by Victoria Fox
‘I came out further than I meant to,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’
‘I’m afraid the lighthouse is off-limits,’ he told her. ‘No access here at all.’
She found his expression curiously blank. ‘Like I said, it was a mistake.’
They travelled back to Cacatra in minutes. Stevie looked behind her, the lighthouse diminishing, smaller and smaller, in their wake.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Bibi asked when she got back. Her friend was relaxing on a wicker lounger, legs tucked under her, magazine in hand, a long-forgotten smile on her face. Dirk Michaels had advised her to see a therapist while she was here—Cacatra had the best, he promised—and while Stevie knew Bibi wouldn’t be revealing the final details of Linus’s death, it seemed like the appointments, however they were being used, were having a positive effect.
‘Long story.’
‘I was getting worried! ’
Stevie sat down. ‘Good session?’
‘I think so.’ Bibi shrugged. ‘I got so relaxed I fell asleep!’
She surveyed the lunch menu. ‘I’m starved.’
‘Me too. Let’s order a feast.’
After they’d eaten, Stevie went on to the veranda to hang her bikini to dry. She noticed a couple of maids cleaning out the adjacent villa, efficiently stripping sheets and carrying bundles of linen across the walkway. That was strange. She had seen Rita Clay there only this morning—the women had met through Marty King—and could have sworn Rita told her she planned to stay another week.
Confused, Stevie checked the villa on her other side. No, she was positive it had been that one. Never mind, maybe something came up and Rita had been obliged to return home.
She made her way back inside. ‘Take a walk with me?’
Bibi yawned, stretching her arms high. ‘I’m kinda tired. Might sleep for a bit.’
Stevie hesitated. She’d wanted to broach the subject since they’d got here but hadn’t found the right time. Was there ever a right time to discuss what they needed to?
‘B, what are we going to do?’ she asked softly.
‘About what?’
‘You know about what.’
Bibi started packing a bag with beach things, even though she’d said she was staying in. ‘I’m not thinking about it. It’s over.’
Stevie was unsure whether to go on. ‘You can’t pretend it didn’t happen,’ she said.
Bibi snapped. ‘You feel sorry for him or something, is that it?’
‘Of course not. Never.’
‘Because it’s not like what I did to him even came close to what he did to me.’
‘I know.’
‘You can’t possibly know.’
‘I’m trying. I want to help you.’
‘Then let me forget it.’ Bibi was shaking. She vanished into the bathroom. ‘I don’t want to regret telling you, Steve,’ she said through the closed door.
After a moment, Stevie knocked gently. ‘Let me in?’
‘No.’
‘Telling me was the right thing. That isn’t in question.’
‘You’re saying I should confess.’
She chose her words carefully. Was it possible to live life by a moral compass when other people didn’t? Wasn’t everyone equally at sea?
‘No, actually, I’m not.’
‘I’m a murderer.’
‘Linus was evil,’ she said. ‘I’d have done the exact same thing.’
The lock on the door clicked. Stevie pushed it open and saw Bibi on the loo with her head in her hands.
‘But I do think you’re going to have to try and work this through,’ she continued, ‘if you want to get your life back. Otherwise it’s going to destroy you.’
‘You said you owed me,’ Bibi said quietly. ‘Do you remember? When you won the Lauren audition?’
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘So this is it. This is when I get to cash in.’ She looked up. ‘Please, Steve, I want to forget it happened. I want to forget. That’s why I’m here, in the middle of the goddamn ocean, in the middle of nowhere. I’m praying that by the time we go back—’ she gestured around, as if the bullshit of LA were something she could clear, like steam ‘—people will have moved on, and it won’t have to be the first thing I see or hear or think about every single day when I wake up. So leave it,’ she finished. ‘All right?’
Stevie rested her head against the doorframe. ‘All right.’
