Liam was in Scarlett’s basement. At least, he thought it was her basement. It seemed basement-like. It was definitely underground, cool, dark and damp, but instead of the water heater and boiler, there were just dozens of perfect, white-coated rounds of something in various sizes, like a series of squishy-looking hatboxes, stacked neatly on shelf upon shelf upon shelf.
He’d needed a distraction, so he’d come looking for the whiskey cellar. He’d heard about it at the gala before everything had gone south. A woman next to him, wearing an enormous diamond brooch at her neck, had breathlessly recited the specs of Scarlett’s house: thirty-five thousand square feet; one thousand linear feet of direct ocean frontage. Twenty-five bathrooms, eleven bedrooms, four living rooms, three kitchens, two libraries, a full-size gym with an indoor lap pool, two elevators, a ballroom and a whiskey cellar. And that doesn’t even count the guesthouse or the pool house!
But no mention of...whatever the hell this place was.
“Maguire?” Scarlett’s voice came echoing down the stairs. “What in the Lord’s name are you doing in my cheese cave?”
He laughed. “Ah,” he said to himself as he bent closer to one of the rounds and sniffed. Smelled like warm feet, sharp and definitely cheesy.
Scarlett came halfway down the stairs carrying an armful of dog leashes.
“I was looking for your whiskey cellar,” he said, “but I got lost.”
Scarlett shook her head. “I do not have a whiskey cellar. Nor do I brew my own beer. Those are rumors started by a vengeful ex. I have a wine cellar—but so does every civilized person in the world.”
“And a cheese cave,” he pointed out. “You have that, too.”
“Well,” she huffed, “it happens to be very difficult to import unpasteurized cheeses from outside the US, so one must do what one must do in order to make a decent cheese plate.”
He smirked. “Indeed.”
“In any case, despite the fact that you are unashamedly nosing around my home, I am delighted to see you are finally out of bed. I was just coming in to see if I could lure you out into walking my dogs with me, but one of the maids said she saw you heading down here.”
Scarlett rather famously had a pack of eight much doted upon rescued pit bulls, all named after various golden-age Hollywood stars. So far, Liam had managed to avoid them, but he supposed his time had come.
“Certainly,” he said as he climbed up the stairs. “Listen, thank you again for everything, and since I have basically used up all my dignity and your patience, after this walk I think it’s time I went home.”
“Oh?” said Scarlett as they emerged into one of her three kitchens—one for everyday cooking, one in her guest wing and a full restaurant-quality one for big events and occasional filming. “I somehow feel like I got the fuzzy end of the lollipop on this. For fifty thousand dollars, I thought at least I’d have a reliable tennis partner.”
Liam laughed. “I’m a lousy player. Ask anyone.”
“Lousy just means I win more, and I love to win. Come on, let’s go find the puppies.”
Liam had been in quite a few mega-mansions and, past a certain size, they tended to have the cold feel of a hotel or museum. But Scarlett’s house did not. Every room she led Liam through was so thoughtfully laid out and elegantly finished that it felt as if he was just moving from one well-loved living space to the next. The views, of ocean or garden or pool, were all perfectly framed; the colors were rich but muted and had just enough fade and wear to feel lived in; there were books in every room that actually looked as if they’d been read; the art was probably priceless, but it was displayed casually and without ostentation. The only strange part was that the place never actually seemed to come to an end. Despite the fact that Scarlett lived here entirely alone, except for the phalanx of servants and pack of mutts, of course, the house felt used in the best possible way.
“Yoo-hoo! Ava Gardner, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland!” called Scarlett in a high-pitched voice. “Now, where are my babies?”
She ushered him past the orangery, a towering glass room filled with full-size citrus trees. Even just passing, the air was thick with the sharp-sweet scent of blossoms. The room made Liam think of the huge, elegant greenhouses in the Bronx Botanical Garden, except this conservatory had a priceless ocean view.
“Liz and Dick?” she called. “Kate and Audrey Hepburn!”
They passed what Liam thought must be a game room; a billiards table, dart boards, small tables set up for bridge and cribbage...
Suddenly, a door swung open with a crash and a multicolored flood of chubby dogs came hurtling out toward them. Liam sprang out of the way while Scarlett dropped to her knees with her arms wide open. Eight overfed pit bulls all charged in to lick her face.
