Neck & Neck (34 page)

Natalie smiled at that. Sounded like Glenda’s apple, Tootie, hadn’t fallen too far from the tree. Tootie was a ho, too, but these days, that was by no means an impediment to marriage, even a profitable one. What made Tootie unmarriageable was the fact that she was a colossal bitch. “But that wasn’t why you were at Princeton?” she asked Clementine. “To land a husband?”

“Oh, no, dear,” her hostess said after another dainty sip of her tea. “I was at Princeton to study biology on a full academic scholarship.”

Once again, Natalie’s eyebrows shot up.

Clementine laughed lightly at her reaction. “I know I probably don’t seem the type now, but there was a time when I wanted to become a doctor and open a free clinic for women and children in my old neighborhood. Teach them about family planning and birth control and give them a safe place to come if their situations at home became dangerous.”

This time Natalie arrowed her brows down in confusion. “But I thought you grew up on Long Island. What would women in the Hamptons need with a free clinic?”

Clementine smiled, though there was something in the gesture that wasn’t quite happy. “There’s a lot more to Long Island than the Hamptons, dear.”

“Like what?”

“Queens, for one thing.” She smiled. “Well, Okay, maybe only geographically speaking. So I fudged a bit.”

Although Natalie wouldn’t have thought it possible, her eyebrows shot up even more. “You grew up in Queens?”

Clementine nodded but said nothing, only sipped her tea again . . . with all the elegance and finesse of a Hamptons
grande dame de la société
.

And just like that, Natalie understood why she’d liked Clementine so much from the get-go. They were a lot alike. Not that Natalie had come from a working-class background in an area where families were crowded into houses that were even more crowded atop one another or had needed an academic scholarship to attend college. It was that whole fish out of water thing. Ironically, however, Clementine was living in an environment now that was nothing like the one in which she’d grown up, yet she was comfortable and confident and fit right in. Natalie had grown up in this environment, but had never really felt any of those things.

“Anyway,” Clementine continued, “Glenda Hightower was Glenda Melbourne then, and a meaner, more bitter, more self-absorbed girl didn’t exist outside the Atlantic seaboard. And social climbing? My goodness, there wasn’t a more socially voracious girl on campus than Glenda, and she didn’t have a single qualm about stomping her competition into the ground.” Clementine sipped her tea again. “So it goes without saying that a girl like me, whose father worked as a longshoreman, and who only had two skirts, three blouses, and one sweater to her name, and who paid the rest of her way through college working as a waitress at a diner off campus, was a very easy, and very frequent, target for Glenda.”

And Tootie had obviously learned at her mother’s knee, Natalie thought. For some reason, though, the realization didn’t make her feel angrier at Tootie. Strangely, it sort of made her feel sorry for her old nemesis.

“But that’s all water under the bridge now,” Clementine said with what sounded like a genuine absence of malice. She smiled at Natalie again, with that twinkle of mischief in her eyes again. “Because after Glenda spent her entire time at Princeton doing everything she could to get her talons into the most sought-after boy on campus—he had gorgeous blue eyes and wavy blond hair and broad shoulders and the nicest eyes, Natalie,
and
he was the president of the Omicron Epsilon chapter of Zeta Psi—he asked me to marry him instead.”

She lifted the teacup to her mouth again, but there was no mistaking the smug little grin curling Clementine’s lips as she enjoyed another sip.

Natalie couldn’t help but smile back. Nor could she quite quell the chuckle that erupted when she said, “Clementine, you sly little campus vixen.”

She settled her cup back into its saucer. “Well, as I said, that’s all water under the bridge.”

“For you, maybe,” Natalie said, “but if Glenda Hightower is anything like her daughter—”

“Oh, she and Camille are definitely two of a kind,” Clementine interjected.

“—then I’m guessing she saw that water take out the bridge like a big ol’ tsunami,” Natalie continued, “and hasn’t even tried to rebuild it.”

Clementine made a little sound that was a combination of both regret and satisfaction. “I’d say that’s a fairly accurate way to put it. I do think the main reason Glenda includes me at her parties—aside from the fact that Edgar is the senior partner in her husband’s firm—is because she enjoys having someone around to try to make feel small.”

