Bare Pleasures

“Don’t be crass.”

She tipped her head back in mock shock and then burst out laughing. “Don’t take this all new Alexander to boring levels, brother dear. Remember I knew you back when.”

Lex started the car just after she belted herself in, gunning the engine of the Charger and taking off so fast that she slammed back into her seat.

Adisa grabbed the door handle. “You asshole!” But she was laughing. “Wait until I tell Mom...”

Chapter 4 (#u22e5362e-024d-58be-b6c3-df6f9f372381)

Working on Saturdays is for suckers, Noelle thought. Which made her the biggest sucker of all since this was the third Saturday in a row she was in the office. She worked the extra hours for no reason other than she wanted to finish the work on a pending case that her boss needed ASAP.

“Fuck my life,” she muttered as she stepped outside the law firm’s five-story building into the sunshine and eighty-degree heat.

It was a gorgeous fall day with just the right amount of crispness in the late morning to make her long for a walk to her favorite Cuban bakery for a pastelito and then a stroll back home to savor that hint of cool weather that Miami got blessed with once in a blue moon. But instead of doing that, she’d been at work. Researching, collating that research and sending it off to her boss in a format he could understand.

Noelle shrugged out of her sweater and draped it over her arm, slid on her sunglasses and walked toward her car. A few feet away from her little red Honda Civic, she stopped mentally complaining for long enough to realize there was somebody leaning on her car.

“Hey, there.” Margot waved her phone at her. “I was just about to text you.”

“How did you know that I was here?”

“You told me you were catching up on some work, remember?”

Noelle searched her memory but couldn’t find such a conversation. But she shrugged. “Okay. What’s going on?”

“I’m taking you out to lunch.”

Noelle looked at her watch and saw it was just past eleven o’clock. She’d been in the office since eight.

“Come on. I’m parked over there.”

Margot gestured toward her own car, a black four-door Mercedes parked in the shade.

Noelle was never one to turn down a free meal. “Okay. Let me just switch out these heels for my flip-flops.” She’d gotten dressed for the office, just in case someone else happened to come in. The professional suit and high heels were comfortable in the office, but now that she was off and on her own time, she felt like putting on sweats and sneakers.

“No, you should keep on your shoes,” Margot said. “Let’s go.”

Oh. That meant they were going someplace fancy. With small portions. Lord help her.

“All right.” Noelle suppressed a sigh, hitched her purse more securely on her shoulder and walked with her sister to her car. The Mercedes still smelled new after nearly a year. The interior was as clean and organized as if Margot had just driven it off the lot. Noelle settled in beside her sister and let Margot sweep her away to parts unknown.

Parts unknown turned out to be a restaurant in Key Biscayne. Four stars, without listed prices and with a sommelier on staff, according to the menu. Noelle secured her bag under the table with a purse hook and wriggled herself to comfort in the plush chair. Leather and wood cupped her back like the hands of a lover, tucking her sweetly up to the table.

“This is a nice place,” she felt obliged to say.

She loved her sister and had known her all her life, so she sensed Margot was up to something. Noelle waited for it, ordering an appetizer and glass of pomegranate juice in the meantime. Margot looked like she was coming from a meeting, wearing one of her obvious power suits with a pair of those red-bottomed shoes she loved so much. She appeared commanding and cold; a look she deliberately cultivated. Sometimes Noelle missed the sister she’d known before their parents left their lives. The sister who played made-up games with her and loved to push her in shopping carts through store parking lots until they were both giggling from the rush.

Noelle sipped her juice and made small talk with Margot, sneaking peeks at her watch and waiting.

Then finally Margot said, “This place is nice, right?”

Noelle let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “Yeah,” she said. “This is good.” She raised her glass of bright red juice, served in a wineglass with a lemon peel curled on the edge and a sprinkling of pomegranate seeds at the bottom.

The waiter came then, properly dressed in his dark apron, and presented their appetizers on tiny plates. He was gone so fast it was as if he disappeared into thin air. This was the kind of service Margot liked. Efficient and just about invisible. Noelle picked up her fork and prepared to demolish the prettily presented crab cakes, determined to at least get Margot’s money’s worth before her sister ruined her appetite.

“This is a nice place,” Margot said again, picking through the sparse leaves of her starter salad with a fork that looked like real silver. “It’s nice to be able to afford a place like this, don’t you think so?” She ate her salad without dressing and tipped her head to look at Noelle with what Margot seemed to think was her most inscrutable expression.

But Noelle had known Margot long enough to read nearly everything about her. Right now, the slight upward curve of her mouth, the minute quiver of her eyelashes said she was feeling pleased with herself about something. In other people’s company, she laughed often, sometimes even reached out to touch in a show of closeness and connection. When she was being herself, though, she was contained. Barely there smiles instead of laughs, hands still and clasped close to her body. Their parents’ abandonment and then death had changed them both.

