"Sure!" Olivia couldn't wait for the next nugget, and Dorothy was beginning to slur her words.

"Ya think Bob's d.i.c.king the nanny?"

Olivia looked at Dorothy and thought, My G.o.d, even if I did know, does she really think I'd tell her?

"I haven't the slightest idea, but I think a lot of women would like to trade places with Maritza." Like you, you ugly transparent wh.o.r.e, she thought.

"Well, you probably could've had him too, Olivia, if you didn't go around acting like high-ranking clergy."

"My friends call me the bishop," Olivia said, and thought, Holy h.e.l.l, she's as drunk as a coot!

"Well, we'll see where his train finally stops, won't we? We'll see."

Bob returned with a flute of champagne and Dorothy took her husband's arm, more to steady herself than for any other reason.

They rejoined the group, Dorothy carefully avoiding eye contact with Maritza.

Olivia watched Dorothy closely. What did she have against Maritza to be so rude to her? Well, now she knew. Dorothy thought that Maritza wasn't worthy of being the wife of a billionaire. Bob's money could take her to every board position in Manhattan she might want. And, under whatever delusion she was suffering from, Dorothy thought she could give Bob some cla.s.s. Maybe on Halloween, Olivia thought.

Now, Bob might not have all the starch of a waspy Boston Brahmin, and he wasn't a Harvard man bound for a career in international diplomacy, but he didn't need it. And he might not have exemplified the religious virtues of his forefathers. But after Nick, Bob Vasile was the most honest, unpretentious, and least screwed-up man Olivia had ever known-with the exception of his weakness for women. And sometimes Olivia recognized a measure of pretension in Nick's language, but she thought he mostly spoke the way he did to amuse her and others and to make his students pay attention. Nick's pretentious language made Bob roar with laughter.

But Maritza was right. Dorothy didn't like her. And it appeared that Mich.e.l.le Bemis had no interest in being good company for Maritza or for anyone else. Anne Fritz was keeping to herself and Lola for the moment. Daniel and Kitty were nowhere to be found. This could become a disastrous holiday if things continued as they were.

"So! We're having a beach party tonight!" Bob announced. "Look down there!"

The caviar circulated again and Olivia thought, I could eat my own weight in this stuff.

About fifty yards from where they stood on the deck and not far from the water's edge, there were rugs spread on the sand. Lights were strung between the trees and something fragrant was cooking in a fire pit tended by two men. There was a long, low table set with lanterns and flowers and enormous conch sh.e.l.ls resting on white linen. Fat square cushions were placed by the table for seating. It looked like a Polynesian luau on Fantasy Island.

"Where's Don Ho when you need him?" Dorothy asked, and she alone laughed at her joke.

"You mean Ricardo Montalbn?" Olivia asked.

"Whoever!" Dorothy said.

"Shall we?" Maritza said.

Ellen rolled her eyes and mumbled, "She says it like she's the queen of England issuing a royal decree. La-di-da."

Gladdie started to giggle. "Hey, Momma! Ellen said you're the queen of England! La-di-da!"

Gladdie broke away from Ellen's hands and began to skip down the sand toward the party, calling out la-di-da with every skip.

Maritza's face turned bloodred, and she stopped Ellen, grabbing her arm.

"Don't you like your job?" Maritza said.

Then Ellen's face turned bloodred.

Olivia and Nick, who were right next to her, pretended not to have heard but their ears were perked. Sam was ahead of them with Bob, Buddy, and Mich.e.l.le, all of them out of earshot, but Dorothy was near them and was sporting a tight grin.

"I didn't mean it like that," Ellen said. "I was just trying to make Gladdie laugh." Embarra.s.sed, she hurried ahead to Gladdie, who was by then way down the beach past the party area, in a flat-out sprint running h.e.l.l-bent for leather toward her half brother, Daniel, and Kitty.

"Oh. Okay." Maritza said, and turned to Olivia. "You saw that, right? Where's Anne?"

"She's behind us with Lola. Yes, I heard it. That kind of humor isn't funny. It's undermining," Olivia said.

"Young people can be very careless with their words," Nick said. "I'd give her the benefit of the doubt."

"This time," Olivia said.

"If y'all think I should, then I will. But she makes me so mad."

