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The billionaire-in-waiting formerly known as Ian Dundunfordsomer was famous for being the polar opposite of his father. He was smart, but in a dorky way. He graduated from Tufts and was a computer whiz, but had nothing of his father’s ambition or business acumen. And unlike his father, he shunned public attention.
That part I already knew. What I didn’t know, however, was that the hermetic lifestyle designed to keep him out of the spotlight ironically drew him further into it. The gossipmongers had labeled him a man of mystery, and his tabloid-inflicted mystique only made him that much more appealing to the legions of single females out there who would kill to be Mrs. Ian Dunning. He’d been unofficially dubbed New York’s most eligible bachelor by dozens of websites and gossip columnists.
I should have told Mom to stop then and there. I should have said that I’d heard enough, that I was going to follow her advice and form my own opinions rather than allow myself to be biased by rumor and gossip.
Instead, I stupidly begged for more.
Mom went on to inform me that Daniel and Ian’s relationship was a long, complex, and very well-documented one. Ian’s mother had died when he was a young teen, and Daniel had handled his new parental responsibilities by shipping his son away to a distant boarding school for the next five years. Ian made no secret of resenting the hell out of his father for it, and after his first Christmas home from college, didn’t visit or speak to his father for another three years.
Once again, that part of the story I knew. What I didn’t know was that, after Ian graduated from Tufts, he and his father had gone to extensive counseling together and finally healed the wounds of the past. They were now each other’s best friends and closest confidantes. Daniel never made an important business decision without consulting his son, and Ian never made an important life decision without consulting his father. They were frequently seen in public having drinks and dinner, and while they were known to bicker, they never parted ways without a hug and a mutual “I love you.” It was something they’d learned in counseling—never say goodbye angry.
Based on what Ian had told me about his childhood, I had assumed he couldn’t stand his father. But those stories had ended with him at thirteen. That was almost two decades ago. A lot can change in seventeen years. And hadn’t Ian said something earlier about how he and his father got on great, that Daniel was a good father and that I’d like him? And when Ian got arrested, didn’t he immediately turn to his father, who in turn instantly dropped everything so he could help his son? Those weren’t the actions of two people who hated each other. They were the actions of a father and son in a close and loving relationship.
What my mother told me next only sealed my conviction that the Dunning men had, in fact, made amends. Seven years ago, they had founded the Dunning Family Trust together, a charitable foundation that honored the life and work of Cassandra Dunning. Once every six months, they threw famously lavish charity banquets on the family yacht and raised something like forty million dollars a year in support of early childhood and special education.
That last part of the story—where Ian raised and oversaw the distribution of millions and millions of dollars for a very worthy cause in honor of his long-lost mother—was the only part I liked. It was wonderful. It was beautiful. It was the Ian I thought I knew.
Key word being “thought.” Because the Ian my mother had described and the Ian I had come to know were two completely different people. I could picture him raising money for a worthy cause, but not sitting at his morally bankrupt father’s side at a hundred-thousand-dollar-a-plate banquet table in the middle of the Mediterranean wearing a tuxedo while delivering stale platitudes to the rich and famous while they drank champagne and sampled caviar.
And as for him being New York’s most eligible bachelor? No thanks. I wasn’t interested in sharing Ian with one woman, much less all of them. Nor was I interested in living my life in a state of constant suspicion. Ian thus far had done nothing to make me believe he was a womanizer, and historically I was hardly what you’d call the jealous type. But boys will be boys, and I wasn’t convinced that even a good man like Ian could resist the amount of sensual temptation that must come his way. His father certainly hadn’t resisted. The expression “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” was slowly but surely creeping into my brain.
Daniel Dunning was not a man of character. He was a misogynist who treated women like ornaments, burned through them like kindling, and lumped them all into buckets of “pretty bitches” and “ugly bitches.” On the business front, he floated around the globe in a yacht that had the carbon footprint of a small First World nation, and Eco-Justice had all but incontrovertible evidence that he was buying off politicians so he could frack for oil in the preserved habitat of endangered species. And those were just the business entanglements I knew of. God knows what other questionable professional activities he engaged in. As far as I could tell, Daniel Dunning had not a single redeeming quality.
And his best friend in the world was his only son.
It was almost impossible for me to believe, but after what my mother told me, there was no question it was true. Ian was his father’s son. It made me realize how little Ian and I actually knew about one another. Over the course of the last twelve hours, we had been building a splendid romance in a tiny bubble. We’d fought and laughed and told each other childhood stories, all the while safely sheltered inside a four-wheeled piece of tin.
But we couldn’t stay in this bubble forever. If we wanted this to become a full-fledged relationship, we had to bring our outside lives into the open. Ian’s outside life held absolutely no appeal to me. I had no interest in attending events held on an ocean-poisoning yacht overrun by clueless gazillionaires. I had no desire to be the subject of tabloid fantasies or gawked at by passersby every time I walked down the street. And I sure as shit wasn’t going to be rubbing elbows—or asses, as our particular case may be—with anyone even remotely connected to fracking and bribery.
By the same token, I had no reason to believe Ian would be any more interested in my lifestyle than I was in his. With the exception of the gas-guzzling vehicle that was the only car I could afford, my whole life was about ecology and preservation. I was a vegetarian who spent every Saturday morning at the farmer’s market. I brought home my groceries in reusable bags and used only eco-friendly cleaning supplies. And I’d personally led multiple bird-rescue expeditions under the sponsorship of an organization whose entireraison d’êtrewas to fight people like Daniel Dunning. There was simply no denying it. Ian and I could never survive as a couple in the real world.
But for now, we were still safely in our bubble. And I wasn’t ready to pop it yet.
Ian, awakening from his slumber, shifted in the seat. One last time, I ran my fingers through his soft hair.
He rubbed his sleepy eyes and stretched. “How long have I been out?”
“Not long,” I said. “Less than an hour.”
He raised his seat to the upright position. “Where are we?”
“About ten feet from the cabin,” I said as I turned into the driveway.
He looked out at the dense forest that surrounded us. “It’s secluded,” he said. “Even more secluded than my house.”
I thought again about the galas, the dirty dealings, the most-eligible bachelor status. But I also thought about how much I wanted to protect him, how much I wanted to be the one who kept him safe. And it suddenly occurred to me that he didn’t yet know how much I knew. And he obviously didn’t know everything there was to know about me. Which meant he didn’t yet realize how incompatible we were. So maybe I could just pretend I didn’t realize it yet, either. I could buy myself a few more days of blissful ignorance, cocooned in the cabin with the Ian I thought I knew.
I reached over and squeezed his hand. “It’s just what the doctor ordered,” I told him. “You’re safe now, Ian.”
CHAPTER 38
Ian
You’re safe now.
The words repeated themselves over and over in my head as we settled into the cabin. They were better thanI love you, and right there on the mantle besideyou’re worth loving. But it wasn’t so much the words themselves that were affecting me so deeply. It was the woman who spoke them. The reason I was safe wasn’t because Clara said so. I was safe because Clara was Clara. She would not deceive me, she would not betray me. I trusted her.
I peeled open an oversized can of Walmart-brand raviolis. I’d never stepped foot inside a Walmart before, and I’d been surprised to find that even a rich fuck like me was not immune to its fabled charms. In addition to buying enough canned and dried food to last a month, Clara and I were now the proud co-owners of three one-thousand-count bottles of expired multivitamins, a twenty-four-ounce tube of rubber cement that could evidently fix anything including an airplane, and a coloring book with three free crayons attached.