Natalie shook her head. Wow. The Hightower women really were poisonous little apples.

“But that only makes her look bad, doesn’t it?” Clementine asked. “Everyone knows the reason Glenda acts the way she does around me is because she’s a bitter, dried up old prune, and—”

Natalie nearly choked on the swallow of tea she’d been about to consume at that. She’d never heard Clementine, or anyone else in her mother’s generation, talk like this.

“Well, she is,” Clementine said.

Natalie tactfully refrained from commenting, picking up a napkin to wipe her mouth instead.

“Besides,” Clementine added, “I always find some opportunity at Glenda’s tea to accidentally misplace one of those cute little Benedictine sandwiches. And you know how, ah . . . pungent . . . cream cheese and cucumbers can get after a week or two.”

Okay, that really did make Natalie choke on her tea. She’d had no idea she and Clementine had so much in common. And anyone who could put up with the Hightower bullying and come out smiling was A-okay with Natalie. Not to mention anyone who countered the Hightower bullying with spoiled food was nothing less than genius.

Which, she thought with an even heavier heart than before, was going to make it doubly difficult to break the news to Clementine that her Derby party was going to come off reeking even more than bad Benedictine.

“Clementine,” she began softly, still trying to sort out how she was going to break the news. “There’s something—”

“No, wait,” her client interrupted her. “I haven’t told you the best part yet.”

“But—”

“No, no, dear, you have to hear this. Since I know you go through the same thing with Glenda’s daughter Tootie that I do with her—”

“How do you know that?” Natalie asked.

Clementine smiled kindly. “Everyone knows that, dear.”

“Oh.” She’d been hoping it was only everyone in her own generation that knew that. Evidently Tootie’s condescension transcended generations. Then again, Clementine had called her Tootie, not Camille, so maybe it wasn’t just Tootie’s condescension that transcended generations. Maybe Tootie’s tootiness did, too.

“Anyway,” Clementine continued, “since you know what it’s like to be high on the Hightower enemies’ list, you’ll appreciate what happened.”

“But, Clementine—”

“No, really, Natalie, you’ll love this.”

Natalie told herself to try to interrupt again, that she really needed to tell Clementine the bad news before they went any further, but the woman was in such high spirits, she didn’t have the heart to dash them. Not to mention any story about the comeuppance of a Hightower woman—which this was sounding like it was going to be—was A-okay with Natalie. Besides, there was still that pesky problem of having no idea how to break it to Clementine that her party was going to be a big, fat zero on the ol’ social significance meter.

“As I said, it happened when I was on my way out. I was one of the first to leave the tea; you’ll understand that, I’m certain,” Clementine added with a knowing arch of one brow. “I was nearly out of the garden room,
this close
to making a clean escape, when Glenda called me back in because I’d forgotten to take my party favor with me. I actually did that on purpose,” she continued parenthetically, lowering her voice, even though there was no one to hear. “Glenda is the biggest cheapskate on the planet, and the party favor this year was a huge bag of absolutely hideous gardenia potpourri. But being the gracious woman that I am, I feigned forgetfulness and went back to the table to get it.

“Of course, it goes without saying,” she continued, “that Glenda had seated me as far away from herself as she could, so she was fairly shouting at me when she made the reminder. Which meant she was also shouting when she asked me how the plans for my party were going, and shouting when she made her apology for not being able to make it herself, because she and Sutton would be attending the Mint Jubilee.”

Uh-oh, Natalie thought. Since Clementine was actually having fun telling this story, that meant she’d put Glenda Hightower in her place. And Natalie really, really, really didn’t want to think about how she’d done that.

Clementine went on, “I shouted back that I was
very
excited, because my party planner had invited an extremely important person to the affair who had been delighted to attend for such a worthy cause, and it was someone everyone in town was going to want to meet.”

Oh, no, Natalie thought. No, no, no, no, no. Here she’d come to tell Clementine that the VIP celebrity she’d invited wasn’t going to be able to make it to the party after all, and Clementine had already told a room full of people—
shouted
to a room full of people—that said VIP would be there with bells on.

