Chapter 02: Seating Arrangements

I took my towel to the laundry basket in my restroom—I couldn’t help myself—before taking the elevator down from the third floor to the first. I walked through the open first floor toward the back of the house that faced the cliffside, Coastal Road, where my husband parked two of his four Porsches. For a man who was heir and co-owner of one of the biggest Engineering and Technology companies in the world, the man only drove Porches when he was at home. He kept his car collection somewhere else.

Outside, the sun showed gold in a mostly blue sky, but off the coast, near the horizon, billowed a storm of gray clouds. Great. Dex would use those clouds as an excuse to drive faster than he usually did on the way to his parents’ home. I frowned, then my frown deepened when I looked at the car.

My daughter, Lana, stood next to the passenger-side door in her sweats with a little backpack in her right hand, looking nothing like the twenty-year-old cover girl she was. Would she be a cover girl if it wasn’t for her father’s family name? Probably, but I’m sure it would have taken longer. A woman could be an eleven, but in that world, elevens were everywhere. At least she didn’t have to fuck her way to the top.

She looked like me; my daughter did, only she was a little taller and more willowy, with a sharper face, longer hair, and blue eyes instead of green. To be in her place...

“Why aren’t you in a costume?” I asked my daughter as I walked toward the car, and she walked toward me with a frown on her face.

Her brother and father were already in their seats, waiting on us.

“I don’t feel well,” Lana said in a low tone when we stood face to face. “And I can’t wear my costume in the car.”

“You okay?” I asked, then I added, “you’re going to your grandparents’ party this weekend. I don’t care what other parties are going on in the city.”

“Oh, I know,” Lana said. “I flew in, didn’t I? I’m not trying to get out of it. I’m not a teenager anymore.”

I laughed as if being twenty had given her a world of experience and wisdom. Who knows, in her fast-paced life, maybe it had.

“But, you know, it’s shark week,” Lana said with her arms crossed across her stomach.

I raised an eyebrow.

“I got my period,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I need to sit in front with daddy.”

“Oh,” I said, giving my daughter a sympathetic smile, but then... “Oh, no. No-no-no-no-no.” I looked at my husband’s Porsche, the four-door Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid Executive—that was his idea of a family car—and I shook my head. “We need to change cars.”

“You look hot, Mom,” Lana said. “Very sexy. Is Daddy making you wear that?”

I mumbled something to her. My daughter knew too much about my sex life, but that’s what happens when your twin sister is your daughter’s favorite aunt. Fuck, I couldn’t sit in the back with my son, Colt. Our luggage would be in the trunk. Colt would sit behind his father, who liked to sit as close to the wheel as possible. Lana would sit in my seat, and in the seat behind hers would sit the biggest fucking pumpkin Dex could find. He wouldn’t carve it until he got to his parents’ house so that he and his mother could carve creepy, life-like faces into its skin and pulp.

“I can’t sit in Colt’s lap,” I said, trying to look through the tinted windows at my son, but I was too far away to see through them.

“Oh, when you have to sit in Colt’s lap, then driving in that little car is suddenly a big deal,” Lana said. “But when I have to sit in his lap, you and dad say, ‘Oh, it’s just your brother, he won’t bite you.’ Thanks, Mom.”

A bitchy look crossed my face, and not even my nun’s habit could soften that glare.

“Sorry,” Lana said, looking to the side. “Colt’s kind of comfortable, I guess, but I can’t sit in his lap when I feel like this. You know, I’ve got cramps, and I feel—”

“I know what it feels like.” I looked toward our home’s roof, where sat the helicopter my daughter had flown in on.

“Dad wants to drive,” Lana said, having followed my gaze. “That’s his thing. He’s not going to call a pilot—”

“Get your father for me,” I said, sighing. “I need to talk to him.”