The Final Seduction

by Sharon Kendrick

  ‘What’s wrong with my body?’

  ‘I told you before. It’s too skinny. Now drink a glass of this.’ And he poured out a red wine which smelt enchantingly rich and powerful.

  Shelley took a sip. It was.

  ‘Better?’

  ‘A bit,’ she answered grudgingly as she felt herself beginning to relax.

  ‘Now.’ He leaned back in his chair and looked at her. ‘Where do we start?’

  She heard the slight edge in his voice and looked down at her cutlery, deliberately misunderstanding him. ‘I think you just work from the outside in.’

  ‘Very amusing!’ He studied her from across the table. ‘Though I suppose it wouldn’t surprise you if I picked up my soup plate and started slurping from it?’

  ‘Oh, there we are on the defensive again!’

  ‘Only with you, kitten—only with you.’

  She sighed and reached out for a bread stick. ‘Just tell me what you want—’

  ‘In full and aching detail?’

  ‘Though maybe it’s time I told you.’ She snapped the bread stick cleanly in half and saw him wince. ‘Shall I explain exactly what happened that night with Marco?’

  ‘Why? Do you think it will change things?’

  No, she didn’t. Not change things in a fairy-story kind of way. But maybe change the way he felt about her. Eradicate some of the contempt. ‘What did you imagine happened, Drew? It was an innocent evening, followed by an innocent kiss. That’s all.’

  ‘That’s all?’ The blue blaze of his eyes lanced her like a javelin. ‘But you lied, Shelley. You lied to me. Didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I did!’ she admitted. ‘But think about why I lied! Because I was afraid of what you’d say if I told you the truth! I should have had the courage to do that, but I didn’t. And don’t you think that says a lot about the inequality in our relationship, Drew? That I didn’t dare tell you I had made a stupid mistake?’

  She had run from Marco’s car and into her mother’s house as though there had been demons on her heels. Which she supposed there had. And her mother had come downstairs to ask her what on earth was going on, alarmed when she saw Shelley’s white face.

  ‘Shelley, what’s happened? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong!’ Shelley snapped. ‘Nothing!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Just leave me alone, Mum,’ she begged. ‘Please.’

  Shaking uncontrollably, she locked herself in the bathroom and stripped all her clothes off and washed every bit of her body, scrubbing at her skin with soap and tepid water, like a punishment.

  But the clothes felt tainted—she knew that she would never be able to wear them again. She stuffed them into a plastic bag and was just bundling them into the garbage when a tall figure appeared from out of the shadows in front of her.

  She started with guilt. ‘D-Drew,’ she stumbled.

  ‘What’s the matter, Shelley?’ His voice sounded low, soft, deadly. She had never heard him speak like that before.

  ‘N-nothing’s the matter,’ she answered, much too brightly.

  ‘Really? But your face is very white, and look…your hands are shaking.’

  ‘Well, it’s…it’s cold.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ he agreed. ‘Far too cold to be putting the rubbish out, surely?’

  She should have come clean then. Should have blurted out the truth and taken all the disdain and condemnation he was prepared to throw at her. Then maybe she would have earned his forgiveness. But she was frightened. Frightened of what she had done and how Drew would react if she tried to explain that one mad moment of stupidity. So she did the worst thing possible.

  ‘Oh, well.’ She licked her lips nervously. ‘I just wanted to help my mother.’

  ‘How sweet.’ There was a pause. ‘What are you throwing away?’ he asked casually.

  Shelley jerked. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. I asked what you were throwing away.’

  And she made the lie a thousand times worse by attempting to put him down. ‘Surely you aren’t interested in the contents of my garbage bin, Drew?’

  ‘So you’re not going to tell me?’

  ‘Drew!’ Her heart was hammering.

  ‘Let me see.’

  ‘Drew—’

  ‘Let me see.’

  She turned away, her heart thumping so painfully that she thought she was about to die. But she didn’t hear the rustle of plastic as Drew withdrew the package she had just put in the bin, and she turned round again to find that he hadn’t moved. Misplaced hope made her look at him optimistically, praying that she had been given another chance.

  As soon as she saw his face she knew that her prayers had not been answered. It was dark and demonic, condemning and cruel—and her own crumpled in response.

  ‘Yes,’ he jeered softly. ‘Infidelity. It’s written all over your face as clearly as if you’d marked it with an indelible pen.’

  ‘I can explain—’

  ‘Explain what?’ he demanded coldly. ‘Explain that you went off with your fancy Italian playboy?’

  ‘Drew—’

  ‘Went drinking with him? Flaunting yourself at the Westward with him?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that—’

  ‘Like what? Like what everybody told me?’

  Shelley gave a silent sigh of relief. So he hadn’t seen her for himself. Oh, thank God. It was bad enough, but at least it could be rectified.

  ‘And that he bought you champagne and fed you olives with his fingers? And that you sat there, giggling like a girl of fifteen—’

  ‘Instead of an old woman of nearly twenty-one, you mean?’ she flared back at him, stung at the loathing which had hardened his face. ‘Whose fiancé keeps her on a leash?’

  He carried on as if she hadn’t spoken, and by losing some of its fire his voice had become even more dangerous, even more destructive. ‘And then he drove you back here in that monstrous-looking car of his—’

  ‘You’re just jealous!’

  ‘Of his car? I don’t think so. A man usually buys a car like that to compensate for certain…how shall I put it…inadequacies. You know what they say—big car, small…’ He let the unsaid word hang on the air, insultingly. ‘But you would know about that, wouldn’t you, Shelley?’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh, come on! Please don’t insult my intelligence by trying to play the innocent with me! I saw you! Okay?’ His voice shook. ‘Saw you with my own eyes!’

  ‘You…saw me?’ she stumbled in frozen disbelief.

  ‘Yes. Saw the way he was kissing you. I was standing watching, and it’s burned on my memory, kitten—’

  ‘Then you will also have seen that I jumped out of the car,’ she defended. ‘Won’t you?’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ he agreed. ‘Because I don’t think that even you would be so brazen as to have sex in the car in full view of your mother’s and your fiancé’s house!’

  ‘You’re mad! Completely mad!’

  ‘Yes, I think I must have been,’ he agreed evenly, only now there was something unrecognisable in his eyes which made her heart lurch with fear. And excitement.

  ‘Drew,’ she said warningly, only she could not work out what the danger was.

  ‘What?’ he answered softly. ‘What is it?’

  He pulled her into his arms and drove his mouth down onto hers in something which could never be described as a kiss. Not if a kiss was supposed to be a gesture of mutual desire and caring. Oh, the desire was there, all right—but nothing in the way of caring.

  ‘Drew!’ she gasped, through the hot anger of his breath.

  ‘What?’ He ground his mouth down harder and pushed his hand up underneath her sweater to roughly cup her breast, running his thumb across the nub with a fire and a fury that made her body cry out for his possession. And Shelley was appalled to feel her knees sag.

  ‘God, you’re really turned on, aren’t you?’ he breathed. ‘Did he get you all hot for me
, kitten?’

  She opened her mouth to object but he had pushed her up against the wall, kissing her little moans of protest away until they became tiny yelps of pleasure. And then his fingers were trembling at her denim skirt, buttons flying open, and his hand was splayed hotly on her thigh as he pressed against her urgently. Desire soaked her as she felt him hook her panties with an impatient finger, and then suddenly he made a choking kind of sound, and tore himself away from her, his breathing sounding like someone who had been starved of air for more than three minutes. Someone who was nearly dead.

  And something had died.

  She knew straight away what it was. The love which had always glittered in his eyes when he looked at her. And Shelley could have fallen to her knees and wept.

  He couldn’t speak for a moment and when he did he destroyed the last, lingering trace of hope.

  ‘You sicken me,’ he managed at last. ‘You sicken me beyond belief. Go to your rich lover, Shelley. Go give him what he wants. What you seem to want more than anything. Certainly more than decency and respect—’ And he turned on his heel and left as abruptly as he had arrived…

  Shelley looked at him now, through the candlelight which danced on the table before them. ‘You were so harsh and unforgiving, Drew. Don’t you know that I had to summon up every bit of nerve to come round to see you the next day? To make my peace?’

  ‘You had wounded my pride,’ he said simply. ‘Incapacitated me with your lies. I was afraid of my temper, afraid of what I might say, what I might do…’

  Jennie had come to the door, her face sour with disapproval.

  ‘Can I see him, Jennie? Please? To explain?’

  Jennie shook her head, struggling to come to terms with what she had obviously just been told about her best friend. ‘He won’t see you, Shelley. He’s made his mind up. He says he won’t ever see you again.’

  ‘Here—’ Tearfully Shelley began to tug the thin gold band with the tiny diamond from her finger. She wrenched it off. ‘You’d better give him his ring back!’

  ‘He won’t want it.’

  ‘Then tell him to melt it down! Or to keep it—to remind him of what a lucky escape he had!’

  Word filtered out around the village, and even her mother found it difficult to speak to her without looking as though she was going to be ill. She was whispered and talked about on the streets and several of the bolder youths from the housing estate made it very clear that her reputation had gone before her.

  Even Geoff, who had sold Marco the car at a substantial profit, was disapproving, but then he liked Drew. That was the trouble. Everyone did.

  Shelley felt isolated and marginalised and at the end of her tether. In despair she fished out the heavy ivory card which Marco had given her. He had written a London phone number on the back.

  ‘If you want to see me,’ he had purred, ‘then give me a ring.’

  She took the train up to London, feeling lost and very small in the noisy, bustling capital. And feeling very out of place in her cheap clothes when she met Marco in a hotel which was the last word in luxury.

  They sat together in the foyer and he seemed to notice her uneasiness as she stared indifferently at the bone-china cup of tea which stood cooling before her.

  ‘Let’s go for a drive,’ he said suddenly.

  He drove her out of town and parked the car by the river, and she told him everything that had happened. Afterwards they sat there in silence.

  ‘So what do you want to do?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Was that disorientated little voice really hers?

  ‘And you say it’s definitely over? Between you and this Drew?’

  ‘Definitely,’ she said flatly. ‘He saw us.’

  He said something in Italian and Shelley didn’t speak a word of the language at the time, but even she could work out that he was swearing.

  ‘Would it help if I spoke to him? If I took responsibility? Told him that things got a little out of hand, but that it was nothing more than that?’

  ‘Only if you want to get your face beaten in.’

  He put his hands on the steering wheel. He wore leather driving gloves which were as soft as skin. Gloves which probably cost as much as Drew’s entire week’s salary.

  ‘And you are a virgin.’ It was more of a statement than a question.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

  A sigh escaped from his mouth. She saw his hands grip and tighten around the steering wheel, saw the brief nodding of his head as he seemed to come to some sort of decision.

  ‘Let me tell you a little about myself,’ he said softly. ‘And afterwards you must decide whether you want to come to Italy with me.’ He turned, and gave her a blinding smile. ‘Mustn’t you?’

  To a young and mixed-up girl, it had seemed the only solution.

  ‘Madam?’

  Shelley looked up. The waiter had arrived with their first course. She kept her gaze fixed on the swirl of cream and chopped herbs which topped the soup, and it was seconds before she could find the courage to lift her face and look directly at Drew.

  Did he see her pain? Her regret? Was that why he was studying her so intently, as if uncertain of what she would do next?

  ‘It hurts to remember,’ he observed.

  ‘Of course it does.’

  ‘Didn’t you realise,’ he questioned softly, ‘that coming back to Milmouth would bring all those memories back? What did you think it was going to be like, Shelley?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t stop to think. But even if I had I think I would have come anyway. I can’t keep running away from the repercussions of what I did. It’s time I faced up to them and let them go. Maybe it’s time to bury the past, Drew—once and for all.’

  ‘And how are you going to do that?’

  ‘By accepting that I probably hastened my mother’s death…’ Her breath caught in her throat. ‘She was heart-broken by what I did—’

  ‘No, Shelley!’ he put in fiercely. ‘There are plenty of things you can beat yourself up about—but that isn’t one of them. Your mother’s death was premature, yes, but natural—the doctors all said so!’

  ‘But I didn’t come and see her for a year!’ she moaned. ‘And when I did it was too late—she was lying in a coma and couldn’t hear me!’

  ‘You couldn’t have predicted that would happen!’ he argued. ‘I went away from home for three years, remember? Something similar could have happened to me, but it didn’t. You were just unlucky.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hey!’ he said softly.

  She looked up at him. ‘What?’

  ‘Your mother got over your defection, you know, Shelley.’ His smile was almost gentle. ‘Mothers always do—once they realise they can’t plot out their children’s lives for them.’

  ‘You can’t know that!’

  ‘Yes, I can—because she told me.’

  ‘Did she? Really?’

  ‘Really,’ he nodded.

  ‘Oh.’ Some of the burden lifted from her shoulders. ‘I’m still sorry for what happened,’ she said simply. ‘And for the way it happened.’

  He gave a short laugh. ‘Me, too.’

  ‘I should have—’

  ‘Shh.’ He shook his head and the candlelight emphasised the honeyed gleam which tipped each dark strand. ‘We can’t change anything by wishing we’d behaved any differently. We just have to deal with what really happened.’

  ‘Oh, Drew!’

  He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Eat your soup, Shelley,’ was all he said.

  He didn’t say another thing as Shelley began to steadily eat her soup with the air of someone who had only just realised what hunger meant. Words would distract her, and she didn’t need any more distractions, not at the moment. Right now she needed to eat.

  He didn’t know what he had expected to feel about her. Over the years he had anticipated many reactions when he saw her again. If he saw her again. He had never been able to count on that, despite h
is own gut feeling, despite what her mother had once said to him. His favourite response to her had been one of complete indifference, but even in his most furious moments of denial he had known that one was a non-starter.

  His imagination had given her and the Italian at least one child together. And an idyllic relationship—in the way that other people’s relationships always looked idyllic. Frustration and hurt pride had subsided over the years, until they could be filed away as experience. He had convinced himself that he was well rid of the bitch.

  Yet life was never that simple. Something inside him had flared when he had seen her today on the beach, her fingers bare of rings. So was that simply lust? Fuelled by absence and the fact that he had never tasted her body in the way which had haunted his dreams for as long as he could remember?

  ‘Oh, that was good!’

  He watched as she finished the soup and put her spoon down, looking up at him with a glowing face which made her look about sixteen years old. Or seventeen…

  ‘You haven’t even touched yours,’ she observed.

  ‘No.’ He didn’t want it. He had lost his appetite. Or rather he’d lost that particular appetite. Another—sharper and much more intense—was raging inside him like a wild storm right now. ‘It’s grown cold. I think I’ll skip.’

  Shelley nodded and ate some bread, and he watched while the life and the colour came back into her cheeks.

  ‘So tell me about Milmouth,’ she said. Anything to distract him, to stop him from staring at her like that. Because she was feeling the strongest urge to push back her chair and grab him by the hand and pull him to his feet and… ‘Has it—er—changed at all?’

  He smiled. ‘What’s this? Distraction technique?’

  ‘It’s called making conversation!’ she snapped, thinking how perceptive he was.

  As opposed to making love, he thought ruefully, before he remembered. If he and Shelley did get physical, it would not be termed making love—not by anybody’s definition. Not now, and not after all that had happened. It would be explosive, probably amazing, and certainly shattering—sex. That was all.

  ‘Well, we have a good general store now, which is trying—and largely succeeding—to attract customers away from the big out-of-town stores. And there are a lot of arty-crafty people moving in—’