A Summer Affair: A Novel - By Elin Hilderbrand Page 0,99
was now almost friendly. (“Claire! Hello!”) He sounded like there was no one else he would rather have on the end of his telephone (“How are you?”); he treated Claire like a long-lost friend. Lock stepped away from his desk, but let me find him. Hold on, here he is—Lock, it’s Claire! Weird.
“Hello?” Lock said. His voice was friendly but not intimate. Claire yearned for intimate, for a purr or a growl or a password or a nickname just for her—but this was impossible. Always, she got friendly, solicitous.
“I love you,” she said.
He chuckled. “Glad to hear that,” he said.
“I just got an e-mail from Isabelle.”
“Uh-oh.”
“She bought a twenty-five-thousand-dollar table. She wants me to buy a twenty-five-thousand-dollar table. In the name of leading by example. As cochairs.”
“Right,” Lock said. He sounded uncomfortable.
“Do you see the impossible position that puts me in?”
“I do.”
“Do you?” It was only as Claire had him on the other end of the phone that she wondered if he would get it. Lock was masquerading as a normal year-round islander, but in fact he was a millionaire. He made a donation every year that was in the mid–six figures; he could buy ten $25,000 tables and not blink an eye. This thought (which was sort of novel, because she never gave any play time to Lock’s net worth: she didn’t care, she would take him prince or pauper) was followed by another series of thoughts . . . about what Lock planned to do in regard to his gala tickets. He could, she thought for one fleeting instant, buy a $25,000 table, and she and Jason could pay him for two seats (she had reconciled herself to the fact that $5,000 was the least she was getting off the hook for), and Lock could fill the rest of the table himself. This had the added bonus of putting Lock and Claire at the same table (and with little or no effort, side by side). They could put Jason next to Daphne and her beautiful tits, and everyone would be happy.
“I do . . . ,” he said.
And at the same time, she asked him, “What are you planning on doing? Where do you sit, usually? You and Daphne?”
“Oh,” he said. Now he sounded really uncomfortable. “Well, when Isabelle called—to get her table, that is—she asked Daphne and me to sit at her table. And I said okay.”
“You said okay?”
“I didn’t see any reason not to. I got the sense that Isabelle is insecure, because of her divorce, you know. She didn’t ask me to join her so much as implore me.”
“So you and Daphne will sit with Isabelle.”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” And because further words eluded her, she said, “Thanks!” Her voice was cheerful and plastic. What she thought as she said it was, Thx! She hung up and stared at the phone, speechless.
A few seconds later, the phone rang. And Claire thought, Lock, calling back. He’d stepped out of the office with his cell phone and was hiding out in Coal Alley, where he could talk more freely. She almost didn’t pick up—she was more stymied by Lock’s news than by Isabelle’s e-mail—but she lacked the willpower to resist him.
“Hello?” she said.
“Hi,” Siobhan said. “It’s me.”
The house he was renting in the hills was a mission-style bungalow with stained glass and real Stickley furniture, a framed sketch by Frank Lloyd Wright hanging in the powder room, and a gold nugget, allegedly mined in 1851, nestled in a shadow box in the study. Max loved the house. It belonged to a real California family; the husband owned a chain of Tex-Mex restaurants across the state, and the wife composed musical scores and jingles for TV commercials. There were five children, from teenager to toddler, but they—the family—were in Shanghai for a year. The house was cozy, a refuge, a nest, and despite the fact that neither the house nor anything in it belonged to Max, he felt comfortable in it, safe, and free to drink to his heart’s content.
Bess had asked him for only one thing: that he use his influence to speed the divorce along. Dragging it out, prolonging it, insisting on mediation or court appearances, would only make things more painful for both of them, she said. She wanted out, now; she wanted a clean break. There was no need for negotiations; the only thing she wanted was the dogs.
“I’ll give you three million dollars,” Max had said during their last phone conversation.