“He said that?” El-Mudad asked in total disbelief.
“No, no, he didn’t put it that way. But it was implied.” If he’d actually used the word “abandoned” Neil might have lost that even-tempered, non-violent streak he had going. “And he expressed concern about how our ‘lifestyle’ might affect Olivia.”
“Does Valerie know about us?” El-Mudad’s dark brows drew together in a thoughtful frown. Knowing him, he revisited every moment of our holiday in his mind, looking for a place where he’d slipped up.
“I don’t think she does. And honestly, I don’t know if she would even care. It kills me to say anything nice about her, but she’s not an intolerant person.” Then again, a lot of super tolerant people just did not “get” polyamory. “We don’t even know if that’s what Laurence was talking about, or if he has a bug up his ass over the fact that Neil is retired and we’re kind of all over the place all the time.”
“You’re not all over the place all the time,” El-Mudad protested. “My god, you barely leave the house most days.”
“That’s when you’re there,” I pointed out. “And that’s because of all the fucking. We do travel. It’s not like it’s every single week or something. And it’s almost always because we’re visiting family or going somewhere for a good reason. I haven’t even gotten a chance to take Olivia to Disney World yet.”
“She’s your ward, you should be able to take her to every Disneyland in the world,” El-Mudad insisted.
I snorted. “Ward. That sounds like Jane Eyre times or something.”
He considered for long, silent moment. “I don’t want to ever do anything that would imperil the relationship between Neil and his granddaughter. Or Neil and yourself. Sophie, if it comes down to it–“
“It won’t,” I stated firmly. “I don’t believe Valerie would hurt Olivia like that.”
“Perhaps you should tell her about this altercation. She should know what kind of man she’s married.” He didn’t sound like he’d like Laurence very much to begin with. I wondered if something had happened at the Christmas party, or after, that would cause El-Mudad to make such a remark.
“She still hasn’t told Neil?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, he has no idea. We have to deal with that when we’re back in the states.”
“Why should he even care?” El-Mudad demanded of no one in particular. “Their relationship was over years ago.”
“For him it was. For her? Not so much.” I wouldn’t rehash all of that ugliness at the start of our vacation. We’d have more than enough chance when we got back to New York. “But let’s not get hung up on it now.”
El-Mudad’s mouth bent into a fond smirk. “You sound so much like him.”
“I know. Sometimes I hear Neil’s words coming out of my mouth. It reminds me that I need to spend time with other humans,” I joked.
El-Mudad’s jet waited for us at the airport, gassed up and ready to go. It was pretty nice, I supposed, as far as planes went. I only had one to compare it to, and I didn’t have much time to check it out while we were onboard. There was too much turbulence and we weren’t in the air for long. I was just glad Neil had opted to go to Iceland, instead; he hated flying and he would have been completely freaked out by the number of sudden drops.
“You’re pale as a ghost,” El-Mudad said with a sympathetic laugh as we climbed down the jetway.
“I just had my life flash before my eyes about sixteen times in the last half hour,” I reminded him. “And I’m motion sick as all get out.”
“What does that mean, ‘as all get out’? Getting off the plane?” he asked, slipping his arm around my waist as we walked to the sedan on the tarmac.
Sometimes, I forgot that English was his third language. “It’s an idiom common to people of my economic origins. It means, ‘as fuck.’”
He laughed at that and motioned the chauffeur aside so he could open the door for me himself.
I used to hate it when men held doors for me, but I spent a lot more money on my manicures now.
The car took us from the runway at Marco Polo airport to a water taxi stand. Venice was only accessible by water, and the path from the airport to the city was marked out with sea-weathered wooden pylons. A mist hung over the water; I could only see the outline of the city, shadowy and indistinct like a painting.
“Come on,” El-Mudad told me, gesturing past the commercial taxis and waterbuses. A man in a sleek speedboat waited for us.
A speedboat with my husband’s initials on the back. Of course.
El-Mudad called out in Italian to the man in the boat—because of course, he spoke that, too—and stepped back as the chauffeur handed our bags off to the...captain? Pilot? I had no idea what one called a person who drove a speedboat instead of a car.