"Darling?" Olivia said. "Why don't we simply enjoy this beautiful night? You preside over the evening like the queen and treat Bob like your king and let's see what happens."

"He has gone to a lot of effort to give all of us a wonderful holiday," Nick said as though he was Maritza's father.

Maritza's face lit up with the possibilities of a well-executed dose of revenge.

Over a dinner of roasted seafood and tomatoes, onions, and other vegetables, Maritza offered a toast to Bob.

"Here's to my wonderful, gorgeous, brilliant husband who arranged this amazing holiday for us! I love and adore you, Bob. There's not another man in this whole wide world like you! You are my king!"

"Now, that's how a wife should treat a husband!" Sam said. "Here, here!"

Dorothy's eyes were rolled somewhere up in her skull at Sam's remark, and Ellen pretended to gag, but just a slight gag. Gladdie was starting to whine.

"Let's get you to bed, Gladdie," Ellen said. "Bob? Do you want to help me tuck her in?"

If Bob and Ellen tucking Gladdie in was a regular habit at the Vasile home, no one knew except the Vasiles and Ellen, but it seemed highly unorthodox to Olivia.

"No, but I'll be along soon," Bob said, dismissing Ellen. He turned back to Maritza. "So, I'm a king, am I?"

"Yes siree, Bob!" Maritza said, and everyone laughed.

Everyone, that is, except Dorothy and Mich.e.l.le.

CHAPTER 4.

Eden and Beyond

The last thing the men did that night was agree to a golf outing the next day. The plan was to go island hopping, playing nine holes here and another nine holes there, and to have a lunch of freshly caught grilled fish somewhere. Sam said he knew a place, a rustic backwater joint with sticky floors and no plumbing. It probably violated every health-code regulation under the sun, but the fish they'd eat would've been swimming only hours ago. Maybe even caught to order. Needless to say, the conch chowder was impossible to duplicate. The guys were unanimous-they wanted a macho food adventure just like that one.

"Infectious diseases be d.a.m.ned!" Bob said. "We're not afraid!"

"h.e.l.l no!" Buddy chimed in.

"We could never take the girls there!" Sam said.

Olivia giggled herself to sleep over their mousy bravado, which was a first for her-not consideration of their mousiness, but the giggling to sleep part.

So, over a sumptuous breakfast on the Bali Hi terrace amid huge containers of palm trees with pink bougainvillea cascading down the sides, Nick announced he was going golfing too. Olivia was surprised. To begin with, in her mind, golf wasn't really a sport and Nick wasn't exactly a rabid fan.

"Really? Why?" She took a bite of her perfectly prepared egg white omelet with minced fines herbes filled with grilled asparagus and Swiss cheese. "You didn't pack your cleats, you know."

"Sam said I could borrow shoes and clubs from the starter. So I'm going for three reasons." He took a forkful of his eggs Benedict, moaning with exaggerated pleasure while he slowly chewed it and swallowed. "My G.o.d! This is best hollandaise in the world! Okay, so one, I'll have Sam right there, who might improve my game, which we know needs considerable guidance. Two, I'm not missing that lunch."

"Take Lysol wipes."

"No kidding. And three, they're taking a speedboat there, not a helicopter. So, I thought, why not? And, I understand the boat is an old Hinckley Craft. You know how I love them."

Nick had several big, glossy coffee-table books from Rizzoli on pleasure crafts and to his mind Hinckley Craft boats were the epitome of style and quality. Olivia would agree emphatically that they truly were the diamonds of any marina. A twenty-five-foot launch of mahogany and bra.s.s could cost as much as half a million dollars or more. Think Cary Grant circa 1955, zipping through the sparkling water surrounding the Isle of Capri, with Sophia Loren draped over his shoulder. There was no s.e.xier boating experience to be had. To put the value in perspective, Nick's last boat was a twenty-foot Sea Pro that was under twenty thousand dollars including the motor and the trailer. Old Hinckleys were highly coveted and practically unattainable except for a very few of the one percent.

"I know you do. Take a lot of pictures!" Olivia smiled and took a sip of her mango/guava/papaya juice. She nodded. "Why not, indeed? Gosh, this is good. Don't worry about me. I have a great book to read. After breakfast I'm going to take a nice leisurely walk. Someone said you could walk the whole circ.u.mference of the island. It's only three miles. No climbing over rocks or anything."

