Have to Have It (7 page)

Take that, Marym
, she said mentally, trying to buoy her self-confidence.
He could have stayed with you that night, but he came to me instead.

She leaned in closer to Tom, sure that he'd politely turn down Marym's invitation to join the table of models. He'd tell Marym that he wanted to be alone with Kiley. It would be so wonderful and romantic and—

“Sure, we'd love to join you,” Tom said easily. “Kiley?”

“Oh, yeah, sure!” she agreed, lying through her teeth.

Damn all over again. She couldn't very well say no, so she slapped a hap-hap-happy smile on her face as Tom and Marym led her to the back of the rowdy restaurant to join the beautiful people.

“So, bottom line, you need to learn how to drive,” Billy concluded as he and Lydia walked hand in hand along the wet sand, stepping up the beach from time to time to avoid the incoming tide.

Billy had taken her to Mia-Mia's, a little Italian-themed coffeehouse in Redondo Beach, where they'd shared weak espressos and dry pastries while listening to a woman sing and play guitar on a small, raised stage in the corner Lydia decided that her voice resembled a squealing squirrel monkey in heat, and her original songs all seemed to involve women deeply depressed over lost love.

Lydia sized up the situation thusly: the girl had been hired for her eye-popping cleavage, amply displayed in a silver brocade sweater unbuttoned to her navel, which was pierced with a diamond stick-pin, and for her legs, which were barely covered by a Seven for All Mankind denim miniskirt, below which she wore
ripped thigh-high fishnet stockings and Balenciaga by Nicolas Ghesquiëre stiletto heels with black and silver velvet polka dots.

When she shared her observations with Billy, he pretty much agreed. The only reason he'd picked the spot was because as kids, he and X used to come to an Italian ice cream parlor that had been at the same address. It was the nostalgia factor that had seduced him into checking out the coffeehouse. Lydia found it sweet that a guy who had grown up in so many different countries—Mozambique, Germany, Thailand, Liberia, and, of course, the U.S.A.—could be so nostalgic about a simple neighborhood ice cream parlor.

The more she thought about it, though, the better she understood. She hadn't been back to Houston since she was eight years old, but there were places in her memory that still loomed large. Houston was home, and it would always be home, no matter where she lived in the world. As soon as she had the chance, as soon as she had enough money for a plane ticket, she planned to return to what she still thought of as
her
city, to revisit the glory days of her rich and pampered youth.

Mia-Mia's was only a block from the Pacific. By mutual decision, they left the coffeehouse halfway into the singer's first set. It was a glorious June night, and they decided to walk over to the beach. It was a wise decision. Whatever Mia-Mia's had lacked in inspiration, the ocean and the night sky made up for. On the walk over, Lydia told Billy the whole story of the moms' “X Is No Longer Your Driver” edict.

He whistled. As everyone knew, Los Angeles without wheels was not doable.

“So, two things. I need to learn to drive, and I need a car. I
need
a car.”

Billy bent down and plucked up a seashell, then hurled it into the inky water. “I can't help you with the wheels, but I can teach you to drive.”

“I'm not so sure that's a great idea,” Lydia mused. “Maybe I should ask X for lessons. Havin' your boyfriend teach you to drive might be relationship suicide.”

He put an arm around her slender waist and bumped his hip playfully into hers. “O ye of little faith.”

“Oh, I have a whole lotta faith in all kinds of things,” Lydia corrected. “Just to be on the safe side, though, maybe we should have sex before we start the driving lessons.”

Billy threw his head back and laughed. “Come on, fess up. If I spent every waking hour trying to seduce you, you'd be telling me to back off.”

She stopped walking, turned to him, and grabbed a handful of his navy blue T-shirt. “Totally wrong, Billy Martin.” She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him softly. He kissed her back, and it quickly turned steamy. She felt his hand edge under the waistband of the extremely used but new to her vintage Missoni pink and black knit skirt she'd unearthed late that afternoon at Her Closet on Melrose, a hole-in-the-wall thrift store in Brentwood that was on the way home from the country club. When she'd tried on the size-six skirt, it had hung loosely on her hip bones (a six was way too big for her). Its hem grazed her knees, there was a cigarette burn on the right thigh, and the pink lining hung haphazardly from the bottom of the skirt—all of which accounted for its twelve-dollar price tag. Well, the low-slung waist worked in her favor, Lydia figured. And the price was right.

