10
Adrian
My world at SkyfordCay the next few days revolved around me and Nina. Two people. Discovering little things about each other. Smiles. Likes. Favorite things.
I gave her another day off. Against the tirade of Chef Dominique. He pulled the I-will-call-your-mother card. I ignored him. We’d planned to visit Blue Lagoon. And there was nothing Chef Dominique could do to stop us.
Nina chose the place.
It would be just the two of us.
The day before had ended on a high note. Nina’s step-uncle had upset her. All I wanted was to protect her; to soothe her wounded spirit. The protector in me showed up with determination and grit. We had our heart-to-heart talk. Then she shared with me the song she’d been playing over and over on YouTube. It’s one of those songs you think is wacky, nerdy, sappy and then you can’t get it out of your head.
We played this little game off the song—If the world was ending what would you do?
I said I would sell all my books, my car, my apartment, my stocks and bonds, my watches, my millions of photos from my trips . . . to buy us one of the eight hundred islands of the Bahamas. I would build us a hut. We would get married. And we would spend the rest of the time together until the world ended.
She laughed and said the world would end before I had a chance to sell off all those things.
If the world was ending, she said she would bake all her favorite pastries for us to live on in the hut I would build.
And for the second night, we fell asleep sitting side by side on her love seat talking into the wee hours of the morning.
I exited the large glass shower, singing Nina’s new favorite song. I groaned.
I pulled out my navy shorts and white polo shirt for our day trip. Nina wanted uninterrupted time with me. And I planned to deliver. “I always deliver,” I said aloud, looking at my smiling face in the mirror.
And then the song came out of my mouth. The song. Nina’s song. It’s taken possession of my mind. I pulled on my Tom Ford shoes. To complete my look, I picked up one of five watches from my nightstand.
Hey. I didn’t say I was perfect. I had a thing for watches. Expensive watches. I had a thing for books, too. Rare books. Collectible items. And I had a thing for papers and manuscripts. Manuscripts. Which reminded me I hadn’t written since I’d been out here. Except the little poem I’d written: “Nina, How do I Love Thee?”
I looked into the mirror and laughed at the teenage boy antics I had been reduced to. It was my method of operating. I had written poems about and to Aimee, too. The first woman who’d moved me to write poetry. Now Nina was having an even more profound effect on me.
I have a beautiful woman to woo with my charm.
Today was going to be the best day of our lives.
I closed my room door and headed to Nina’s apartment.
An hour later, we’d gotten off the ferry on the idyllic Blue Lagoon. The cay was a virtual slice of paradise. I fell in love with it at first sight—the three-story tower we’d passed at the entrance to the landing, clear turquoise waters, coconut palm trees, white pristine sandy beach, and lush natural vegetation. I helped Nina get off the boat.
“This is Blue Lagoon,“ I said, taking in my fill of the place.
“Is this your first time?” Nina asked with a hint of teasing in her voice. “What kind of Marco Polo are you?”
“It”s obvious. I am here to discover the unknown to me.”
“Good point, caller,” she teased right back. “You are now on the list of illustrious rich people who’ve been here.”
“Thanks for that very useful tidbit of information.”
“I aim to please, Mr. Adrian the fourth.”
“What should we do today? Play with the dolphins? Watch sea lions? Do all the watersports? Take nature walks?” I asked, waving the pamphlet in the air.
“None of the above. Today we chill. Here’s our host to lead us to our VIP spot.”
“Welcome to our tropical paradise,” our host said in his lyrical Bahamian accent. He led us to an orange umbrella with a small wooden table for drinks. “Is this spot good for you?”
“Yes, I like this spot,” I answered.
“Perfect for chilling and liming,” Nina said, laughing. Her laughter was bright, light, happy and her smile was like an express shot of sunshine right to my heart. She placed her basket on the sand next to her seat. The basket she’d refused to hand over to me on the boat.
“I finally get to see what you’re hiding.”
“Is anticipation killing you, Adrian the fourth?”
“Oh, Nina, will you ever just call me Adrian,” I said, nudging her on the arm with my shoulders.
“No,” she said and struggled not to let her smile turn into a full blown guffaw.
“I see. You love saying my name.”
“You’re my first ‘the fourth.’ You’re not ‘the second,’ which is common enough. But ‘the fourth’ . . . in the twenty-first century. Unusual, me thinks,” she said, her voice coated with teasing.
“You’ve seen my family right. You saw how they behaved over the weekend. The name is a stronghold.”
She laughed so hard she slumped against the backrest of her lounge chair, making it wobble. And that laugh made it all worth it.
Me.
Pursuing her.
“I love the word stronghold. So tell me, Adrian . . . if—and this is a big if—if we get married and our firstborn is a son, will you go with the stronghold tradition and name him Adrian Watkins-Williams the fifth? By the way, do you have a middle name?”
