by Jill Mansell
In the loaded silence that followed, they realized that the telephone on the table beside them was ringing. Caroline jerked away and lashed out with one foot in its direction. With a swift movement, Nico released her and picked up the phone. Any excuse to interrupt the argument. Even if it was Monty Barton, he thought grimly, calling to complain about the striking French technicians, he would keep him talking for half an hour.
“Yes?” he said curtly into the receiver.
“Hi,” said Mac, his own tones equally curt. “It’s me. Isn’t life a bitch? Are you busy tonight, or would you keep an old friend company while he really ties one on?”
“I’ll join you,” said Nico, relieved. “Hang on; I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
The usual gaggle of paparazzi were hanging around outside Luigi’s when Nico and Mac arrived by taxi, but at least once they were inside they would be undisturbed. Having had an armful of fan mail flung into his face by Caroline earlier, accompanied by a wailed “If they knew what a sod you really were, they wouldn’t write this crap,” Nico had chosen the evening’s watering hole with care. As soon as they had run the gauntlet of exploding flashbulbs at the door, Luigi himself would ensure that they had privacy and the freedom to behave as badly as they liked.
“Hey, Nico. How’s the wife?” shouted one of the photographers.
He turned and gave him a flashy smile.
“How was Paris?”
“How’s Loulou Marks?”
“How’s Roz Vallender?”
“How would you like your neck stretched?” murmured Nico through gritted teeth, making sure that only Mac could hear. “Come on, let’s get inside. I can’t stand the sight of blood.”
* * *
Three bottles of wine and half a bottle of Remy Martin later, both men were feeling better, alcohol having blurred the edges of their respective troubles. Luigi had joined them earlier, falling briefly asleep at the table, and two unsubtle young actresses had slid into chairs opposite them, staying for three glasses of wine before realizing how unwelcome they were.
Now they were alone, Mac pulling desultorily at a lobster claw and Nico pouring a hefty measure of cognac into his coffee.
“I don’t even know what she’s calling her,” said Mac gloomily, swallowing the succulent lobster meat without even tasting it.
“Liliane. Lili. It was her grandmother’s name, apparently.”
“The old woman would turn in her grave.”
“Come on, Mac. It isn’t a crime.”
Mac nodded, looking thoughtful. “Ah, but you haven’t been married to Loulou. You don’t know how I feel. She’s done some crazy things in her time, but this is the craziest. Giving two million pounds to that charity runs it a close second. Jesus—if that baby had been mine I was going to ask her to marry me. Again. Despite everything she’s put me through.” Now he was shaking his dark head. “I’m the one who must be crazy. What a mess.”
“Getting married doesn’t help,” declared Nico, lighting a cigarette with the air of one who knows. “I only did it to get Roz off my back. Finding someone who had never even heard of me, someone I knew wasn’t only interested in me for my money…that was a bonus. I thought it was fate.” He raised his cup, draining it. “Now I know it was bloody fatal. Even marrying Roz couldn’t have been worse.”
“Shame about Nicolette. Hers…yours…do you think she really was yours?” asked Mac, who was fast becoming obsessive where paternity was concerned and who knew he could ask Nico anything. They had known each other for several years now, and their friendship had been so effortlessly and instantly forged that it seemed much longer than that.
Nico shrugged. “Who can say? It was a possibility, I suppose. I felt as guilty as hell when she died, but when I heard what was wrong with her… I didn’t know until afterward… It sounds terrible, but I was almost relieved. Is that sick?”
“Of course it isn’t. Only natural. Roz was looking OK last night, anyway. She turned up with Camilla’s ex-husband of all people and apparently had a real go at Camilla before she left for having the nerve to write to her after the baby died.” He sighed heavily. “What a bitch.”
Nico couldn’t help it; the mention of Camilla’s name jolted him. She could still have that effect. He hadn’t gotten her out of his system yet. For a moment, he was unable to speak without giving himself away, and his confused feelings for Camilla were about the only secret he had kept entirely to himself. Mac had no idea.
