‘Thank you so much, Father,’ Dina said, when they had come to a stop by the limousines.
‘God bless you, my child.’
She turned to her mother. ‘Momma, I’m not riding back with you and Oliver. Mr Gaines is taking me to the city.’
‘Suit yourself, Dina. It was certainly a beautiful ceremony, Father.’ Ellen presented one gloved hand, as though she wanted it kissed.
Dina walked with Gaines to his waiting car. He opened the door, and she slid in, on to the seat.
‘Take us to the office,’ Gaines said.
‘Very good, sir,’ Carlos replied.
Joel pressed a button, and a soundproof, bullet-proof security screen slid up between them and the driver. Now they were as good as alone.
Dina kissed him on the cheek. ‘Joel, thank you so much. That was an incredible relief for me. Thank you for arranging it all. I am in your debt forever.’
He shrugged. ‘Least I could do. I’m sorry.’
She leant back against the soft pewter leather of his limousine seats. ‘I feel like I could sleep for days. Emotion – it’s exhausting.’ Her eyes moistened. ‘My poor Johnny.’
‘Maybe you should see somebody – a counsellor. Grief hits you in waves, that’s what they say.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think there’s any shortcut. I’ll be mourning Johnny for the rest of my life. But I still have to live it out.’
Gaines looked her over. He was truly done now; the brother was buried, and he couldn’t hide behind the Good Samaritan schtick any longer. She was still thin, but clearly had been eating healthily. Her hair was washed and she had simple make-up on. Dina was back from the dead.
Now he had to decide where he was, in her life. If anywhere.
‘You’re looking at me.’ Dina stared back at him, boldly. ‘I’m not the mess I was a couple of days ago. Thank you for that, too.’
He nodded.
‘But we also had a deal. You told me that, if I kept it together, you’d at least give me the chance to explain.’
His voice was cold. ‘Slept with a rich man to blackmail him? An older man? A man my age? I don’t think there’s an explanation in the world that can take that away.’
‘Joel – you said you’d hear me out. Over coffee.’
‘This car is completely private. He can’t hear a thing. Tell me now, Dina, because I don’t think I can take any more game playing. My life has been on hold for you – because of the past, pity, whatever reason – but I’m nobody’s sucker, girl, not even yours. So, if you have something to say, tell me right fucking now.’
She was taken aback by his anger. All the care, all the comfort – she had got used to it. But now that he saw she was well – coping – he was turning that fire back on her.
Dina responded. It was good; it felt good to be challenged. Gaines was treating her like a person, not a patient. Sympathy and kindness weakened her; aggression, a fight, she knew how to rise to.
‘When I was growing up, it was rough. My dad died early, and my mom . . . My mom didn’t really care for me.’
He nodded, said nothing.
‘At school, the boys would try to feel me up and kiss me and stuff, and the girls didn’t really like me, so basically nobody hung out with me. Except Johnny. He was my only friend. He couldn’t stand up to Mom, though; he was always weak. I don’t blame him; it was his way.’
She swallowed. She wanted this to come out just right, just well enough to convince Joel Gaines that she was serious, not guilty, that she was still worth his love, his lust, his patronage – whatever was going; whatever tiny part of him could be hers.
‘My mom started drinking when she got a little older. And men started to come around at night. Different men, in cars, from the Family.’
‘The Family?’
‘My dad worked a Mafia construction site. They provided for the widow; it’s good for morale. Anyway, I knew these guys were using my mom, turning her into some sort of hooker. They were all married.’
I’m married
. The unspoken fact hung in the air.
‘What did you do?’
‘Everybody knew the local Don, where he lived. I got a bus; I went to see him. At his gatehouse, his bodyguards felt me up when they patted me down. Really groped me – touched me. I was fifteen and they made me feel like meat.’
He digested that. ‘And the
capo
?’
‘He listened to me. After that, somebody came by the house and spoke to my mom. No men came by ever again, and she never drank another drop. I think he told her he would kill her. Anyway, she never gave me another affectionate word after that.’ Dina smiled slightly. ‘There hadn’t been too many before. I mean, she almost hated me; maybe she did hate me. She thought I had ruined her life – no parties; no fun. Before I had even turned eighteen she was ready to throw me right out of the house.’
He could no longer keep up the cold shoulder. ‘Goddamn. That’s hard.’
