The Heiresses

  She had to get out of here. It was bad enough that it was a betrayal to Dixon, but there was so much more than that. She had betrayed Will too. She wanted more than ever to talk to Poppy, to ask her what to do. Poppy was the only person in the world who knew all of her—the part that loved Dixon, who knew she could be happy with him, their future predictable and pleasant. The part that had fallen for Will, that for a brief moment imagined a life that was completely unknowable. And the part of her that she had left behind in Virginia, the baby she had never gotten the chance to know.

  She wanted to tell Will all of that; she wanted him to understand the complicated macramé of her life. But she also wanted to leave, to click her heels together and find herself back uptown in their lovely three-bedroom apartment, where each room was climate-controlled and everything existed in shades of gray and grège. But when she looked up again, Will’s face was moving toward hers.

  Just one kiss, Corinne told herself. Just one kiss good-bye.

  “We shouldn’t do this,” she murmured—but she let him pull her dress over her head.

  “No, we shouldn’t,” Will agreed, guiding her toward his bedroom.

  Will’s bed smelled like soap and sugar. He climbed on top of Corinne and began kissing every inch of her body. She shut her eyes and tried to numb herself, but she shuddered as Will’s rough hands moved along her bare skin. He was fast with her, lustful and crazy, hard and desperate and needy. He didn’t touch her C-section scar. More important, he didn’t ask about it, either. She tried not to think of Dixon and that dark locked room of a secret inside of her. But before long, she didn’t have to try not to think. All reason departed; only the physical was left.

  Corinne kneaded her feet against the sheets, her legs shaking. It was as if Will understood inherently, without her having to say a word, what made her feel the best. It had set him apart from the other boyfriends she’d had when she was young—all of them had fumbled, asked too many questions, laughed when they shouldn’t have. And Will—well, he just knew.

  CORINNE OPENED HER eyes to find it was dark outside. She must have dozed off. Will’s bed was empty, and she heard pots and pans clanging in the kitchen. She lay there for a moment, thinking about what she had done. What she’d done again, she reminded herself. But instead of feeling shame, the guilt that she’d tried to scrub off her last time, she felt relaxed. She felt as if she was glowing. Rising, she pulled on her clothes and padded in the direction of the sound.

  Will stood in his boxers and bare feet over a pan on the stove. His hair was mussed, his skin flushed, and there was a look of concentration on his face as he flipped something over in the pan. When he noticed her in the doorway, he smiled. “I made us a snack.” He slid a sandwich onto the plate. “Truffle grilled cheese.”

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Corinne said softly, accepting the plate. And though she knew truffle oil, brie, and bread were probably the worst thing she could do for her figure, she bit into the sandwich anyway and swooned. “Oh my God. This is way too good.”

  “Stick with me, and I’ll make you one of these every day,” Will said as he slid onto a barstool next to her.

  “I’d weigh two hundred pounds.”

  “Then I’ll make you one every other day.” Will touched her chin, rotating her head so she was looking at him.

  “You know it’s not that easy.”

  “Tell me about it.” He sighed. Will rose from the stool, walked to a messy desk built into the corner of the kitchen, and plucked a piece of paper from the top of the pile. “This is for you.”

  Corinne wiped her messy fingers on a napkin and studied the paper. “Invoice,” it read at the top, next to Coxswain’s logo. “Clients: Dixon Shackelford and Corinne Saybrook. Event description: Rehearsal dinner (175 guests) and wedding (260 guests) at the Saybrook family home in Meriweather, Massachusetts.”

  A hard knot formed in her chest. It was almost perverse to see her, Dixon’s, and Will’s names on the same piece of paper. She wanted to shift them around, make Will the groom, Dixon the hired help.

  Will bit into his half of the sandwich. “Are you actually going through with this?”

  Corinne’s eyes burned with impending tears. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you love him?”

  A lump formed in her throat. “It’s not just about that.”

  “Marriage isn’t about love? That’s new to me.”

