8. All Dressed Up （Ethan）
ALL DRESSED UP (ETHAN)
T here’s nothing more pretentious than flying on your private jet.
I’m fully aware of it, just like I’m fully aware that this is the fastest and most efficient way of traveling to New York City.
I board nearly an hour before takeoff, taking one of the seats with the enormous lump of Ares sprawled out on the empty seat across from me.
You can do anything when you fly private, and that includes letting the laziest basset hound alive rest his paws on designer leather while the jet cruises at thirty thousand feet.
Not that I would have brought him if it was entirely up to me. He could’ve stayed at home, slobbering by the fire with my cleaning staff taking care of him.
Only, when Mother heard I wound up with the dog, she threatened a massacre if I didn’t bring him to visit.
So here I am.
Bringing her the only legacy from Gramps she’ll ever care about.
Ares snorts like he knows what a chore this is, his big bloodshot eyes cracked and staring at me. I can’t tell if it’s an adoring look or not—he wears the same numb expression all the time, like someone just banned him from gobbling down his daily pile of salmon treats.
I feed him generously.
Even when he’s wagging his tail, he doesn’t look happy.
Finally, he stands, smacks his lips, and bellows a yawn like a dragon as he turns away from me, pawing at the cushion to make a nest in the seat with the blanket a flight attendant draped over him.
Ignoring him, I turn back to my laptop.
Better to get some work in while I wait.
A little while later, I see a car pulling up on the tarmac. Hattie gets out.
There’s a black dress on a hook hanging over her arm and her hair’s piled up neatly on her head.
Margot’s touch shines again, right down to her makeup.
Subdued pastel-pink lips today.
Probably best if I don’t look at her mouth. Or the way her hips sway as she walks. Or—dammit, anything.
Every movement she makes rocks that innocent librarian look that twists my balls in a vise.
I force my eyes back to my screen, reading the same sentence in my report three times as Hattie struts up the rollaway staircase and enters the jet.
Ares looks up and wags his thick tail the second he hears her greeting a flight attendant.
An earsplitting scream splits the air.
I’m about to toss the laptop aside and leap up, thinking Hattie’s hurt, but she’s running up the aisle to Ares.
“Good afternoon, beautiful boy!” She cups the old dog’s wrinkly face in both hands. “I haven’t seen you in ages. Do you remember me?”
He does, I’m sure.
Unfortunately.
And with this slobbery reunion, I’m also betting I won’t get much work done on this short flight.
It’s not like when we were kids and she was too shy to mutter more than a few words.
She has an energy now like a live current.
Although she isn’t the loudest one in the room—my sister steals the honor any day—she’s definitely the brightest.
I hate my imagination.
Ares licks her hand with the most enthusiasm I’ve seen in years.
Overgrown traitor mole dog.
“I can’t believe you brought him along for the ride,” Hattie gushes, glancing up at me with wide eyes. “I thought for sure you’d put him down.”
“He’s perfectly healthy for being five hundred in dog years. I’m not that much of a bastard,” I throw back.
“No, I guess not.” She kisses Ares’ wrinkled forehead and I take the dress, hanging it up for her since she just got her hands dirty with the dog.
“You should go wash your hands,” I tell her.
She settles in beside him, flippantly rolling her eyes.
“Why? Not much point when I’ll just pet him again in five minutes. I’ll wash up when we get there. Before I change into the dress.” She eyes it cautiously, a spark of excitement and trepidation on her face. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
“Hauling around a dog who was on Noah’s Ark? Yeah.” I scowl at his wrinkly face. “No, I can’t either.”
“Not Ares, you dork. This, I mean.” She sweeps her arm around the space. “On a private plane. Going to New York to meet your parents.”
“An unfortunate necessity. And you’ve met them before.”
“Yeah, but not like this. Not for dinner .”
“Be glad it’s just dinner. You wouldn’t want to linger a second longer.”
Hattie looks at the dress again. “This thing is worth more than all my books put together.”
I spare it a second glance.
Margot has her faults, but she knows how to pick them. It’s a pink, floral halter neck made to show an enticing amount of skin.
“Are you complaining?” I ask.
No, I still haven’t forgotten the way she reacted when I bought her the fucking bookstore.
Overkill?
Perhaps.
But she needs to get it through her head that the sums of money we’re dealing with are negligible.
With Blackthorn Holdings, I could buy every library in Maine without noticing the change in my account.
