“What he did, Charlotte, was he followed me outside when the movie was over, pushed me against a wall, and shoved his tongue down my throat!” Lucie said melodramatically.

Charlotte put her hands to her face. “Oh my God, Lucie! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I got away from him fast.”

“What is it with that boy? It’s the second time he’s tried to seduce you. He’s never gotten over you, has he?”

“He humiliated me! He clearly hasn’t gotten the message that I’m about to become Mrs. Cecil Pike,” Lucie huffed, trying to sound indignant.

“Did you tell Cecil?”

“Are you mad? Of course I didn’t.”

“Thank God! Knowing Cecil, he’d probably try to challenge George to a duel!”

Lucie didn’t respond, but she suddenly had a vision of Cecil dressed up in a crisp white fencing uniform and helmet, saber in hand. It’s not a saber, Lucie, it’s called an épée, she could hear him already correcting her, as he assumed the proper fencing stance opposite George, who stood before him in his standard black tank top and surfer shorts. Cecil waved his épée threateningly in the air with great flourish, while George, in one swift Jean-Claude Van Damme move, raised his leg and kicked Cecil in the head, knocking him out cold.

“Where is George now?” Charlotte asked, snapping Lucie out of her daydream.

“He hightailed it back to Manhattan after the movie.”

“With his tail between his legs, I should hope!”

Suddenly, all Lucie could think of was George between her legs, ravishing her with his hands, with his tongue, with his deliciously hard … Stop, stop, stop it! Why was she thinking such obscene, shameful things? Wasn’t fantasizing about another man the same as cheating on Cecil? She couldn’t do this to Cecil; she couldn’t do this to herself. She couldn’t ruin her whole life because of some inexplicable obsession with George Zao. Yes, that’s what it was. She could admit it to herself now. She was obsessed, utterly obsessed with him, and it just wasn’t right. She had been torturing herself since the day she had found out he rented Cissinghurst, and it had tormented her to the edge of insanity. It had turned her life upside down. She had lost her appetite, she felt sick and anxious all the time, she was having the most intense dreams about reenacting pagan love rituals in cliffside caverns with George. It wasn’t natural to have these kinds of dreams, to feel such things for a man whom she didn’t even like. George was the polar opposite of the kind of guys she liked. He didn’t grow up in New York. He wasn’t suave and sophisticated. He didn’t dress properly. He didn’t in any way resemble Cary Elwes in The Princess Bride. He was nothing like the husband she had always envisioned for herself. He had driven her crazy and done nothing but mess up her life and mess with her head since the moment she had first set eyes on him in the lunchroom of the Bertolucci, and the one thing she hated more than anything was messy. Her life, her image, her whole being up till this point, had been a study in perfection. She had gone to Brearley and had always been popular as Lucie Tang Churchill, the cool half-Asian girl. She had graduated from Brown with honors. She had landed her dream job with the coolest company in town, and she was about to marry a dashing, erudite gentleman whom even Esquire proclaimed “The Most Desired Dude on the Planet.” They would live in an exquisitely original town house in the West Village, summer in East Hampton, and maybe even get a place in Provence. They would both serve on the boards of the Brooklyn Museum of Art and PS1 and maybe even the Dia. They would, in precisely four and a half years, start to have beautiful, gifted children (a boy, then a girl) who would attend Saint Bernard’s and Brearley, followed by Harvard or Brown or Bard—actually, no, not Bard, Brearley girls didn’t go to Bard—and be adored by everyone, adored by Granny, adored by all the Churchills. And if all went as planned, she would see Cecil and her children’s names appear alongside hers in The Social Register, and it would be the happiest day of Cecil’s life. There was no way in hell she was going to let George ruin this magnificent life she had planned out for herself since she was eight years old. All the happiness in her future, her family’s future, her children’s future, depended on the removal of George from her life.

Lucie got up and turned to Charlotte decisively. “First thing tomorrow, you’re coming on a drive with me, Charlotte. We’re going to the city and we’re going to find George Zao. You were responsible for this mess, so you’re going to help me end it. Once and for all.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Three Lives & Company

West Village

“Why are we meeting him at a bookshop?” Charlotte asked, as they approached the red French doors of Three Lives & Company on Waverly Place.

“His office is at South Street Seaport, and I didn’t want to meet him way down there. And I didn’t want to be spotted with him anywhere on the Upper East Side either, so I thought this would be neutral territory where no one will know us,” Lucie explained, as they entered the quaint little bookshop filled with green shaded reading lamps that cast a cozy warm glow over the space.

Lucie walked to the back of the shop to check if he was there. Perched against a shelf, flipping through a copy of Alan Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child was Cecil’s mother.

“Lucie! I didn’t know you’d be coming into the city today!”

“Yes … er … I’m on my way to meet with a client,” Lucie blurted out as she attempted to hide her shock. It was the first thing she could think to say.

“Oh, look, here’s your cousin,” Reneé said cheerily, as Charlotte peeked around the corner. “I suppose she must be coming to meet your client too.”

Lucie looked at her like a deer trapped in headlights.

Charlotte came to the rescue. “Mrs. Pike! What a divine jacket you’re wearing! Off-White?”

“Alexander McQueen couture.”

“Of course it is. Now, what brings you so far south, Mrs. Pike?”

“Please call me Reneé. I’m on the board of God’s Love We Deliver. I’m killing a little time before a board meeting and thought I’d come in here to take a browse.”

“God’s Love—what a wonderful organization! I volunteered at their kitchen one Thanksgiving. Now, Lucie, have you found the book you wanted to get for Cecil? We’re going to be very late!” Charlotte announced.

“What book are you getting for Cecil?” Reneé asked.

“Er … I already looked, and they don’t have it,” Lucie said, irritated that Charlotte had dug her into a deeper hole.

“Well, perhaps Toby can help you find it? Who is the author?” Reneé prodded.

“Um, Maira Kalman,” Lucie said, spying one of her books on the shelf behind Reneé.

“Oh, I love Maira! But has Robert approved the book yet?”

“Approved?” Lucie looked at her, confused.

“Well, you know Robert only allows books with distressed spines in Cecil’s library. One shiny new spine could throw the whole look off.”

“Oh yes, I forgot.”