That Friday, she got her period. It happened unexpectedly, when she was swimming. She’d been late, just a few days but wondering all the same … if. If she was, it meant being able to have a family. If she was, then there was nothing the matter with her. If she was, then she could go back to Xander with the news and that would make everything all right. But she had known, really, the moment she’d woken that morning and felt the scrape in her gut.
She was hurrying back to the villa, wrapped in a towel, when, eyes down on the beach, she ran straight into JB Moreau. Embarrassingly she sort of collapsed into him and he had to gather her, holding her at arm’s length like a puppy brought out of a box.
‘My fault,’ he said. ‘Didn’t see you coming.’
Stevie’s mind was blank, aware of the pressure of his touch on her shoulders. At the Vegas event she had thought him handsome, but in proximity he was magnetic in that way so particular to dangerous men. There was a look in his eye that reminded her of her first day working at Simms & Court. How she’d entered his office, primed for direction, and he’d turned from the window to face her and everything in his expression had said: This is inevitable. Once you gave away an innocent heart, you could never get it back.
‘I don’t think we’ve met.’ JB extended his hand. ‘Jean-Baptiste, call me JB. I’m a business partner of Reuben’s. We look after the island.’
Stevie found herself drawn involuntarily to his eyes, which were of a startling, unusual blue. She shook his hand firmly, registering the quiet strength of his grip.
‘Stevie Speller.’
‘Yes, I know.’ That smile again—it was killer. ‘Xander’s wife.’
The observation struck her as blunt and a little rude. ‘I prefer not to think of myself as just someone’s wife,’ she said, aware she sounded stuffy.
‘Xander’s not just someone,’ JB countered, dark humour in his voice that she couldn’t account for. Stevie had the sense he was feeling his way, aiming to grasp how much Xander might have told her. ‘He’s an old friend of mine.’
Old adversaries.
JB waited for her to confirm or deny her knowledge. She decided to do neither, though it was beyond tempting to ask him to elaborate on their relationship.
‘How is he?’ he asked smoothly. ‘It’s been a while.’
‘Fine,’ she said carefully. ‘We’re very happy.’
He smiled. Stevie saw his teeth were very nearly straight but not quite, the imperfection, as with the scar, adding to his weird beauty. His canines were slightly sharp, giving his mouth a malevolence. ‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ he said. ‘We used to know each other well.’
Stevie returned the smile, close-lipped.
‘Well, it was good to meet you,’ she said, backing away.
‘Likewise,’ JB said. ‘Perhaps we’ll run into each other again?’
‘Perhaps.’
As Stevie crossed the bridge to the villa she sensed his eyes on her back. Despite the searing heat, cold seeped down her spine like syrup dripping from a spoon.
41
Lori
Lori was due to return to LA the following morning. She had been on Cacatra for eight weeks.
Island life suited her. ‘It better had,’ said Jacqueline when she told her she was coming home. ‘Your schedule’s back-to-back.’
‘And Peter?’
‘Gone quiet. Moreau was right about this break—it was for the best.’
Lori hadn’t seen him for days. He had been tied up in meetings with Reuben van der Meyde. She wasn’t sure what the connection was between
the men but recalled Desideria telling her JB ran a number of pursuits separate to the fashion house and decided this must be one of them. While it was tempting to read more into his attentiveness during her stay on Cacatra, as she was a Valerie Girl owned by La Lumière it stood to reason he would make the effort.
But then she would think of the time he had taken her out in his boat and caught a fish the size of a violin, slipping his thumb into its mouth to kill it; or when he’d dived with her, moving through underwater shadows and across knuckles of pink coral; or the way he was with the child Ralph, like an elder brother, how it lit him like a flame in a glass; or how he’d held on to her that day she’d hurt her ankle—and all the longing would seep back in, under the door she’d closed on it, insistent and everywhere, like trying to hold back a furious river with only her hand.