“Poor Camilla,” went on Mac, refilling his glass and failing to notice the pause. “For some reason or other Roz has given her a pretty hard time over the past year.”
For a moment, Nico wondered whether to confide in Mac, then through the haze of alcohol remembered why he hadn’t done so before. He had failed Camilla in bed. Those kind of details he preferred to keep to himself.
* * *
The next afternoon, when Nico finally arrived home, he had come to one conclusion. Dinner at Luigi’s followed by four bottles of Dom Perignon at Tramp, chased down by the remains of Mac’s liquor cabinet had steadily clarified his dilemma and its obvious solution.
Having spent the night in Mac’s spare bedroom, and awoken with a bone-crushing hangover, much of the previous night’s conversation had faded into merciful oblivion.
Only the idea—and subsequent decision—remained clear, crystallized and necessary in his mind. His marriage was over—if it had ever truly existed. The sooner he put an end to it, the easier it would be for both Caroline and himself.
It was the best thing all around, without question.
And in Caroline’s present mood, he realized, it should be easy enough to persuade her that he was right. Undoubtedly it would cost him a great deal of money…he wasn’t naive enough to think otherwise. Equally undoubtedly such a very short marriage, and on the heels of his disastrous liaison with Roz, would result in scandal, bad publicity, general loss of favor. Monty would flip when he heard the news. The press would speculate wildly, probably put it about that he was gay.
His mother would be distraught.
It was raining slightly as he stepped out of the car, a gray chilly drizzle that clung to him, coating his blond hair and white cotton shirt with a layer of dampness too light to permeate. The gravel, gleaming wet, crunched beneath his feet as he turned toward the house.
Was Caroline even there, he wondered, after last night? He hoped she would be reasonable and listen calmly to what he had to say. Any more appalling fights like yesterday’s and his modest art collection—with a pang he recalled Camilla’s innocent joy when he had brought home the five Hockney prints—would be lost.
Caroline was waiting, if that was the word, in the sitting room. Nico ground to a halt in the doorway when he saw her. His first thought was that she had been on the vodka and tonic with a vengeance.
“Darling, thank goodness you’ve come home,” she said, rising from the settee and moving toward him with a slow, sinuous sway. Naked but for cream silk knickers, a matching bra and garter belt, her excellent legs encased in the sheerest silk stockings and ivory high-heeled shoes, she pressed herself against him and in his state of shock all Nico could say was, “It’s raining; I’m wet.”
“Good,” murmured Caroline, sliding her arms around his neck and burying her face against his open shirtfront. “Nico, I’m sorry about last night. I love you so much; it was crazy to fight like we did. I don’t know what I’d do if we broke up. I was jealous, but I know now how wrong I was. Loulou’s your friend and I had no right to interfere. Forgive me, hmm?”
As she spoke, she was moving against him, her barely contained breasts rubbing sensuously across his chest, her pelvis sliding against his own. Despite himself, Nico felt his body responding. Caroline was running her hot, wet tongue along the line of his collarbone, her hair brushing his skin. The sex between them—before h
e had begun avoiding it—had always been fantastic. Inhaling a delicious waft of Caroline’s perfume, he felt himself weakening, remembering how erotic it felt to be undisguisedly seduced by a woman, and allowed her fingers to trail down toward the front of his black denims.
This wasn’t what was supposed to happen, he thought, his mind dazed by lust, his own fingers expertly unfastening her bra so that those generous breasts could spring free…but it had been so long…and this was his wife, after all…and he knew he could please her…
“Don’t leave me,” whispered Caroline against his neck, as he slid her panties down to her trembling knees. “Forgive me, stay with me, I swear I won’t ever make you angry again. Just make love to me, Nico…”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Christo, if you tell me now that there is no hot water, I shall make you babysit all night, and it will serve you bloody well right for being so mean with that immersion tank. I’m going to a wedding, for Chrissake… I can’t go smelling of spit-up.”
