“She quit,” Michael said with a brief dark glance at his wife, who didn’t seem to notice. She was wearing skintight yoga pants, high soft leather boots, and a long cardigan over a low-cut top—I guess in theory it was all comfortable traveling clothing, but she looked pretty incredible. She was a beautiful young woman with long, straight dark hair and large black eyes.
Mia reached her arms out toward her mother. Crystal heaved a sigh, handed Michael her purse and the key cards, then took the baby and propped her up on her hip. “Megan doesn’t know which room we’re in, so someone has to wait for her.” Mia waved her arms and made some complaining sounds. Crystal rolled her eyes and thumped her on the back. “And here we go again. You’d think she’d be all cried out after that horrendous performance on the plane. I’ll take her on up. Michael, you wait for Megan. You know you want to. She’s very beautiful,” she explained to George.
“Not as beautiful as you,” Michael said wearily. “And she’s standing right over there, near the elevators. Let’s go to bed. We’re all overtired. Good night, Ellie. And good night—” He stopped. “I’ve forgotten your name,” he said to George.
“Are you serious?” Crystal said. “How could you forget Jonathan?”
“Because he’s not Jonathan,” Michael said. “This is his brother.”
“Oh.” She studied George. “Identical twins?”
“He’s eight years older than me, actually,” George said apologetically.
She pressed her lips together, then said, “Huh. Well, good night.” They left.
“You know what the easiest thing would be?” I said to George. “For you just to be Jonathan for the rest of the weekend. Especially since you don’t seem to like correcting people.”
“I couldn’t correct Michael Marquand,” he said. “He discovered Dense Keys.”
“Who or what is that?”
“Are you kidding me? Ellie, you’re a Philistine. How can you know so little about music when your stepfather is Luke Weston?”
“I don’t know. We talk about other stuff, I guess.” We headed down the wide, carpeted stairway that led to the pool-level lower floor.
George said, “So who’s Aaron and why are we so happy he’s coming to LA?”
“He’s Michael’s son by his first wife.”
“So the wife I just met is number two?”
“Three, actually. There was this young actress in between.”
“Crystal isn’t exactly old.”
“This one was even younger. I believe the words ‘cradle robbing’ were used, but I’m not telling you by who, except it was my mom. It didn’t last long.”
The hallway at the bottom of the stairs ended in glass doors that led out to the back of the resort. George held one open for me and I stepped through. “Wow, it’s really beautiful here.” I stopped to look around. Torches were lit all around us, outlining the paths to the pool and the beach, and their flickering glow tinged everything burnt orange. Palm tree leaves stirred against the blue-black sky. You could hear the ocean from where we were, but the sound was just a gentle rise and fall behind the uneven clash of voices laughing and talking from the patio restaurant. I breathed in the salty-smoky air and closed my eyes briefly to enjoy it. “Why is anyone inside when they could be out here? Why would anyone be anywhere else in the world right now?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty nice.”
I glanced over my shoulder and he was watching me, but his gaze quickly shifted away. “I know what you’re thinking,” I said.
“I doubt it.”
“You’re gloating because you were right—this is just as good as Tahiti would have been. Maybe even better.” I flung my hand around. “I mean, this is perfect. You can’t get better than perfect, can you?”
“I didn’t deliberately not choose Tahiti because you wanted it, you know. This was the best choice for a lot of reasons.”
“Still, you were right and I was wrong. I admit it. Now let us never speak of it again. Want to go down to the beach?”
“Yeah.” As we walked along the curving path, he said, “You never finished telling me about Michael’s son. Do you know him?”
“He’s my future husband.”
“Really? What crime did he commit to deserve a sentence like that?”
“Don’t be mean. We’re like the same exact age and his father and Luke are best friends. And—” I stopped. If I’d been with one of my girlfriends, I might have also said something about how Aaron had grown from a reasonably cute tween when I first met him to one of the best-looking guys in the world. I’d seen him briefly a few months ago when he was visiting his father and he kind of took my breath away. He had gotten tall and broad-shouldered and his hair was this bronze color and wavy, and he had these light blue eyes and this perfect jaw. . . .
“And . . . ?” George prompted.
I shrugged. “And so he’s destined to be my husband. I’m just not sure which husband. I don’t want him to be my first, because obviously that one’s not going to last—”
“Obviously.”
“And I want my last husband to be much younger than I am so he can take care of me when I’m dying. Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“Maybe number three?”
“Would that put him in the middle? Or still toward the beginning?”
“I’m hurt,” I said. “How many husbands do you think I’m planning to have? I’m not that kind of girl.”
“Obviously,” he said.
I nudged his elbow with mine. “Come on. Let’s go down to the water.”
When we reached the sand, I kicked off my flip-flops and said, “You’d better take your loafers off, too, unless you like gritty shoes.”
He removed his shoes and socks, then cuffed his pants. “How stupid do I look?” he asked as he straightened up.
“You don’t want to know.”
“‘Don’t worry, George, you look fine. Not stupid at all.’”
“My mama didn’t raise no liars.”