  His voice was uncommonly stern. Corinne concentrated on the white plate on which the sandwich sat. She did love Dixon, but was that enough? Was it the kind of love you could build a life around? Was it a forever kind of love? “It’s complicated.” She laughed, a little bitterly. “I mean, obviously,” she said, looking around.

  Will paced back toward the stove. “I just don’t get it. If you love him, why are you here?”

  “I know. It’s just . . .” She sighed and gazed out the window. “This would wreck my family.” She thought about her father’s choked voice earlier. I’m proud of you. “And it’s who I am too,” she added. “This is what I’m supposed to do. This is the person I’m supposed to marry.”

  Will’s eyebrows arched. “It’s not the Dark Ages, Corinne. Marriages aren’t arranged anymore.” Will crossed his arms over his chest. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

  Silence passed between them. Corinne looked away first. “No,” she lied, the secret swimming inside her. She wanted to tell him, but how would she start? I was pregnant that summer. We have a baby out there somewhere. You’re a father.

  He moved closer. “Don’t you want to live an honest life? Don’t you want what you do and feel to be real?”

  She hunched her shoulders, trying to hide. “I can’t give you the answer you want right now. I need more time.”

  “You don’t have that much more time.”

  Something in the kitchen crashed. It was only after the plate lay in pieces on the floor that Corinne realized that Will had shattered it. He stood there, his chest heaving, his shoulders and biceps and chest muscles prominent and powerful.

  Corinne shot to her feet. “You’re scaring me,” she told him, suddenly unnerved.

  Will looked back at her, his jaw hard. “Why can’t you understand that you’re not the only one with emotions?” His voice cracked. “That you’re not the only person in this equation?”

  “You’re making me sound so selfish.” She turned into the entryway, blinking back tears as she looked for her discarded shoes. “Is that what you think?”

  Will didn’t answer. Corinne unearthed her Jimmy Choo kitten heels and started to put them on, her throat tight. She couldn’t fit her heel into the strap, so she let it flap free, as messy and undone as she felt. “I’m going,” she mumbled.

  Will started to walk her to the door, but Corinne marched a few paces ahead, refusing to look back at him. Will cleared his throat. “Corinne, stop. I’m sorry. I want to be with you. I think you want to be with me. It should be that simple.”

  Corinne stopped and turned. He stood in the doorway, a tortured look on his face. “Well, it’s not,” she whispered, and started down the stairs.

  17

  After an interview at the New York CNN studios, Aster returned to her tiny cubicle at Saybrook’s, staring at a massive binder on her desk that listed all the Saybrook’s stones still in company storage. The binder was categorized by color and then by carat and other features, like where the diamond was found and whether it was cut. Elizabeth had asked her to input all of the information and upload the images to a cloud server, whatever the hell that meant. But Aster needed a moment to breathe. She’d managed to hold it together during the interview itself—actually, she thought, she’d done a pretty fantastic job—but talking about Poppy must have affected her more than she realized. Afterward, she’d started crying on the way to the bathroom. She ducked into a stall and quietly sobbed for a minute, then carefully redid the thick, caked-on TV makeup before saying her good-byes and leaving the studio. Aster knew bet
ter than to let anyone see her cry.

  Her phone buzzed, and she looked down. New post on the Blessed and the Cursed, read the message. Mitch had helped her sign up for these alerts a few weeks ago. Maybe it was masochistic to watch as someone aired the Saybrooks’ dirty laundry all over the Internet, but Aster figured it was better to know what was being said than to be blindsided.

  She took a deep breath to steel herself, then tapped the link. Sure enough, a new post had loaded. Two pictures were positioned side by side on the screen. On the left was a shot of a sheet-covered figure lying on a busy Manhattan sidewalk, a lock of blond hair peeking out from underneath the tarp, an elegant snakeskin pump emerging from another corner. Aster drew in a breath. Poppy.

  The other photo was of Natasha lying in a hospital bed. Tubes protruded from her nose. Dark, curly hair framed her oval face, and an eerie smile played around her lips. Aster’s mouth dropped open. How had someone gotten close enough to take a picture of Natasha?

  “Two Heiresses Down, Three to Go,” read the headline in bright red letters.

