Entry-Level Mistress

chapter 13



The estate stretched along several acres of beach. At the gate, a security guard asked for names, and then waved us through. Laughter, conversation, and the hum of engines filled a large cobblestone courtyard where a valet station teemed with cars, guests and staff in red vests. We crossed the white marble threshold into a foyer larger than a living room. This mansion had been built to meld with the beach and the large living room/ballroom—I wasn’t entirely certain what to call it—opened out onto the dark night, lit up by tiki torches. I felt as if I were walking through a resortwear issue of Vogue. The furniture was long and low, Italian modern and organized into mini spaces. Cater-waiters in their white shirts, black vests and pants crisscrossed the room with silver trays of appetizers.

Was I the heroine of Cinderella … or Pretty Woman? I hated the way I thought sometimes. Why did I always have to put a label on everything, try to fit my life into predefined little slots? It was the stupidest tendency because, at the same time, I had always gravitated toward doing things my own way, toward not giving in to everyone’s expectations.

Yet, there were patterns to life. That was simply a truth, one that I had recognized at a young age, had grasped onto as a steadying force even as my world spun around me. There was chaos and then there were patterns, and even chaos was part of a grander plan.

This moment, this weekend in the middle of this strange summer, was chaos. My feelings for Daniel—chaos.

But the pattern? The grander plan?

“Daniel!” A leggy, breezy blonde in a nearly diaphanous layer of turquoise cotton approached us, her hands outstretched. Daniel let her take his as they exchanged cheek-to-cheek air kisses. “When Gretchen told me you were coming, I hardly believed it. But then Adele had her housekeeper confirm.”

“Should you really be admitting the lengths you go to for information, Stacia?” Daniel chided with a laugh, pulling away. “But here, let me introduce you to—”

“Ah, the sculptress!” Stacia exclaimed, reaching for my hands. “Gretchen warned me that Daniel would have a date.” I noticed that these words were said for Daniel’s benefit as Stacia was glancing at him flirtatiously out of the corners of her eyes.

“Such a pleasure to meet you, Stacia,” I said, stepping back from the kisses. “I’m Emily. You have a lovely home.”

Stacia laughed. “Yes, well, that’s why I am trying to keep it. Maybe Daniel can convince my soon–to-be ex-husband to stop being a cheapskate on top of a philandering ass. Anyway, I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Hartmann!” A forty-something man, hair thinning at the top, in a brushed silk Hawaiian shirt and linen pants strode over to us, the liquid in his cocktail glass sloshing a bit. Another man in a suit, slightly younger, with another willowy blonde on his arm, came over as well. Before I was introduced, Stacia pulled me aside for a moment.

Leaning close, she whispered, “I don’t know if you realize darling, but there are a number of Hartmann’s exes here tonight. You seem like a sweet girl, so if you want to avoid the bitchfest—”

“Thank you, Stacia,” I murmured. I knew what the “mean girls” high school game looked like, and if reality television was anything to go by, I was sure the Hamptons social scene was simply a fractal expansion of that world—which meant this seemingly kind advice likely had ulterior motives.

After Stacia was gone, Daniel raised his eyebrows at the private tête-à-tête, but then slid me elegantly into the conversation.

Hawaiian Shirt Man was Anthony Blake, a Wall Street financier, and the couple comprised French businessman Claude de Turenne and his American wife, Dagney, Manhattan socialite.

There were dozens of people like that, rich but not anyone whose name I might recognize, and then there were the others who I recognized not only by name but also by having seen their images hundreds of times in my life.

Such as Fitzi, the diminutive pop fashion artist who was unmistakable with his yellow mohawk and his neon plaid shirt.

As I wandered through the crowd while Daniel talked to a business colleague, I spotted other celebrities, both A-list and minor.

And there were people whose names held near mythic status for me, such as Edward Ainsley, the sculptor-turned-museum curator whose exhibitions were near works of art themselves.

“I was a Barrows Farm alum myself,” he said shortly after we’d been introduced. The name of the art colony had instantly melted his impassive façade, and his face relaxed into genial fond remembrance of those days.

When Daniel rejoined me, his arm sliding around me as if he thought he needed to stake his territory, Ainsley’s facade went back up, and I found that moment revealing.