"Good! Climbing wet rocks is not a good idea, especially if you're walking alone. You could slip and break something, and who would know? You could lie there dead in the surf and wash away with the tide. Swarms of fiddler crabs pecking away at your lifeless body?"

"Good grief, Nick!" Olivia laughed. "Probably wouldn't happen, but I see your point. Anyway, I'll probably walk with one of the girls. Can I refill your coffee?"

"Yes, thank you. Well, just be careful. By the way, we haven't dissected last night. I must say, Olivia, watching Dorothy and, to a lesser degree, Ellen being so insufferably rude to Maritza was appalling."

"They want her life. It's the only justification I can think of."

"They must be insane," Nick said. "I wouldn't want her life for five minutes."

"Me either."

"I mean, Ellen might be Bob's plaything for the moment, but in my opinion, it's never going anywhere. But how awful to have that right in your face."

"I agree. And it's embarra.s.sing. Even worse was Dorothy cavorting around like some kind of femme fatale. Can you even imagine Bob with Dorothy?"

"Not to be crude, my love, but the weenie's in the freezer."

"What a thought! Good grief, Nick!" Then Olivia burst into a deep laugh. "How terrible! You are so naughty."

"Sorry. I only meant to make you laugh. Anyway, today should be a beautiful day."

"I want to find the flamingos," Olivia said. "And don't worry about me. Just go have fun!"

"There are flamingos on this island?"

"Yes, and lemurs! I love those crazy little animals! They're primates, you know."

"No, I did not know that." Nick laughed and shook his head. "They have the strangest beady yellow eyes. Take pictures if you see one! Wait? Lemurs? They aren't indigenous to the Virgin Islands."

"No, they are not. They're from Madagascar, I believe. Branson brought them here to breed because they are an endangered species," Olivia said, taking her last sip of juice. "Or something like that."

"Well, that's not a bad deal for the lemurs, is it? Dragged halfway around the world to a paradise just to, well, procreate?"

"Oh, Nick! You're such a boy!" She shook her head and looked down at her plate, bare except for a sprig of parsley. "This breakfast was as amazing as dinner last night, minus the green-eyed monsters."

"It was," Nick said, wiping his mouth with his napkin and bringing it to rest to the right of his knife. "Jealousy is a terrible thing. Shall we go seize the day?"

"Yes," she said and stood, looking out toward the water. "Poor Maritza. She really loves the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you know?"

"Yes, it's so obvious. The poor child. She's bound to have her heart broken."

"I think it's certain that she will," Olivia said. "I hate the thought of it."

"What is she? His sixth wife?"

"Fifth. Well, since I've known him."

"We witness the triumph of hope over experience."

"I'll say. Bob's constant changing of the guard is good for business, but I just hate to see this marriage go up in flames. I mean, I think she would've married him even if he had less, don't you?"

"What? One billion instead of twenty?"

"Gosh, honey, do you think we're jaded?" Olivia picked up her tote bag and dropped her novel inside, along with a tube of sun block, a bottle of water, and her cell phone.

"A wee bit. A sad but true story. Let's go."

Everyone had agreed to meet in the large open-air living room s.p.a.ce on the main floor of the Great House at ten. After a short walk in the delicious fruit-scented air, with palms swaying, the ocean spraying, and gulls squawking, they arrived and spotted Bob and the other men fidgeting, pretending to putt or drive off an invisible tee. Nick and Olivia could tell that they were beyond ready to leave.

"These fellows are die-hard jocks," Nick said, "I'm just an old duffer."

"I keep telling you, golf is not a real sport," Olivia said. "And I love my duffer, who is not even close to old."

"I love you," Nick said and kissed her cheek.

The ladies were chatting to one another, sort of. At least they were putting out a vibe of amiability for the sake of their husbands and partners. Daniel and Kitty were nowhere to be seen. Olivia imagined they were probably back at Bali-whatever having s.e.x. If she had been that age, that's what she would've been doing. Gladdie was jumping on the sofa with impunity as though it were her very own trampoline. No one said a word to correct her.

"There you are!" Bob said loudly. "Did you get some breakfast, I hope?"