He invited her to dinner that night. One of his assistants came to Villa 19 just as the light was fading behind Cacatra’s serrated silhouette. Lori was pulling her bags together for the early-morning departure, holding close items of clothing and breathing them in, wanting the scent of the island to travel with her. But clothes, like memories, would be washed clean: replaced, renewed, until they forgot the places they’d been.
It was a relief to know she would see him one last time before she left. She fully expected him to withdraw the moment they were back in America. It was wise. JB Moreau was unavailable, in every sense of the word.
‘Give me an hour,’ she told the assistant, even though she could have returned with him. It was an hour to sit at the window of her villa and embrace the view that had become over the past two months as familiar and beloved as the one from her childhood bedroom, when her mama was still alive and life was laid out ahead of her in its glory. What it was, she saw now, was possibility. Chances. A view, plain and simple.
She made her way to JB’s villa along the beach. His had a wide veranda carved out of the rock—she’d been up once before when he’d taken her on a tour of the island—and, up on the terrace, she was surprised to find a table set for two, covered in long white linen and overlooking the sea. An ice bucket was positioned to one side, chilling champagne.
JB was standing at the balcony, his back to her, head tilted towards the stars. He was smoking a cigarette.
‘It’s not meant to be romantic,’ he said, without turning round. ‘Chef must have thought I was dining with my wife.’
Lori wasn’t sure what to say. ‘I didn’t think it was.’
He ground out the half-smoked cigarette on the chalky wall, where it left a smoky grey smudge. ‘Sit down.’ He gestured to the table. His eyes were changed, she saw, the pupils large so they swallowed the blue, as though staring down infinite distances had at last absorbed the dark immensity of sea and space. ‘Relax.’
The food was delicious: tender pale mussels and hunks of salted bread, raspberry and chocolate fondant that dissolved on her tongue. They shared a bottle of Krug and Lori began to feel drunk. The sky was in limbo of deep purple. Water contained them like glittering ink. Candles were lit and the glow accented each contour of JB’s face: near-blackness around his mouth and eyes, through which she would occasionally capture a flash of sapphire, glinting sharply like treasure on the ocean floor.
‘Come for a walk,’ he said when they finished. He saw her hesitate and held out his hand. ‘There’s nowhere like the beach this time of night.’
Lori took it, but only to stand, and released his grip before he had the chance to do it first.
The sand was wet between her toes. Firm, compacted, solid ground, yet comprised of grains so tiny that alone they were invisible. She loved how the sea came in on its rhythmic tide, smoothing it over again and again like a mother’s palm across a fevered forehead.
‘You see why I choose to be here,’ he said. They walked in quiet, only the sound of the lapping waves for company.
Lori turned, unable to make out any detail. He was nearest the shore, against the moon, so that its light was absorbed by the side she couldn’t see, drawing him a blank shape.
‘It’s not hard to imagine,’ she said.
‘No?’
‘Living on Cacatra. Being happy. It’s the first place I’ve felt that way about since my mother died.’
She thought he moved closer, walking so their arms would touch, could touch, if she wanted them to. In the same moment she remembered JB’s own parents, Paul and Emilie Moreau, who had both died so horrifically when he was a child.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘that was insensitive.’
‘Because I’m an orphan?’ The word conjured images of filthy abandoned children, weak and shivering and alone—not JB, with his wealth and sex and the cold fire that burned in his eyes. ‘Your pain is no less legitimate.’
They continued in silence, but it was comfortable, understood, as when confidences are shared and each tentative word valuable. Lori looked behind her. The house they’d come from was a twinkling cluster in the distance.
‘I was fourteen.’ JB stopped and turned to the ocean. ‘I never wanted to see water again. Now, I can’t imagine any other way than to be surrounded by it.’
‘Fourteen is young.’
‘Any age is difficult.’
He crouched, picked up a roughened stick and carved a wide arc in the sand, from left to right. Lori lowered herself down next to him.
‘We lost control of the boat,’ he said, his voice strange, too low, as though he was trying to get far enough beneath the words to support them. ‘One minute we were together. The next, they were gone. I lost them.’
