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It’s enough. Rhett’s tone darkens in an instant. “It’s the Westing family plane. Just because I didn’t buy it doesn’t make it not mine. Or at least partially anyway.”
“So that means your mother came home from France early? Funny, didn’t expect her back until the end of the week.”
He hesitates. “Mother’s not gone. She’s—”
“Staying five nights at the Four Seasons Paris. How do you not know that your own mother’s in Europe?”
“It’s not like we sit down for family dinner every night,” Rhett says through gritted teeth. His demeanor changes suddenly, back to nonchalance and assholery. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll rent something.”
“I think your mother wants you to fly with me. She bought you a ticket on my flight—”
“Christ!” Rhett exclaims, cutting me off. “Is this how this weekend is going to go? ‘Your mother wants this’ and ‘your mother wants that’? Let me let you in on something, honey. My mother wants a lot of things, about half of which are actually impossible. For example, this wonderful assignment she’s given you.”
“First of all, I believe we’ve established that my name is ‘Liz’,” I say icily. “Not sweetheart, not darling, and definitely not ‘honey’. Secondly, do you really want to know how this weekend’s going to go?”
My tone has risen with every pet name and the question comes out filled with fire. “Let me lay this out for you. You think your uninvolvement is coming as some sad shocker? I want you to leave me alone with the Alencars. Because if there’s any chance of this going well, you can’t be involved. At all. So yes, please. Be a pretty face. Throw your name around like singles at a strip club. Hell, rent a fleet of planes to take you to Chicago. But once we get there stay the fuck out of my way.”
I stop to breathe. Rhett is silent, and the silence gives me space to fling in one last barb: “Now I’m going to bring you up to speed on something about me, Rhett. If you’re going to be more high maintenance than a prom queen on her wedding day then it’s better if we interact as little as possible. Because I have zero patience for useless men.”
Rhett still doesn’t speak when I finally stop. The fire has burned quicker and brighter than an explosion in the sky. Suddenly I’m back to reality and realizing that this conversation hasn’t done anything right. I’m normally so controlled. How the hell does Rhett manage to bring out this furious, shit-talking side of me?
Finally Rhett speaks. And (un)fortunately, he sounds like he’s stifling a grin more than a tantrum. “You think I’m a pretty face?” he asks.
Urgh. I roll my eyes. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Somewhere. Just be there. Please?”
“No promises, sweetcheeks,” Rhett says and then he hangs up before I can get another word in.
What an asshole! And what is the matter with me? I should never have said all those things, especially the part about Rhett’s pretty face. I flush at his teasing tone and then bat the embarrassment away like an insect. Who cares? Rhett knows he’s hot. It sucks I just fellated his ego a bit, but then I’m sure he does that himself so much that innocuous comments like mine carry little real importance.
I shouldn’t have reacted so strongly though. Who knows how Rhett will feel after he’s sat on things for a bit? Will he want to be more involved once his ego starts to sting?
I throw my phone aside and shut my computer. There’s no point in speculating. I just have to show up tomorrow in Chicago and see what happens, hopefully with as little friction from Rhett as possible. It’s a nice dream anyway.
I leave the couch to get in the shower, finish up the rest of my packing, and go to bed early. All the while there’s a pit of dread in my stomach and anticipation in my heart.
Outside, it starts to snow.
CHAPTER FOUR
RHETT
I wake up to white.
When I press the button on the shades surrounding my penthouse bedroom, there’s nothing to see. At first I think my eighty-nine story building is just lost in a cloud again, but then I realize that it’s snow, a blizzard to be more specific.
Giddy, immature laughter starts in my chest well before my suspicion is confirmed by the news. New York City is shut down. Mother Earth shit five feet of snow onto her steel throne overnight, leaving all us mortals in the lurch. The roads are closed, the streets are empty. Even the trains have shut down, and people are either fighting their way to work or barricaded inside toasty apartments, free of responsibility and waiting things out.
Oh, and all outbound flights are canceled for the day, maybe even until Friday. Expect the airports to be hell through the weekend.
Aren’t they always?
I’ve flown privately enough times in my life to know that small planes turn into paper in storms like this. I won’t be chartering anything, and since I wouldn’t step foot in LaGuardia in ideal conditions, this weekend of torture that Mother has planned for me is in definite danger of losing its head.
This is only further confirmed when the weatherman gestures toward his little map, ushering the winter storm west over the next few days. Rather than dissipating, its intensity seems to only pick up as it travels over the Midwest before honing in on, you guessed it, Chicago by Saturday morning.
That’s all I need to hear before I’m dialing Wallace.
“What do you want?” he snaps. In that moment he sounds a lot like Liz Slate. It occurs to me that they’d be fitting together: my mother’s drones, monotone and icy, obsessed with their soulless jobs and waiting year-round for their two weeks in Florida. I picture them in bed briefly and then have to laugh. Wallace couldn’t handle a woman like Liz; she’d eat him alive.
