The Price of Inheritance Read Online Free PDF Page B

We’d met when we were fourteen, when we were both at freshman orientation for boarders at St. George’s. Though we’d grown up in Newport, we didn’t know each other until we went to school together. Alex had kissed me three weeks into the year and declared that I looked like a fragile rose. That won me over a little and when he whispered in my ear that his mission in life was to give me an orgasm, that won me over entirely.
    It’s not that Alex didn’t like going a little bit crazy. He did. We were once reprimanded in Vegas for jumping into a lazy river while wearing wooden shoes after a “going Dutch” party. But sometimes he didn’t like my extremes. My nerves around auction time, my need to be very successful at everything I gave a morsel of energy to. I knew he wanted me to be steadier, more stable, just like him and his emotionless family.
    I looked at Alex, still so perfectly handsome. His skin and his hair and his eyes all matched, almost an identical golden taupe, which didn’t make him striking, but he was very good-looking without the shock value. He was a bulky six feet tall with muscles that refused to be well defined but were somewhere under there. He ran track in high school and college and told me he always liked sports better when you didn’t have to rely on idiots. “I’m not a team player,” he’d once said after he won the 400-meter dash. “That’s why I always win.” He was pleased with the way he looked, and the haughty way he acted, and so was everyone else, including me.
    When we got to Daniel we both forgot that he actually wanted a different version of me, the me that existed before I had my dream job, before I understood what real pressure was. Instead we ate, talked about people we knew from home, and kept floating down the line of shared experiences. We would always be connected because of school, because of Newport and falling in love there when we were very young, and for now, that was good enough.
    After dinner, Alex suggested that we go back to his apartment, take off our underwear, and drink heavily. I thought that sounded like an exceedingly good idea. It took us a few minutes to grab a cab and I hid my face in Alex’s navy blue blazer, letting the soft material rub against my made-up face.
    â€œAfter you, star of the art world,” he said, opening the cab door for me; I swooned just a little as the air caught his brown curls and they fell across his forehead. Well, on the right side of his face, anyway.
    â€œStar, you say?” I asked him, trying to keep the conversation on the topic of my life-changing accomplishment. “So you’re proud of me, then?”
    â€œYou sold a twelve-and-a-half-million-dollar table,” said Alex, whistling under his breath. “And frankly, it’s not even attractive. I’m impressed. You should be a criminal. People will buy and sell anything when they see that angelic face,” he said, squeezing my cheeks like a lemon.
    Maybe he could tell I was annoyed by his comment and he wanted me to calm down, or maybe he just knew how to turn me on after fifteen years of turning me on, but he put his lips next to my ear and said, “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I want you naked for the next twelve hours.” The cabdriver was thrilled to get rid of us.
    When I woke up for work that Monday, I was ready for compliments and cheers at the office, but instead I got a call from Louise DeWitt, department head of American Furniture and Decorative Arts, at 6 A.M. sharp. She demanded that I meet her for coffee in thirty-five minutes and that I better have a bag packed because her assistant had just booked me a flight to Texas and I might have to stay for a few days. I didn’t ask any questions. I assumed that someone very rich who had important pieces of American furniture had just died. I packed a bag full of completely impractical