Christmas at the Beach (7 page)

“There.” Deirdre slid the plate of hors d’ oeuvres closer to Jeff and untied her apron.
She wore a periwinkle blue silk pantsuit that looked as if it had been dyed to match
her eyes. She was built just as small and big breasted as Avery, but the cut of her
tunic top downplayed the D cup that dwelt beneath it. A pair of strappy sandals gave
her an extra couple of inches.

Avery wore a pair of Daisy Dukes, a chopped off Do Over T-shirt, and an ancient pair
of Keds. Which just went to prove that the apple could fall far from the tree if it
tried hard enough.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” Deirdre said giving Avery the once over. “But there’s time
if you want to shower and change.”

That had been Avery’s plan until Deirdre brought it up. “I’m good. Thanks.”

With a snort of laughter Chase reached in the refrigerator and pulled out a beer.
“Dad?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Chase handed his father a beer then opened one for himself. He slathered pate on a
fancy cracker and popped it in his mouth. “Mmmm—mmmmm.”

Deirdre beamed at him. Avery gritted her teeth and went to the pantry.

“Where are the Cheez Doodles?” she asked scanning the shelves.

Deirdre raised an elegant eyebrow. “I believe we’re out.” She said this with a regretful
tone that was no more convincing than Avery’s French accent. “But if you put them
on the shopping list I’ll . . .”

“Forget to buy them. Again.”

“They turn everything they touch orange. There’s no telling what they do to your internal
organs,” Deirdre said.

“I’m thirty-six-years-old. My internal organs belong to me. And you showed up on the
scene way too late to influence my taste in food.”

Deirdre rubbed her arm where the bullet had gone in.

Avery rolled her eyes. “She does that every time I even think about disagreeing with
her.”

“Which is pretty much all the time,” Deirdre said.

“My Cheez Doodle habit is my own business,” Avery pointed out.

“That’s true. But I think ‘habit’ is the operative word.” Deirdre’s chin jutted forward.
Her hands fisted on her hips.

It was like looking in a freakin’ mirror.

There was a strangled laugh and Avery turned her attention to Jeff and Chase.

“Sorry,” Jeff said smothering his smile. “I just never can get over how much you resemble
each other when you square off like that.”

“Well, I think orange dye on a woman is kind of sexy,” Chase said. “Add a little sawdust
and . . .” He managed to shrug and leer simultaneously. “I’m a goner.”

Jeff guffawed.

“Fine. Laugh all you want.” Avery settled on a bag of mini pretzels. Which was a poor
substitute for the air filled cheesiness of her favorite snack. She was munching the
little twists when the doorbell rang. “I’ve got it.” She strode to the front door,
pulled it open. Kyra stood on the front porch with Dustin in her arms. Madeline stood
beside her. She was already hugging Maddie when she spotted movement on the sidewalk.

“Halo Avery!” The voice was loud. The accent British. The tone overly familiar. The
tabloids had gone crazy over Kyra from the moment they’d discovered she was pregnant
with Daniel Deranian’s child. It had only grown worse since Dustin was born. “Are
Deirdre and Chase inside?”

The photographer was tall and lanky. A pack of paparazzi jostled each other behind
him. They looked completely out of place on the modest tree-lined street. Like a pack
of wolves hunting sheep in a grocery store.

A digital flash went off. Avery fell back a step.

“Come on, Kyra luv!” The Brit coaxed. “Just one clean shot and we’ll be on our way.”

“That’s Nigel and he’s lying,” Kyra said with a shake of her head. “Last week in Atlanta
I was at a drive through waiting for Dustin’s Happy Meal when I heard his voice on
the speaker. I hesitated for just a second, because you don’t hear all that many English
accents at a fast food place and I’d already paid for our food. A whole herd of them
jumped out from a bush right next to the cashier’s window.”

Another flash erupted. Avery looked up and the flash went off again. She had a brief
vision of what she was—and wasn’t—wearing.

