The Summer House (3 page)

“But it’s nine o’clock in Paris,” said Ruiz, his voice as clear as if he were sitting in bed next to her. “The Loudets are waiting for your answer.”

BeBe groaned, pulled off her black satin eyemask, and snapped on the lamp. “Ruiz,” she said, “remind me to fire you when you get home.”

“You cannot fire me. You are in love with my great Cuban ass.”

Despite the hour and the slight headache that ringed her temples, BeBe laughed. “You’re right.” She picked up a glass from the nightstand and sipped some water. “I was a bad girl last night,” she confessed. “I missed you so much I went to The Breakers and hung out at the aquarium bar like a trollop.”

There was a pause over the line from Palm Beach to Paris. “What is a trollop?” Ruiz asked.

BeBe laughed again, though this time it was forced.
“Forget it,” she said. She’d never been fully convinced that Ruiz’s English wasn’t actually better than her own. It seemed he liked playing the inferior one, the subservient employee to his lover-boss. It was a habit that was beginning to irritate the hell out of her. “Tell the Loudets I’m not ready to deal.”

This time, the pause was not phony.

“Then why did I come here, BeBe?”

She took another sip of water. “You went because you wanted to get ideas for the new package designs.”

“And to make French Country Comestibles irresistible to the Loudets.”

He was right. BeBe had been toying with the idea of selling out to the Loudets, and Ruiz had been encouraging her. The French toiletries manufacturer had been courting her for over a year—ever since her brother-in-law had stepped into the international political scene and announced his bid for the presidency. Nor were they alone. It seemed that every opportunist with a fat wallet thought French Country would become more successful because of Michael’s visibility. It was as if no one had noticed that it had been BeBe herself who had started her company with a single item: the most delectable, finely layered chocolate croissants on the face of the earth. BeBe had started it, and BeBe had turned it into a forty-million-dollar gourmet food industry whose exclusive products were available only through mail order or at the most discerning boutiques and department stores around the world. From her pear tart patisseries to her latest mandarin creme biscuits—all packaged in collectible tins of French blues and butter yellows and featuring the lovely designs of Ruiz—with each new item BeBe had grown more successful, alone, on her own. But lately no one cared that Michael Barton had absolutely nothing to do with the business.

And now, countless people wanted a piece of her, a
chunk of the action. Including the Loudets, who had offered one and half times what the company was worth. It was a difficult bid to ignore, even for BeBe, the independent woman.

Ruiz, of course, wanted her to take the money and run. “They won’t keep the offer open forever, BeBe,” he continued now. “This could be your chance of a lifetime.”

She squirmed on the edge of the bed. “When are you coming home?”

He sighed. “Tomorrow night. I have some things to do first, then I’ll see you about nine.”

BeBe never asked what “things” Ruiz had to do. She assumed they had something to do with his Cuban refugee work, and the less she knew about that, the better. She helped back it financially, and that was enough. Uncoiling the phone cord, she let it spring back. “French Country could be worth more if Michael wins the election.”

“And if he loses, it could be worth less. Or nothing at all.”

BeBe stared at the floor.

“BeBe,” Ruiz continued, “why are you stalling? Take the sure thing now. It will make you a very wealthy woman.”

“I’m already a wealthy woman. Besides, without French Country, what would I do?”

“Stay home and let me make love to you every day.”

For all his artistic talents, Ruiz would not have a problem being a kept man, as long as he was
well
kept. “I’m forty-seven, Ruiz. In a dozen years I’ll be nearly sixty. You’ll only be in your forties.”

The pause came again. “Good-bye, Barbara Beth,” Ruiz said brusquely. “I’ll see you tomorrow night. In the meantime, I’ll tell the Loudets to … how do you say it … kiss off?”

If she did not love his great Cuban ass, she would have told
him
to kiss off. “Just tell them I need more time. A couple of weeks.” She hung up the phone. Maybe she was passing up the chance of a lifetime. Maybe it was time to let go of her business. But should she hold out for more money? Or was that being greedy? And greed was one of those seven deadly sins, wasn’t it?

She threw back the covers and stepped out of bed. Greed was not the only deadly sin she’d come up against in her life, and so far, Barbara Beth “BeBe” Adams had survived.

