Bloodline Sidney Sheldon

“You’ll meet some interesting people up there,” Jeff Hamlin told Billy. “Rich people. People who can help you. You gotta network.”

Billy’s dad was a great believer in networking. Quite why, or how he thought a summer spent rubbing shoulders with spoiled bankers’ sons was going to help his charming, unqualified and utterly unambitious boy get ahead in life remained a mystery. Not that Billy was complaining. By day he got to hang around on the beach playing the fool with a bunch of sweet little kids. And by night Camp Williams had more freely available drugs, booze and what his grandma would have called ‘fast’ women than a New Orleans whorehouse. At eighteen years old, Billy Hamlin didn’t have many skills. But he did know how to party.

“Billy! Billy! Come play pothum in the middle with uth!”

Graydon Hammond, a knock-kneed seven year old with a lisp brought on by at least five missing upper teeth, waved for Billy to come into the shallows. Graydon would grow up to inherit a majority of shares in Hammond Black, a boutique investment bank worth more than most small African countries. Waving people over to do his bidding would be a big part of Graydon’s future. But right now he was so sweet natured and lovable, he was tough to resist.

“Graydon, leave Billy alone. It’s his afternoon off. I’ll play possum with you.”

Toni Gilletti, unquestionably the sexiest of all The Camp Williams counselors, was supervising Graydon’s group. Watching Toni run into the surf, her Playboy Bunny body barely contained by her white string bikini, Billy was mortified to feel the beginnings of an erection start to stir in his Fred Perry swim shorts. There was nothing for it but to dive in himself and use the ocean as a fig-leaf.

Like all the other boys at camp, Billy lusted wildly after Toni Giletti. Unlike the other boys, he also liked her. They’d slept together once, on the very first night at camp, and although Billy had been unable to persuade Toni to repeat the experience, he knew she’d enjoyed it and that she liked him too. Like him, Toni was something of an outsider. She was no laborer’s daughter. Toni’s old man owned a string of thriving electronics outlets along the Eastern Seaboard. But neither was she a prissy freshman from Wellesley or Vassar. Toni Giletti was a wild child, a thrill seeking troublemaker with a taste for cocaine and unsuitable lovers that had gotten her in deep shit back home in Connecticut. Rumor had it she’d only avoided a prison sentence for credit card fraud because her father, Theodore Gilletti, paid off the judge and donated a seven figure sum to pay for a new bar and wet-room at the local country club. Apparently Toni had stolen the gold Amex from a neighbor to keep her latest dealer boyfriend in the style he’d become accustomed to. The Gillettis had packed their daughter off to Camp Williams as a last resort, no doubt hoping, like Billy’s dad, that Toni might ‘network’ her way to a better future; in her case, marriage to a decent, well-bred white boy – ideally one with a Harvard degree.

Toni had kept half of the bargain, dutifully sleeping with every Harvard grad at camp who wasn’t completely physically repulsive, before settling on Charles Braemar Murphy, the richest, handsomest and (in Billy’s view) most obnoxious of them all. Charles was out on his parents’ yacht today. The Braemar Murphys had ‘stopped by’ on their way to East Hampton, and Mrs Kramer, who ran Camp Williams, had given Charles the day off. It was irritating, the way Old Lady Kramer favored the rich kids. But every cloud had a silver lining. Charles’s absence gave Billy his best chance yet to flirt with Toni Gilleti uninterrupted and try to persuade her that a second night of passion with him would be a lot more satisfying that sticking with her stuck-up stiff of a boyfriend.

He already knew he had a chance..Toni was a free spirit with a libido like a wildcat. Only a few days ago she’d come on to Billy outrageously in front of Charles. It was a crass attempt to make her boyfriend jealous, but it worked. Later, Billy had heard Charles Braemar Murphy grilling Cassandra Drayton, another of the girls Billy was known to have slept with, about his appeal.