“Avery. Darlin.” Nigel urged. “If you can just get her to turn around for . . .”

Avery grabbed Kyra’s free hand and pulled her the rest of the way into the foyer.
Maddie tumbled in after her. Avery shoved the door closed behind them.

“I’m so sorry,” Kyra said. “I don’t even know where they came from. I didn’t see anybody
tailing us down from Atlanta. Although there was this really homely woman wearing
what looked like size 13 shoes in the stall next to me at the rest stop.” Kyra sighed.
“That’s how bad it’s gotten. I’ve been reduced to checking out feet in stalls! But
I thought we were safe. I didn’t even think about wearing a disguise. Plus there was
no way I was making an eight hour drive in a burqa.”

Dustin rubbed his eye sleepily. One side of his face showed signs of contact with
what must have been a corduroy car seat. His dark curls looked smashed from sleep.

Chase and Deirdre came into the foyer. Maddie set down their overnight bags. “I need
to get Dustin’s booster seat and porta crib out of the car.” She squared her shoulders
and turned back to the door with all the enthusiasm of a condemned prisoner about
to face a firing squad.

“I’ll get them.” Chase took the mini-van keys and offered a mock salute. “Cover me!
If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, send reinforcements.”

“If I had a gun I’d gladly cover you,” Kyra said. “I don’t know how to get rid of
them. I just keep praying that a real celebrity will show up to distract them.” She
propped Dustin up in the crook of her arm. “I mean where are Kim Kardashian and Lindsay
Lohan when you really need them?”

Keep reading for a preview of Wendy Wax’s latest novel

WHILE WE WERE WATCHING DOWNTON ABBEY

Available now from Berkley Books

Chapter One

As a child Samantha Jackson Davis loved fairy tales as much as the next girl. She
just hadn’t expected to end up in one.

Every morning when her eyes fluttered open and every night before she closed them
to go to sleep, Samantha marveled at her good fortune. In a Disney version of the
airline passenger held up in security just long enough to miss the plane that goes
down, or the driver who runs back for a forgotten cell phone and barely avoids a deadly
ten-car pileup, Samantha averted disaster in the once-upon-a-time way: she married
the prince.

Over the past twenty-five years Samantha had sometimes wished she’d spent a little
more time and energy considering alternatives. But when your world comes crashing
down around you at the age of twenty-one, deep thinking and soul-searching are rarely
your first response.

There was plenty of precedent for prince-marrying in the fairy-tale world. Sleeping
Beauty had not ignored the prince’s kiss in favor of a few more years of shut-eye.
Cinderella never considered refusing to try on the glass slipper. And Snow White didn’t
bat an eyelash at moving in with those seven little men.

It wasn’t as if Samantha had gone out searching for a man to rescue her and her siblings
when their world fell apart. She hadn’t feigned a poisoned apple–induced sleep or
gotten herself locked in a tower with only her hair as a means of escape. She hadn’t
attempted to hide how desperate her situation was. But the fact remained that when
the handsome prince (in the form of an old family friend who had even older family
money) rode up on his white horse (which had been cleverly disguised as a Mercedes
convertible), she had not turned down the ride.

The fact that she hadn’t loved the prince at the time he carried her over the threshold
of their starter castle was something she tried not to think about. She’d been trying
not to think about it pretty much every day for the last twenty-five years.

* * *

Samantha smiled sleepily that early September morning when her husband’s lips brushed
her forehead before he left for the office, but she didn’t get up. Instead she lay
in bed watching beams of sunlight dance across the wooden floors of the master bedroom,
breathing in the scent of freshly brewed coffee that wafted from the kitchen, and
listening to the muted sound of traffic twelve floors below on Peachtree Street as
she pushed aside all traces of regret and guilt and renewed her vow to make Jonathan
Davis happy, his life smooth, and his confidence in his choice of her unshaken.

