The puck sails into the scenic lake.
"...And every scallywag with a million to his name be playing it..."
"Pa."
"...Golf, bah!"
"Pa."
"Polo, now there's a kingly sport..."
"Pa!"
"Puss?"
"There's been rumors flying about a Hamilton-Wilkes merger..."
She is as picturesque as the country club whose membership has cost him millions, as picturesque as the Robillard bride he pretends he didn't need to buy. His puss, his little girl. Flailing her baby fists imperiously, not for rocking chairs or diamond rings, but for something money can't buy.
"Best not worry your pretty head over rumors, puss."
"But I-"
He waves her off like an insubordinate... subordinate. Looks away crossly - he can only flail where his daughters' lovelives are concerned. Most unacceptable. Steel tycoons do not flail.
"So, there was I thinking, what would your mother like for a birthday present? A pretty little Pacific island perhaps, just like James Tarleton got Beatrice, perhaps..."
000
"Had fun ministering to the sexual frustrations of the physically handicapped at the Charity Supper?"
Mother and Sue had been at some kind of social which involved freaks in wheelchairs, the media and Manhattan socialites and (in Sue's case) a Luca-Luca microdress flaunting clumps of adipose. Yeah, she had spent most of Sue's freshman year pretending their shared last name was pure coincidence.
"Caught up with Melanie Hamilton there. She looked pretty."
Sue's eyes were as green as Scarlett's. They gleamed the same way too. "They're moving to New York."
Pageflip. "And I care because...?"
Shrug. "She looked really pretty."
Snort. "Lighting."
Smirk. "Maybe."
000
Thirteen-year-old Carreen lounging by the pool in a (borrowed) string bikini, bubbling into 'cute' (gauche, middleschool) giggles when Brent said something about the weather.
...Like real women needed transparent swimsuits to win a man.
Carreen, skinny and pasty (fragile and pale, Mother consoled), like the pale, pathetic, wannabe ghost of a child pornstar. At thirteen, she, Scarlett, had sizzled and scorched. She'd given Raif Calvert, senior heartthrob, a blowjob.
"Brent, baby, it's been too long," she cooed and wrapped her arms (and lips and legs) around him. If there'd been a coke machine nearby, to lean on, they'd have been fucking in seconds.
Part of it was sheer cankaterousness after a bad day, part habit, but part of it was sheer pleasure at the look on her baby sister's face.