“Oooh,” she said as she slowly bent backward under the literal puppy pile on top of her, “there are my babies! There are my babies!” She tossed Liam half of the leashes. “Would you mind helping me buckle them up?”
Liam nodded and gingerly approached the nearest dog. It was smallish and white with a black mark like a shiner surrounding its eye. He touched its collar and it immediately lifted a lip and growled at him. He snatched his hand back.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Scarlett. “I should have warned you that Mickey Rooney has arthritis. He doesn’t care for anyone to touch him except me.” She quickly attached a leash to his collar. “The rest of them should be fine, though.”
Nodding, Liam randomly chose another dog and clipped the leash to its collar, making his way through the squirming, wriggling mass of canine flesh until they were all on leash.
Scarlett stood back up, caught up all the leads, divided them by half and handed him four, each attached to a grinning, pulling, twisting dog. “Here. We can probably let them off once we get down to the beach. As long as my crazy neighbor isn’t there.”
“You mean Bono?” said Liam. “Doesn’t he live next door?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, and he’s such a terrible nag about my doggies. Threatens to call the police every time he sees them off leash. Damn his uptight Irish hide.”
They walked through the garden and out the back gate down to the beach, the four dogs racing ahead and nearly pulling Liam off his feet. Scarlett carefully looked both ways once they were on the sand, and then said, “The literal coast is clear. Go ahead and let them run. They need the exercise, poor darlins.”
After he unclipped all their collars, the dogs took off as one—joyfully chasing the sea birds fluttering around at the ocean’s edge. Scarlett took his arm, and they followed down the beach after them.
“So,” she said. “Aren’t you wondering why I paid top dollar for you?”
Liam looked out at the ocean. It was a nearly perfect day, sunny, breezy, not too hot. The sea was a sparkling blue. “Pity?” he said.
Scarlett snorted. “If I wanted to rescue the pitiful, I would have bought the congressman with the unfortunate taste for penis pictures. No, even before you made such a poor showing, I was planning on bidding on you. You see, I’m rather fascinated by your story. I do believe we have some things in common.”
Liam looked at her. “What could I have in common with the richest woman in the world?”
“One of the richest women in the world,” corrected Scarlett. “There are others who have more in both Asia and Russia. And don’t you try to cry poor to me, Maguire. I know exactly how much you’re worth.”
“Okay,” said Liam, “I’ll bite. What do we have in common?”
“Well,” said Scarlett, bending to pick up a shell, “I know you come from a rather unfortunate part of Chicago—”
“Not unfortunate—just dirt-freaking-poor,” said Liam.
She nodded. “And I happen to have been raised small-town Georgia dirt-poor. Which, trust me, is far worse than anything you’ve ever seen.”
“Oh, yeah? I wouldn’t count on that.”
“Shoes, Maguire. I assume you always had at least one pair of shoes?”
He shrugged. “Sure, usually full of holes and one size too small.”
Scarlett stretched out her foot and showed him the Gucci sandals on her perfectly pedicured and tanned feet. “My sister and I shared our pair—and on the days she wore them, I went barefoot and vice versa. I didn’t have my own pair until I was sixteen years old, and that’s only because I was the same size as the woman I cleaned house for, and I stole a pair of her ratty old gardening Keds off her back porch.”
Liam cocked his head. “Okay, so you grew up poor. Lots of us did.”
“No. Very few of us did, actually. Most of the people around here inherited their daddy’s money and if they didn’t send it all up their noses before they hit thirty, maybe they managed to hire a smart financial adviser who made their inheritance work a little harder for them. Big deal. They were born with a silver spoon shoved up their rears. But you and I, we are truly self-made. That’s not so common around here.”
He shrugged. “All right. What else you got?”
She squinted and smiled. “I’m guessing less than stellar parents?”
He shrugged. “Missing dad. Drunk mom.”
She smiled primly. “My parents started drinking as soon as they woke in the morning and didn’t stop until they fell down wherever they happened to be standing later in the day.”
He nodded, impressed in spite of himself. “Why don’t I know this? Seems like a People magazine profile waiting to happen.”
She looked at him with a wry expression in her eyes. “Son, nobody wants to hear that America’s tastemaker used to shove Hungry-Man TV dinners down the front of her girdle so she wouldn’t starve to death.”
