She checked her watch. She was not going to wait for Mr. Harris to come back here, and there was no way she was having this confrontation out in the open. Plus, there was real work to do—she hadn’t finished the bouquet bowls the night before.
Heading for the conservatory through back channels, she tossed out the tangle in her brain and focused on what she had to do. After the flowers were finally finished, she could put the tablecloths out because there was no chance of rain or wind before the brunch tomorrow. And she was usually in charge of getting all the glassware and plates where they needed to be at the bars and food service stations around the garden. Greta was due in—
“Good morning.”
Lizzie froze with her hand on the conservatory’s door.
Glancing over her shoulder, she met Lane’s eyes. He was sitting off to the side in an armchair, legs crossed at the knee, elbows on the rests, long fingers steepled in front of his chest. He was dressed in the same clothes he’d been wearing the night before and his hair was a mess, as if he’d slept somewhere other than his bed.
“Waiting for me?” she heard herself say as her heart pounded.
up in her bedroom, Gin fisted a Prada blouse and crammed the thing into the corner of her Louis Vuitton rolling suitcase. “Tissue paper … you’re supposed to put tissue paper in here. Where is …”
Going on the hunt, she found the pastel pink sheets with her initials stamped on them in a large, flat drawer in her wardrobe room. Back at where she was packing, she licked her forefinger, peeled one free and a waft of Coco tickled her nose—because her maid had sprayed each one individually when they’d arrived. Stuffing the delicate paper around the wad of silk, she backed that up with a McQueen skirt.
Repeating the process until she had four outfits in there, she leaned back and checked out her work. Horrible. Nothing like what Blanche did for her, but she was not waiting until that woman came in for her shift at noon.
Gin was in the process of closing things up when she realized she had no underwear, no shoes, no bra, no toiletries.
She took out a second LV roller, and screwed the tissue paper.
What did she care, anyway. She was just going to buy whatever else she wanted.
When she was finished, she picked up the house phone over by her bed, dialed Rosalinda’s office, and couldn’t believe it as voice mail kicked in. “Where the hell is that woman—”
A quick glance at the Cartier clock on her desk and she discovered it was just eight-thirty. God, she hadn’t been up this early in how long?
Arrangements for the jets could also be made through her father’s executive assistant—and that robot was always at her desk. But Gin didn’t want him to know she was leaving until she was halfway to California, and undoubtedly his bulldog in a skirt would hop right on the phone to him if she called.
God, that expression on his face last night had made her blood run cold. She’d never seen him so furious.
But, again, she was nothing if not her father’s daughter: As with hatred, two were going to play at this game of chicken.
Ten minutes later, Gin pulled out the handles on her luggage and tripped over the damn things as she rolled herself out into the corridor. With her matching monogrammed bag slapping against her side and one of her heels popping out of the back of her Louboutins as she shut her door, she cursed the lack of a bellman.
But she didn’t trust that butler, either.
As a matter of fact, she trusted no one in the house.
Before she took the elevator down to the basement level, she went to Amelia’s room and opened the door up.
For the first time, the decor truly registered on her.
The pink and white canopied bed was a queen size even though her daughter barely weighed more than a pillow, and there were no Taylor Swift or One Direction posters on the walls. The vanity was French and antique, the en suite bathroom was marble and brass that was sixty years old, and the chandelier in the center was Baccarat and suspended on a silk-sheathed chain below a handmade, gold-leafed medallion.
It was more the suite of a fifty-year-old than someone who was fifteen.
Sixteen, as of last night, Gin reminded herself.
Tiptoeing across the needlepoint rug, she took her favorite picture of her dark-haired little girl, who was now not so dark haired as she was getting blond highlights every six weeks and hardly so little given that she was a sophomore at Hotchkiss.
The mere thought of her daughter made leaving Easterly feel even more right. She had two friends waiting for her in Montecito, and she’d stay out there until the point had been made that her father might run a billion-dollar-a-year corporation but he was not in charge of her. After that? She would come back here just so he could see her on a regular basis and realize his mistake.
Out in the hallway again, she kept the cursing to a minimum as she hobbled down to the elevator and loaded herself in. She broke a nail punching repeatedly at the door-closing button, and nearly snapped one of her stiletto heels off when she got off on the cellar level and had to pull the suitcases out.