She'd brought it home and performed the same machete fashion surgery that she'd done on clothes in the Amazon,
except this time with some pinking shears. Now the skirt fluttered midthigh. Then she'd dived into the bottom of her purse to find the engraved matches from the FAB party aboard the
Queen Mary.
She lit one and made a few more burn holes in the skirt's fabric to match the one that was already there, so that the burns looked punk and deliberate. She paired the skirt with a thin, cheap, boy's white sleeveless undershirt (thrift store price was a buck) and wore nothing underneath but creamy skin. No mention had been made of the “borrowed” cosmetics and perfume, so Lydia had been able to do her usual five coats of Benefit BADgal Lash mascara, several sweeps of Nars blush in Orgasm, plus a thick layer of collagen-infused lip-plumping gloss.

Evidently the entire effect had worked; she'd been gratified to see Billy's IQ drop when he picked her up and took in the hotness that was her … which made it all the more maddening that the boy refused to take her virginity.

She rubbed up against him, fingering the fly of his Levi's; she felt his hand caressing the minuscule Wendy Glez lace thong under her skirt. Oh yes, this was going very, very well. She tugged him down toward the sand. He obliged, kissing her neck. But then he whispered in her ear: “Not gonna happen here, Lydia.”

Damn him.

She pushed against his chest. “If you really wanted me, you wouldn't have so much self-control.”

He put his palms in the sand and leaned back, staring out at the ocean. “Look, you want this to be some quickie thing, I can oblige you. But I want more.”

“Great idea! Quickie sex and then move on to something more?”

“It doesn't work that way. At least not for me.” He scooped up a handful of sand and let it run through his fingers. “It's all fantasy to you, Lydia. But in my experience, sex too soon ruins a relationship.”

She thought about that for a moment. “Is that because you're not very good in bed?”

He laughed. “Oh no, Miz Chandler. I'm not playing that game with you. Let's talk about driving.”

Lydia pouted her incredibly pouty lips. “You are a very difficult person.”

“So are you,” he said, but he smiled when he said it, and gave her a kiss. “When do you get a day off? We'll do your first lesson.”

She cocked her head at him. “You're sure?”

“My friend Sasha taught me on the Autobahn between Cologne and Bonn when I was fifteen,” Billy explained. “It's not legal to drive in Germany until you're eighteen, but that doesn't seem to stop anyone. Speeds on the Autobahn run somewhere between eighty and time warp. I promise that you'll have an easier time of it than I did.”

“Sold.” Lydia lay back on her folded hands and stared up at the stars. “Great night, huh?”

“Oh yeah.” Billy lay down next to her. “I used to look up at the stars when I was in whatever foreign country my parents had been transferred to and watch for meteors. I always wished to come back to America. You can't imagine how much time X and I spent on this beach, right here, when we were kids.”

She turned to him, studying his profile in the moonlight. Chestnut brown hair flopped boyishly on his forehead. “I did that, too. Wish to come home, I mean.”

He let his hand drift atop hers. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She smiled at him. One of the big things they had in common was that neither of them had grown up in America. In his case, it was due to his parents' careers in the State Department as Foreign Service officers. Both of them knew what it felt like to know that America was home and to long to be there, but at the same time to feel like a stranger in your own country when you were back. It was like permanent culture shock.

She snaked her arms around his neck and kissed him. “I have Sunday off.”

He kissed her back. “Excellent. I've got a thing at eleven, but after that.”

Lydia couldn't help herself. “What thing?”

“A friend asked me to help out with a house she's building in Alhambra. It's part of Habitat for Humanity.”

Lydia arched a brow.

“I have friends who are girls, Lydia,” Billy said of her look.

“Me too, Billy. I'm not the jealous type. I was just wondering.”

“Becca. She's another one of Eduardo's assistants.”

Eduardo was the slave driver for whom Billy was interning in interior design. This Becca—whoever she was—must be an interior design student too.

“Have you had sex with Becca?”

Billy's eyebrows rose. “You really want to go there?”

“So you have?”

Billy sat up. “We met at Eduardo's Christmas party last year. She got wasted, I got wasted—”

“And you did it,” Lydia filled in.

“Yeah, it happened,” Billy admitted. “But we're just pals, Lydia.”

“Friends with benefits,” Lydia mused. She sat up too. “Are you
friends?”

He ran a hand softly through Lydia's shagged silver-blond mane. “The only woman I want benefits with is you, Lydia. And for now, only in my dreams.”

Ooh.
There went that shivery feeling he gave her whenever he talked about her—them—and sex.

