The Summer House Read online

  “Your brother Roger called earlier. He arranged a last-minute appearance for you and Danny. Something in pediatrics.”

  Liz knew this had little to do with the sick children and more to do with feel-good photos for the evening news. She closed her eyes briefly, then looked at Danny. “I’m sorry, honey. Maybe you’ll get that nap later.”

  Danny forced a smile and a shrug.

  Long hours later, Liz was finally able to crawl under the covers and pull a scratchy hotel sheet up to her chin, trying to be quiet so as not to awaken Michael. The pediatrics appearance had left no time for a nap before a fund-raiser at the Guggenheim in Manhattan, then a guest shot on Letterman and back to Atlantic City.

  She stared up at the dark ceiling. How had presidents been elected before helicopters were invented? When had it become the job of the First-Lady-to-be to keep the momentum going while her candidate-husband was stumping across the country or buried in strategy sessions? And yet she had to admit that there was something exhilarating about the attention … about having people smile at you, care about your every move, listen to what you had to say.

  Breathing in the scent of commercially laundered linen, she closed her eyes. Tomorrow, the convention would open. Tomorrow, they would be cloistered in their hotel rooms, invisible to the world for four days until the candidate was officially chosen. Shutting themselves out from the world was part of Father’s strategy toward building the drama and thus the momentum. It seemed like overkill, but Liz had to admit it would be four lovely, peaceful, media-free days. Maybe she’d even wear jeans. And sneakers. Yes, she thought, she would wear sneakers.

  “Danny thinks you should be running, not me.” Michael’s words startled her. Even after all these years, she still could not tell when he was sleeping or when he was not. She rolled onto her side and reached across the king-size mattress until her fingers found the muscled-hard flesh at the top of his leg where it met up with his butt. There were few nights in these last many months that they had shared the same zip code, let alone the same bed.

  She grinned in the darkness and lightly stroked him. “You have a great ass, Governor,” she said. “I wonder if Roger should mention that in the press kit.”

  She sensed his smile.

  “I expect no one would much care about my ass,” he joked. “But they might be concerned that a word like that was coming from the lips of the next First Lady.”

  She moved across the bed, pressing her body against his nakedness. When they were first married, it had made Liz uncomfortable that Michael slept without clothes; now, she could not imagine him in bed beside her any other way. It was no longer as much about sex as it had once been; now it was about the warmth of his skin, the feel of his touch, the feel of her touch on him.

  “What Danny said is true.” Michael turned to her and encircled an arm around her tired shoulders. “I think your approval rating is higher than mine.”

  “I’m not sure Father would agree.”

  Michael kissed the top of her head, then fluttered a hand across her breast. “I disagree,” he replied. “Something tells me your father would do just about anything to keep Josh Miller out of the White House.”

  Her hand froze on his leg. She wished Michael did not have to mention politics here, in bed. She wished that, just for a minute, he’d stop thinking about … work. She also wished he’d found a better time to mention Josh Miller than when her hand was making its way toward his penis and he was gently caressing her breast.

  But now that he’d brought it up, she had to ask. “Do you really think Josh is going to be a problem? You’re ahead in the polls.”

  “Not by much. And first I have to be officially nominated.”

  Michael’s nomination was merely a party formality. He had swept the primaries, he had won over the delegates. It had not been as easy for Josh: he’d had a tough fight, but three weeks ago had captured his party’s—the other party’s—nomination.

  “But how can Josh win? He’s Jewish,” she said, echoing her father’s words, her father’s thoughts.

  “Kennedy was Catholic,” Michael reminded her. “We never thought he’d make it out of Boston. But religion no longer matters. Nor should it. What matters is who is the best candidate.”

  Liz wondered if her husband really believed what he was saying, or if he’d simply been a politician too long. She moved her hand up to his back. “Let’s not worry about the other side,” she said. “Let’s just take care of what we need to take care of.” She hoped her voice sounded convincing.

  “What I need to take care of right now is this erection you seem to have given me,” he said softly.

  Liz hesitated a moment and pretended not to know why. “Are you sure?” she asked. “You must be tired.”

  Without answering, he lifted her nightgown and slowly began kissing her face, then her throat, then the soft little places that lead to her breasts.

  This is Michael, she told herself. This is your husband, the man that you love. But, even as her body moved in sweet rhythm with his, Liz felt an ache of dissatisfaction, followed by the sting of tears. Suddenly she wished that BeBe were back. Back in the world still ruled by their father, the world that seemed to be spinning out of control. Her sister, BeBe, was the only one who would understand how she was feeling. But BeBe was in Florida, safe from the “scrutiny” of the media, safe from the spotlight. Father had wanted it that way, and, as usual, Liz had not argued.

  She cradled her face against Michael’s shoulder. What would they think—Michael, her children—if they ever discovered that their mother was not as wonderful as they had thought?

  Chapter 2

  “It’s three o’clock in the damn morning,” BeBe barked into the phone, her voice a husky blend of last night’s margaritas and too many cigarettes, both of which she’d sworn off four times in the last month alone.

  “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 pro
ducts 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?”