This, of course, required a great deal of organization and focus, many hours of volunteer
work, and now that she was on the downhill slide toward fifty, ever greater amounts
of “maintenance.” Today’s efforts would begin with an hour of targeted torture courtesy
of her trainer Michael and would be followed by laser, nail, and hair appointments.
Since it was Wednesday, her morning maintenance and afternoon committee meetings would
be punctuated by a much-dreaded-but-never-complained-about weekly lunch with her mother-in-law.
Which would last exactly one hour but would feel more like three.

Samantha padded into the kitchen of their current “castle,” which took up the entire
top floor of the Alexander, a beautifully renovated Beaux Arts and Renaissance Revival–styled
apartment building in the center of Midtown Atlanta.

When it opened in 1913, the Alexander, with its hot and cold running water, steam
heat, elevators, and electric lights, had been billed as one of the South’s most luxurious
apartments. Like much of mid-and downtown Atlanta it had fallen on hard times but
had been “saved” in the eighties when a bottom-fishing developer bought it, converted
it to condos, and began the first of an ongoing round of renovations.

A little over ten years ago Samantha and her prince spent a year turning the high-ceilinged,
light-filled and architecturally detailed twelfth-floor units into a four-bedroom,
five-bath, amenity-filled home with three-hundred-sixty-degree views and north– and
south-facing terraces.

For Samantha its most prized feature was its location in the midst of trendy shops,
galleries, and restaurants as well as its comfortable, but not offensive, distance
from Bellewood, Jonathan’s ancestral home in Buckhead, one of Atlanta’s toniest and
oldest suburbs, where both of them had grown up and where his often-outspoken mother
still reined.

The doorbell rang. As Samantha went to answer it she pushed thoughts of Cynthia Davis
aside and gave herself a silent but spirited pep talk. She’d married into Atlanta
royalty. Her prince was attractive and generous. A difficult mother-in-law and a life
built around pleasing others was a small price to pay for the fairy-tale life she
led. As Sheryl Crow so aptly put it, the secret wasn’t having what you wanted but
wanting what you got.

* * *

Shortly after the morning’s training session ended Samantha rode a mahogany-paneled
elevator down to the Alexander’s marbled lobby. The gurgle of the atrium fountain
muffled the click of her heels on the polished surface as she took in the surprisingly
contemporary high-backed banquette that encircled the deliciously carved fountain.
Conversation groups of club chairs and sofas, separated by large potted palms, softened
the elegant space. A burled walnut security desk, manned twenty-four-seven, sat just
inside the entrance. The concierge desk sat in the opposite corner and commanded a
view of the lobby as well as the short hall that accessed the parking garage and the
elevators.

“Good morning, madam.” Edward Parker’s British accent was clipped, his suit perfectly
tailored, his starched shirt crisp. His manner was deferential but friendly. A relatively
recent addition to the Alexander, the concierge was tall and dark with rugged good
looks that seemed at odds with his dignified air. “Shall I have your car brought around?”

“Thank you.” She was of course capable of simply going into the Alexander’s parking
garage to retrieve her own car, but the last time she’d insisted on doing this Edward
had looked genuinely disappointed, and the minutes saved would come in handy if she
ran behind or hit traffic between appointments or on the way to lunch with her mother-in-law.
Punctuality was a virtue that Cynthia Davis prized; tardiness a vice to be stamped
out at all cost.

“Very good,” he said, his brown eyes warm, his white-toothed smile decidedly un-British.
When he lost some of the stiff upper lip that seemed welded to his accent and his
occupation, there was a rakish George Clooney–ness about him. Although Parker was
in his early fifties, Samantha’s younger sister Meredith had pronounced him both “hot”
and “dishy.”