Three hours later BeBe watched the sun haul itself up over the Atlantic and prepare for another blistering late-July day. She picked up the coffee mug that sat on her desk and tipped it to her mouth. It was empty. Sometime before dawn she’d finished her second pot of strong black java, between looking over the layouts for the spring catalog and reading proposals for a manufacturing facility in the Pacific Rim.

After her conversation with Ruiz, she had not gone back to sleep. Instead, BeBe had done what she did best: worked. Work was her salvation; work was her life. It was the one thing she could count on; it was the one thing that had ever made any sense, even though it gave her hunched shoulders and a stiff neck, daily headaches and, once, a bleeding ulcer.

Why would anyone expect her to give all that up for a mere sixty million dollars?

She set down the mug, remembering when she’d decided to go into business. She’d been between husbands number two and three. “Floundering” was the word her baby sister, Liz, had suggested; she had not been wrong. It was a condition not foreign to BeBe: it was as if her entire life had been spent on the cusp of
something that never quite happened, at least not for long. It was as if her few times of settling down were just the halftimes in her permanent game of floundering.

So she’d been floundering again, between husbands, and had somehow decided that Paris was as good a place as any to do it.

For a few weeks she’d surveyed the haute couture and the Champs-Élysées and Luxembourg Gardens and the Moulin Rouge. Then she met a man who actually lived on one of those houseboats on the Seine, and she ended up spending four days and four nights there. His name was Pierre (no surprise there) and what was most memorable about him were the chocolate croissants he fed her in bed and the unique way he used his tongue to lick the delicate crumbs from all over her body.

When she tired of him or he tired of her (who tired first, she could not quite remember), BeBe walked the side streets of Paris. It was then that she saw the word “Comestibles” engraved on a wooden shingle. The sign hung over an old shop in a pale putty-colored building that hugged the curve of a narrow alley. Intrigued by the word, BeBe stepped inside the shop. There, amid cozy collections of gourmet treats, she found lovely, light biscuits and alpine-rich cocoa and marmalade made in Provence.

Comestibles
. The word would not leave her mind, but continued to roll deliciously around in her mouth, even after she’d stopped floundering, even after she’d returned to the States.

Just before she met and (unfortunately) married husband number three, BeBe started French Country in the garage of her old condo in Palm Beach Gardens. In honor of Pierre, she began with chocolate croissants.

She supposed that when Father learned about her venture, he had not expected it would last very long. Which BeBe admitted to herself was perhaps the one reason she
was determined to make it succeed. Thankfully, she’d waited until her next (and last) divorce before generating the big bucks. She’d moved up from croissants to tea cakes in lemon and custard and raspberry-almond. That’s when she had the idea to pack her goodies in tins, thus escalating the retail price, the geographic span of the market, and the profits.

And now, here she was, perched on the edge of sixty million dollars, wondering if she should jump in or get off.

She stood up and decided that right now she was going to do nothing but shower and dress for the office.

She crossed the media room of her sprawling home, which, nestled as it was along prime Palm Beach waterfront, was a few hundred steps up from the old condo in the Gardens. She absently picked up the remote and flicked on the television as she walked past. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Michael’s picture. She stopped in the middle of the room and turned to the TV. She watched. She listened. She tightened the sash of her silk robe.

“We’re all so pleased to be at the convention,” Michael was saying to the crowd of reporters, microphones shoved at his face. “It’s been a long journey to Atlantic City. In the next few days, we’ll see where we go from here.” He waved and flashed a wide smile. The cameras pulled back and BeBe saw Liz.

“Hey,” BeBe called out to the wide screen before her, to her gorgeous kid sister who had come so far. Then BeBe saw Roger and his pain-in-the-ass wife, Evelyn, then Mags and Greg and Danny—Liz’s kids, her nephews, her niece. But the smile that had come to her face vanished when she saw that next to Danny’s wheelchair stood Father, all puffed up and arrogant as if this were his show.

