Page 7 of The Getaway

Gemma Sutherland hated meeting new people. It wasn’t that she was antisocial. Or so she told herself. It was that she was socially awkward. “It’s not you; it’s me,” she often wanted to tell people when conversations petered. She was always sure she was going to say the wrong thing or laugh at the wrong time or forget someone’s name. So whenever she was forced to attend a social event, she mostly kept to herself, quiet in a corner, sipping a drink until she could dump it in a plant or a sink and slip away unnoticed. She didn’t much like drinking either.

Unfortunately, that plan was not going to work at Lincoln Foster’s Hamptons house. “The Villa” or whatever he was calling it. She was going to be here for a week. An entire week with strangers. Every meal, every hour, every day.

But she was here for a reason. A very good reason. She just had to keep telling herself that.

“Mom! Florence took the good room without even asking me!”

Gemma put down the silk sweater she’d just removed from her bag and sighed, then smiled. At least she had the twins. If anything got too tense, she could always use them as an escape hatch. Maybe they would get their periods, and she would have to tend to them and their insane cramps. What day of the month was it again?

“Girls! Flip a coin!” Gemma called out and added a couple more tops to the pile she was making on the bed. The linens were pure white and tucked as tight as could be, a detail Gemma appreciated.

“Who has coins?” she heard Vienna grumble. Then a door slammed, and they were arguing behind it.

Gemma looked around the sunlit room. There was one large dresser, an armoire, and two bedside tables, all adorned with expensive beach-themed knickknacks. Appropriately shabby-chic blankets and rugs were tossed about, seemingly without a care. Lily Foster had impeccable taste. The new bride—Hazel, who was a bit loud for Gemma’s tastes—had either not yet gotten her hands on the guesthouse or had decided not to change anything. A wise decision, in Gemma’s opinion.

Suddenly a pair of hands grasped her waist, and Gemma tensed for half a second before relaxing back into her husband’s broad chest. She hadn’t heard him come out of the attached bathroom. Probably because the girls were making such a racket.

“Remember when they liked each other?” Grant joked.

“You mean last week?” she replied with a smile. “And they’ll like each other again tomorrow. Such is siblinghood.”

“Fair.” Grant pulled her closer, nuzzling her neck. “We have to tell Vienna she can’t film these people all week. These are the types of folks who value their privacy.”

“I know. I already told her.”

Their sixteen-year-old was a budding filmmaker who did, literally, video everything. Armed with her phone and a GoPro at all times, Vienna had already attended summer film classes at NYU, the New School, and USC. When she wasn’t making short documentaries about everything from influencer culture to foodborne illness, she was making artistic videos with her twin that they posted to Florence’s account, @Twinswinninglife, which had hundreds of thousands of followers. She didn’t love that her daughters were basically public figures, but they’d recently landed a cosmetics sponsorship, and they did need to go to college, whatever happened this week, so she was keeping her mouth shut.

“Thank you again for coming out here with me,” he said into her hair, his beard tickling the soft skin under her ear. She reached up her right arm and placed her palm on the back of his neck as he kissed her cheek. “I know this is not your idea of a fun week. But Lincoln made it pretty clear that if I want the chief counsel job, we had to make this trip.”

In that moment, she was glad he was behind her, because she was sure he’d be able to read on her face that she was keeping something from him. He never needed to know the role she’d played in getting them invited here this week. Let him think it was all him. She took a deep breath and steadied herself.

“I know.” She turned around, looping her slim arms around his neck. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll get through it.”

“Yes, you will.” He kissed her nose. There was a slam in the adjacent room, and he smirked, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “They might not.”

She laughed. “They’ll be fine.” She gave him a quick kiss on the mouth, then extricated herself and went back to her unpacking. “It was nice of Lincoln to give us the guesthouse.”

“Yeah,” Grant said absently. “Definitely.”

There was a carnival-themed party this evening that looked to be a total blowout. Workers were already erecting a white-and-red-striped tent in the vast backyard to match the one in the drive, and there were going to be games and stilt walkers and—yes—clowns. Gemma imagined herself faking an upset stomach and sneaking back here to read. Her smaller suitcase was filled with a dozen of next year’s beach reads and thrillers, and she was hungry to dive in. Her job as a freelance reviewer for the publishing trades had come to her about fifteen years ago through an old friend and had helped pull her out of her postpartum depression. It was her perfect dream job—she got to work alone, she got to read all the hottest books before everyone else, and she got to put down on paper what she really thought about them with no repercussions (she used a pen name for her reviews). The money wasn’t great, but it wasn’t as if they’d ever needed it. Of course, that had changed recently.

Grant moved to the other side of the bed to start unpacking his own stuff. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to expose his strong forearms, thick with dark hair, a sight that always made her feel slightly aroused. Of course, now was not the time. “I feel optimistic, you know? I think he’s going to give me the job. I really do. And then everything will be okay.”

“I know he will,” Gemma replied. “Because you’re the best man for the job.”

“Tell that to the gossip hounds,” Grant said ruefully, pulling a stack of T-shirts from his bag.

“None of that,” Gemma said. “You did what you had to do. Just stay the course, and everything will be fine.”

What Grant had had to do was dissolve the Atlanta law firm he and his former best friend, Victor Hollow, had built from the ground up. Victor, as it turned out, had been hiding a drug addiction disturbingly well for years, using company funds to feed his partying and lavish lifestyle. It had come to a head when he’d been so coked out on his firm’s annual partners’ trip to Aruba that he’d nearly killed a dozen people trying to dock a fiberglass fishing boat—he’d hit the throttle from a hundred meters out instead of pulling it back. There had been an investigation, Victor had gone to jail, and Grant had been left holding the bag. So many lawsuits had been filed against the firm for negligence and mishandling of funds that it had been impossible to come back from. Overnight Hollow and Sutherland was a thing of the past, and Grant’s income had completely dried up—along with his reputation.

That had been over a year ago, and over time Grant had become increasingly depressed and listless. At first he had taken all kinds of meetings, scheduled lunches, gone to industry events. But none of his former colleagues, Yale Club buddies, or law school professors would touch him with a ten-foot pole, and it had taken a toll on her normally boisterous husband. She never knew which Grant she was going to wake up next to—the happy-go-lucky one she’d married, the one who didn’t want to get out of bed, or the one who was so angry at the world he spent full days sulking around the house, slamming doors.

And then, Lincoln had stepped up. Lincoln Foster would be their savior. Gemma could feel it in her bones.

Grant paused and looked her in the eye across the king-size mattress. “What would I do without you?”

She smiled. “Luckily, you’ll never need to find out.”