31. Beautiful
Beautiful
Charlotte
February 13, 1999
A stunning view of the Gulf of Mexico takes up the entire wall in this room on Arden’s yacht, The Legacy . Dripping chandeliers and carpets made from raw silk complete what he lovingly calls his “home away from home.”
When I snuck onto his yacht dressed as a crew member, I’d packed clothing assuming it would be warm, but they keep the air conditioning higher than I expected, and I haven’t left the yacht since I arrived.
I smooth my black cotton maxi dress over my thighs as Arden assists me into the ivory-silk-upholstered dining room chair, then pushes my seat in for me.
Do rich ladies not push in their own seats? He’s done it for me every single meal we’ve shared. Rose definitely didn’t like the way I sit.
The silverware—actual silver, not the stainless steel I’m used to—gleams in a dizzying array on a pristine white tablecloth. I don’t have a single clue why anyone would need so many forks or different styles of spoons. I also have no idea which I’m supposed to use.
At lunch, Arden wouldn’t take a bite until I did, which meant I couldn’t watch him to see which fork he used and copy him. I tried to do the “outside in” method, but it didn’t always work, especially when I grabbed a fork when it was meant to be a spoon.
“Is everything okay with Bronnie and your parents?” he asks.
I shake out my napkin and lay it across my lap. “She’s having fun. Thanks for letting me use your satellite phone to call home and check on her.”
His smile looks confused. “Of course. It’s not a problem.”
A waiter, or rather, “steward,” approaches with another fancy glass tube of artisanal water from Switzerland. I’ve been here since this morning, and this is probably the sixth time I’ve been served Swiss water. Florida water, apparently, is not “palatable.”
My lips twitch in reluctant amusement as I sip from my crystal water glass. I wish I'd been in the bathroom with Arden and seen his expression the first time he used the well water from my faucets. The scent of sulfur and iron had to have wigged him out. I’m so used to it, I didn’t even think to warn him.
When the steward places a flute of champagne before me, Arden takes a sip from his own, then nods his approval.
When we’re alone again, Arden glances at my clothing, then back into my eyes. “You didn’t like the dress I bought you?”
I keep my eyes on the bubbles in my champagne. Old Navy clearance rack is clearly not cutting it on The Legacy. “ Loud and tacky” is what Rose called me.
When I got here, Arden gave me an entire trunk’s worth of designer clothing, shoes, and accessories.
He’d laid tonight’s dress on the bed. I left the outfit he gave me exactly where he put it.
The only reason I can think of for him to have given it to me in the first place is because he wanted to make sure I looked like someone he would date. This is his private space, not a public restaurant, but we still changed our clothing for dinner. “At my trailer, after we got up for the day, I asked you if my clothes bothered you. You told me you didn’t care what I wore. But the first time we have dinner together, you set out a designer cocktail dress, diamonds, and red-soled high heels. You gave me shoes the night of the masquerade, even though I brought my own.”
“Okay, that sounds—” He grimaces. “You mentioned that you’d never owned haute couture or designer clothing, but you and Rochelle liked to look at the magazines. I thought you might enjoy them. That’s all there was to it. I swear. No hidden agenda.”
My shoulders and spine relax by a fraction, and I give him a tentative smile. “They’re really pretty.”
The steward returns and starts another murmuring conversation with Arden.
Vaguely, I hear Arden and the steward speaking quietly to each other. “Certainly, sir . . . wine pairing . . . dinner is served . . .” My mind is on the gift I ignored in an unnecessary act of defensiveness. Yesterday, I was giddy at the idea of a weekend spent on a superyacht with the man I love, but insecurities I didn’t even know I had are bubbling their way to the surface. Even my most audacious dreams didn’t look like this.
With a flourish, the steward, whose name I still don’t remember, places a square white plate in front of me, in the center of which rests a morsel of food approximately the size of a fifty-cent piece. The majority of the surface of the plate is decorated in a swirl of green sauce.