Looking at the eyes that looked too much like her
own, BeBe decided that maybe she
should
take the sixty million and run. Because for all of Father’s connections and all his big-mouthing, she doubted if he had ever had such a sum. It would be revenge, and it would be sweet, but it would not be enough, never enough. With a slow, steady hand, BeBe raised the remote, leveled it at Will Adams’s face, and pressed the OFF button.

If it hadn’t been for Claire, BeBe would have lost her mind long ago, like maybe eight years ago when she’d decided she had enough products to begin her own direct mail catalog. Until then, French Country had been offered only through other people’s catalogs and stores, other people who were making the real money, not her.

Claire was a single mother of three, struggling to make it on an administrative assistant’s pay and no child support. When Claire showed up at the condo for an interview, BeBe was instantly drawn to her. It might have been the young mother’s patently old, but neat and clean, navy blue suit—so uncommon in these days of nothing but jeans. Or it might have been BeBe’s inherent attraction to the underdogs of life, with whom, despite the dubious “privilege” of her upbringing, BeBe had always felt she belonged. BeBe had hired her immediately, and had been happily increasing her salary regularly to numbers the woman had perhaps never dreamed possible.

However, Claire was a cynic who thought all men were scum (especially Ruiz) and detested politics (especially Michael Barton’s politics), and she never hesitated to share her opinions with her boss.

“Your sister’s on the phone,” Claire said later that day. BeBe was sitting in her office reviewing résumés for
much-needed additional chefs, trying to decide who could be trusted with her lavish, rich recipes.

“Lizzie!” BeBe said exuberantly into the phone. “I saw you this morning. You look wonderful.”

“It’s all done with mirrors,” Liz replied. “The truth is, I’m beginning to feel older than dirt.”

“What you need is some Florida sun.”

“What I need is to talk to my big sister. Tell me this is all worth it, Beebs. Tell me everything will be okay.”

It was a request BeBe could not even pretend to grant. “I’m sure Father has everything under control.” She wanted to sound as if she’d meant it, as if it could give her sister some comfort. But, as usual, anytime Father’s name was mentioned between them, a gap opened that could not be closed. BeBe had barely seen Father since Daniel was killed.

“Oh, Beebs,” Liz said. “I wish things could be different. I wish you could be here.”

“Me too, kiddo.” It had, however, long since been decided that their politics would not be a showcase for the family’s black sheep. “How are the kids?” BeBe asked brightly.

“Bearing up well. Danny’s a little tired. But I guess that’s to be expected.”

“And Michael? Is he going to be nominated?”

“It looks that way.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And he’ll be running against Josh.” She waited one, two, three seconds for Liz to comment.

“Congratulations,” Liz said. “I see you’re keeping up with the news.”

BeBe wondered just how much French Country’s business might suffer if Michael lost the election, or worse, if ancient, dark family secrets were
unearthed during the race. She supposed it was possible that her customers might choose to no longer deal with an Adams. She had a sudden thought of Billy Carter, and wondered what had ever happened to his beer.

Leaning back in her chair, she put her feet up on her desk. She looked down at her legs, which had never been as long as her sister’s, and at the pale skin that, despite living year-round in Florida, no longer tanned as it had on the Vineyard, but more often burned and made her sprout adolescent freckles that matched her orange hair. “Well,” she said slowly, “it will be an interesting election.”

Liz hesitated then said, “Yes. Well. That’s one way of putting it.”

BeBe’s heart ached just a little. “Keep your chin up, kiddo, and everything will work out. It always has. It always does.” She did not add, “But not always the way we want.”

“I love you, big sister,” Liz replied. “Will you come see us when we’re in south Florida?”

“What? Come to one of those horrible dinners with overboiled chicken and dishwater gravy?”

“Yes.”

“The answer is no. Not on your life.”

“Then I’ll have to make time to come and see you.”

“Please. And bring the kids. I love those kids.”

“Me, too, Beebs. And I love you, too. You’re the best sister. Guess I’d better go. Roger wants to give us an update.”

“Kisses to him, too. But not to his wife.” They both laughed for a second before hanging up.

Then BeBe looked down at her flame-colored manicure and wondered how Liz would feel if she ever found out that once, long ago, BeBe, the “best sister,” had slept with her husband. That was
before Michael had married Liz, of course. That was … before.