‘She gave everything to Johnny – paid for his Catholic schooling, his college. I had to go to public school; there was no money for me to go to college, although I had the grades. She wouldn’t take a loan on the house or anything. Swore she needed it all. I had to threaten her, too, to give me some cash for a deposit on my first rental.’
‘What did you say?’
‘That I would go back to the Don. After that, she ponied up. I would have gone to thank Don Angelo personally, except his guards probably wouldn’t have stopped at feeling my ass.’
‘No. Probably not.’
‘They have this fucked up code. Kids get immunity – mostly.’
‘So then what?’
‘I moved to the city. No college; high-school diploma; small pot of money. I worked round the clock, waitressing. I got very good at it, helped my diner out by bringing in new customers, but, you see, all the men mostly leered at me. They’d proposition me. They’d offer me money to fuck them. I never had a boyfriend at school. I was eighteen and I didn’t know how to date.’ She paused. ‘I started hating men, I guess.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I flung myself into work – I wanted to, and I had to. This guy who runs a coffee chain gave me a break, made me a junior manager of a café. It was uptown, near Columbia. I always wanted to study there; even though I was running the books at the café, it wasn’t college-level stuff. I’d serve coffee to kids my own age, just a little older, and it felt like I’d be serving them all my life. All these rich, preppy kids. And the boys were the worst. It was exactly the same as the diner, except they didn’t just leer, they laughed at me – took bets on who would be first to bang me. This one bastard – he totally humiliated me, and I poured coffee on him.’
Gaines laughed. He was gripped. ‘I bet you did.’
‘And, just when I was feeling sick, this guy, Edward, came up to me. Only he’d given himself a fake name: Edward Fielding. He acted really disgusted and sympathetic. He treated me with respect.’ She choked back tears. ‘It was the first time any boy had treated me with respect. We dated, and eventually I went to bed with him. Then he ditched his cellphone number and his fake name, and he vanished – completely vanished. I gave my virginity to a guy who just screwed me and walked out.’
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing – until he turned up at the coffee shop, with his friends. You see, he wanted to prove to them he’d fucked me. I was a bet.’
Gaines was starting to understand.
‘I laughed it off, told the boys Edward had been drunk – too drunk to get it up. He denied it, of course; they argued; we argued. I heard one of them say his name – Johnson. That made me see red and I threw coffee on all of them. The café fired me, right away. So, then I had no job, no money left, and some guy – the first guy I’d ever trusted – had used me like a tissue. It was so funny to him, Joel, so goddamned amusing. That’s when I started looking him up, finding out how I could hurt him. He’s an only child; Mommy is a society queen; Daddy is this banker who wants to be a politician and who’s buying his seat. Edward Johnson hurt me with sex, and I wanted to hurt him back. I wanted to humiliate him, like he did me. When the father was ready to jump me, I took full advantage: I screwed him; I photographed him; I sent his wife the pictures. Maybe it was whorish. I sold myself – not for money, but revenge. You’ve got to understand, Edward had already made me feel like a whore. So what was the fucking difference?’
The bitterness and anger in her tone was thick with regret.
Gaines asked a question to which he didn’t want to know the answer: ‘Money, Dina? You were out of a job, so you asked them for money?’
She shook her head. ‘God – not that kind of whore. I wanted to put Edward Johnson in my position, let him see how that other half lived.’
‘You’re saying you
didn’t
demand any money?’
‘Hell, no. I told Shelby to step down from the campaign, and Edward was to drop out of college. Beyond that, I didn’t give a damn. I just wanted to take from him that life that made him so smug, so entitled. So, it was blackmail, if you like, but not for money. For justice. As I saw it, back then.’
Gaines took a full breath in, like he could drain all the oxygen from the world.
‘You know what happened to the Johnsons?’ he asked.
She flushed. ‘I didn’t care. I know – I know how that sounds. But I didn’t think about it more than that. Edward told me when I called him about Johnny.’
‘Shelby Johnson dropped off the face of the earth. There was a divorce, and he went to “find himself” in Florida. The wife started to drink. She’s in Florida now, too, in a rehab camp. The family were a laughing stock.’
‘I understand that. I didn’t think . . . I didn’t care.’
‘Dina, your beef was with Edward, but you destroyed his parents to get to him.’