Liam laughed.
“And the third thing we have in common—you’ve recently had your heart broken.”
He winced. If he didn’t put a name to it, the horrible feeling of walking around with his heart outside his body, raw and heaving, could almost be ignored.
“We all had a front-row seat to your particular heartbreak, of course. But mine was many, many years ago. A skinny little redhead named Lily Mae Hopkins. Preacher’s daughter, but the devil himself must have taught that girl to give head. I haven’t had such a talent between my thighs since.” She demurely reached to pat one of her dogs who had come circling back around them. “We fell into the kind of love only a couple of in-the-closet country girls could. Of course, back then, you could hardly be open with your affections, but I somehow thought we’d figure it out. We’d get the hell out of Pine Tree, Georgia, and it would be just me and Lily Mae until death did us part.” Scarlett stared off into the distance for a moment, and then sighed. “Then one day, after she gave me four orgasms in a row, she told me that she was getting married to Roddy Johnson. That she was already pregnant with his baby. And that we had to stop our sinful ways and settle down like good girls. I left Pine Tree the next week, was a fit model in New York City a month later, started my first catering business a year after that, and the rest is very well-known history.
I only saw Lily Mae once since then, when I went home for my mama’s funeral. She was still wiry and red-headed but she had six squalling brats. Roddy Johnson had doubled his weight and halved his IQ sniffing glue, and for a moment I imagined that I might take Lily Mae away from it all. Just swoop her up in my private jet and fly us off to Rome or Marrakesh or Ibiza. But damned if that girl didn’t give me the cut direct. Even with all my money, all my fame, all my god damned everything, she was still pretending that she’d never been a butch dyke with an insatiable tongue.”
“So,” said Liam. His voice cracked. “How’d you get over her?”
Scarlett laughed softly and threw the shell she’d been carrying back into the sea. “Did I say that I did?”
Liam closed his eyes. “You are not helping.”
Scarlett squeezed his hand. “No, I went home and continued to work my ass off and became so successful people started saying Oprah Who? And Martha What? And I made a point of living my life so large that even those peons in Pine Tree couldn’t miss it. I made myself a household name, Maguire, just to punish my ex. So what are you going to do?”
He shook his head. “Um, considering the fact that I have been holed up in your guest-room bed for almost two days straight, and only came out to find what I hoped to be a room full of whiskey, I’m not so sure I can match your achievements.”
She chuckled. “Well. There are options to consider. Some people drink until they black out, and some people go and find another woman or ten to plug the hole, and some people run off to a monastery and take a vow of silence. But you hardly seem the type to pull that off.”
Liam shrugged. “I dunno. Sitting in a cave in Tibet sounds pretty good right now.”
“I believe that you have a business to run? Why don’t you start there? Because if you don’t get Hana back—and let me tell you, that woman seems undeniably fickle, so there are no guarantees that you will—you’re going to need to go back to scratch and do what you do best.”
He stared out at the waves. “The only reason I worked as hard as I did was for her.”
Scarlett laughed. “Oh, that’s a load of horse crap and you know it. The reason you work so hard is so you won’t have holes in your shoes. The reason you work so hard is so you never have to go back to where you came from. Admit it, it’s better being rich.”
He looked at her. Her gray eyes were glittering fiercely.
“I don’t think anyone around here would argue that point, Scarlett.”
She shrugged. “Nor should they.”
“Anyway, if I can’t be a monk and you won’t share your Klonopin, I suppose going back to work so I don’t end up barefoot back in Chicago is the next best thing.” He patted his pockets. “Man, I don’t even know where my phone is. I can’t remember the last time that happened.”
“It’s in the breast pocket of your tuxedo jacket, which has been dry-cleaned and is currently sitting in the closet of your guest room. I had your phone charged for you. I suggest that you go on home, take a couple of days to pull yourself together if you still need them and then check your messages. Because take it from me, the only thing that is going to get you through this particular situation is working until you collapse into bed every night and can barely crawl out alive the next morning.” She squinted. “Oh, hellfire, there’s Bono. Doggies!” she called, and the animals turned toward her en masse.
“But,” she added, “before you leave, I do believe you owe me a game of tennis.”