‘Welcome to New York.’
His stomach rumbled and he realised he hadn’t eaten anything since lunch.
‘How about we get something to eat?’ he suggested.
‘I’ve got a better idea. My friend is DJ-ing tonight.’
‘It’s Tuesday,’ he said, struggling to remember the last time he’d gone clubbing, let alone on a week night.
> ‘So? Come on. You’ll love it. It’s a load of retro stuff.’
They got a cab to a dive bar in Brooklyn. The place was full of men with beards and plaid shirts. Jim checked his suit jacket in at the cloakroom and ordered a double vodka. Sarah seemed to know everyone. Within half an hour, so did he.
A couple called Justin and Ashley invited them to their cabin in the Adirondacks for the weekend. A travel blogger called Cara offered to do a piece on the Omari group, which Jim politely said he’d think about, until Sarah pointed out that her site had more traffic than Condé Nast Traveller.
Sarah dragged him up to dance, and after the amount he’d had to drink, he was happy to oblige, singing along to everything the DJ threw at them, from Snoop Dogg to Sonic Youth. If he noticed that Sarah didn’t know the words, he tried not to register it.
‘I love this old stuff,’ she said, throwing her head back and laughing out loud. Her hair tossed back like a matador’s cape, and when she settled her arms around the back of Jim’s neck, it seemed like the most natural place for them to be.
‘Are you going to kiss me, then, or am I going to have to make the first move?’ she whispered into his ear.
Her lips were only inches away from his now. Jim felt his skin tingle as they moved closer together until they were kissing; soft and sensual at first, becoming firmer and more passionate. Finally, they came up for air, both grinning like schoolchildren caught behind the bike sheds.
‘People are going to start staring,’ he smiled as they pulled apart. ‘The British are supposed to have such a stiff upper lip after all.’
‘Then we’d better find somewhere more private,’ she smiled as she took his hand and led him out of the club and back to her apartment in Brooklyn.
Chapter Fourteen
Jim had never liked the Hamptons. Or rather, he disliked the idea of it: a glittering enclave created exclusively for the use of the rich. Before today, admittedly, he had never visited Long Island, but he had mixed with plenty of people who had houses there. As a rule, they were the sort of people who boasted about their Upper East Side lateral conversion or their ‘cottage’ in Mustique.
‘Isn’t it pretty, though?’ said Sarah, peering out of the window of the car. ‘It’s like Walt Disney created a perfect version of what America should look like.’
She was certainly right about that. The houses passing on either side were perfect: sweeping lawns, picket fences, the Stars and Stripes hanging from the porches of beautifully rendered colonial cottages. Scaled-up versions, of course: hidden at the rear of these cute white clapboard fantasies would be pools and tennis courts and glass extensions filled with art and angular furniture. But from the front they were all nodding blue and pink hydrangeas and Americana shining in the sun.
‘I just wish you didn’t have to be a millionaire to live here. That’s why I love hotels so much: the places we build might be expensive, but at least everyone can go and stay there.’
Sarah raised an eyebrow. ‘I had no idea the Omari luxury hotel group was so socialist.’
He laughed. Sarah had a way of managing to cut through his defences. He needed something to calm his nerves, as he was dreading reaching their destination. They were heading to White Dune, the East Hampton estate owned by Connor Gilbert, Jennifer’s husband. Apparently the couple held a swish party at their house every Memorial Day, and Jim knew that that in itself was going to be difficult. He didn’t like Connor, never had, but meeting him for the first time in twenty years at his thirty-million-dollar estate wasn’t going to make him any more humble.
‘You OK?’
‘Sure, just trying to find my way through all this bling.’
They were passing through Bridgehampton, a small village with a cute ice cream parlour, a pizza shop, even a thrift store, which made the mind boggle. The rest of the single main street seemed to be taken up with art galleries, flash interiors outlets and fashion boutiques. Sarah reached over and squeezed his knee.
‘Don’t worry, my darling,’ she said in a fair impression of Katharine Hepburn’s clipped vowels. ‘One day, all this will be yours.’
Jim smiled across at her. He was glad she was here; it would certainly make the coming ordeal more bearable. But the truth was, he was also feeling tense because this was their first official outing as a couple. They had been seeing each other now for close to two months. After that electric first date, they had spent almost all their spare time together, much to Jim’s surprise. His plan, of course, had been to start seeing Sarah as a way of seeing more of Jennifer. In that regard, it had been an abject failure. He had seen Jennifer only once in the past six or seven weeks, and only then briefly for a drink before he and Sarah headed off to the movies. The truth was, there just hadn’t been enough time. The Casa D’Or project was well under way, the marketing people already circulating a glossy press release to build interest and excitement, and he was settling into his new life in Manhattan. But it was also that he liked Sarah. They had settled into an easy relationship that was refreshing in its lack of complexity. They went out. They had fun. The sex was great and Jim even found himself calling when he said he would.
He glanced over at her and she winked. He liked her. A lot.
‘Christ, is this where they live?’
They had turned off the Montauk Highway – a rather grand name for what was really just a two-lane road cutting through wineries and dunes, with the occasional large house – and on to an unmarked stretch of blacktop punctuated here and there by a hump of white wind-blown sand. Neither of them, however, was paying much attention to the road.
If the houses in Southampton and Water Mill had looked like overgrown cottages, the houses out here looked like full-blown mansions. The architecture paid lip service to the colonial style, yes, but there was no mistaking the grandeur of these dwellings: long drives, landscaped gardens and extensive outbuildings to house the spa or the stables or the ‘playroom’.