“Yes,” Noelle agreed. “It’s nice you can afford this place and treat me to lunch.” Although she knew that wasn’t the point, Noelle added, “Thanks for inviting me out today.”

“You know it’s nothing. Anytime I can take my little sister out is a good day.” Margot twirled her fork in a pile of spinach leaves like it was spaghetti.

“I could take you out to a place like this if that’s what you really want,” Noelle said. “But you’d have to wait until payday.”

“That’s just my point.” Margot’s eyes snapped with triumph, a subtle shimmering under her thick fan of lashes, the only thing about her that was lush. “Wouldn’t you love to take yourself out for meals like this whenever you want? Without worrying about a paycheck or making payments toward it on your credit card?”

Noelle shrugged, forked off another piece of crab cake in her mouth—and it practically melted there, buttery and faintly sweet—before she said anything. She slowly chewed, savoring the crab meat on her tongue. “I have the kind of life that I want, Margot. You know that. Eating at expensive places and wearing shoes that cost as much as one month’s rent is not my thing. It’s yours.”

Noelle put another piece of the tiny crab cake in her mouth, determined to enjoy every last bite while she could.

“If you ever used any of the money in your inheritance account, you’d want that too.”

Noelle rolled her eyes. Some random nightclub in Jamaica their parents had owned started to actually turn a profit a few years after Margot took over. Her sister made sure Noelle’s share of the profits got deposited into an account they both referred to as the inheritance account. Noelle knew the money was there and knew it was a lot of money, but she rarely looked at it, preferring to leave it there for the rainy day that life with her parents taught her was always coming.

“If is a big word, Margot. Right now, I have everything I need and can buy everything I want.” That wasn’t quite true. She couldn’t afford to take the trip to the Great Barrier Reef she wanted, but that was only a matter of saving her vacation time.

“But what if you just went to law school and became an entertainment lawyer? Wouldn’t that be better than just being a paralegal at the firm? You could work directly with ball players and entertainers as their legal counsel.”

It was an old conversation but framed in a different way. Margot had money. Noelle didn’t know exactly how much and she didn’t care. Just like she didn’t care about the details of the inheritance account, it was simply enough to know Margot had financial security. Her sister had given up her own childhood to make Noelle comfortable when their parents disappeared for the last time. Noelle was nine. Margot was nineteen. When the disappearance ended with Hugo and Michelle Palmer being found dead on some abandoned farm in the middle of Iowa, the girls breathed a sigh of relief. Not because they were rid of their parents, but because they finally knew where they stood. Alone.

Margot dropped out of college and took over running the Jamaican nightclub, taking care of Noelle every day except for the half a dozen times each year she left the country to check on the club and other businesses she had going. Other than during those disappearances, when Margot left Noelle with a trusted friend of their mother, Margot was there to make her meals, help with homework and provide every material thing they needed. Margot had sacrificed to get the money and financial freedom she had now. But that was not what Noelle wanted for herself. Her small happiness was more important to her than any pair of thousand-dollar shoes or meals that cost a hundred dollars a plate.

The waiter came back to take away empty dishes and bring their entrees, but Noelle didn’t pick up her fork.

“I already told you, Margot, I like my life the way it is. When I’m not at the office, I don’t have to worry about anything there unless I feel like it. Most of the lawyers work through lunch and miss dinner with their families and spend entire weekends at the office instead of being with the people they love. I don’t want that.”

“Even if I pay for the LSATs and law school for you?”

That was a new one. Margot had offered to pay for the LSATs before but never for law school. Noelle took her napkin out of her lap and lay it across the table. Carefully, she rested her hands on either side of her plate and drew a calming breath.

“I don’t want to sound ungrateful about this, Margot. But if you don’t stop harping on this law school thing, I swear to God I’m going to walk out of here and take the bus back to my car.”

Margot sighed and sat back in her chair. “Calm down. I’m not trying to upset you. I’m just—”

“I know what you’re just trying to do, Margot. But we’re not our parents. I’m not completely broke and reliant on a man who takes chances with my life. You’re not a drug-addicted gambler who can’t tell a trap from a score.” She swallowed the sudden tears that threatened the back of her throat. “And we’re not kids anymore and I can make my own decisions about the kind of life that I want.” Noelle took another breath and truly tried to calm herself down. Their parents had done a number on them both, especially Margot, who thought she had to fix everything in Noelle’s life. Hell, she’d wanted to fix her anger at Eric for jilting her by hiring someone to break his legs.

For a moment, it looked like Margot’s carefully constructed facade was going to crack, like she was finally listening to what Noelle was saying and actually understood. But then she picked up her fork and knife as if Noelle hadn’t spoken.