“No middle names. No Adrian has had a middle name—nothing to detract from the surname. The name Watkins-Williams is the joining of two of the wealthiest and powerful New York legal families. It wasn’t just the amalgamation of the firms. My great grandfather took on his wife’s surname, on the day his firm merged with her father’s firm. They made a pact to always keep the name of the firm as Watkins and Williams. No matter how many other partners were created. A Watkins-Williams would always sit at the head of the table.”
“I see.”
“Additionally, every son down the line would be an Adrian Watkins-Williams. The credit goes to my great grandfather. He wanted his progeny to always be the front man. To answer your question, for our son not to be an Adrian Watkins-Williams the fifth, the pact would have to be broken.”
“I’ve read about old money, old alliances, old amalgamations. I always thought of them as stories of a life I would never know. I never thought I’d meet a living, breathing person from an old established family.” Her words washed over me, smooth and calm as the distant blue of the ocean, and quieted my spirit.
She took my hand into hers. She squeezed it and then caressed it. I leaned back against the cushion and scooted closer to her. I turned her face to mine with the tips of my finger. The warmth I saw there flooded my senses. The scent of flowers, delicate and sweet, floated off her skin to my nostrils. A sharp urge to bury my nose into the source of the scent jump-started my heart to a gallop, then a sprint. Heat traveled along the back of my neck.
I couldn’t help it. I had to kiss her. Now.
I bent towards her and she leaned into the kiss so her lips reached mine sooner than I’d anticipated. It was fast. I didn’t think. I gave in. I opened and I received her soft, soft lips. She’d painted them the color of dark red cherries. My heart sped as satin lips sought silk lips. Satin and silk. Sweet and sweeter. Honey and honeycomb. We indulged until a loud voice interrupted our interlude.
“What are you two doing here? Chef Nina, how can you ...” He left his sentence unfinished. A good thing.
It could not be.
Sure enough, it was him.
“Chef Dominique, what are you doing here?” we both said. I turned to look up at him. I didn’t miss his guilty smirk. Standing next to him was the house manager Lizette. He was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt and she had on a white wrap with an orange bikini underneath.
“Fancy meeting the two of you here,” Chef Dominique said.
“What are you insinuating, Chef Dominique,” I said, my voice flat and hard.
“I am not insinuating anything. I am just concerned for Nina,” he said, looking directly at Nina. “Have you told them about Nina?”
I didn”t answer.
“I thought as much,” he said, shaking his head. “I heard your shouting match with them after the party. None of the princesses were to your liking. You want Nina. But I see you have a hard task ahead, convincing your parents.”
The sunny day darkened. My stomach recoiled. My blood hummed through my veins like I was running with a bag of sand on my shoulders.
“You are so out of line, Chef Dominique,” I hissed, with narrowed eyes.
His face reddened and he crossed his arms. With cold eyes he said, “It’s the truth, Adrian. My real concern here is Nina. Watch out, cherie. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Nina.”
I rose to my full height to confront him. But he pulled Lizette and ran to the other side of the cay. She’d stood there with a big smile. Like she enjoyed every minute of it. It occurred to me that it wasn”t really just concern, that maybe they were both jealous. Jealous of Nina. I vowed then to protect Nina. I sensed trouble around the next bend in our story.
****
After the encounter, we cut the day short and took the ferry service back to Nassau and the house. It wasn’t the uninterrupted interlude we’d wanted with Chef Dominique and Lizette watching our every move. Plus, more people had arrived on the cay’s ferry service and Blue Lagoon had ended up much more crowded than we expected.
Back at the house, the moment I closed the door to my bedroom my iPhone rang. I’d left it on my nightstand for my uninterrupted day with Nina. It was my grandfather.
“Adrian, finally I got you. We need you to come back to New York immediately. There are some important developments concerning the firm and I want you to be in on the discussions. The jet is already on the way to you. All airport permissions have been cleared. You’re to leave for the airport at once. Do not delay. The meeting is in my office in three hours.”
And he hung up without giving me a chance to say a word or ask a question.
I flung the phone on the bed.
My heart entered its first Crossfit competition. The image of my room blurred. An icy chill crawled through my body. This was it. The trouble I’d sensed coming. Is the world falling apart in New York? If I knew my grandfather, my father, my mother, this was their next ploy to control me.
Does this mean war?
I threw my things into my suitcase and rushed down the steps to the front door. Roger stood with the door open, with a smirk. What was with all the smirks I was getting lately? I got in the car. The dutiful Adrian the fourth was on his way back to New York.
On the plane, I realized I hadn’t said goodbye to Nina and my day went from bad to worse.
My world blurred again, spun out of orbit, round, round, and round until I became dizzy. The earlier icy chill of fear returned with force infecting every cell in my body. I closed my eyes and the feeling multiplied.
WasI ready for war?