“Pear, goat cheese, and caramelized fig with a playful sprig of sprout. Enjoy.”
“ Dinner is served.” I heard him say those words, didn’t I?
I peer around him for the cart the stewardess used when she served lunch. The one that had normal portions and varieties of food on it. But there is no cart.
He then passes the same thing to Arden, who sits there, smiling politely at the man and looking perfectly composed, as though we weren’t served a literal single bite of food for dinner.
Why bother dirtying a plate for this?
The steward disappears through a set of rich mahogany doors, leaving Arden and me, apparently, to enjoy our meal.
Arden tips his head toward my plate. “You don’t care for your amuse-bouche?”
I can be an upfront, tell-’em-like-it-is kind of person in some things, but being gracious about food someone else has made is one place I know to mind my manners. I grew up in a household where my dad taught us from the moment we were old enough to speak to say “thank you” to our mother for cooking our meal and compliment her efforts. And, under no circumstance, ever, was the word “yuck” permitted to leave our mouths at the dinner table. We didn’t have to eat everything put in front of us, but we didn’t complain about it either. “It looks delicious.”
His lips quirk. “You covered your mouth and your pitch was too high. You’re still a terrible liar.”
A laugh sneaks out of me, and I peek up at him in chagrin. “I don’t actually like goat cheese,” I admit.
“I didn’t realize. I’ll make sure the chef knows not to serve it in the future.”
“No, I’m sorry. I’m not that picky. Truly, I can eat it.”
A playful expression creases his face, and he glances toward the door, before grinning like a naughty schoolboy.
He looks at my plate, back at me, and wiggles his eyebrows. “Do you mind?”
Do I mind what? “No?”
Just like that, Arden reaches across, swoops my fifty-cent sized dinner off my plate, pops it in his mouth. And it’s gone.
My mouth drops open in shock. “You ate my muse-poosh.”
He freezes, his eyes going wide. “I thought you didn’t want it.”
“Well, I don’t want to starve either,” I say on an incredulous laugh.
He picks up his plate and swaps it for mine. “I apologize,” he says stiffly.
I cross my arms, then, realizing I look defensive, uncross them just as quickly. “It was a misunderstanding. You asked. You didn’t just take it.”
The steward returns with a blessed, beautiful silver trolley, and the scent that wafts toward us has my mouth watering. The muse-poof was a course, not the meal. Thank you, sweet baby Jesus.
I push the square plate back toward Arden. “Eat that thing. Quickly.”
The poor man literally scratches his head in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
I don’t want to admit to my idiocy, but I’m already carrying the weight of a secret, even if he knows I have one. We’ll never work if I pile dishonesty on top of it. “I thought it was our entire dinner.”
He narrows his eyes. “You thought I served you a bite of pear and fig for dinner, and then took yours and left you with no food at all?”
“Just eat the pooch, Arden.”
He maintains eye contact as he swoops up the morsel, chews and swallows.
The steward clears the table and deposits a bowl with tiny slices of warm bread and a plate drizzled with oil and herbs. Arden glances at him. “Thank you, Martin.”
His name is Martin . Hallelujah.
I select a slice of warm bread, dip it in the oil and practically melt into my chair at how good it tastes. Then, I remember not to slouch or wiggle like a fish in a net and straighten in my seat. Elbows off the table? Still good there. I haven’t screwed that up, at least. Napkin still in my lap? Spine straight? Tiny bites? Knees tight together and legs crossed at the ankle? Check. Check. Check. And check. By the time I’m done running through my mental list, I’ve forgotten to enjoy the bread, especially when I look over at the way Arden is eating his and realize I was meant to transfer it to a plate and use a long, skinny fork to skewer it before I dipped it in the oil.
Once more, Martin disappears through the double doors.
Arden’s manner has become reserved and formal as he sits across from me.
“I’ve offended you.” I look down at my lap, twisting the linen napkin in agitation, then smoothing it. “I’m sorry. It was a misunderstanding.”
