Chapter 465 | Rude is Expensive

Chapter 465: 465 | Rude is Expensive

She read the message twice. Harrison always wrote like a quarterly earnings call. Three options by EOD meant three restaurants his assistant picked, and none of them would serve anything she liked.

Her thumbs moved before her brain caught up. "I’m literally so busy Thursday, sorry!!" She stared at the two exclamation points and deleted them. She deleted the sorry too, and then the literally. What remained looked naked on the screen.

"Busy Thursday."

She hit send and dropped the phone face down on the passenger seat. It landed on her Goyard tote and slid into the crease. Her heart slammed against her ribs over two words to a man she felt nothing for.

The rearview mirror showed her a stranger. Mascara had run in two grey tracks down to her cheekbones. Her honey-blonde hair hung loose over one shoulder where she had swept it for Jordan’s hands, and the ends had tangled in the wind off the cliff. Her lipstick had worn off somewhere between the bench and the car.

She looked like a girl who had been kissed. Nobody had kissed her, which made it so much worse.

Alexis pulled a makeup wipe from the glove box and scrubbed under her eyes until the skin stung. She fixed her concealer from memory and pinned her hair back up. The mirror gave her Alexis Van Der Berg again, the version her mother had built piece by piece since kindergarten.

Her shoulders refused to cooperate. She tried to set them square, and they just dropped back down, loose and heavy and warm under the cashmere. Eighteen years of Pilates posture, gone in ten minutes on a teak bench.

She started the engine and pulled away from the eucalyptus tree without checking where his Civic had gone.

Pacific Coast Highway carried her north past Crystal Cove. The ocean sat flat and gold on her left, and the radio played something with too much bass. She turned it off. The silence was worse, so she turned it back on and cranked it until the steering wheel shook under her palms.

Her neck felt amazing. That was the whole problem. She kept rolling her head side to side at red lights just to feel nothing catch, and the muscle under her ear stayed soft where his thumb had pressed. It had never been soft before. She had assumed that knot was structural.

The gates to the estate slid open for her plates. The driveway curved up through the palms her father had imported from Morocco, and the house appeared white and enormous against the evening sky. Every window on the ground floor blazed with light. Her mother liked the house to look occupied from the road.

Alexis parked in the garage between her father’s Bentley and the Range Rover nobody drove. She sat with the engine off for ninety seconds and counted them. Then she grabbed her tote and her phone and pushed through the side door into the mudroom.

Dior hit her ankles first. Four pounds of cream Pomeranian launched off the tile and yapped until Alexis scooped her up. Dior licked her chin and sneezed on her collarbone.

"Hi, baby girl, did you miss me? You’re the only person in this house who missed me, I literally know that."

"Alexis, darling, is that you?"

Her mother’s voice floated down the hallway from the kitchen. Catherine Van Der Berg never raised her voice, because she never needed to. It simply arrived wherever she wanted it, clear and bright and pleasant, and everyone within range stopped what they were doing.

Alexis set Dior down and walked into the kitchen.

Her mother stood at the marble island in a cream silk blouse and camel trousers, her blonde hair swept into a chignon that had not moved since the Clinton administration. A glass of Sancerre sat at her elbow. Beside the wine glass sat a small navy box with a white satin ribbon.

The Graff box. She had brought it downstairs.

"You’re late, darling. I texted you at four." Her mother’s eyes went over her from hairline to heels in two seconds flat. "And your posture is dreadful. Did something happen at Pilates?"

"New instructor, she’s super into release work, like, letting the spine decompress or whatever." The lie came out smooth. Alexis had been lying to this woman since she could talk. "It’s supposed to be good for you."

"Well, it makes you look like a fishwife." Her mother lifted the Sancerre and sipped. "Harrison’s mother called this afternoon, and she’s thrilled about the twenty-second. She wanted to know your ring size, so I gave her the five and a half."

"I’m a six, Mom, I’ve literally been a six since sophomore year."

"You’re a five and a half on the day, darling, because you’ll skip lunch." Her mother tapped one manicured nail on the navy lid. "I thought this could live down here now, so the staff can see it. It sets the tone for the house."

Alexis stared at the empty box. Her left hand slid into her sweater sleeve and found the frayed grey cuff of the henley underneath. She rubbed the loose thread between her thumb and finger.

"It’s empty, though, so what tone is that setting?"

Her mother’s smile did not move. Nothing on her face moved, which was how Alexis knew she had crossed a line. The kitchen went still, and even Dior stopped panting at her feet.

"It’s setting the tone of a family that plans ahead, Alexis." Her mother set the wine glass down without a sound. "Harrison said you’ve been difficult to reach this week. Three days without a reply is rude, darling, and rude is expensive."

"I replied to him today, like, twenty minutes ago."

"And what did you say?"

"That I’m busy Thursday."

Her mother looked at her for a long time. Alexis held her face still and kept her thumb moving on the thread.

"You’ll be free Thursday," her mother said. "I’ll have Maria clear your calendar. Wear the Zimmermann, because Harrison’s mother liked it in the photos. Go wash your face, darling, you look like you’ve been crying at a rest stop."