  Aster immediately dialed Foley, but she didn’t get through. Trying to remain calm, she scrolled down and looked at the comments under the post. Some of them condemned the message writer and demanded the blog administrator take the post down. Others said, “Can’t you take a joke?” Still others wrote that Aster and her cousins deserved it. “Stuck-up bitches,” an anonymous poster wrote. “What goes around comes around.”

  Aster’s phone buzzed, startling her. The website had disappeared, and Clarissa’s name appeared on the screen. Aster felt a flush of satisfaction—she hadn’t seen Clarissa since before Poppy’s death, but of course her friend would call in Aster’s time of need.

  “I’m guessing you saw me on CNN?” Aster asked instead of hello, still feeling shaky from the Blessed post.

  “Why were you on CNN?” Clarissa’s voice was husky, the way it always got when she smoked too many cigarettes. Aster wondered where she’d been last night. One of their old haunts, or a new club Aster hadn’t even heard of?

  “Because someone tried to kill me?” Aster said slowly, shivering at the sound of that. “There’s a crazy serial killer leaving messages on my family’s gossip site.”

  “You shouldn’t read that site,” Clarissa said. “You know it’s all bullshit.”

  Except it hasn’t been bullshit lately, Aster thought. Not all of it.

  “Anyway.” Clarissa yawned. “Are you coming tonight, or what?”

  Aster clutched the phone tightly, startled that Clarissa had changed the subject on her. Being pursued by a murderer wasn’t a big deal? “Um, where?”

  Clarissa scoffed. “To Boom Boom, of course! Jake’s going to be there.”

  Aster pulled up the Blessed and the Cursed on her computer. Poppy and Natasha’s pictures were still front and center; she minimized the window. “Jake?”

  “Gyllenhaal? Aster, I sent you the screenshots of his texts. Didn’t you look?” Clarissa was sounding more and more disgruntled. She launched into a braggy story about how she’d traded texts with Jake and that they were meeting there at twelve thirty.

  “I’d love to,” Aster said, “but as I just said, my life’s sort of in danger. I should probably lie low.”

  Clarissa snorted. “You sound a little Kim Kardashian overdramatic, honey. The people who post on that site are just doing it for fun.”

  And do you know this because you are one of them? Aster felt a stab of annoyance. Then she noticed a figure passing in the hallway. “I have to go. I’ll call you later,” she told Clarissa, and hung up. “Mitch!” she called out. He turned toward her, his face lighting up.

  “Hey,” he said softly. “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m okay,” Aster said. Mitch hadn’t shaved that morning; the stubble made her notice how sharp his jawline was. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, either. Aster had never realized how long his lashes were, longer than she had ever seen on a guy.

  Mitch squinted at her, inspecting her features. “You know, I wouldn’t be okay if I went through what you did this weekend.” He glanced down the hall. “Has Elizabeth said anything to you about it?” he whispered.

  Aster shook her head. “Not a word. She was pissed, actually, that I had to do an interview today.” Elizabeth’s door had been firmly closed when she returned to work, but she’d sent Aster an e-mail of things to do, everything in all caps. “She finds it an inconvenience.”

  Mitch sniffed. “I’d say she was the one to push your car off that bridge, but then she’d have no one to do her bitch work.”

  Aster had already considered the idea. Elizabeth clearly hated the Saybrooks—maybe she’d killed Poppy too, and was after the rest of the cousins next. But she’d checked Elizabeth’s calendar this morning before the interview; her boss really had been away the morning Poppy was murdered. There were even receipts from the Four Seasons LA and Katsuya to prove it.

  When Aster looked up, Mitch was still studying her. He shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t know how you can even be here right now. If you need anything today, give me a call, okay? I can do your coffee run for a change,” he added wryly.

  Aster snickered. “Thanks,” she said, then glanced at her computer screen again. “Want to figure out who runs the Blessed and the Cursed for me?”

  Mitch frowned. “Isn’t the FBI doing that?”

  “Yeah, well.” It didn’t seem like they were working very hard.