“Just remember, Billy,” she whispered. “When we finally do jump each other, you're gonna have a whole lot of time to make up for.”

He kissed the spot where her collarbones nearly met. “Count on it,” he said.

The next thing she knew she was in his arms again. Then a bright light shone in their eyes, blinding them.

“What the—” Billy barked.

Lydia shielded her eyes from the light and looked up at a park ranger. He had a green uniform, a blond crew cut, and beefy arms, and he didn't look happy.

“This beach closes at ten p.m.,” he roared.

“Yeah, we get that. Could you move the flashlight out of our eyes, please? It's a killer,” Billy requested.

The park ranger stood his ground. “As soon as you two lovebirds move along and out of here.”

Billy cursed softly under his breath and helped Lydia to her feet. “You seem way too happy in your work, man.”

“Just move along,” the ranger insisted, shining his light up the beach, presumably the path that he wanted Lydia and Billy to follow.

Lydia shook her head. “You know, there are other outlets
for your sexual inadequacies than bustin' up other people's romances.”

“What
did you say?” the ranger fumed, and made a motion toward his handcuffs.

“She's joking,” Billy assured him quickly. “And we were just leaving. Come on, Lydia.”

Billy took Lydia's hand and led her quickly through the sand until they reached the street.

“
Never
joke with anyone in a uniform in Los Angeles,” Billy instructed. “They don't have a sense of humor.”

“Who was joking?” Lydia asked. “I know sexual frustration when I see it. Or feel it.”

Dang. She suspected she could have pushed Billy past the point of no return if the Sex Pistol hadn't shown up. Of all the rotten luck.

The Eurocopter AS 355 helicopter raced east, high above Jamaica's northern coastline. Esme pressed her face against the window, looking down at where the azure Caribbean Sea brushed the emerald island. The sky was cloudless, the horizon boundless. She thought she'd never seen anything as beautiful in her life.

“What do you think?” Steven Goldhagen, dressed in jeans and a promotional T-shirt from
Cedars of Hope
, one of his television shows, leaned toward her.

“It's amazing,” Esme breathed.

“Not scared to be up here?” he asked.

Esme shook her head. “I think it's cool.”

“¡Mira, Esme, mira!”
Weston was pointing to the northern horizon.
“¡Yo puedo ver Cuba!”

Esme laughed.

“What did she say?” Diane asked.

“She said she could see Cuba from up here,” Esme reported.

Diane laughed. “Well, if we were higher, we probably could. Anyway, it's just another ten minutes or so, then we'll be back on the ground at the resort. Enjoy the view”

The view was remarkable, but no more so than the events of the past sixteen hours that had brought Esme to this place. When she'd come home from the country club, there'd been a limo waiting to take her to a passport-expediting agency. Esme didn't have a passport, and without one, she wouldn't be able to clear Jamaican immigration in Montego Bay. Within an hour, the photographs had been taken, the application had been made at the federal building near UCLA, and a new blue American passport had been in Esme's hands. After that, the limo had brought her back to the Goldhagens' estate, where she had packed not only for herself (in a piece of lime green Kate Spade luggage that Diane gave her), but also for the twins. They were only partially tracking what was happening; they knew they were going on a trip, but whether that trip was to Santa Barbara or Timbuktu didn't seem to be registering. Diane had left strict instructions about what they would need for five days in Jamaica—to Esme, it seemed like enough clothes and gear to last a month (six bathing suits, eight pairs of shorts, Wrist Wrapper watches custom-designed with actual diamonds, Minnetonka suede moccasins, and ribbed tank tops that blared
ROCK STAR
in rhinestones for each girl)—but she had dutifully followed the list.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon Jamaica time; the family had left the small Van Nuys airport on a private Gulfstream jet at eight o'clock in the morning, Los Angeles time. Steven had hastened to explain that the jet wasn't his—he considered anyone who actually owned a private jet to be wasting money that
could be better donated to charity—but that he owned a share of it, which entitled him to five days of use in any given month.

On the plane itself, though, Esme had discovered a brochure from the company that operated the plane. The cheapest share that you could buy cost nearly four hundred thousand dollars a year, and that was for only fifty hours of flying time in the company's smallest jet, called a Hawk. This was not a Hawk, but a Gulfstream V that could carry eight passengers, plus a crew of four.

