“At the ranch?”
“She’s not out in the country, dear. She’s out of the country.”
“As in…” Dorian prompted impatiently.
“At the moment she’s on a Greek yacht in the Mediterranean, on the first leg of a rather long sea cruise. She instructed me to inform you she will be incommunicado for the next three months.”
Stunned by the financial manager’s bombshell, Dorian dropped the phone into her lap. “I don’t understand.”
“I believe your grandmother has cautioned you about your spending. Has she not urged you to live within your more than ample means?”
“Maybe. But she’s always advanced me money before when I ran out.”
Malcolm straightened his tie. “She said she warned you no more funds would be forthcoming if you were imprudent again.”
Dorian glanced at the ceiling and sighed. True. Two weeks ago she’d been summoned to the North Park town house and reprimanded for what Granny Pru called “living too high on the hog.” Having been dressed down before about her spending, she had scarcely listened. She’d been in a rush to meet her friends and make the opening of an exclusive new West End club.
“So what are you telling me, Malcolm?”
“You want the nutshell version?”
“Please. I’ve already had the lecture, parts one, two and three.”
“Simply put, you are out of money.” At her disbelieving look, he elaborated. “Strapped. Flat broke. Busted. The industry term for your current condition is insolvent.”
She laughed, relieving the tension that had built inside her. If she didn’t laugh, she might cry. And Dorian Burrell did not cry in public. She saved her tears for the lonely darkness. “You’re kidding, right?”
Malcolm’s brows lifted, reminding her he rarely dabbled in kidding.
Broke? She slumped in the chair. Having known nothing but wealth and privilege, she could scarcely conceive of the concept. Icy fear snaked through her. She was broke. “So what am I supposed to do now?”
“That’s what we have to figure out,” Malcolm said gently.
Her thoughts raced to make sense of an impossible, improbable situation. Would she be forced from the apartment her grandmother had given her when she graduated college? Part of a luxury West End renovation project, the penthouse commanded a fantastic view of the city and was close to the trendiest restaurants and night spots. Maybe she didn’t hold the deed or pay the bills, but she had personally chosen every item in her home, the only place she felt secure.
The houses she’d grown up in had never been homes. They’d been cold and empty, decorated by professionals, managed by housekeepers and cleaned by maids in gray uniforms. Her mother had floated through the artfully arranged rooms like an amorphous spirit, beautiful and not quite real.
Always untouchable.
“What about my apartment?” Dorian voiced her concern.
“Pru was explicit. You’re to continue living there.”
Relieved, she blinked back another sting of tears. This time they were tears of gratitude—even rarer for her than those of sadness or self-pity.
“But I have no money?” She would have figured her chances of uttering that particular combination of words in her lifetime were considerably less than, ‘I’m catching the red-eye to Mars.”
“Not until your next trust deposit.”
“Which is in September.
“Right.”
“This is June.”
Malcolm consulted his fancy desk calendar. “Correct.”
“I don’t believe this. What am I supposed to do until then? Did Granny Pru leave any words of wisdom before going incommunicado?”
“She said she was confident you could solve this problem on your own. You do come from strong stock, you know.”
“Please, spare me the salt-of-the-earth story. I know all about how great-grandfather Portis started out with nothing but a hundred dollars and a wildcatter’s dream. How he pulled himself up by his bootstraps to build one of the biggest, richest oil companies in Texas.” She pushed out of the chair and paced in front of the desk, her blond bob swinging.
As heir to the Chaco Oil fortune, currently controlled by her seventy-nine-year-old grandmother, she was well acquainted with family propaganda. “What the hell are bootstraps anyway?”
He shuffled papers in an attempt to hide his smile.
“I’m glad you think this is funny, Malcolm. Because I don’t.”
“I think your grandmother hoped you would look at the next ninety days as a learning experience.”
“Right.” Uncertainty coursed through Dorian, an unfamiliar emotion for someone who’d always been sure of her place in the world. Now that world was threatened. How could she manage without her grandmother’s love and support? Her father was dead. Her mother barely deserved the title. Granny Pru was the only person she could depend on. “Does she hate me?”
“You know better,” Malcolm said. “She loves you. Always has.”
“Is she trying to punish me?” Other than being born into the right family, Dorian had done nothing to deserve the advantages handed her on an heirloom silver platter. She had always stuffed the feelings of unworthiness down in the place where she stored all unacceptable emotions.
“I’m sure that’s not the case.”
“Oh, my God.” She stopped pacing and whirled to face him. “Has Granny Pru gone senile? Please tell me she hasn’t lost her mind.”
“No, of course not.” Malcolm dismissed the idea as absurd. “Prudence Channing Burrell is the sharpest, most savvy and sensible woman I know.”
“Then I give up. Did she mention why she feels compelled to turn her only grandchild’s life into a waking nightmare?”
“Actually, she said if you asked, I was to give you a one-word answer.”
“Which would be?”
“Cassandra.” He leaned back in his chair, apparently pleased with his cryptic response.
What did her self-absorbed mother have to do with anything? Pru and Cassandra had engaged in a bitter mother-in-law versus daughter-in-law battle for over two decades. Since John Burrell’s death thirteen years ago, his merry widow had maintained a palatial home in Dallas, but spent most of the year jetting around the country with her snooty, old-money friends. The last Dorian heard she was summering at Hyannis Port, still trying to worm her way into the Kennedy enclave.
Cassandra Burrell hired out unpleasant tasks. She had gardeners to clip hedges, chauffeurs to drive cars, cooks to prepare food and maids to clean up. She would have rented a womb if she hadn’t accidentally gotten pregnant first. Since she found motherhood an especially odious chore, she’d brought in a succession of nannies to perform the duties she found distasteful.
Early on, Dorian had learned to torment and manipulate the poor women paid to care for her. All in the foolish hope that if she could drive them away Cassandra would become a sweet, loving mother who gave hugs and kisses and cuddles. Dorian’s childhood tantrums were legend. If she wanted a bed-time story, she ordered the nanny to read. If she wanted a cookie at five in the morning, she sent the nanny to fetch one. If she flung her expensive clothes from drawers and closets, she waited for the nanny to put them away.
The one thing Dorian had not been able to order was the thing she had longed for most of all. Her mother’s love. She’d given up that dream years ago. “Since when has