Christo swept the baby, Lili, from her mother’s arms and held her high in the air to gurgle contentedly above him.
“Electricity costs money. Happily,” he said, teasing her, “today is Tuesday, and I still have some. So you may have your bath, Cinderella. Did you really think I’d let you go to the wedding of the year without one?”
“You’re an angel.” Loulou dropped a kiss onto his russet head, then pulled a face at Lili, whose black saucer eyes were only inches from her own. “And so are you,” she murmured lovingly, addressing her daughter and tweaking one of the pink ribbons that had by some miracle stayed in her fine candy-floss hair for over ten minutes. “Just be good for Christo while Mummy has her bath and then we’ll get you dressed. Seven weeks old and you’re going to your first wedding. Who’s a lucky girl?”
It was Christmas Eve, and Loulou had never been happier. As she sank into the hot bath, she reflected for the hundredth time how absolutely right she had been to give up Vampires.
Vampires had been fun, but it was also a lot of hard work and an enormous responsibility. And while some women managed to carry on in business when their children were born, Loulou wondered how they coped. Lili took up not only all her time, but her emotions too. Loving someone with such intensity, she had discovered, left no room for anyone or anything else. And loving a tiny human being with ravishing black eyes, a perfect rosebud mouth, irresistible dimples, and the most adorable fingers and toes she had ever seen was so much more fun than loving a wine bar—or even a man—that she was completely hooked.
Thank heavens, she thought with a smile, for darling Christo.
By closing her mind to the possibility that Lili might not have been Mac’s daughter, she had blithely assumed that once she had given up her business and her home, he would invite her to live with him. They had been getting on together so wonderfully that it had seemed the obvious thing to do. They would live together, a proper family, and be disgustingly happy for the rest of their lives.
But Mac had taken the news of Lili’s undoubted paternity extremely badly and as a result had missed out on all the happiness in which Loulou was so luxuriously wrapped. Instead, it had been Christo who, having had the foresight to consider what might ensue, had come to Loulou’s rescue. He had been renting a small flat in Kensington with an Australian who was now returning home to Sydney, he explained to her. A room was therefore available, the rent was reasonable, and the landlord was agreeable. Christo, who had arrived from southern Ireland three years ago with nothing, had never forgotten how Loulou had given him a job and installed him in her spare room until he could find a place of his own. They had always gotten on well together. Now it was his turn to help the impulsive, generous, wayward friend who had done so much for him in the past.
Touched beyond words, Loulou had hugged him so hard that his lungs almost collapsed. Four days after Lili was born, they had both moved into the tiny flat with Christo, and from the sale of her own furniture and other possessions, she raised enough money to pay her share of the rent for almost two years. Further ahead than that she couldn’t think. Fate, she had told Camilla airily, would take care of her. Money wasn’t important, after all.
Hair dripping, slender body gleaming wet, she stepped out of the bath and considered her flat stomach with pride. Then her glance fell upon her watch lying in the soap dish, and she saw with horror that it was one o’clock. In less than an hour Nico and Caroline would be arriving to give her—and Lili, of course—a lift to the Register Office. The wedding was scheduled to kick off at two fifteen.
* * *
No one who chooses to get married on Christmas Eve has any right to expect good weather. When the day dawned frosty-white, sparkling, and sunny, Matt kissed Camilla and said with a grin, “Just lucky, I guess. Someone up there must like us.”
“Stop gloating,” Camilla told him, deftly removing the glass of champagne from his hand and placing it safely on the table. “Save your energy for catching Marty. It sounds as if he and Toby are murdering Charlotte, and I don’t want blood splattered all over her new dress.”
“Ah, this is the life,” said Matt cheerfully, pinching her bottom as he went past. “My future wife and I, alone together at last. With three wild children all hell-bent on killing each other. Bliss.”