Samantha arrived at the Piedmont Driving Club—where the Davises had belonged since
its inception as a gentleman’s club in the late 1880s—ten minutes before noon, buffed,
coifed, and polished. Though she was early her mother-in-law was already seated at
a favored table with her back to the window, the better to keep an eye on the room’s
comings and goings. Samantha smiled and leaned down to kiss her mother-in-law’s rouged
cheek. Cynthia Davis might be seventy-five, but she was still formidable. Like her
son and the husband she’d already outlived for a decade, she could drive a golf ball
straight down a fairway and had a tennis backhand that was almost as sharp as her
tongue. Born into one of Atlanta’s oldest and most revered families and married into
another, she remained a snob at heart; one who liked to remind anyone who would listen
that “you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” and the vaguer but more ominous
“breeding will out.” Samantha had heard these summations applied to everything from
a disappointing fund-raiser to the scandal that had ensued when Samantha’s father,
Davis & Davis’s managing partner, had dipped into client trust accounts, almost ruining
the firm that had been in the Davis family since shortly after the Civil War. He’d
been under investigation when his car had run off the road just a few miles from home,
killing both him and Samantha’s mother instantly.

Cynthia Davis had been horrified when her only son chose to marry the daughter of
one-time friends who had disgraced themselves publicly before dying spectacularly.
Samantha’s failure to produce a grandchild had made her even less desirable in her
mother-in-law’s eyes.

Samantha had barely settled into her seat when Cynthia leveled her steeliest look
at her and asked, “What do you intend to do about Hunter and Meredith?”

“Do?” Samantha ordered a glass of Chardonnay. Hearing her brother and sister’s names
on her mother-in-law’s lips made her regret she could have only one glass. As she
considered possible replies, she made a mental note not to schedule anything after
their weekly lunch in the future so that she could drink as much as the meal required.

“I don’t believe either of them are employed at the moment, are they?” Cynthia asked,
as if there might be some doubt. For Cynthia Davis idleness was an even greater personality
defect than lack of income.

“Not exactly, no.”

“Then perhaps we need to put our heads together to come up with something for them
to do.” This was not a question. “After all, Hunter’s last venture did show some . . .
promise.” Cynthia was referring to her brother’s recent attempt to launch a chain
of soul food/sushi restaurants in the Midwest, which had ended badly. Hunter could
make a better first impression than almost anyone she knew and could sell almost anything
while in the first flush of enthusiasm. Unfortunately, follow-through was not his
forte.

Samantha smiled and nodded as if Cynthia’s comment had been meant as a compliment,
and perhaps it had been. Her mother-in-law did not approve of Hunter Jackson, or the
money Jonathan spent on Hunter’s upkeep, but she was not immune to Hunter’s charm.

The basket of corn bread and rolls that neither of them would touch arrived. A group
of women stopped by the table to pay their respects on their way out.

“Don’t you think it’s time we find Meredith an opportunity here in Atlanta where she
can make use of her degree? She did spend quite a lot of time in school acquiring
it.” Cynthia had been furious when she’d realized the size of the tuition Jonathan
had paid for Samantha’s younger sister to receive a master’s degree in Historic Preservation
from the College of Charleston. But while Jonathan loved his mother and preferred
her happy—or at least satisfied—he didn’t ask her input on his decisions or bow to
her wishes unless they happened to coincide with his.

“I don’t imagine the Atlanta Preservation Board has heard about her little contretemps
in Charleston yet. Maybe I could put a word in.” This was so Cynthia—first the slap
down, then the oddly magnanimous gesture. Samantha allowed herself another measured
sip of wine. At least Cynthia hadn’t brought up her sister’s taste in men.

“And that last boy she brought to the Labor Day party at the club?” Cynthia shook
her head sadly. “Really, dear. Meredith is quite presentable when she tries. I’d think
she might aim a little higher.”

Samantha swallowed slowly, bracing for the “bless her heart” that Cynthia all too
often tacked on to the end of Meredith’s name; the final condemnation of her sister
and the job Samantha had done raising her. A job for which she’d been unprepared and
which had led her to marry the first prince who had galloped to her aid.