dropped almost eight pounds this week,” he told her. “Before you go home, you’ll get a list of what you can and can’t eat.”

“I eat on the run at home. With five kids you can’t really diet,” Annie said.

“Sure you can,” he told her. “Just keep away from the bread, the pasta, and the sugars. I’ll bet your girls will love lots of salads and lean meats. You can add the hard carbs for the little guy. Remember, your older son will be gone. Other than Wills it’s just you girls, Annie. You can do this!”

Devyn was so positive, Annie thought. He made her feel good, like she could do anything. He made her feel as if she weren’t just someone’s mother. Well, hell, it was his job as her PA to make her feel good. She shouldn’t read anything more into it than that, and tomorrow afternoon Cinderella would be back to her ashes.

Dinner was wonderful. The two reporters had departed after the weekend. Those remaining all sat at one table: Nora Buckley, Mrs. Van der Veer, Annie, and the two other specially asked guests, J. P. Woods, the head of a publishing company in the city, and a senator’s wife from D.C. Annie had had virtually no contact with either woman. She found the publisher a little scary, even on short acquaintance; and the senator’s wife turned out to be a lawyer whose schedule was so hectic Nora had allowed her to come during this preopening week. At dinner all she talked about was her desire to get back home, as she had to prepare for a very high-profile case.

Nora had invited the guests’ personal assistants to join them at dinner. The inclusion of the four young men made the table livelier. Dinner began with shrimp cocktail. There was prime rib of beef, fresh corn, haricots verts, delicious plates of perfectly sliced ripe tomatoes, and for dessert sweet chunks of pineapple with individual bowls of dark chocolate for dipping, along with cups of pale tea. Tall green bottles of Pellegrino lined the table.

As the meal came to a close, Nora stood up and the conversation ceased. “I hope you have all enjoyed your week here at the Spa,” she told them. “If you have any suggestions, I hope you will fill out the cards you’ll find in your rooms before leaving us tomorrow afternoon. Mr. Nicholas wanted me to thank you all for agreeing to be our guinea pigs during this preopening. And we’d love to share the news that we’re already booked a year in advance, and have a waiting list for cancellations. We’re having a little piano concert following dinner. It’s Van Long from the Belvoir Hotel in the city.”

“Wonderful!” Elise Van der Veer said. “Franklin and I go at least once a week when he comes to play. How on earth did you manage to get him? He spends his summers in New Hampshire.”

“He and Mr. Nicholas go back a long way,” Nora murmured.

They adjourned to the open terrace to be entertained by the famed café pianist who played all the old standards—Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and the like. Mrs. Van der Veer and her PA got up to dance. Van Long smiled and waved to the dowager from his place at the piano. She waved back.

“Want to dance?” Devyn asked Annie.

She started to demur, but then it dawned on Annie that it was unlikely anyone was ever going to ask her to dance again. Well, maybe when her children got married one of her sons would do his duty. “Why not?” she asked, getting up.

To her surprise he was a wonderful dancer. He swept her into his arms and they glided across the floor. He twirled her. He dipped her, and soon Annie was laughing.

She was having fun! They rumbaed. They waltzed. And when they slow-danced he pulled her against him, and his lean, hard body felt wonderful.