“Alone together,” murmured Matt at two o’clock as they traveled in the pale-gray, chauffeur-driven Rolls, which he had insisted on hiring, to the Register Office in Knightsbridge. On his left, squeezed between himself and Camilla, sat Charlotte. Toby was perched on the very edge of the seat on his right, polishing his new shoes with a clean handkerchief. Sprawled across Matt’s lap and singing a wordless song at the top of his voice was Marty. Over the top of Charlotte’s head, his eyes met Camilla’s and his heart leaped. He couldn’t wait to marry her and make her noisy, quarreling, loving collection of children—both real and borrowed—at least partly his own. He couldn’t wait to make her pregnant and add to the brood. He wanted it all, now. He couldn’t wait.
* * *
“…I now pronounce you man and wife,” concluded the registrar.
Marty, who knew only that Matt had at last released his firm grip on his hand, broke into a fresh chorus of song in celebration. Matt burst out laughing and lifted him into the air.
Suddenly, everyone was kissing everybody else. Charlotte, planting a shy kiss on Matt’s cheek, whispered, “Are you my daddy now?” and he melted.
“No, sweetheart, you’ll always have the same daddy. I’m your stepfather, but I think it’s easier if you just call me Matt.”
“Oh,” said Charlotte thoughtfully. “Will you buy me Christmas presents, though?”
“Definitely,” Matt assured her, and she brightened. Initially truculent, she had metamorphosed in recent weeks into a kind, if somewhat bossy, ten-year-old.
“That’s OK, then. Do you want me to look after Marty for you so that you can kiss some more people?”
Nico hung back, wishing he hadn’t come. Watching Camilla marry someone else—someone who so obviously made her happy—wasn’t easy, and the fact that he couldn’t find anything about Matt Lewis to dislike didn’t help. Besides, he thought unhappily, standing witness to all this undiluted joy only brought home to him how messed up his own life was. Caroline had made a terrific effort in the last couple of months and had been particularly understanding since he had been racing to finish his new album.
The only trouble was, he reflected as he watched Loulou fling her arms around Matt’s neck and give him a noisy kiss, the nicer Caroline was, the more guilty he felt because he couldn’t love her. If only she would do something wrong…give him a reason not to love her…it would be so much easier…
Caroline, at his side, gently nudged him. “You haven’t congratulated them,” she said in a low voice, carefully controlled, determined not to betray the fact that she was desperately jealous of Nico’s past relationship wit
h Camilla. Only the fact that he had been so reluctant to come to the wedding told her how much he still cared, and that made Camilla far more of a threat than Loulou in Caroline’s eyes. Or she would have been, if she hadn’t just married that gorgeous Matt Lewis.
Camilla, who had just dismantled her bouquet of white roses and baby’s breath and tucked the delicately fragrant flowers into the hair of first Charlotte and then Zoë’s children, glanced up and saw Nico making his way toward her. She straightened, felt a moment of awkwardness, and hoped it didn’t show in her smile. It had been Loulou’s idea, of course, that Nico should be invited. He would be hurt, she had insisted, if he weren’t. And Camilla was quite unable, without going into very private details, to persuade her otherwise. She had half hoped that he would have been unable to attend. Even loving Matt as much as she did hadn’t killed her feelings for Nico. And after the way she had treated him she should be grateful, she supposed, that he had had the decency to come to her wedding.
“Congratulations,” said Nico, inclining his head and kissing Camilla’s cheek. She breathed in the familiar scent of his aftershave and longed suddenly to hug him.
“Thank you, Nico. And thank you for coming. I’m glad you did.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” He smiled, and the lie came easily. “We’re friends, aren’t we? Matt’s a lucky man.”
“I’m lucky too,” she told him simply. “When you think what I was like only a year ago.”
And when you think of everything that has happened since then… The thought sprang, unspoken, between them both, and Camilla smiled, reached out, and touched his hand. The spontaneous gesture had far more effect than the sterile kiss that had preceded it, and she instantly regretted making it. Nico looked uncomfortable and she drew back, glancing past him at Caroline, who had now been drawn into conversation with Matt’s younger brother, Lloyd.