Then Gordon Fillmore joined us, and I knew his name from the bookstore shelves. He’d won the Booker Prize. Had a reputation for being morose, for getting kicked off of airplanes after drunkenly harassing the flight attendants or other passengers. He seemed well on his way to drunk this night as well. He didn’t know Daniel but he recognized him, mentioned that Daniel had good taste in women, and then eyed me. Ainsley made an attempt to bring the conversation back around to the previous topic by explaining that Fillmore had also been at Barrows Farm, where he had first met Ainsley.

“Ahh, Barrows,” Fillmore said with a wink at Daniel. “You know these art colonies, more like orgies.”

I didn’t know what to say to that but Daniel apparently decided nothing needed to be said. At his disparaging silence, the other man’s jocular amusement faded, his expression turning morose in a way that put me on edge. Apparently this unnerved Ainsley as well because he put an arm around Fillmore and whispered something in his ear as he guided the man away.

From across the room, a head of long honey-blonde hair cascading over a tall modelesque body came into view. I locked eyes with Tatiana, whose expression looked somewhere between outraged and horrified. Then she was stalking across the room toward us, that expression melding into some other mask. I wondered if there was a way I could transform that concept—the various masks all these people wore for each interaction—into an art piece.

“Daniel,” Tatiana interrupted, placing herself squarely in front of us. “I’m surprised to see you here.” But she was still looking at me intently, as if searching for something.

“Always a pleasure, Tat—”

“You look familiar. Do I know you?” Tatiana interrupted, drowning out Daniel’s greeting.

I straightened as much as I could, which meant I still had to look up to Tatiana, and smiled thinly. This was a conversation between exes and not my fight.

“I don’t think so,” I said simply, since one drunken encounter did not an acquaintance make. I spied Fitzi, his yellow hair a beacon. I might have been scared to introduce myself earlier in the evening but at that moment he looked like escape.

“Excuse me, there’s someone I’d like to speak with,” I said, disengaging from Daniel. His arm tightened around me briefly, and for a moment I thought he wouldn’t let me go. But then he did. I spared a brief look back at him before moving on. His dark gaze seemed to promise something dangerous, as if I’d regret abandoning him. Which was silly, because Daniel Hartmann didn’t need me to protect him against an ex-girlfriend.


• • •



I knew exactly when Daniel left the house. Even with hundreds of people there, with bodies pressing against mine in the crush, the room felt empty in his absence. Tatiana, however, had not gone with him and I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. I tied up my conversation with Fitzi, made my way through the crowd. Somewhat drunk on more than the wine, I felt wittier, smarter, prettier and more powerful. I wasn’t hiding from anyone or anything.

Leanna had suggested that I seize the moment, give this relationship a chance. That I put aside the fear.

This night, with the lulling cascade of jazz in the background, the scent of the tiki torches, night jasmine and salt air, anything seemed possible.

I walked down the wood-slatted path toward the beach, away from the brighter lights of the house. Close to the water’s edge, I shivered in the midnight ocean breeze. My father had had a house here once, a long time ago and I’d spent months here as a child. Then there was the summer that Daniel’s mother had lived with my father. I had avoided them for the most part, painted or read, hung with the few people I knew. This stretch of beach, this midsummer air, filled me with nostalgia.

I saw Daniel, his white shirt catching the thin moonlight, making him a beacon. I followed his gaze up to the sky where the stars above him winked in the night. I could make out Orion. Then the Pleiades. His future. He was Daniel Hartmann, entrepreneur, billionaire and business maverick, as Fortune magazine had labeled him.

I wanted to cry but I wasn’t sure why.

He looked over his shoulder, found me, and then took long strides across the beach. I slipped off my shoes, dangled them from my fingers and stepped off the path. The sand was damp and cold between my toes, but I walked forward in the inky darkness to meet him halfway.

“You’re so alive,” he said, catching my face between his hands. “Your energy, it’s inspiring. You make me want to be more but not the way I was. Not simply to fill my father’s shoes and then surpass him.”

My heart aching with the sweetness, the import of his words, I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came. He filled the silence with his kiss and suddenly I had everything to say, with my hands, my lips, my tongue and teeth. My thighs against his, hips to his. It was a new conversation, a new weight with each movement, and I fell with him to the ground, heedless of everything but the way our chests rose and fell with each ragged breath. My dress around my hips, thong discarded, I cradled him between my thighs.

It was as if the wind and the lapping water, the harsh sand and the thrust of his body into mine were all echoing silent words of love. I held onto him and, to myself, finally admitted the truth: I didn’t want this to end.