Esme had never been in a private jet before—she'd never even flown in an airplane. It made her giggle to think that the twin girls had more experience with flying than she did, having flown back to America from Colombia with Diane. The gleaming white plane was marvelously well appointed, with plush white Italian calfskin seats, a Denon sound system and Sony DVD player with a four-hundred-disc changer, a forty-five-inch flat-screen TV monitor, wireless Internet access, and a galley that had been stocked with bagels, lox, and Katie the pastry chef's special rugelach from Nate 'n' Al's delicatessen in Beverly Hills.

The pilot had told them that they could cruise at more than six hundred miles at fifty thousand feet, though he probably wouldn't be flying that high. Since the Gulfstream could fly from Saudi Arabia to New York without stopping to refuel, the relatively short hop from Los Angeles to Montego Bay, Jamaica, would be a breeze.

Commercial air travel time would have been five hours and forty minutes. The pilot assured them they could do it in four and a half. Not only could they, they would. He was absolutely true to his word. They touched down in Montego Bay four hours and twenty-nine minutes after they'd gotten airborne.

The helicopter buzzed eastward, with Easton and Weston
oohing and aahing at the sights, pointing down at the boats on the sea and over at the two-lane highway that hugged the coast. Esme could pick out the many resorts on the north coast—they were obvious from the hotel structures, swimming pools, golf courses, and immaculately manicured grounds. At times, they seemed to run right into one another.

The highway, though, also seemed like a line of demarcation. To the north of it were the resorts. To the south of it, the terrain and the architecture were starkly different. There were shanties and half-built structures; she even saw a dusty town with a public market swarming with shoppers. She couldn't tell exactly, but it seemed as though all the marketgoers were black.

Esme sighed. It never ended. No doubt everyone at the resort they were going to—she couldn't remember the name, but Diane had told her that it was the most exclusive one that permitted children—was going to be the same: richer-than-rich white people vacationing, poorer-than-poor dark people serving them, hoping for tips, eating their leftovers, et cetera et cetera.

God.
She wasn't white, but she sure wasn't black. What would the help at the resort think of her?

That thought made her muse on what Jonathan would think. Would he even notice the disparity, or had he been so rich for so long that he'd just take it in stride that this was the way the world worked, that there would always be haves and have-nots? Jonathan was born a have, and Esme was born a have-not. That was just the way it was.

A short time later, the helicopter touched down on the helipad of the Northern Look resort, ten miles east of the Jamaican town of Ocho Rios. The helipad was painted blue, with a Jamaican
flag in the center. As they had come down, Esme had seen a small army of white-jacketed Northern Look employees waiting for their arrival.

Now, as the chopper's blades stopped whirring, that army of employees was at their service.

“Welcome to Jamaica! May I take your bags, Mr. Goldhagen?”

“Welcome to Jamaica! May I bring you some champagne, Mrs. Goldhagen?”

“Welcome to Jamaica! May I show your family to its dwelling, Mrs. Goldhagen?”

“Welcome to Jamaica! May I reserve a tee time on the golf course for you, Mr. Goldhagen?”

It seemed to take only a few seconds for Steven and Diane to be loaded onto one green and white golf cart, with Esme and the twins on another one. A third golf cart, modified specially for the job, carried their luggage. Each cart was being driven by a handsome Jamaican guy—Esme found herself on the front seat of her cart, with the twins in the back. Her driver—a smiling fellow whose name tag announced that he was Desmond—kept up a running commentary as the golf cart wended its way toward the oceanfront. Esme found herself charmed by his singsong accent.

“On your left, you will find the golf course. It is twenty-seven holes, designed by Pete Dye, and we send out a foursome only every fifteen minutes so there is no waiting. On your right you'll find the children's circus section, with instructors from Moscow and Paris, an actual big top, and a flying trapeze. Straight ahead is our tennis center: four outdoor clay courts, two indoor hard courts. Our pros are members of the Jamaica Davis Cup team. I trust they will give you a game, yah mon,” Desmond joshed.

The golf cart continued on the path, and Desmond continued
his narration. The resort was enormous. There was a yoga building, a health center, five restaurants—French, Japanese, Spanish tapas, Italian, and vegetarian—plus an outdoor buffet, a running track, a go-cart track, three swimming pools (one of them clothes optional), an enormous beach with every possible water sport from sailing to snorkeling to parasailing, and a main activities center in which Desmond promised they would find a small casino, game room, piano bar, and screening room. “Yah mon,” Desmond reported. “You will not be bored here in Jamaica.”

