Danielle Steel - Toxic Bachelors

2

THE CAPTAIN DOCKED THE B LUE M OON AT THE END OF the quai in St. Tropez that afternoon. It was a major feat since dock space wasn't easy to come by in high season. Because of her size, they had to have the first spot, but as soon as they tied her up, Charlie was sorry they had gone in, instead of coming into port in the tender, as he usually preferred to do. The paparazzi were out in full force, and instantly drawn by the sheer size of the boat. They snapped a lot of photographs of all three men as they slipped into a car waiting for them. Charlie ignored them, as did Adam, and Gray waved.

“Poor bastards, what a shit way to make a living,” he said sympathetically, as Adam growled. He hated the press.

“Parasites. They're all bottom-feeders,” he said. The press constantly created problems in his clients' lives. He had gotten a call from his office just that afternoon. One of his clients had been caught coming out of a hotel with a woman other than his wife, and the shit had hit the fan. The irate wife had called the office ten times and was threatening divorce. It wasn't the first time he'd done it, and she either wanted a huge settlement in a divorce, or five million dollars to stay married to him. Nice. Nothing surprised Adam anymore. All he wanted right now was to find those Brazilian girls again, and dance the samba until the wee hours. He could deal with the rest of the crap when he got back to New York. Right now he had no interest in dealing with the tabloids, or the infidelities of his clients. They'd done it before, and would do the same things many times again. This was his time now, not theirs. Time out. He had turned his meter off.

They went into town to shop that afternoon, took naps, and had dinner at Spoon at the Hotel Byblos, where a spectacular-looking Russian supermodel had come in wearing white silk pants, and a little white leather bolero, wide open, with nothing underneath. The entire restaurant got a full view of her breasts, and seemed to enjoy it. Charlie looked amused, while Adam laughed.

“She has amazing breasts,” Gray commented as they ordered dinner, and an excellent bottle of wine.

“Yeah, but they're not real,” Adam said clinically, unimpressed but also amused. It took a lot of guts to sit down to dinner in a nice restaurant with your tits hanging out, although they had seen it done before. A German girl had walked into a restaurant the year before with a see-through net blouse you couldn't even see, and no one skipped a beat. She had sat there eating dinner all night, naked from the waist up, talking, laughing, smoking, and obviously enjoying the sensation she had caused.

“How do you know they're not real?” Gray asked with interest. Her breasts were large and firm, and the nipples pointed up. He would have loved to draw them, and was already slightly drunk. They'd been drinking margaritas on the boat before they went out. Another night of decadence and debauchery had begun.

“Take my word for it,” Adam said with confidence. “I've paid for about a hundred pair by now. Actually, a hundred and a half. A couple of years ago some girl I went out with only wanted one done. She said the other one was fine, she just wanted to match up the smaller one.”

“That sounds interesting,” Charlie said, looking amused, as he tasted the wine and nodded to the sommelier. It was fine. Better than fine. It was superb. It was a very old vintage of Lynch-Bages. “Instead of taking them out to dinner and a movie, do you send them out for new breasts first?”

“No, every time I go out with some budding actress, she hits me up for a new pair on the way out. It's easier than arguing about it. They go quietly after that, as long as they like what they got.”

“Men used to buy women pearls or diamond bracelets as consolation prizes. I guess now they buy them implants instead,” Charlie commented drily. The women he went out with would never have asked him for new breasts, or any of the other things Adam paid for. If Charlie's dates had cosmetic work done, they paid for it themselves, from their trusts, and it was never discussed. He couldn't think of a single woman he'd gone out with who'd had plastic surgery, at least not that he knew about. Adam's girls, as he and Gray called them, had been entirely remodeled for the most part. And Gray's women needed lobotomies, or heavy sedation, more than anything else. He had paid for a number of therapists, rehab programs, shrinks, and attorneys' fees for court orders to restrain the previous men in their lives who were either stalking them or threatening to kill them, or him. Whatever worked. Maybe paying for the implants was simpler in the end. After the surgery, Adam's women thanked him and disappeared. Gray's always lingered for a while, or called when the new men in their lives began abusing them. They rarely stayed with Gray for longer than a year. He treated them too well. Charlie's women always became friends, and invited him to their weddings, to someone else, after he had left them, once their fatal flaw had been unearthed. “Maybe I should try that sometime,” Charlie said, laughing over his wine.

“Try what?” Gray asked, looking confused. He was dazzled by the Russian woman and her breasts.

“Paying for implants. It might make a nice Christmas present, or a wedding gift.”

“That's sick,” Adam said, shaking his head. “It's bad enough that I do it. The girls you go out with have too much class to want you to buy them tits.” The women Adam went out with needed them to get ahead, as actresses or models. Adam wasn't interested in class. It would have been a handicap for him. Women like the ones Charlie went out with would have been a headache for Adam. He didn't want to stick around. Charlie claimed he did. Gray just let things drift. He had no firm plans, about anything. He just lived life as it came. Adam had a schedule for everything, and a plan.

“At least it would be an unusual gift. I get so tired of buying them china.” Charlie smiled through his cigar smoke.

“Just be happy you're not paying them alimony and child support. Believe me, china is a lot cheaper,” Adam said tartly. He had stopped paying Rachel alimony when she remarried, but she had taken half of everything he had, and he was still paying hefty child support, which he didn't begrudge his kids. But he hated what he had given her in the settlement. She had really put it to him ten years before when they divorced, and he had already been a partner in his firm. She got a lot more than he felt she deserved. Her parents had hired her a terrific lawyer. And he still resented it bitterly ten years later. He had never gotten over the damage she'd done, and probably never would. In his mind, buying breast implants was fine, alimony wasn't. Ever again.

“I think it's too bad you have to buy them anything, along those lines,” Gray commented. “I'd rather just buy a woman something because I want to. Not pay for her lawyer, therapist, or a nose job,” he said innocently. Considering how little he had, whenever he got involved with someone, he wound up getting stuck for a fortune, in proportion to what he earned. But he always wanted to help them. Gray was the Red Cross of dating. Adam was the wheeler and dealer, setting clear limits and making trade-offs. Charlie was the ever polite and romantic Prince Charming. Although Gray said he was romantic too. It was just the women he got involved with who weren't, they were too desperate and needy to pay much attention to romance. But he would have liked to have some in his life, if he ever managed to get mixed up with someone sane, which seemed ever more unlikely. Adam claimed to no longer have a romantic bone in his body, and was proud of it. He said he'd rather have great sex than bad romance.