Now that he’s survived his treacherous twenties and is well on the way to becoming the mature, though still hip, online image of Love & Pease, Will definitely can’t afford a scandal so déclassé as drug running. The men who plunk down $95 for 1.7 fluid ounces of PeasePower face cream are not aspiring to be aging addled frat boys.
Eve grips the underside of the table. “What did he do now?”
“He’s saying it’s no big deal.” However, the girl’s body is practically vibrating as she texts her stepbrother. “A simple misunderstanding.”
“Let’s hope.” Relieved not to be dragged into whatever mess Will’s gotten himself into this time, Eve sips the tea, now lukewarm, and drums her fingers on the crafted table. They need to get back to the shoot.
“He says he has a big surprise and he’s reached out to Jake and Dani to make sure they’re around when he gets here. ETA is six thirty.” Megan abruptly looks up, her cheeks flushed pink as her mouth forms a silent O.
“What?” Eve asks, now on alert.
“Mom. He says he’s stopping off on Newbury Street to pick up an order from Cynthia Britt’s.”
A gasp catches in Eve’s throat. There’s only one thing a man like Will Pease would order from Cynthia Britt’s jewelry store. Only one very, very special thing.
“Get the fuck out!” Eve leaps out of her chair and toward her daughter. “Oh, baby!”
Megan drops her phone with a clunk and begins to cry. Eve snaps up a napkin from beneath three shining forks and uses it to dab away the dark rivulets of mascara dripping down the girl’s cheeks. “Sweetie, don’t. You’ll puff up.”
Ice water, that’s what they need, and lots of it, followed by a Love & Pease Totally Cool eye mask. And if that doesn’t do the trick, Preparation H. “Come on. Go and take a therapeutic shower.” She gives Megan a slight shove toward the stairs. “Use the exfoliating brush, too, and borrow my black slouchy turtleneck, the Yang. Casual but sexy. I’ll call Yvonne for an emergency blowout. Hurry!”
Giddy, Megan does as her mother instructs, lashes damp with joyful tears, while Eve grabs her own cell and, taking a deep, empowering breath, calls her stepson, Jake.
Jake has been dead set against Megan dating his brother Will ever since he caught them in bed last summer. He was horrified, and started going off on how their relationship basically amounted to incest, though it was no such thing, not at all. As CFO of the family company, he demanded Will “earn back his dignity” by working for the Pease Foundation in Colombia, Chet’s pet project, which he founded with his former wife, Madeleine, after they adopted Bella.
Despite Megan’s protests, Will complied with his domineering brother’s command, angrily flying to Bogotá the next day to join his drip of an adopted sister, now all grown up and smug. That girl’s so earnest she might as well be a nun, lurking on the sidelines of Eve’s parties with her arms folded and lips pinched in disapproval at the elegant canapés passing by on silver trays. Eve doesn’t have to be a mind reader to know that Bella silently judges her for throwing a dinner party that costs more than what the foundation would pay to feed ten orphans for a year. As if she should be serving friends and business associates thin gruel instead of organic duck breast with fresh Japanese yuzu.
Anyway, who cares? That proverbial water is under the proverbial bridge. Will’s served his sentence at the foundation and paid his penance. Now, he’s back to claim Megan with a fabulous ring and Jake will simply have to suck it up.
This will be the wedding of the century. Eve is already envisioning the months and months of buildup on the Pease website. Glowing Megan in soft lighting, flowers in her hair, her gauzy dress billowing in a summer breeze against a backdrop of luscious, luxurious, irresistible product. There’ll be dress designers to promote and chefs and florists and tchotchkes galore!
“Eve?” Jake answers on the first ring.
“I have huge news,” she blurts. “Will’s back from Colombia and he—”
“I heard. This is a crisis. A fucking crisis!”
She flinches. Surely, he still can’t be that furious at his brother, not after all these months. “I hardly think . . .”
“Just got off the phone with Dani. She’s pissed, too. She’s headed over to your house. If you have plans, cancel them. We need a family meeting. This needs to be nipped in the bud ASAP.”
It crosses Eve’s mind that Jake might attempt to intercept Will to prevent him from popping the question. That cannot happen. It would totally destroy Megan, and the pain of watching your baby’s heart break in real time is too much to bear for any mother, to say nothing of a self-sacrificing mother like her.
“They’re adults, Jake. You can’t tell them what to do . . .”
“I don’t give a shit what you think, frankly.” Jake inhales and exhales, fuming audibly. “Arthur’s on the other line and brainstorming about how we can get Will out of this without too much damage to the family. Meanwhile, please keep your mouth shut. Don’t go blabbing to your seven million lemmings. This crisis needs to stay private.”
He clicks off and Eve stands there, shaking.
From those early dark days, after Jonny Blak made it clear he would not contribute financially to his daughter’s upbringing, Eve feels she has been constantly fighting some man to secure her daughter’s welfare, including a dead husband when Chet’s will revealed he’d cut out Megan entirely. Every morning she awakes prepared to go toe-to-toe with another male, whether that’s Jake or the family lawyer Arthur Whitaker, or, once, a nosy cop whose investigation into her family threatened to unravel the entire Pease dynasty.
Now, with Will’s proposal, all her hard work finally is paying off. Megan will be formally brought into the Pease fold with all the appurtenances, privileges, and wealth afforded by a legal marriage. This is nonnegotiable.
So, no. Eve will not stand by to watch Jake lay waste to her creation. She will do as she has done in the past to guarantee Megan rises to the top—which is to say, whatever it takes.
Three
EVE
Less than an hour later, calmed by a sauna with mugwort steam and a medicinal elderberry martini, Eve decides she’ll deactivate Jake’s negative energy by holding the family powwow in her sacred space, a skylit room she uses for meditation due to its healing sunlight and ghostly inspiration.
Back in the 1920s, this brick-walled retreat was a studio for artists who painted and smoked and made lazy, passionate love underneath its eleven-foot beamed ceiling. Eve still senses their creative ectoplasm electrifying her neural pathways when she comes here, perhaps even inspiring quirky inventions of hers like the wildly popular Pease Yourself® sex toys.
Tonight, she hopes lightning will strike twice. Having set about several Pease Breathe In/Breathe Out/Repeat® scented candles ($72 a pop) in Mowed Himalayan Hay, Goddess Taleju Sandalwood, and Pendleton Lavender, she assumes the tree pose, resting the instep of her left foot above her right knee, hands brought together in prayer as she meditates on how to break through her stepson’s thick skull.
What does Jake prioritize more than his family’s reputation? Even more than upholding the impeccable Pease name, she knows, Jake relishes the prospect of one day controlling the entire Pease empire with Eve’s support and, it goes without saying, her valuable shares.