The one strange thing, though, was how few guests Esme noticed. There were several foursomes on the golf course, a group playing tennis doubles, and several others lounging around the main pool, which was teardrop-shaped and crystalline. But the whole Northern Look resort was amazingly uncrowded. She asked Desmond about that.

“Ah.” He smiled as the golf cart neared a gleaming white modern structure by the beach. “We are very exclusive. Our clientele comes from all over the world—America, Canada, Argentina, France, Italy, even Taiwan. Yah mon. They are of… how do you say in America … a certain station. They do not want to be trampling each other.”

“Oh,” Esme said, wondering how much it cost a day to stay here.

Desmond smiled as if he was reading Esme's mind. “How exclusive are we? You do not stay in a room. You stay in a home. Each of these homes—where you will be staying—comes with its own chef, butler, and nanny for the children.”

“Nannies for the children!” Esme exclaimed. “That's fantastic!”

Again, Desmond smiled. “I take it that you are the regular nanny to these children.”

“I am their nanny, that's right.”

The smile turned into a laugh, and Desmond stopped on the oceanfront side of the white building. It featured a beachfront patio with wicker furniture and a split-level layout with picture windows facing the ocean on both stories. There was an assortment of water sports equipment in a box on the patio—surfboards, masks and flippers, and a beach ball the colors of the Jamaican flag. Almost immediately, Easton and Weston hopped off the golf cart and charged over to the beach ball, which Weston kicked down the beach. The two girls ran after it, giggling with delight.

Esme felt like giggling, too. Five days down here without nanny duty? Where she'd just get to relax and enjoy herself, as if she was an actual part of the family? That was fantastic. In a way, it was better that Jonathan
wasn't
here. So much had happened these last few weeks, she could use some time to sort out her feelings about it all….

The resort came with its own nannies. Right now, there was no place in the world that Esme would rather be than Northern Look.

As Desmond would say, “Yah mon.”

“Esme, I'd like to introduce you to Peter and Erin Silverstein. Peter and Erin, this is our nanny, Esme Castaneda.”

Esme marveled: Peter and Erin Silverstein were carbon copies of Steven and Diane Goldhagen, only five years younger. Just like Steven, Peter was a balding, fifty-something television producer with the deep tan of a several-times-a-week tennis player and the athletic build to match. Also like Steven, he had a scruffy, graying beard and was dressed in faded jeans and an
orange tennis shirt. His wife, Erin, was a Diane Goldhagen clone, with a toned, tan body; surgeon-perfect nose and cheekbones; thick blond hair fortified with natural extensions; and a Pucci-print minidress.

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Esme,” Peter said, extending his hand. Esme shook it.

“My pleasure,” she told him, then shook Erin's hand too.

“So, you're the supernanny,” Erin exclaimed. “Diane thinks you're God's gift to her children.”

“Erin, don't say that,” Diane mock-chided. “I'm going to have to give her a raise.”

“How much are you paying her?” Erin shot back. “Because I'll double it. She can start tomorrow.”

Steven laughed. “No chance. She's ours, now and forever.”

Well, well
, Esme thought.
Isn't this interesting. Forty-eight hours ago, I was afraid that Steven and Diane were going to fire me. Now I'm theirs, now and forever? All it takes is a little competition and a little interest from someone else, and they get all proprietary about me.

“What are your girls doing?” Peter asked Steven.

“Sleeping,” Esme interjected. “I think there's been too much excitement. Weston told me she wanted to go in the ocean, but she fell asleep putting on her bathing suit. Easton didn't even get that far.”

“How about your kids, Erin?” Diane queried.

“We already dropped them at the kids' club up at the main building. Ham is playing with the Xbox 360, and Miles found someone to play Duelmasters with. He's kind of obsessed,” Erin related. “I have to tell you, I'm looking forward to them joining up with your kids and—”

“Excuse me, guests.”

They all turned—a tall, tuxedoed black gentleman with a mustache, carrying a tray, had just stepped into the expansive, white-on-white living room replete with wicker tables and squashy cream chaises. On that tray were four tall mimosas, two frozen brown and white cocktails, a sliced pineapple, a plate of sliced Gruyëre cheese, and a sliced loaf of crusty French bread. This was the Goldhagens' butler, Samuel.

“Would Mr. Goldhagen and his guests like a snack before their afternoon activities?” Samuel queried.

“Just put it on the sideboard, Samuel,” Steven suggested. “Or better yet, in the fridge. We're going to play some tennis, we'll attack it when we get back.”