She bowed her head. ‘I blamed them, for raising him. I hated them all. Rich bastards. I know it was wrong, now. The mother never did anything to me. And I seduced the father. He was unfaithful, but I tempted him pretty hard, as hard as I knew how. I understand if you despise me for it.’ She sobbed. ‘I despise me.’
‘It was wrong, but I can see why you did it.’ Gaines leaned back, next to her, his shoulders relaxing against the car seat as he let out the long-held tension in his body. ‘You didn’t ask for them to fall apart like that, though you should have been more careful.’
‘I wanted them to divorce. I was angry – so angry. Maybe Edward was unlucky. He was just the last and worst in a long line.’
‘And you snapped.’
Dina sobbed.
‘What you did to his parents is bad news, Dina. You should try and set that right.’
She raised her head and looked at him. ‘How can I? It’s over.’
‘You can try. Use your ingenuity.’
Dina was startled out of her crying. She’d never even thought of that, not for a moment. Put it right? Could she? Was there anything she could do?
Joel Gaines sat next to her, the most surprising man she had ever met.
Put it right
. No therapist would ever say that. It would be,
explore your feelings
or
write a letter and burn it
.
‘And Hector Green? And Ludo?’
‘Hector happened just as I told you, Joel. I deserved half of that cream. It was my idea. His whole store was my idea – all the expansion of it. It was where I learned to run a beauty business, and I took that into Torch.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what happened to Hector, who got to him, or why he changed.’
‘You didn’t have a relationship with him? Sleep with him?’
She laughed aloud. ‘
Hector
? He was about ninety. No, and he never asked. He just got tired, and greedy. I was ready to take the Green Apothecary to the heights, but he just wanted a little money and then to be left alone. It’s not always that way with men, the sexual thing. I just haven’t been lucky.’
‘And Ludo Morgan?’
‘You weren’t available.’
He looked at her.
‘I’m serious. Hell, Joel, I’m tired, too. I feel like Hector Green, right now. I can’t dance around things anymore. I had fallen in love, and it was a disaster; you brushed me off. I don’t blame you – you were married. The worst you did was flirt with me a little. I packed more into it than was there. But you hit me hard; I can’t lie. I needed something to get over you, something that wasn’t just a job. My career path was a little erratic, shall we say. I had made money – from Meadow, from our deal. But also some from the Green Apothecary, and quite a lot from real estate. Maybe I wasn’t the most normal girl in the world. But I wanted to take a break from all the pushing, all the struggle to be someone.’ She put her hand up to her face and dashed away tears. ‘A weak moment, maybe. I just wanted . . . to get a job, and then get a boyfriend. A normal boyfriend, who wasn’t you.’
‘Is Ludo Morgan normal?’ Gaines looked at her. ‘He was the boss. His daddy owns the company.’
Dina shrugged. ‘Torch became very consuming.’
Joel grinned. ‘A pattern, Dina. Did you notice that? Even when you say you won’t push yourself, you can’t help it.’
‘You might have a point. Anyway, Ludo solved a major problem for me. He was at work. That was part of it. I didn’t have to take time out. And, after Edward, I insisted he date me in public, and he had no problem with that. So I guessed it was OK.’
He looked at her. ‘But it wasn’t OK, was it?’
She shook her head. ‘I liked him; I didn’t love him. I thought maybe love would grow. But we didn’t fit – romantically; in bed it was just like going through the motions. Maybe that’s what sex is.’
Gaines shook his head. ‘Not if you’re doing it right.’
‘Well, I’m hardly going to be anybody’s test case. So . . . at the party, when I saw you and you warned me he was trying to steal my work . . . And you kissed me . . .’
‘I’m sorry,’ Gaines said. He wasn’t.
‘Right after that, he took me out to the beach and proposed.’
For the first time, Joel sat up straight. ‘What?’
‘He got out this huge diamond ring and asked me to marry him, and said I should quit my job and just be with him.’
There was a long pause.
‘You turned him down?’
‘Obviously. And, when I said no, he wanted me to walk back to Manhattan. It was only when I threatened to make a scene at the party that he decided to be more reasonable. He said I could stay in his spare room, and that I was fired. Next day, he airbrushed me from all the company literature. Not only that, but it turns out I had a non-competition clause in my contract. And he’s enforcing it. I can’t work for anybody else.’