Dev glanced at the bedside table. “Where’s your PDA? Won’t it be in there?”
“Always you with your machines,” Mirabel said, and yawned. “Let me use my brain a moment, okay?” She stared at the ceiling. “I need to go into town first . . .” Between the two of them this meant Phoenix; downtown Tempe, closer and smaller, was “the village.” “Got to meet with the board for the homeless charity about the new shelter.”
“They finally get their planning permission?”
“Nearly,” Mirabel said, rubbing her eyes. “One or two snags to iron out.”
“Money snags?”
“No, it’s something about the plumbing. The attachment to the city sewerage. Don’t ask me for the details; Cara has those.” Cara was Mirabel’s PA. “Eleven o’clock, I think. I’ll take the baby to preschool before I go.”
“Okay,” Dev said. “What then?”
Mirabel sat up in the bed and hugged her knees. “Uh, I think Cara said yesterday that the dress for the University Ball is ready. That’ll mean I need to go for the fitting this afternoon. After that . . .” She pushed the covers away, got up. “Maybe I’ll take Lola down to Coldstone Creamery in the village. She kept asking for an ice cream yesterday. ‘I was good today, Mommy . . .’ ”
Dev grinned at the loving and perfect imitation of their daughter’s voice. “Was she?”
“She drew a great picture of your bike,” Mirabel said, going to the in-bedroom casual closet and pulling her white silk bathrobe off a hanger.
“Somebody’s angling for one of her own . . .” Dev said. His big heavy black Dutch city bike was a source of much amusement among his staff, most of whom couldn’t understand why he didn’t ride one of the ubiquitous Omnitopia golf carts around campus, or at least a bike with a little more class to it. But Dev had his reasons.
“Don’t think she wants her own just yet,” Mirabel said. “She wants a ride on Daddy’s. Did the new baby seat come? No way you’re sticking her in the old one. She’s too big now.”
“I’ll ask Frank if it’s in,” Dev said.
“You coming home for dinner?”
“I have no idea.”
Mirabel sighed and went into the little private bathroom. “I’m gonna call security and tell them that if they can’t show me video of you eating something decent by six o’clock, I’m gonna hunt you down and stuff a sandwich down your face. Don’t care what meeting you’re in, either.”
“Threats, idle threats.”
“Not so idle. . . . ” She stuck her head out the door. “Oh, when you go downstairs, would you leave a note for Maurice? We need more toothpaste.” Maurice was the concierge for their private quarters; he would be coming on duty in a couple of hours.
“Gotcha.” He grabbed her before she could head back into the bathroom and kissed her. “Call me.”
“Will do. Want to see if the baby’s up yet?”
“Next thing on the list.”
Dev headed out to the common room again and across it to his own bathroom and dressing room, where he plunged into the stacks of jeans and racks of polos nearest the door, grabbing one of each more or less at random. As he headed into the bathroom, his brain was already churning with what Milla had told him, tinkering with the priorities of what to handle first this morning, calls he had to make or have made, people he needed to remind that there was just one more thing that needed fixing.
The shower took place at its usual unconscious speed. Fifteen minutes later, scrubbed, shaved, and dressed, Dev was heading out of their suite and down the long antiques- lined corridor beyond the front door, wishing as he sometimes did that Mirabel’s schedule didn’t have to be quite so active, though this was a quieter day than some. Mirabel was all too aware that it was PR-smart for the wife of the world’s eighth richest man to be seen doing something to offset the fact that she didn’t need a day job.
Nonetheless, Dev knew that the PR issue would never have been what mattered most to her. She’d been the one, when they first started to get wealthy, who had insisted that with all the money they were getting, it was imperative to give a lot of it away. “What are we supposed to do?” Mirabel had said. “Just make a big heap and sit on it, and whoever’s heap is highest wins?” She had snorted in derision at one