February, and they had liked the boat so much on their honeymoon that he bought a yacht and called it the Ruby Moon, which seemed like the height of luxury to Ruby.
“Shouldn’t we be saving all this money?” she asked him from time to time, looking worried. Her family’s history of losing everything in the Crash of 1929 had always marked her and she didn’t want the same thing to happen to him if things went awry.
“If I lose it, I can always make more.” He had total confidence in his limitless earning power, and he didn’t seem to be wrong. When he turned twenty-five, six months after they were married, his net worth was estimated at four billion. With his first remarkable deal, he had planned to seek his father’s investment advice, but by the second deal, his fortune became so vast that he had hired high-powered money managers to advise him. And in the meantime, there seemed to be nothing he couldn’t buy. He was like the proverbial kid in a candy store multiplied by four billion. Ruby couldn’t even conceive of it. But despite the vast fortune he had made, he still enjoyed the simple pleasures, weekends in Tahoe at the cottage, fishing with her grandfather, going to the beach, hiking in the mountains. And at the same time, he denied her nothing. Anything she wanted for their new house was fine with him. He didn’t even expect her to ask, and gave her carte blanche. He couldn’t wait to spend time on the yacht with her after the baby came. The boat was currently in the Mediterranean, and he was planning to leave her there through the summer.
One thing he and Ruby both noticed was that with his sudden immense fortune, women and men threw themselves at him. Women wanted to seduce him, regardless of the fact that he was married, men wanted to do business with him. Even his own mother and stepfather, who had been inattentive and uninterested in him for the last fourteen years and had told people openly that he was weird, suddenly wanted to court him, spend time with him, and invite him to come and visit. But Zack was no one’s fool, and those who hadn’t been there for him before were of no interest to him now, even his own mother. The only person in his life that he truly trusted was Ruby. She had loved him and been a faithful friend before he made his fortune, and she was just as devoted now. He knew she would have loved him if he had nothing. Ruby was above all real, and always had been. And she was deeply grateful for the family house he had restored to her, and how happy he had made her grandparents by doing so.
Zack thought the women who threw themselves at him now were pathetic and desperate and he ignored them. They were flattering, but none of them were as bright and exciting as Ruby, and he couldn’t wait for the baby to arrive. In less than a year he had become an adult and an important man. He was determined not to let it turn his head, and so far it hadn’t. Ruby hoped it never would. She loved his honesty and innocence, which was almost childlike, in contrast to his genius with computers.
Ruby and her grandmother were poring over auction catalogues looking for furniture that closely resembled what had been in the house originally. Since they had sold most of it, or a great deal of it, through their own antique store, she had photographs of whatever they had sold, which made it easier to replace whenever fine antiques came up for auction.
Ruby and Zack took their last weekend trip to Lake Tahoe in May, and in June they moved into the Deveraux mansion, a month before the baby was due. Many rooms were still being worked on, but the reception rooms were coming along well, the master suite with both dressing rooms was finished, as was the nursery, which looked exactly as it had when Eleanor was a child. She still remembered it perfectly.
Zack had already bought a miniature Bugatti for the baby, with a proper engine, assuming it was going to be a boy. But he said it didn’t matter, as long as the baby was healthy. He said he wanted at least a dozen more children with Ruby anyway. The life they were leading was heady stuff