  Aster pressed her fingers to her temples. Her head was pounding, probably because she hadn’t gotten a decent night’s sleep since Poppy’s murder. The last few nights, her mind had whirled overtime as she struggled to think of who could be after them. Natasha, perhaps—she hated their family so much that perhaps she was picking them off one by one, only her latest plan had backfired and injured her instead. Or a random girlfriend of Steven? Maybe Elizabeth. Maybe someone they didn’t even know. And did Poppy have a secret? Why was Natasha the only one who knew about it?

  “Mitch,” she asked, getting an idea. “Have you ever looked through company e-mails?”

  “I’m not sure if I should answer that honestly.”

  “I’m not going to get you in trouble. I’m just curious about Poppy.” She cleared her throat. “I sort of found out that she had . . . struggles.” It was the same word Jonathan York had used with Corinne at Poppy’s funeral. “And maybe a secret.”

  Mitch frowned. “You mean the jewelry thing?”

  “What jewelry thing?”

  Mitch looked conflicted, then slid forward in his chair. “I thought that’s what you meant. A few months ago, HR was concerned that Poppy was . . . taking things.”

  Aster balked. “Taking things? What do you mean?”

  “I saw it on e-mail. I think she checked out some pieces to show clients and never checked them back in. People were worried that she . . . stole them, I guess. And then maybe sold them.”

  Aster laughed incredulously. “Why would Poppy need money?”

  Mitch shrugged. “I don’t know. According to the e-mails, the jewels were never returned.”

  “So was she in trouble?” Aster asked, her mind moving slowly.

  Mitch stared up at the ceiling. “I think it just went away. But I have no idea how it was resolved.”

  “Jesus.” Aster’s head pounded even harder now. Who was this new Poppy, and why had Aster never met her? She wondered if Rowan knew about the theft allegations. Probably not—she would have mentioned it. “I hate this,” she whispered, feeling overwhelmed.

  “Hey,” Mitch murmured. “It’s okay. It’ll all be okay.” He reached out as if to touch her shoulder, then seemed to think better of it and let his hand fall to the side. The silence stretched taut between them.

  Finally Aster turned and started clicking randomly at her computer. “You’d better get out of here, or Elizabeth will push us both over a bridge.”

  “Right.” Mitch looked a little disappointed. “See you later, Aster.” He turned an
d loped into the hall. His shoe was untied, and he tripped over the laces, then turned back and shrugged goofily. Aster shook her head, smiling.

  Her phone rang, and she jumped. Her father’s extension appeared in the caller ID window. “Dad,” Aster said shakily. “What’s up?”

  “I have something I need to talk to you about.” Mason sounded very sober.

  “Now?” Aster swallowed. Was he going to scold her about the CNN interview? What had she done wrong this time?

  “Can you come into my office?”

  Aster peeked into the hall. “I’m not sure Elizabeth would like that.”

  “I’ll clear it with her. Come down now.”

  He hung up before Aster could reply. She rose and smoothed down her dress, a solid blue that would look good on camera and brought out her eyes. Maybe this was a good opportunity, actually. She could ask him about Steven.

  She thought back to that night, at the end-of-summer party five years ago. It had been their point of no return. If she’d chosen differently that night, she and her father might have salvaged things.

  But instead Aster had followed Steven away from the group, fueled with adrenaline and spiky anger. This was the perfect revenge against her father. If he could ruin her relationship with her best friend, then she could destroy one of his.

  As for Danielle, all Aster had felt was hate. She’d thrown away their friendship to be with Aster’s dad.

  She and Steven pushed through the reeds and walked down to the beach. Though Steven had said he wanted to show Aster his yacht, as soon as they were out of view, he seized her around the waist and pulled her close to him. They sank down, and his hands traveled all over her body. In moments he’d unzipped the dress she was wearing and tossed it on the sand. Cool wind kissed Aster’s bare skin. She undid the buttons on his shirt and loosened his tuxedo cummerbund. “Oh my God,” he’d breathed into Aster’s ear. “You are so wet.” Aster didn’t really feel like dirty talking, so in response she just unzipped his pants and yanked them down.