Lovers by Judith Krantz

a shopping-mall almost-billionaire?” Billy asked Spider, as they sat having drinks in front of the fire before dinner, alone now that the twins were finally stowed in their cribs.
    “Nope. What’s his name?”
    “Winthrop, Ben Winthrop. In fact, Benjamin Warren Saltonstall Winthrop, no less. Ring any bells?”
    “Loud and clear. He’s one of most aggressive of the businessmen of the eighties, according to
Forbes
, although they’re more polite about their terminology. I didn’t know you were related. He operates out of New York, not Boston.”
    “Maybe, but he’s also one of the awful tribe of evil cousins who persecuted me when I was growing up in Boston. There were dozens of them, all beastly. I don’t remember anyone named Ben, but he called this afternoonand identified himself convincingly. The Warrens are part of the family tree that came over on the
Mayflower.”
    “It sounds to me as if his blood hasn’t thinned out too much, in spite of all that genealogy.”
    “He said he was out here on business and would love to come calling. I haven’t been back to Boston since Ellis was alive, and I haven’t seen any of my cousins since Aunt Cornelia’s funeral, when I was twenty-four. I certainly don’t remember a Ben Winthrop back then.”
    “Did you invite him over?”
    “Of course, sweetheart. Would I miss a chance to show you off to any of that snobbish, clubby, self-satisfied gang that made my life a misery when I was a poor little poor girl? Would I pass up an opportunity to show off the twins?”
    “I think you’ve reversed the order of your areas of pride,” Spider said, temporarily willing to come second.
    “Not by much. Anyway, he’s coming to dinner tomorrow. Let’s ask Gigi, she’s all alone and I’m dying to hear about her new job.”
    “She’s only been there two days.”
    “True, but what about the importance of first impressions? You decided I was a frosty bitch the minute we met.”
    “Weren’t you?”
    “Damn right I was. And I’m proud of it. At least I have that period of my life on my résumé, now that I’m brainwashed, barefoot, tied to the kitchen stove, and pregnant.”
    “Again?” he asked mildly.
    “Just an expression.”
    “That’s a relief.”
    “Don’t you want more children?” Billy asked piteously. “No little girl?”
    “Of course I do, but not right yet, darling, not until Max and Hal stop controlling you with their eyes and start verbal interaction in which you might be able to get the better of them.”

     
    Did his cousin Billy Winthrop also take a pair of bodyguards with her wherever she went, Ben Winthrop asked himself in mild surprise as he leaned out of his car to give his name to the guard at the gatehouse that stood squarely at the driveway entrance to Billy’s estate in Holmby Hills. This was almost like Houston, that great boomtown, he thought, where one of his richest friends had built a watch-tower on top of his house, manned round-the-clock by men with machine guns. Hugely rich people in Boston and New York, including people who had as much money—well, almost as much—as Billy Ikehorn, were known to walk the streets, take taxis, even subways. Surely this was excessive? Or perhaps not? He still knew little, after all, about the intricate local rituals of Los Angeles wealth, although he intended to become a quick expert on the subject.
    Los Angeles had fascinated Benjamin Winthrop for years. It was the last American frontier before Hawaii in his plan to pinpoint certain privileged parts of the world with his malls. Now thirty-five, he had entered his teen years in the 1960s, a fact that might have sidetracked a boy with less focused ambition, but Ben had zoomed right through those tempting, throbbing years without feeling the slightest temptation to drop out, tune in, turn on, or acquire flower power. He’d homed in young on real estate, the way millions of his generation had homed in on rock ‘n’ roll, and singlemindedly he had