“Adrienne.”
Adrienne gasped; she’d been caught. Holt Millman himself stood in the doorway. This was, no doubt, the kind of situation that Adrienne’s father composed in his mind, the kind that turned his hair silver: Adrienne, wearing only a bikini, standing in the bedroom of Holt Millman’s yacht.
The pot made her feel like laughing; she bit her lip. “Sorry,” she said. “I was looking for the bathroom.”
“Use mine,” he said. He opened a door that Adrienne had thought was a closet, but it was the master bath. Marble, of course, with the Jacuzzi.
“Okay,” she said. “Thanks.”
She closed the door behind her and peed-she really had to go-looking at the stacks of fluffy green towels and at the glassed-in shower. She felt the boat listing from side to side. She washed her hands with one of the cakes of sailboat-shaped soap and checked her teeth, hoping and praying that by the time she opened the door, Holt Millman would be gone. But he was right there, sitting on the edge of the bed, talking to someone on his cell phone. When she emerged, he snapped the phone shut.
“I just made a dinner reservation for two, tonight, eight o’clock, at the Wauwinet,” he said. “I hope you’ll join me.”
Adrienne stared at him, unwillingly imagining a woman smoothing essence of sea cucumber on Holt Millman’s neck to keep it taut. She wanted to laugh. She bowed her head. This was the eleventh richest man in the United States, asking her on a date.
“I can’t,” she said. “I have to work.”
“Work?” he said, as though he’d never heard of the word. “Okay, then, what night are you free?”
The answer was Wednesday night, but Adrienne couldn’t bring herself to tell him. She wished like hell that she was up on deck lying safely between Caren and Cat, picking at the leftover wraps, maybe indulging in one more cocktail since her mouth was dry and ashy.
“I’m dating someone,” she said. And in her alcohol-saturated, drug-induced state, she thought, I’m dating Thatch.
Holt Millman didn’t get to be so successful by being a jerk or by preying on young women in bikinis whom he found nosing around his personal quarters. He was, at all times, a model of graciousness. “Whoever he is, he is one lucky man,” Holt said. He offered Adrienne his arm and escorted her up the stairs, back into the sun.
When Adrienne woke up from her nap, it was four o’clock, and the girl with the English accent was offering her a cold Coca-Cola, which Adrienne immediately recognized as the answer to her prayers. She had fallen asleep on her stomach and she could tell just from sitting up that her back was burned. She knocked back half the Coke and went in search of Caren and Duncan, whom she found standing at the stern on either side of the flapping Rhode Island flag. They were tan and laughing; they looked like models in a Tommy Hilfiger ad. Adrienne caught Caren’s eye and pointed to her running watch. It was five after four, they were zero feet above sea level, and Nantucket was still a smudge on the horizon. Caren shrugged. Nonchalance was her middle name. Adrienne, on the other hand, was a realist. If they headed back now they might be in the harbor in half an hour. Leaving twenty-five minutes to drop Duncan off, get home, change (there would be no time for a shower), and get to work. But who was she kidding? They were going to be late.
Adrienne tapped the captain on the shoulder. “I know I’m going to sound like a Providence Puritan,” she said, desperately hoping he got the joke, “but there are three of us on this boat who have to be at work at five.”
Even with both motors turned on full-throttle, they didn’t reach the mouth of the harbor until ten of five. By this time, the effects of the alcohol and the pot were gone and in their place was the special anxiety that hit when Adrienne knew she was going to be fatally late. Her brain ticked like a clock, she checked her jogging watch eighty-two times, and finally-because everyone on the boat could sense she was about to have a nervous breakdown-Holt Millman pulled out his cell phone and told Thatcher that he had taken three of the Bistro’s key employees hostage and that they would be to work by the stroke of six. Adrienne was dying to hear Thatcher’s response to this, but Holt snapped his cell phone shut, as if closing the book on the problem of the time, and said, “There. Do you feel better?”
“I don’t like to be late,” she said.
When they finally docked, Adrienne hugged the eleventh richest man in the country and thanked him for a wonderful day, then she hauled ass to the car with Duncan and Caren trailing reluctantly behind. The next hour was a blur of activity: drive, drop off Duncan, drive, wash face, brush teeth, change into the diaphanous blouse, which hid her sunburn, stuff half an untoasted bagel with light veggie cream cheese into her pie hole since they were going to miss family meal (Caren ate the other half and spent four minutes brewing an espresso-Adrienne drank one also in the interest of staying awake through service), brush teeth again, drive. They walked into the Bistro at five fifty-six, trying to look like it was just another lovely day at the regatta. Pshew!
Thatcher was at the podium, going over the book. He seemed unperturbed by their late arrival. “How was the sail?” he asked.
“Fabulous,” Adrienne said.
Why had they hurried? There were only sixty-two covers on the book and only twenty people for first seating, though Adrienne did have three parties walk in. Joe and Christo both had the night off, as did Rex, so instead of piano music the stereo played Vivaldi.
“It’s dead,” Adrienne complained.
“The calm before the storm,” Thatcher said. “This is a notoriously slow weekend because people have other things going on-weddings, graduations. But I had a hundred calls today about the Fourth. It’s going to be a circus.”
This was the longest conversation they’d had since their date. The sail had put Adrienne in a more generous frame of mind. She could talk to Thatcher as though he was just another person.
“What was family meal tonight?”
“Grilled pizzas,” Thatcher said. “Are you sorry you missed it?”
“I ate at home,” Adrienne said, thinking, Of course I’m sorry I missed it! “The boat was fun. Holt Millman asked me out to dinner.”
At first it appeared Thatcher hadn’t heard her-either that or he was letting it go, like he did the time Adrienne asked if Fiona was his wife. But then he tilted his head and peered at Adrienne out of the corner of his eye. “What did you tell him?” he asked.
There was no mistaking his tone of voice: He cared. He cared! Adrienne did her best to keep the trumpet of victory out of her response.
“I told him no.”
At seven o’clock, JZ came in with a little girl who had brown bobbed hair and a mouth full of chewing gum.
“Adrienne,” JZ said. “I’d like you to meet my daughter, Shaughnessy. Shaughnessy, this is Adrienne Dealey.”
“Big dealey,” Shaughnessy said, then she giggled.
“You’ll excuse my daughter,” JZ said. “She’s suffering from a cute case of being eight. We’re going to sit at the bar.”