Lori closed her eyes. She pictured the jumping, steaming waves. Grey, brown, violent.
‘There was nothing I could do. I watched them both drown.’
She put her hand on his arm. Once upon a time she might have thought better of it, but now it came naturally. Whatever misunderstandings and embarrassments had gone between them in the past, she wanted to be his friend. She owed him that.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
JB looked up. There was sadness in him, such deep loneliness, deeper than Rico’s that day in the parking lot, deeper than her father’s, deeper than her own.
‘Do you believe in God?’ he asked. His expression was determined, as though he sought not just her faith but the absolute answer. He needed to know.
‘I used to,’ she said. ‘Didn’t everyone?’
Reclaiming the stick, JB swept through the arc, completing the circle around them. He had to lean across her to do it and his proximity was hard to bear.
‘Afterwards, I lay on deck,’ he said. ‘The storm had passed. The sky was purple, like a painting. They were the worst hours. Me and God, with nothing to say.’
‘Were you alone?’
‘Our boat had been reported missing. They came for me.’
She studied his face, knew the truth before she asked for it. ‘Were you hurt?’
JB raised a finger to the scar on his mouth. ‘Only this. I slipped trying to reach them and it cut right open. The wound was deep. It took a long time to heal.’ He shook his head. ‘Sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? But it felt like they were reminding me.’
‘Who?’
‘My mother and father. Even after the stitches were out, every time I went to smile, it hurt. It felt like they were reminding me of what I’d let happen.’
‘But you didn’t let anything happen,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘Maybe.’
A wave rinsed up to Lori’s feet. ‘Do you feel close to them on Cacatra?’ she asked.
‘Close?’ The word was acutely, painfully intimate.
‘Here more than anywhere. Because you used to—’
He took her chin in his hands and kissed her.
It happened just like that. She must have turned at the exact same moment because they were sitting side by side and then they were kissing, and there wasn’t anything else in between.
JB’s lips were soft and inquisitive, sure
and firm, and when he broke away Lori felt like a parched desert-wanderer given a thimble to drink. She needed more. She had to have more.
This time they went for each other, his hands running down her body, mouth on mouth, body against body, aching with burn. Switched like a light, flooding her with glow. She was thrown back on to the sand, JB’s fingertips trailing a line down her neck as he kissed her earlobe and her chin and then her mouth again and his hand moved lower. Lori felt him cross her breast and her body shook. She shivered with heat.
‘Do you want this?’
‘Yes.’ Such a small word for the emotion it betrayed: months of devotion, of hatred, of confusion, of dreaming of this. She yearned for all of JB Moreau, his entirety, his body and soul.
His hand was on the inside of her thigh. Damp in her knickers. The sand was still warm and Lori imagined her body was fire, scorching the earth beneath. When his touch disappeared inside her she moaned, spilling on to him, reaching down to grip his forearm and clasp him to her. She could not see his face, a black outline against the sky blacker still. Only the wide eye of the moon gazed down at her, full and brimming with light.
He kissed her again, his tongue in her mouth. Water washed between them, the tide coming up, thick with salt and cold and raw. She unbuttoned his shirt, running her palms across his chest, the smell of him accompanying the parting of the material, as if he were a window she had opened on a summer’s day.
‘Are you a virgin?’ he breathed.
She could barely speak for the blood in her voice. ‘Yes.’
His hardness pressed between her parted legs. Never had a sensation been so consuming, the promise of euphoria that was too much to bear.
The instant he entered her, Lori came alive. Lightheaded, she swam in infinite depth, JB’s strong arms pulling her to him, saving her, holding their bodies together. The pain was searing and momentary, followed at once by immeasurable pleasure. Feeling him inside, joined with him, as one, riding his rhythm, she would be content to die right here, now, on this island, and float out to sea, her body spent, this union spelling all it had ever been and ever would be.