So yeah, buying her the bookstore felt like the logical conclusion. It was getting in the way and I don’t have patience for endless interruptions.
Besides, she’s always wanted to live with the pages.
I just sped up her destiny, thank you very much.
But the way she responded—like I’d somehow gone behind her back or it was dirty money—made me feel like I overstepped my bounds.
Never my intention.
I’m a coldhearted brute sometimes, sure, but I never want to make her feel small, like she doesn’t deserve what she’s earned.
The trouble is, good things don’t come to people who deserve them.
That’s not how the world works. You have to bite and claw for every drop of blood, no matter what your name is or how many good cards you’re dealt in the first hand.
I’m not better than anyone else because I was born wealthy with a name that means something.
I simply got lucky, and after too many years of wasting my luck, I finally figured out what to do.
Unlike my parents, who decided early on that ‘lucky’ was the final destination.
They don’t have a fucking clue what to do with their money beyond their next exotic spa treatment or Mom’s next big social. As long as they get to live off Gramps’ generosity until the day they die.
Me buying Hattie the bookstore instead of letting her muddle through loan applications and investors doesn’t mean she hasn’t worked hard.
She throws me a cautious glance, chewing her lip.
“Not complaining,” she says eventually. “It’s just a lot. I really hope it’s up to their standards.”
I nod briskly.
“My parents are particular. I’d say their eye for appearances and luxury are all they’ve ever cared to develop.”
I don’t say more.
Part of me thinks I should give her a fair preview of the family dynamics, but where do I fucking begin?
Mom only cared what Gramps’ money could buy her next and then what miracles their travel agent could work on his dime.
You have to get real creative when your clients have soaked in several dozen sunsets on Lanai and woken up to coffee with wild elephants in Zambia before they were middle-aged.
If Gramps’ life revolved around building empires and making money, Mother’s exists to spend it. Which makes the strained relationship they had until the bitter end even more baffling when it was so symbiotic.
Still, if the old man didn’t die rich, I doubt my mother would’ve acknowledged his passing at all.
When she found out he turned his nose up at a funeral, her relief was palpable.
“They’ll see the designer label, and that’s enough.” I give the dress another long look. “Salvatore Fig?”
She gasps. “How did you know?”
“Spend enough time around crowds flaunting it and you know it on sight.” Not that I’ve ever cared for designer labels much, but it helps to have a sense of what wows potential future partners.
I make it my business to care about the details in life, and Margot’s too, though she’d laugh in my face if I told her.
The way Hattie looks at me now says she can see there’s something more under the surface, but I’m not about to feed her interest. Soon, she turns away and focuses on scratching Ares’ comically long ears.
By the time the jet taxis down the runway again, I open my laptop and try not to think about how damnably content they look together.
My parents send a car to pick us up from the private airport, and we arrive at their Long Island estate a little while later.
Even I forget it’s so ostentatious it’s stunning every time I come back here.
The elegant wrought-iron gate opens to a long driveway lined with pear trees and well-sculpted hedges circling the house, which is vaguely colonial with modern touches.
Perfect for the image my parents like to project.
Refined. Classy.
Old money, even though they never earned a penny of it themselves, and by East Coast blue-blooded standards, Gramps was a baby in the money game.
Hattie changed into her dress just before we landed.
She’s all fire beside me, even though tension radiates from her shoulders, and her mouth sets in a firm line.
“Relax. I promise you’ll come out of this alive, Pages,” I whisper roughly.
“Easy for you to say,” she hisses back.
“You’ve met my parents before. They haven’t changed.” I wrap the leash around my hand as we step out with Ares. Amazingly, the old dog tries to break away to chase a butterfly. He’s surprisingly spry when he wants to be. “It’s not a big deal unless you make it one.”
“You keep saying that, Ethan. But you don’t know what this means. It’s different.”
I roll my eyes. “Or maybe you need to stop being so uptight.”
“And maybe you need to learn how to be considerate.”
“You met them dozens of times when we were kids,” I remind her with a snort.
“Um, I met them like ten times over the years. They never came to Portland to pick up Margot, remember? Half the time when I’d visit her here, they were gone somewhere. And I definitely wasn’t supposed to be your fiancée then.”
“There’s no supposed . Get it right.” I scowl. “You are my fiancée and you’d best start believing it if we want to convince everyone we can tolerate each other’s presence for more than ten goddamned seconds.”
It’s clear as day she doubts it just as much as I do.
Maybe more.