“Hey babe,” He drawls. “Wanna take a ride with me?’
I burst into laughter, unable to stop even as I place my cases in the back. “I didn’t know you drove a Jag.” I comment, impressed. Nick is a native New Yorker, and even though I’ve seen him freezing in St Petersburg and wearing flowing robes in Morocco, I’ve never actually seen him behind the wheel of a car. “Did you steal it?" I ask, settling into the front passenger seat.
“Would that make me more attractive to you?” He winks.“Bad boy on the wrong side of the law... Clyde to your Bonnie... Tell me that turns you on."
“Naw.” I shake my head, smiling, “I’m not as adventurous as all that."
“You never know. You might like it.”His blue eyes hold mine, and for a moment I wonder if he’s serious, not about stealing the car, but about wanting to be attractive to me. As one of the most celebrated editors for Gilt publications, he’s high up there as a force to reckon with in the world of magazine publishing. As a photographer, his patronage is invaluable to me, as a woman, it’s flattering that, in all the years we’ve known each other, he hasn’t given up on making passes at me. Nevertheless, I’ve never taken his attempts at seduction seriously, not when I know all about his charm‘em, fuck‘em, and leave‘em style of dating. I’m not eager to add myself to the list of his conquests.
“I don’t think so.” I say with a smile.
Nick shrugs and turns back towards the road. “It’s not my car.” He says, in reply to my question. “Jackson Lockewood lent it to me to pick you up with.”
As soon as he says the words, my heart stops, and I feel the blood drain from my face. Suddenly I can’t breathe. No, I think desperately, sure that I’m going to have a heart attack. Jackson cannot be at Halcyon. I was told very clearly that he wouldn’t be there. I wait for Nick to say something else, anything to show that I imagined the last sentence, but he just keeps on driving.
Suddenly, I realize that taking this assignment was a huge mistake. Because, of all the many reasons why I should never have returned to Halcyon, Jackson Lockewood is the greatest of them all.
Chapter Two
Past
I’M sitting in the back seat of my dad’s SUV, engrossed in one of the romance novels my mom has given up on discouraging me from reading. My parents are in front, my dad driving, and my mom in the passenger seat, no doubt checking the rear view mirror every five seconds to see what I’m doing.
I hear them laugh, my dad’s laugh is deep and resonant, my mom’s, light and soft, and I pretend not to see as her hand crosses over the middle of the car to rest on his thigh. It’s not moving, or doing anything gross, though it’s already gross enough that it’s there at all. I roll my eyes. At fourteen, I’ve already come to terms with the fact that my parents will never be able to keep their hands off each other, even in front of me.
Outside the car windows, the streets of Foster, the small town in the Hudson River Valley where we’ve recently moved, are lined with wide green trees that provide shade even in the summer. My parents think I hate it here, but I don’t, at least, not as much as I’ve made them believe, but I do miss my old life. I miss my old school, my friends, even our old house on a street where all the houses looked almost the same.
Most times, I’d like nothing more than for my dad to decide that he doesn’t want his new job managing the Lockewood Trust anymore, and move us back to our old life. But that’s just wishful thinking. My dad loves his new job. He loves that he can commute to his office in New York City by train and be home in time to help my mom make dinner. My mom has also got a job at the Foster library where she can indulge her love of books, and do her freelance writing at the same time. They’re happy here, and I have no choice but to swallow my discontent and try to like Foster, for their sakes.
“Honey did I mention how nice your dress looks?” I hear my Mom say.
I roll my eyes. “Yes you did Mom.”
She chuckles, so I know she saw the eye roll in the mirror. I sneak a peek and sure enough, she’s looking at me. Even in the side mirror, she’s really pretty. Her auburn hair is dark and wavy, and her eyes are deep green with brown flecks, or brown with green flecks depending on what she’s wearing. Today, they’re mostly green. People say I look like her because I have the same color of hair and eyes. But on days like this when she looks so beautiful, I find it hard to believe.
“I just don’t see why I had to wear a dress, or even come at all.” I complain. Constance Lockewood Milner, the chair of the board that manages Lockewood Holdings, which owns the Lockewood Trust, as well as many other Lockewood interests in finance, technology, shipping etcetera, and therefore my dad’s boss, has invited us to Sunday dinner. I would have been content to stay home and finish my book while my parents went to Halcyon, the Lockewood mansion, but my mom insisted that I go with them, even making me change out of my customary jeans and sneakers as if we were on our way to a fancy restaurant in the city.
“It wouldn’t hurt you to visit a historic mansion,” my mom says, “and Mrs. Milner’s nephew and niece are about your age.” She adds, “Maybe you can be friends.”
I don’t reply. I don’t want to remind her again that I already had my friends back home, before we were ripped apart. I miss them, Karen Pace, with her bright red hair, who never lost any weight even though she had celery for lunch every day, and Jamie Novak, who could do a perfect drawing of anyone with just a pencil or charcoal. We had our lunch together and hung out after school. We were a team. Now they’ll forget about me and be a team without me, and eventually we’ll become those kinds of friends whose whole friendship consist of old memories and occasional likes on a Facebook post.
“They might even let you come back and take a couple of pictures of the house,” my dad adds, “wouldn’t you like that?”
I shrug nonchalantly, as if I don’t care, but my interest is perked. I got a camera for my tenth birthday from one of my Grans, and I’ve been in love with photography ever since. My parents indulge me, letting me buy all sorts of image editing software with their credit cards. I sigh. I really should be nicer about the move to Foster.
“Aren’t the Lockewood children older than me?” I ask, thinking about what my mom said about us becoming friends.
“Not much,” my dad replies. “Jackson is ah… eighteen and his sister Blythe is fifteen.”
I shake my head. There’s not much chance of older kids being even remotely interested in me. I’m neither outgoing nor funny. I’m one of those people who always have their nose in a book. I love history, poetry, and all kinds of novels. Add my obsession with taking pictures, and I’m a certified nerd. But there’s no point telling my parents that. Like all loving parents, they think I walk on water, and I’m bound to be popular wherever I go.
I’ve never met the Lockewood children, since they don’t go to the local high school, but I know from hearing some of my parents’ conversations that Jackson and Blythe are the products of Constance Milner’s older brother Daniel’s marriage to Rachel Jackson, an oil heiress from Texas. I know that they both died when Daniel Lockewood crashed his small plane a few years after Blythe was born, killing himself, his wife and Jonathan Milner, Constance’s husband. The accident left the Lockewood children orphans, but heirs to most of the combined Lockewood and Jackson fortunes.
My parents aren’t poor by any
standards, and they’ve always taught me that a person is worth more than what they have in their bank accounts, but still, the idea of meeting the Lockewoods is a little intimidating. Will they be snobbish like some of the rich kids in my new school, with their brand new convertibles and designer clothes, and total disregard for anyone not in their clique? Not that it matters, I decide, after this dinner I’ll probably never see them again.
I turn back to the windows, watching as the houses get bigger, and farther away from the streets, until they are barely visible at all behind acres of lawn and trees. After a while, my Dad turns into one of the gravel covered driveways, and a pair of wrought iron gates open automatically, allowing us to drive up to the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen.