by Croft, Pippa
I can’t be angry with Immy for being so direct. ‘No, not exactly, although we did almost everything but.’
Her jaw drops. ‘Everything but!’
‘Yes.’ The image returns: Alexander taking off my dress, lifting me on to the billiard table, climbing on top of me. My body’s response to him was about as direct as it could be.
‘Oh. My. God.’
‘You think that’s crazy, that I almost had sex with Alexander Hunt and then stopped him?’
‘Not crazy. I understand why you’d want to shag him. He is absolutely gorgeous and you won’t need me to tell you that half the girls in England would kill to get him into bed. You must have made a very big impression on him. Huge, in fact …’ She hesitates and bites her lip. ‘I don’t want to worry you, but I did try to warn you about him, not that I know him that well – I’m not sure anyone knows him that well, not even Rupert.’
‘That’s what worries me too. If his closest friends don’t know him, who does?’
‘Rupert says that Alexander doesn’t get close to people. Not since his mother was killed.’
‘What? His mother was killed? I had no idea!’ I shudder and feel almost physically sick. Poor Alexander.
‘Yes, she died in a car accident while taking Alexander back to school. I think he was thirteen and Emma, his sister, was in the car with them. I don’t know exactly what happened, but Alexander and Emma were badly hurt and their mother died instantly.’
‘That is truly awful. I can’t bear to think of anything happening to my parents. I worry about Daddy as it is, with his public role.’
‘My parents drive me insane at times, but I love them to bits. I don’t think any of the Hunts have ever really got over it. Not that you get over losing someone, but there’s more to it. Rupert says that Alexander’s father blames him for the crash.’
‘What? Why would he do that?’
Immy shrugs. ‘Rupert’s not sure but he says it wasn’t Alexander’s fault. Alexander’s father is a shit. He’s a general in the Guards and he wanted Alexander to join the same regiment. General Hunt makes General Tilney look like a pussycat.’
‘So he went and joined the Paras …’ I think back to the hints Alexander dropped about his choice of regiment and Immy’s words make sense. ‘It’s complicated’ doesn’t even begin to cover Alexander. My stomach swirls. I wonder how losing his mother at that age – and, worse, being blamed for it – has affected his relationships with women. Then again, the more I hear about him, the more I think he should come with a danger sign and barbed wire around him.
Immy lowers her voice as a couple of guys in tennis whites stroll out on to the terrace. ‘I can’t tell you what to do about Alexander. I can understand the appeal. He’s gorgeous, rich … and seemingly unattainable.’
‘I never set out to attain him, that’s the whole point, and his money doesn’t impress me.’
‘Hey, I know that and that’s precisely why he’s pursuing you so hard. The fact he’s called Hunt is no coincidence.’
‘That had occurred to me.’
‘I’d hate to see you get your heart broken and if you’re looking for an easy ride you couldn’t have picked a worse person.’ She glances away from me, perhaps a little guilty for offering advice – after all her own love life isn’t perfect – yet I can’t deny that everything she has told me fits with my own experience of Alexander.
‘I wasn’t looking for anything.’
‘Which is precisely why Alexander has come along now. Doesn’t it always happen like that? Fuck, it’s bucketing down. I wish I could keep my Audi in Oxford during term time, but the parking for students is non-existent – unless of course you’re Alexander and have your own garage.’
‘So that was his house I went to? It’s not rented?’
‘I think it was his mother’s when she was studying here, and it was rented out until Alexander started his degree. I’m not absolutely certain; the Hunts have a lot of property. Now, we have two choices, cycle home and get soaked or persuade that hotty over there from the Blues tennis squad to give us a lift back to college. What’s it to be?’
The hotty, a tanned, lean blond who reminds me of Eric from True Blood, needs no persuasion to run us home once Immy works her charms on him. I spare a thought for Freddie as ‘Eric’, a.k.a. Skandar, scrawls his number on Immy’s palm before we dash into the Lodge at Wyckham.
Back in my room, I dry my hair after my shower, trying to find answers behind the mirror. I crave Alexander like some kind of new drug that’s been custom-made to give me my own unique high – and the fact that I want him that much only confirms my determination to go cold turkey.
The morning sun shines through the window as I scroll down through my notes on my iMac. We’re nearing Halloween and the rays don’t even have enough power to warm my hands as I type. It’s Saturday, Third Week officially starts tomorrow and I plan to get as much work as possible done today because a bunch of us are going to dinner at the Cherwell Boathouse on the river and tomorrow I’m heading for the V&A with a couple of people from my course. I went with Todd on his one and only visit to London, but he was bored within an hour and dragged me off to some pub.
There is so much I want to see there that I can’t even begin to think about it, but the costume display is sensational. I’m disappointed that I missed the Fashion in Motion live catwalk events they held over the summer, but as a consolation there’s a new exhibition of Photography and Truthfulness that’s a must-see for me. If there’s time, I’d like to call into Harvey Nicks while I’m in South Kensington tomorrow, but I guess I’m so close to London now that I can always go back another day.
I undo the catch on my window to let in some fresh air, and the chapel clock chimes noon. Last night, I lay awake thinking about the stuff Immy told me about Alexander’s background and the car accident. The thought of what he and his sister went through makes me shudder even now. His father too; no matter what kind of pressure he’s placed on Alexander, it can’t have been easy for a man like that to raise two young children on his own, even with the help of the nanny I guess they had. Not that his family troubles are any concern of mine, especially as he hasn’t called again since yesterday. Hopefully, he’s finally given up hassling me.
And that makes you feel, how, Lauren?
‘Arghhh.’
I cross to the window as if I’ll find any kind of answer in the austere beauty of Wyckham’s Jacobean front quad, where the statues of its stern founders gaze back at me through sightless eyes. Voices drift up from the path that skirts the quad, and I spot one of the younger porters walking through the arch that leads into our staircase. His footsteps thump up the stairs, growing louder and louder until they stop outside my door, and then there’s a knock.
‘Lauren Cusack?’
He knows who I am already, but I open the door and play along. ‘Who wants to know?’
He grins. ‘There’s a courier in the Lodge with a parcel for you. Normally, we’d sign for it and we don’t allow strangers into college, but he says he won’t hand it over to anyone but you.’
The proverbial lightbulb clicks on in my mind. After the emergency trip to the ballgown emporium, I asked my mother to send over my Alexander McQueen dress in case I get invited to any more of these white-tie events.
‘OK. I think I know what that might be. Sorry you had to trudge up here. I’ll come down and collect it.’
Five minutes later I am in the anteroom of the Lodge, staring at the contents of the parcel, in shock. The package is not from my parents and it is not an Alexander McQueen gown. It is much smaller and it is from a different Alexander.
The Cartier necklace nestles in its box. It’s a white-gold chain with a trilogy of pink diamonds glittering in the light. It is classy, understated and just about the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I know from the design and the cut and colour of the diamonds that it must have cost tens of thousands of pounds.
And I cannot possibly accept it. Shut
ting the lid on the box, I dash out of the Lodge on to the street. The courier’s van is still parked outside and he is climbing into the driver’s seat. I run over and bang on the passenger window.
‘I can’t take this. You have to have it back.’
‘Miss?’ The window opens and he stares at me as if I’m a crazy woman, yet I know I’d be crazy to accept it. No matter how much I sympathize with what happened to his mother, the fact remains and always will: what Alexander wants, Alexander gets. He will do anything to get it. I feel as if I’m being hunted. I am his quarry. He never gives up. He has to win. He will do anything he can to get me into his bed. Including, it seems, buying me.
‘Take it back to the store.’ I drop the box on the passenger seat. ‘Please.’
‘Miss, wait!’
Too late. I’m running back to college, through the postern gate in the great oak door and along the quad to my room. By the time I’ve raced up the staircase, my lungs are about to burst, but I don’t care. I lie on the bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering why.
What made him think he could buy me? Does he think I’m that easy to manipulate? I can buy my own jewellery; I don’t need a guy to do it, yet the image of the necklace glittering in its box is seared on my memory. It was heart-stoppingly beautiful and also a symbol of how far apart we are in the way we view the world and our places in it.
I have work to do, but it proves impossible to concentrate over the afternoon. Every time I open a book or sit down at my iMac, my mind is filled with the necklace and why Alexander sent it. It was totally beautiful, a piece I’d have definitely picked out for myself if I could ever have justified the extravagance.
If it was simply to get my attention, then he has it. If it was a peace offering, it’s had the opposite effect. Why does this happen now, when I finally got my chance to be independent and start again, free from the expectations of my parents and Todd’s shitty behaviour? It feels as if Alexander Hunt has marched into my life when I so wasn’t looking for him and now he won’t leave me alone, like I’m some kind of challenge he has to conquer because he can or thinks he can. Even if I had been looking for someone, he’s the very last man on the planet I’d have chosen, no matter how much he drives me insane with lust. But, comes the rogue, inveigling whisper in the corner of my mind, he is the ultimate challenge for me.
Now I am sitting on the edge of the window, looking out over the rooftops of Oxford. The dome of the Radcliffe Camera is bathed in sunlight, with the finials and towers beyond pointing up to the sky. Bells chime, as they always do, and in the distance the fields and countryside dream under the sky. It is the classic idyllic Oxford scene that you can buy on a thousand postcards around the city. It is my dream, so why do I feel so confused?
I think of calling Immy as soon as she gets back from her tennis ‘lesson’ with Skandar at the sports centre, but I don’t want to play gooseberry and this is something I don’t feel I can share with her until I’ve composed myself. How will Alexander feel when he finds out I rejected his gift? Angry, hurt, upset? It gives me no pleasure or triumph to cause him pain yet I still know I’ve done the right thing. The wind rattles the window and it’s growing cold in here. I fasten the catch, and the bells are muffled. Everything is quiet as I sit on my bed, my knees hunched to my chest, before the peace is shattered by a barrage of thuds on my door.
Chapter Nine
‘Lauren. Open the door, please.’
‘Go away, Alexander.’
I hug my knees tighter as a brief silence is followed by more urgent taps.
‘No.’ His voice is louder now.
‘You’re wasting your time.’
‘If I have to sit here all night until you let me in, I’ll do it. I’ve spent the night in less comfortable places.’
I’m on the edge of the bed now, my heart beating faster.
‘Then you’ll have to sleep out there on the landing.’
His voice is loud through the wood. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
I jump up and hiss through the door. ‘Me? Ridiculous? Keep your voice down. Everyone in college will hear you.’
‘Good. Let them. I don’t care.’
Immy will be home soon and I don’t want her to hear this, or anyone else for that matter. Tentatively, I twist the Yale lock and open the door a few inches. Alexander paces the landing, grim-faced. The door squeaks and he rounds and stares at me like I’m an alien. Maybe he really didn’t expect me to open it.
‘You’d better come in before someone calls the porters.’
He gives a satisfied nod. ‘About time.’
What? I wish I hadn’t opened up, but it’s too late now and I back inside as he pushes his way in. He’s never been in my room before and, now he is, he seems to fill the space – although the walls, the floor, the furniture may as well not exist because Alexander has only one focus and that is me.
His blue eyes burn as he speaks in that quiet, unflinching voice. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘What do I think I’m doing? You’re the one battering down my door.’
‘A, I wasn’t battering it down. Believe me, you’d have known about it if that was the case. B, you call racing off like that at the ball nothing? Ignoring my every call and text, nothing? Throwing that necklace back in my face, nothing?’
I am furious at this. ‘You do know that your behaviour since the ball has verged on the stalker-ish?’
He grins as if I just handed him a huge compliment. ‘I’ll carry on stalking you until you see sense.’
‘You call sending me that ten-thousand-dollar necklace sensible?’
‘Actually, it was nearer twenty thousand.’ His smile is wicked and sexy and so wrong as he adds, ‘Pounds.’
‘That makes it worse. You can’t buy me no matter how wealthy or powerful you think you are.’
‘Buy you? I sent you the necklace because I thought you’d like it, and as for powerful? That’s a joke when you have me calling you ten times a day, unable to concentrate on my work, lying awake at night thinking about you in that dress and out of it!’
My nipples peak under my top at the vision of him peeling off my ballgown and my throat is dry as I answer, ‘Wow, I have to hand you full marks for frankness.’
‘Actually, I always get full marks for everything.’ The arrogant twist to his mouth drives me crazy in every sense of the word. ‘Come on, Lauren, let’s stop baiting each other and call a truce, although I have to admit the sparring is a massive turn-on.’
‘You get off on me insulting you?’
‘Oh, I get off on you all the time.’
His hands slip around my back and rest on my waist. Infuriatingly, I do not move. Even worse, I have an overwhelming urge to touch him back, but know that if I do there will be no going back.
‘And here’s me thinking that I’ve been driving you insane …’ I murmur, balling my fists at my sides.
‘You have, but not in the way you think. You surely can’t deny that you want to find out what would happen if we do call a truce for a while? How exciting this could be for both of us? Because, Lauren, you strike me as a woman who doesn’t back down from a challenge …’
My instinct ought to tell me I’m being sold a line, but the one instinct that truly matters is telling me to take the risk and embrace the danger – to revel in it My hands move to the waistband of his jeans, resting so lightly as I hover on the brink.
‘You know what I think?’ he says.
‘I’m never sure what you’re thinking, Mr Hunt.’
He laughs softly. ‘I think that you think I’m some kind of player who uses his charm to get girls into bed and then leaves them.’
I burst out laughing. ‘What charm?’
‘Exactly.’
I shake my head as much at myself as him and my resolve is melting as fast as an ice cube tossed into a hot drink. ‘All I’ve seen so far is a guy who’s frank to the point of being brutal, a sarcastic, domineering egomaniac who thinks the world should fal
l at his feet.’
‘I ought to warn you what will happen if you insult me again.’ His eyes shine with sensual threat. ‘I’ve never met a woman who’s given me so many sleepless nights.’
I want to believe him … the same way I wanted to believe Todd so many times and that makes me wary.
‘I’m not going to be flattered by that,’ I say, yet my voice has softened, and I am softening.
‘I can see that, but would you please tell me why you sent back the necklace?’
‘Because … it felt as if you were trying to buy me.’
‘I wasn’t. I was simply giving you a gift. I wanted to make you happy and I’m sorry it had the opposite effect.’
‘The necklace is truly fabulous, but you didn’t need to spend that kind of money to impress me.’
‘Lauren, of course I didn’t have to. I’m well aware you can buy your own jewellery.’
What can I say? My other jewellery has come from my family and my own occasional indulgence, but I’d never have dared splash out on a Cartier necklace.
‘You do like it?’ he asks, and the genuine doubt in his eyes is far harder to resist than his self-assurance.
I take a deep breath, knowing I probably just stepped off a cliff.
‘I love it.’
There. I’ve said it out loud and there’s no going back now. In seconds, he gathers me into his arms. His sweater is soft beneath my fingers as I push my tongue inside his mouth, longing to taste every part of him again. He deepens the kiss and it feels amazing, even better than at his house and at the ball. His fingers linger at the hem of my top and every nerve end tingles from my scalp to my toes.
‘Take this off.’ His voice is low and raw and my hands tremble a little as I slip my sweater over my head and toss it on the floor.
He sits on my bed and beckons me to stand between his thighs. I shiver a little as the cool air whispers over my skin. Alexander gathers me to him, his big hands settling on either side of my hips. When he rests his forehead on my midriff and inhales, as if he wants to breathe me in, the pleasure is so intense I tremble.
