Page 76 of Filthy Rich

He parks the car and, when I don’t immediately get out to join him, comes around to my side, opens my door and takes my hand. I stand, taking a minute to get my unimpressive Chuck Taylor-ed feet beneath me.

“Don’t look like that,” he says gruffly. “Say something.”

I hoist my lower jaw up and force myself to stop shaking my head like an idiot. “I don’t know what to say. I had no idea people lived like this.”

“It’s just a house.”

That, it is not.

Part of me wants to tell him that the apartment where I grew up—two-bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchenette and a living/dining room—could fit into half of this warehouse of a garage. But in this bewildering moment, I don’t feel like either of us needs any reminders of the enormous gaps between us.

“Come on,” he says, taking my hand and leading me through a side door back to the circular driveway at the front of the house. “Let’s get this over with.”

I realize for the first time that there are people waiting to greet us by the front door. Two women and three men, all of them wearing the same uniform of a white polo shirt and khaki pants—except for one of the men, who’s wearing a suit and tie.

I find myself leaning closer to Lucien, hunching my shoulders.

“Stand up straight,” he says out of the corner of his mouth. “Nobody here is any better than you are.”

Sure, chief.

A nice sentiment—not that I believe it for a second.

“Tamsyn Scott, this is my head staff. Berta Madden, the housekeeper. Edgar Reynolds, the chef. Don Glass, the groundskeeper. They’ve all got their staffs. You’ll meet them eventually.”

Great, I think dismally, greeting them all in turn. The staff has staff.

Then Lucien turns to the man in the suit. “And this is Daniel Evans. My right-hand man.”

Daniel looks like a middle-aged human version of the Ken doll, with wavy blond hair, a healthy tan, a wide smile and pale blue eyes with crow’s-feet that fan out as he smiles and shakes my hand.

“Welcome to Ackerley,” he says, his grip warm and reassuring. “It’s a pleasure to have you. We’ll take care of anything you need. Just ask.”

“Thank you,” I say, liking him already.

“Thanks for the greeting,” Lucien says to the group at large. “Now, scram before the storm hits. Take the rest of the day off. I’m going to show Tamsyn around, then we’re going to rest. Chef, I hope you left some goodies in the fridge.”

“Always,” Chef says.

“Good deal,” Lucien says as we all troop inside and the others disperse.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but my lower jaw drops again. It is, like the rest of me, absolutely overwhelmed by the grandeur on display here.

The soaring foyer is like a football field, with a grand, curving staircase, a massive oriental carpet, a central table with some sculpture on it and several side tables and benches, in case you need to sit and take a rest as you venture into the rest of the house.

The next thing you notice are the columns and floor-to-ceiling windows throughout. The view from every window suggests that we’re sitting in the bay, only a few steps away from all that sparkling blue water at any given time.

It’s truly breathtaking.

Lucien leads me through everything, starting with the formal living and dining rooms with their antique furniture and priceless artwork on the walls. He doesn’t give me time to take a closer look, but I swear I see a Picasso and a Jackson Pollock as we walk by. There’s an enormous chef’s kitchen, a monument of marble, stainless steel and shiny copper pots hanging overhead. The wine cellar is outfitted with sliding glass doors and well enough stocked to put the local liquor store out of business. The round tiled observatory with all its tropical plants seems like a redundancy of the greenhouse with all of its tropical plants, but hey—these are rich-people things. I don’t claim to understand. There’s a dark-wood-paneled study, which is separate from Lucien’s dark-wood-paneled office. A dark-wood-paneled billiard room. A theater with lounging seats and a screen large enough for the latest IMAX 3D extravaganza. Oh, and there’s also an indoor pool and spa area in the basement in case, I don’t know, it’s raining outside when you want to swim, or you’re just unable to work up the energy to make the long walk outside to the outdoor pool for some reason.

And that doesn’t even include the upper floor.

“Say something,” he tells me as we head up the curving staircase.

“I can’t,” I say, absorbed in this bird’s-eye view of the foyer down below. “I think I’m dreaming. I don’t want to wake up.”

Lucien says nothing to that. I get the feeling that he’s unsettled by my reaction. But he can’t be anywhere near as unsettled as I am by all this.

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