Chapter One
Marion
The bar crystal was wrong. It had cuts. Marion fingered the rocks glass and figured it was probably from the Tiffany set. And she didn't need to wear her glasses to recognize the Buccellati ice bucket, which meant that the whole shebang was way too much—the biggest mistake you could make at a political event. Donors like to think every penny of their money is going into boots-on-the-ground media campaigns for the average working Joe and other rolled-up-sleeves stuff. This bar said the pope and Queen Elizabeth were coming over to burn dollar bills. (Yeah, yeah, you could choke on the irony.) There was also that McCain-Lieberman-thing law about not spending too much. Bottom line: it was wrong.
People would notice and talk.
(And she'd be a target.)
Marion felt the ghost of an all-too-familiar yip in her stomach.
(Oh, no you don't.)
This was totally fixable.
"Ivan!"
"Yes, Mrs. Zane?" said a soft German voice at her elbow.
Marion almost knocked over the portable bar. You'd think that after fifteen years, she'd be used to her assistant's spooky habit of appearing before she could even speak his name, but it still jigged the bejesus out of her. The foyer was the size of a small church with vaulted ceilings and freakin' marble floors. How'd he sneak up so quietly in hard soles?
Ivan's James Bond face was neutral, but she could feel him smirking on the inside as he offered her her reading glasses. Eerie. At least he wasn't in a tux.
From the first day she'd met him, Marion had always imagined Ivan in an advertisement for expensive shirts (or on cheery days, expensive underwear). His sculpted good looks, perfect grooming, grace, and efficiency led everyone to assume, at first, that he was gay. For a while every rich, gay power player in town was descending on the Zane compound, armed with fictitious reasons to speak with "Marion's Aryan."
He never, though, responded to their entreaties. Yet, she realized, Ivan didn't respond to any of Marion's trampier girlfriends' advances either. Nowadays she just regarded him as a preternatural, asexual being and wrote off his sixth sense about dress as part of the package.
"We gotta dull this down," she told him. "Where's Jeff?"
"Here, Mrs. Zane," a voice promptly answered, and Jeff, her tuxedoed (yikes) majordomo, came bustling in, trailed ten paces by a silent six-year-old boy who was doing his best to appear invisible.
"Okay, it's a political event, so on all the bars: plain crystal instead of cut—use that Baccarat; plain silver bar accessories, plain cocktail linens, not jacquard—use that French set, plain serving trays, quiet flowers. Jeff, way too dashing in the tux. Just coat and tie, like Ivan, and shirtsleeves and bow for waitstaff. You guys know how to do this."
Jeff shot a look at Ivan.
"What?" Marion asked.
Jeff hesitated. "Mr. Zane said to use the good stuff."
"Ah, Jeffery, there are about twenty different sets of crystal in the basement."
"Twenty-four."
"Right, but in my husband's mind, we've got two: jelly jars and ‘good stuff.' Warn me the next time he wants to take a hand in choosing the dishes. I'm sorry you had to drag this up."
Jeff smiled and bounced a nod. He got it. She wouldn't have to explain it again. "I'll change everything right away, Mrs. Zane," he said.
"Thanks."
Jeff gasped as he spotted the boy leaning on one of the Louis XVI gilt and alabaster console tables and started to shoo him back to the kitchen.
"Is that Peter?" Marion asked.
"Um, yes, Mrs. Zane. I apologize, but Karen had to work . . ."
Marion whipped off her readers, walked over to the boy, and squatted so as not to freak him out. Good thing she was in her uniform of jeans, a white shirt, and bare feet. If she'd been glammed, he'd probably have recoiled. "Hey, I'm Marion. You met me when you were three. Your parents let you watch cartoons?"
The boy looked at his father's raised eyebrow, then made the sign for "a little" with his fingers.
"What's your favorite?"
"SpongeBob," he whispered.
Marion nodded. "I've got that. C'mon."
She took him by the hand. He came without pulling.
"Mrs. Zane, you don't have to . . ."
"Please. At least there'll be one person in this house tonight who isn't bored to tears."
Marion led the boy out of the foyer, toward the north wing. She watched his head tilt up as they passed the Rodin bronze. Twelve feet tall and armored with defiant breasts and wide hips, the nude made a formidable guard before the carved stone archway to the family wing.
"Caught ya lookin'."
The boy giggled.
As she set Peter up before the giant flat screen and called for juice and popcorn, Marion had to admit she was kind of pissed at Richard's latest request: "Honey, I need you to give a reception on Thursday for a Senate candidate. He wants something intimate. Use your good list."
Translation: she had less than five days to round up no fewer than fifty (campaign manager's idea of "intimate") billionaires, tastemakers, and A-list movie stars who would probably donate to a newcomer.
That she'd done it in four was beside the point.
Did her husband think she just pulled these people out of her butt?
And here she was ragging on the finest staff in the world about bar stuff. All so Richard could seduce and place some millionaire-who-was-bought-out-of-his-company-but-still-wanted-to-wield into a position to change some law. It had to be zoning because Richard already had the media consolidation thing locked. That, coupled with above-normal libidinal demands, could mean only one thing:
Richard was building again.
Land development did the same thing for her husband as scrapbooking did for grandmas. He was always happiest when he had a project. Richard had made his first millions in land development. It was sentimental creativity.
Continues...
Excerpted from Trophiesby Heather Thomas Copyright © 2008 by Heather Thomas. Excerpted by permission.
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