Lila smiled at the two of them as she retrieved her cover-up and sun hat.
“We didn’t finish giving gifts.”
“And no one ate the cake,” Alejandro added.
“I’m eating it right now.” Francis plucked his bisque spoon from the table and made a show of digging into what was left.
Lila picked her way over the minefield of frosting to call down to her children below deck. “Tia! Rylan! Come help Alejandro clean up your mess. Then we can do presents.”
Only at the mention of presents did the twins scamper back on deck.
When most of the cake had been washed into the marina,the twins sat at the table, and Lila produced a little velvet box too pretty to be wrapped.
Tia flipped it open to reveal a pair of earrings. “Wow,” she said.
Lila had picked them out at the jeweler months ago. They were simple. Classy. Two South Sea pearl studs with solid-gold backings. Their worth totaled somewhere in the five figures. Lila hadn’t examined the receipt all that closely.
“Pearls are the birthstone for June,” she explained. “And I know you share your father’s fondness for the sea.”
She hoped this would elevate Tia’s boat style from knotted T-shirts and booty shorts to something more put-together that would match a beautiful piece of jewelry. Honestly, choosing pearl studs had been rather restrained of her. She had far more extravagant items picked out for their birthday party once they reached Florida.
Lila handed Rylan a gold paper package. He took care not to tear the paper and instead slit the tape with his nail and opened the gift at the seams. Folded inside was a vicuña wool cardigan in Rylan’s favorite color, navy, and a cashmere button-front raincoat from Bergdorf that Lila thought might come in handy on this particular vacation. Her son would look smart and feel warm in them both.
Rylan hugged the luxury fabrics to his chest. “Thank you,” he said happily.
Lila was a master of gift-giving, in her opinion. Nobody ever seemed to understand quite whatshewanted, but when it came to other people, she could look into their eyes, see their greatest desire, and then tweak it a bit to be as beautiful as possible.
Tia wanted to be important, which might as well be a synonym for beautiful. Rylan wanted to be taken care of. Francis wanted more of whatever he already had, and Alejandro...
Lila glanced sideways at the cook.
After all these years, years of being offered the same wealth and influence that Francis had painstakingly achieved for himself, all Alejandro seemed to want was a nice kitchen and a place in the Cameron family.
How many men would choose a life as a private chef when they had the option to have all their meals cooked by someone else?
“Piratey.” Tia closed the box. “Thanks.”
“I have one for each of you,” Francis announced and stood to open one of the panels in the deck.
“Watch him have somehow stashed a Ferrari in the bilges,” Tia joked to Rylan.
“After you put that dent in your Lexus, I wouldn’t get too excited, young lady,” said Lila as Francis lugged out a deep-sea fishing kit with a little bow tied around one of the rods.
“For you, my boy.” He squatted and laid the mess of lures and tackles at Rylan’s feet. “We won’t even have to watch it all the time. We can set it up on the stern and whoever’s manning the helm will let us know if we get a tug. How cool is that?” He stood, pleased with himself. “What do you think, Alejandro? Could you make something delicious out of a tarpon? Or a shark?”
Alejandro looked up from looping the hose. “I could make eyeballs taste like oysters.”
Francis bared his teeth in a grin and raised his arms. “The ocean’s your limit, my boy! Let’s see what we catch.”
Lila watched her son wilt in Francis’s shadow. She gave him a look, but Rylan’s despondence didn’t change, so she reached over and poked an acrylic nail into the small of his back. He sat up straightaway.
“What about me, Daddy?” Tia crossed her ankles and tilted her saccharine expression toward what was left of the sun. “Do I get a gun to poach white rhinos in Zimbabwe?”
“Course not, sweetheart. The rhinos need a fighting chance.” Francis produced something from his pocket and handed it to Tia. “To match the earrings,” he said.
Lila craned her neck to see what sat in Tia’s palm. It was a necklace, gold chain as thin as a thread, with a single South Sea pearl hung from a bail.
It was from the same jeweler she had gotten the earrings, part of a matched set.
