6. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
Marcie looked nervous.
I came out of the bedroom to find her in Yukiko’s room, sitting at the vanity like a soldier getting ready to be dropped onto a battlefield.
Everything about my angel was on point, from her outfit to her makeup—and if anything wasn’t, the woman standing behind her with a brush in her hand and an open cosmetics case on the bed looked ready and willing to fix it.
Caroline worked in small, unhurried strokes, touching her up here and there as she stared into the mirror.
The sight stopped me in my tracks. “Hey, angel,” I said. “You look ready to rock.”
It was the morning after my night with Yukiko, and my complicated thoughts about her mother had still been rattling around in my head while I showered, shaved and dressed for our meeting with Tallulah Harrington.
It wasn’t until I saw Marcie and Caroline together that my brain truly switched over, readying itself for the work to come.
After that, I tabled everything else to be dealt with after.
Marcie glanced at me in the mirror. For a second, she looked every bit her father’s daughter, then her bottom lip began to wobble and her eyes crinkled. “I am so anxious,” she admitted. “I’ve got the butterflies like mad right now, Uncle Jack.”
“You tell those things to settle down,” Caroline said smoothly. “Otherwise you’ll smudge. I did not spend all morning giving you the world’s most perfectly subtle under-eye blush for you to wreck it before I can set it properly.”
Marcie laughed. “She’s such a slave driver,” she said.
“I’m an artist,” Caroline murmured, tilting Marcie’s chin towards the light.
“One who is on incredibly thin ice where the Avery family is concerned. If I don’t get this right, your fellow wife is likely to beat me to death with a Louisville Slugger and let your other fellow wife bury me in the backyard. ”
“That would never happen,” Marcie said, shaking her head. When Caroline leaned in to touch up the makeup beneath her eye, she put a hand on the wrist and gently squeezed it. “Hey.”
Caroline paused, something heavy shifting behind her eyes.
“I did some Googling last night,” Marcie said kindly. “Pretty sure everyone else in this house did, too. Nobody’s going to bring it up, I promise—but we know what you’ve been through. We are not getting rid of you, Caroline.” Daniel shone through her eyes. “I won’t let it happen.”
For a second, Caroline looked like she might cry. “Thank you,” she said, nodding once. “I’m glad I didn’t have to say it all out loud.” She straightened up, readjusting her grip on the brush. “Regardless, I’m still going to make sure you look perfect.”
“You already look perfect,” I told Marcie. “Tallulah’s going to love you.”
“I hope so,” Marcie said. “God, I feel like I’m going to be sick.”
A knowing smile spread across the makeup artist’s face. “You want to know a secret about meeting new people?”
Marcie perked up a bit. “Sure.”
“Everyone you meet is nervous,” Caroline said, tilting Marcie's chin up with one finger. “Every single person. No matter how old they are, how experienced, how self-assured, there’s a little part of them that’s standing there thinking please like me, please like me.
The ones who look confident? They're just nervous about different things.” She dusted a final sweep of powder along Marcie's cheekbone.
“So when you walk in there and your stomach is doing backflips, just remember—Tallulah's stomach is doing the exact same thing. You're not the only one auditioning.”
“That... actually helps,” Marcie said slowly.
I don’t know that that’s necessarily true, I thought. But it’s probably what my angel needed to hear.
“Of course it does. It was true about Colin and Rachel from Morning Harbor. It’s true about Miss Harrington, too.
” Caroline stepped back, examining her work with a critical eye, then smiled.
“The universe doesn't do things by accident, Marcie. It winks. Frequently, it laughs.” She tucked the brush away.
"There. Now go throw up if you need to, but go show Samantha your face first. I want her to verify I did the job right.”
“I’ll show her. But I’m already feeling better.” Marcie turned her face this way and that, pressing the tip of a nail against her cheekbone. “I look good. I’m feeling… I’m feeling okay.” She glanced at me. “You think I’ve got this, Uncle Jack?”
“I know so, angel,” I told her.
The rest of the morning passed in a blur of well-wishes and goodbyes.
Samantha took one look at Marcie and spent several minutes gushing about how pretty she was and how much ass she was going to kick, while Yukiko whispered a reminder into my ear that she was still thinking about Yui when she kissed me goodbye.
Mona showed up just long enough to wish us luck and make sure all of us had coffee poured down our throats.