Arden tips his head to the side. “‘Offended’ implies that I’m angry. I’m not angry. I’m . . . hurt, I suppose . . . that you believe I would do such a poor job of caring for you. I’m also confused.”
Now I’m the one who doesn’t understand. “Confused by what?”
He indicates the table setting with the blade of his hand. “What would be the purpose of the silverware if the only thing you were served was a single bite of finger food?” His question isn’t sarcastic or unkind. He sounds genuinely concerned.
In my mind, I’d moved on to the way I’d eaten the bread wrong. He’s still on the appetizer debacle. “I don’t know what the purpose of any of that silverware is. I was raised with one fork, one knife, and a spoon. Occasionally we had a salad fork or a soup spoon. For all I know, this silverware is some sort of art installation meant to shock and awe. I was thinking about something and not paying attention. I thought I heard Martin announce that it was dinner, and the cart wasn’t here.”
His lips press together. “You’re uncomfortable here.”
“Your boat is beautiful.”
He nods. “But you’re uncomfortable.”
“This is you and me and a handful of crew members, and I can’t even hazard a guess at how many times I’ve violated etiquette that I don’t even know exists, since I came on board.”
“Don’t worry about that. This is meant to be fun.”
“I can’t help it. I know you don’t understand because this is normal for you, but for me, it’s intimidating. I can’t imagine eating every meal like this. Bronnie will wreck these chairs and this carpet. She’s four and she’s messy. There is no way I’m spending every meal telling her to be quiet, sit with her back straight, her knees together, and her ankles crossed. Does anyone in your life speak to you in a normal volume? Everyone acts like they turned the sound down and forgot what emotions are, and there are only two of us here tonight. We didn’t eat a meal at the masquerade, and I still did fifty things that let people know I didn’t belong there. What if I were your date at one of those black-tie galas you go to and screwed up like I did with the bread in front of everyone?”
“My wife ,” he says.
“What?”
Eyes steady on mine, he says, “I’m going to marry you, Charlotte. You won’t be my date. You’ll be my wife.”
I blink, my heart racing, my pulse headed for the stratosphere. “Where I’m from that’s the kind of thing you ask someone, not tell them.”
Arden shrugs. “If I asked you tonight, you’d say no. But I already know that you’ll be my wife at the Harcourt Gala. You’ll be my wife at any dinner party we host. And if anyone has a problem with you, they can find another table, because they won’t be welcome at ours. If you pick up the wrong fork, then I’m using the wrong one too because your feelings are the ones that matter.”
His words try to envelop me, warmth wrapping me in reassurance from my head to my toes. I resist the urge to cuddle into them, take a deep breath, hold it, then blow it out. “If this weekend was an audition, I’d never get the part.”
Arden’s brows come down, and his dark blue eyes snap. “This isn’t a test. It’s you and I building a life together. One step at a time.”
I nod. “You’re not ever moving to Blackwater. If we can make this work, it’ll be me coming to you. And you deserve someone who won’t embarrass you.”
“Charlotte, no—”
“I don’t like champagne or even wine. I’d rather have a margarita or a whiskey sour or a plain old Coke or Pepsi.”
I gesture to the table. “I have no idea what anything we ate for lunch was. I choked down something that was basically fish pudding . I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but foamy fish is revolting .”
“I would never expect you to eat something you don't like.” Exasperation laces his tone.
I shake my head. “I was trying to get this right. This is low-stakes. But if we’re together in public, the press will make fun of every ignorant, backwoods thing I say and do. Rochelle showed me articles about us after the masquerade. The stuff they came up with claiming they had ‘a source’ was insane. One of them said I was a housekeeper in a hotel, another said I was a stripper, and another one said I was a waitress in a diner, you came in for coffee and fell in love at first sight. When people realize I really did work at Teresa’s diner, that one is growing to stick. No one assumed I was part of your social sphere.”