“Well, you can imagine the reaction that got from everyone in the room,” Clementine continued.

Oh, yeah. Natalie could certainly imagine that. A gardenia-reeking room full of women whipping around in their chairs to look at Clementine fast enough to send all their humongous hats flying. God only knew what kind of damage millinery did to a garden room when it was flying at speeds like that.

“ ‘Who?’ Everyone wanted to know,” Clementine said in the same sort of voice the women must have used: surprised, curious and, alas, gossipy. “ ‘Who is it, Clementine?’ they kept asking. Then all the speculation began. Was it someone from Hollywood? Broadway? Washington?
Dancing with the Stars
? And the names they threw out, Natalie,” she added with a laugh. “Was it George Clooney? Was it Martha Stewart? Was it”—here, her voice grew reverent—“
Oprah
? Or was it someone like Angelina Jolie? And if so, did I think she would bring Brad Pitt? Or was it—and this was the best one, Natalie—was it our new president of the United States? Oh, Natalie, if you could have just seen their faces.”

Natalie was pretty sure she was glad she hadn’t. It was bad enough seeing Clementine’s, all exultant and hopeful and smug. No, not smug, Natalie thought. Smugness wasn’t in Clementine’s character. What she looked was . . . happy. And not happy for herself, that her party was going to be a success, Natalie knew. But happy for the children of Kids, Inc., who would be benefiting even more.

“So now you have to tell me, Natalie,” Clementine said with a grin. “I won’t take no for an answer. Who’s the big mystery guest? Who’s the extremely important person everyone’s going to want to meet?”

Natalie’s heart sank to the pit of her stomach at the question. Then it dropped right through and went crashing to her toes. There was no way she could tell Clementine the truth. If she said the mystery guest was going to be a no-show now, Clementine would look like a big, fat liar. She’d never be able to go anywhere again without feeling uncomfortable. Glenda Hightower would make her social life a living hell. The same way Tootie could never see Natalie without mentioning the big-ass bow dress, Glenda would never be able to see Clementine without making some snide remark about the VIP who wasn’t there. And although Natalie realized now that Clementine was made of sturdy enough stuff to handle it, Natalie also realized she herself wasn’t.

Before she even realized she meant to speak, she heard herself say, “It’s Russell Mulholland.”

Clementine’s eyes went as round as silver dollars. “Russell Mulholland?” she echoed incredulously. And damned if her voice wasn’t even more reverent than it had been when she’d mentioned Oprah. “Really? You’ve met him?”

“I have indeed,” Natalie said, grateful for not having to lie about that, at least.

“You’ve spoken to him?”

“I had dinner with him,” Natalie confirmed, chalking up another tally for truthfulness. Just because she hadn’t, technically, finished dinner with him—or quite started it, for that matter—didn’t make it less true. They’d sat at a table in a restaurant and ordered food. That counted as dinner in anyone’s book. Just ask Martha Stewart. Or Oprah.

Although Natalie wouldn’t have thought it possible to surprise Clementine any more than she already had, she looked even more astonished at the announcement. Then she looked stunned. Then she looked delighted.

“Oh,
Natalie
,” she said. “This is
wonderful
news. Russell Mulholland doesn’t even appear on the big network talk shows. He won’t talk to Barbara Walters. He won’t talk to Oprah. He won’t give interviews to the
Wall Street Journal
or
Vanity Fair
or anyone else. The women will want to meet him because he’s so handsome and elusive. The men will want to meet him because he’s so business savvy and elusive.” She let that sink in for a moment, then launched herself at Natalie and hugged her even harder than before. “Natalie Beckett, you’re
brilliant
,” she said. “Everyone who’s anyone really
is
going to want to come to my party. It’s going to be a huge success.”

Clementine released her, looking absolutely giddy at the prospect, and ready to burst at the seams.

“But, Clementine,” Natalie hurried on, injecting as much firmness into her voice as she could, “you have got to promise me you won’t say a word to anyone until I’ve made the announcement public.”

“But when do you plan to do that, dear?”