The three of us left in my McLaren: Marcie in the passenger seat, Caroline folded into the jump seat like an extremely happy to be here piece of furniture.
The GPS informed me as we pulled out of the neighborhood that we had about two and a half hours of driving between here and the Harrington mansion.
Marcie put on some music. I could tell that it was tough for Caroline to relax in such cramped confines, but you never would have been able to see it just by looking at her face.
“Let me know if either of you need anything,” the makeup artist said, watching houses pass by the McLaren’s window. “Otherwise, I’m going to try and get a little more sleep.”
I sat up a little straighter. Marcie did a double take.
“You can sleep back there?” Marcie asked. “Like that?”
Caroline laughed. “This is far from the oddest place I’ve taken a nap,” she said, patting the back of Marcie’s seat.
“On a TV set, you learn to catch a few Z’s whenever you can.
Short snatches whenever there’s downtime.
” She yawned. “And being driven around like this… well, that’s something I haven’t experienced in quite a while. I’m used to doing my own driving.”
“Yeah, this is the lap of luxury,” I said. “Squeezed into half a seat.”
“It’s not all bad,” she shot back, catching my eye in the rearview mirror. “The company is wonderful.”
And she winked.
“Careful,” Marcie said.
Caroline gave my angel a look that told me this was not the first time this subject had been brought up beneath my roof. “Oh dear, am I stepping on the toes of an Avery wife?”
Marcie snorted. “No. That’s just how everybody starts with Jack.
It’s all ‘I respect you so much’ and ‘you’ve changed the way I look at the world,’ and then before you know it you’re straddling the front seat of this sports car with your own panties in your mouth and fireworks going off behind your eyes, asking yourself how soon can I marry this guy? ”
Caroline’s jaw dropped. She looked delighted.
“Marcella Avery,” she said, laughing. “Your panties in your mouth?”
“That one wasn’t me,” she said, brushing a lock of hair away from her forehead. “But I did have my first time in the front seat of this McLaren.”
“Is the whole drive going to be like this?” I asked.
Both women snickered. “Why, would you prefer we were asleep?” Caroline asked.
“No,” I said, popping my sunglasses out of the center console and sliding them onto the bridge of my nose. “Just trying to figure out if I’m going to need to make a stop with Marcie on the way.”
Marcie looked like she wouldn’t have minded one bit.
“Probably not the best idea,” Caroline said from behind the seat. “I’m still on probation. I’m not close enough to the inner circle yet to have the true mystery of the Avery family revealed.”
“The true mystery?” I asked.
Caroline met my eyes in the rearview, hers brimming with mischief.
“Mr. Avery, you have three wives and twice as many women angling to become your wives,” she said, as if this were the most normal topic of conversation in the world.
“Every woman who’s ever seen the videos has wondered just what you use to keep them all satisfied.
” A pause. “And how much of it there is.”
“Oh, it’s good,” Marcie said, leaning back with a wink. “I mean, it’s not like I have anything to compare it to, but I am definitely not complaining—”
“I think you already know the answer to that question,” I told Caroline. “Let’s tackle a different one.” I turned to Marcie. “Run me through the play.”
Marcie’s gaze sharpened. She cleared her throat, suddenly all business.
“We get there, we make the introductions, we have dinner,” she began, her gaze fixed on a point on the windshield.
Outside, the buildings gave way to trees as we began to leave Boston behind.
“It’s the first time I’ve seen Tallulah in two years, and the first time the two of you have met in nearly a decade. ”
“Which was for about thirty seconds at one of Daniel’s events,” I muttered.
Marcie nodded. “At some point, I bring out the Rolodex. We laugh. And that’s when I pivot.”
“Tell me.”
Her voice picked up strength and surety the longer she spoke.
“Harrington Structural and Ramsey Engineering were joined at the hip for almost my Dad’s entire career.
Not because of margins, but because of trust. Carl could have gotten his business handled anywhere.
He stayed with my father because they built the Wexford footbridge together, and because he promised him that together, they’d always take care of it.
” She patted the purse between her knees, where the now-familiar bulge of Daniel’s old Rolodex stretched the fabric.
“Victoria broke that promise the second she saw a line item without enough profit in it. So I’m not going to pitch Tallulah.
I’m going to let her know that we’re here to keep my father’s word to her husband. ”
I nodded. “You’re damned right.”
“Oh, she’s good,” Caroline murmured from the back seat, delighted. “She is so good, Jack.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “I know she is.”