“You’re better off not reading those articles. It’s not good for anyone’s mental health.”
“You know your peers and colleagues will talk about you behind your back because of me, and your parents will eventually hate me.”
His jaw flexes. “The more time they spend with you, the more they’ll love you because you’re a genuinely incredible woman. My peers and colleagues will be jealous of me. The press are difficult, but it isn’t because of any failing on your part.”
I push the idea of hordes of press harassing us to the back of my mind to worry about another day. One crisis at a time, thank you very much. “I can learn how to laugh like a rich person and read a French menu for special occasions, but I can’t live like this every day, and I won’t make Bronnie do it either.”
Arden closes his eyes briefly and gives a small shake of his head. Abruptly, he stands and steps around the table, offering me his hand. Heavy silence descends between us like taffy, stretching, thinning.
“You’re angry at me?” I ask hesitantly.
Eyes narrowed, Arden shakes his head. “Not even a little. But I’m furious with myself.”
He huffs and indicates the room around us. “I only use this space for dining when my parents are here, and I hate these chairs. They’re ridiculous. In my world, offering you something more casual for our first meal together would have been viewed by most people as me saying you weren’t worth the effort.”
“Oh.” I look around. “Now I feel like a jerk for giving you scrambled eggs and juice in a plastic cup at my trailer. It wasn’t an insult.”
His lips quirk. “I know. Come with me.” He indicates the hand he’s holding out for me to take.
When I do, he leads me to the same double doors Martin walked through and pokes his head into the room beyond. “Same dinner, but make it a picnic. Usual routine.”
“Certainly.” I can hear Martin’s voice.
“Oh, and can you bring us a couple of margaritas?”
“My pleasure.”
Arden glances down at me. “Standard lime margarita okay with you, or do you want something different? Mango or strawberry?”
I lift my eyebrows hopefully. “Mango sounds amazing.”
“One mango margarita and one lime,” Arden calls.
Martin appears to unwind under Arden’s change in attitude, his voice louder and more cheerful than deferential. “Coming right up.”
Arden heads for the main doorway. Abruptly, I stop and tug on his hand. “Wait a sec.”
He stands patiently while I run back to the table, grab the bowl of bread, and return with it clasped against me in a football hold. “This bread is delicious .”
He grins, then leads me through the corridor and into his private sleeping quarters. Nodding at my feet, he says, “Feel free to ditch the shoes if you want. You don’t need them.”
Gratefully, I slide my heels off and watch as he enters one of the walk-in closets, then returns a minute later in his trousers, shirt sleeves, and bare feet with an armload of pillows and fabric piled under his chin.
“Can you do the honors?” He indicates the doors that lead to a private deck.
We step outside onto teak flooring, my feet soaking in the heat from the recently setting sun. The night is balmy and a warm breeze lifts strands of my hair from my neck. Before us, there’s nothing but the black and silver glint of the Gulf at night, lit by a luminescent full moon.
Arden dumps the blankets and pillows onto the deck, then extracts a hammock from the pile and attaches it to the large metal hooks obviously placed for that purpose.
“For after we eat,” he says.
Then he strides to the doorway and hits a button that illuminates the deck with subtle lighting. Removing cushions from the outdoor furniture strategically built into the space, he tosses them onto the deck.
When I realize what he’s doing, I help. By the time we’re done, we have an oasis of cushions, blankets, and pillows, surrounded by warm light, a Gulf Coast breeze, and the gentle splash of waves against the hull.
No sooner has he drawn me down to sit with him, than Martin, clearly familiar with this routine, arrives. He secures a short table to the deck next to our nest of cushions, adds a tablecloth, and puts all the courses of our dinner on it, some napkins, and a container of cutlery. No fussing with one course at a time. Martin hands me my margarita, complete with umbrella and a twinkle in his eye. Then he passes Arden his.
“No need for anyone to come back to clean this up until tomorrow,” Arden says.
“Very good. Enjoy your evening.”
I wiggle my bare toes, hike my dress up over my knees, and sigh. “This is heaven.”
“If the weather allows for it, the kids and I usually eat dinner out here on vacation. Sometimes we use the regular table and don’t drag out the blankets.”
I take a sip of mango perfection. “I love it.”
He watches me with a small smile. “We usually eat breakfast and lunch in the dinette.” He clears his throat. “Sturdy leather upholstery. My boys were messy preschoolers once too.” He laughs. "Gabriel still isn't exactly neat.”
We dig into our meal, my steak and some weird unknown vegetable melting on my tongue. “This is really good. What is this white thing?”
Arden glances over at my plate. “Asparagus.”
“You’re kidding me? This is what it’s supposed to taste like? The only asparagus I’ve ever eaten is the color and consistency of baby poop.”
Arden laughs. “What kind of asparagus do you eat in Pennsylvania?”
“I don’t know about the whole town, but my mom buys it in a can, and it’s nasty.”
Conversation is easy as we feast our way through dinner.
We finish with creme brulee. It reminds me of fancy pudding with a crunchy top, and it's delicious. When I’ve had enough, I feed Arden the last bites from my spoon.
Afterward, we set everything aside on the table, including my nearly empty margarita glass, and I wrap my arms around my upraised knees. “I should have spoken up sooner and told you I wasn’t enjoying the whole frou-frou thing.”
Arden pulls me down to lie on the cushions with my head cradled against his shoulder, his hand drifting up and down my back in a comforting rhythm. “I don’t expect you to be the only one whose life is going to change.”
“What if we got married, and I cooked dinner some nights, instead of your staff?”
“I’d love to eat the food you cooked.”
“Your staff won’t get upset that I invaded their territory?”
“Staff are there to make you more comfortable, not less. They’re paid to provide a service within your home. Anyone who tries a power trip on you can find another job.”
“I just need to know you’ll back me up if I have to”—I wiggle my eyebrows—“assert my dominance.”
He laughs, then turns serious. “Always.”
“What if I served you meatloaf with ketchup on top?”
He remains silent for a moment, then says, “I would try it. And if I didn’t like it, I’d probably sit through dinner with a smile on my face, then sneak out to the kitchen later to see if I could track down some foamy fish. ”
I snicker. “I’m sorry. That fish was so disgusting.”
Arden shakes under me. “You want to serve me a loaf of meat with ketchup on it. You didn’t even specify what meat it would be. Random . . . loaf-shaped . . . meat.”
When we’ve stopped laughing, I look up at the night sky, so vast and full of the unknown, and the flutter of trepidation returns. “I don’t know how long it will take for me to learn to fit in. It makes me a liability in your life. I was raised with a dinner party meaning a rowdy family gathering with people sitting around a table, passing the mashed potatoes, and five conversations happening at the same time.”
“There’s not a thing wrong with how you were raised. True etiquette is about kindness. You have that in spades. I would never be ashamed of you or Bronnie.”
Rolling us until he’s braced over me, he searches my eyes, his thumb skating gently over my cheekbone. “Charlotte, my life is a thousand times better because you're in it. You could never be a liability.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is exactly that simple."
I bite my lip and nod, but anxiety continues to buzz inside me, a constant static of what if and but maybe and more than all of it, a low-grade fever of fear that sears through me and whispers, “ The other shoe will drop. Greg will get his way with the hydraulic lift or someone else will find another reason to dig in the basement, and they’ll know it was you. There are no happy endings.”
Arden rolls off me and sits, draping his arms over upraised knees, his gaze unfocused on the glittering waves. “You don’t believe me.”
“I don’t think you’re lying, but I wonder if you have rose-colored glasses on about the two of us.”
He turns toward me and shakes his head. “I’m the last person who would do that. Until you, I was a cynic through and through. I had a miserable first marriage. Do you think I’d ever sign up for more of the same?”