‘Lucie.’
It was his voice. Deep and commanding. She ignored it.
‘Hey, what do you think you’re doing?’
The waiter stopped his trolley as she felt her arm pulled back and heard Dante’s voice hissing in her ear.
She spun round to face him. ‘Get your hands off me! Don’t ever touch me again!’ she hissed.
He grabbed her by the hand and put his arm around her so quickly that in seconds he had steered her down a harshly lit, plushly carpeted corridor. Her heels sank and snagged as she walked. And then he stopped, turned and twisted her round.
‘Get off!’ she spat, tugging out of his grip.
‘Do not speak to me like that.’
‘Like what? You deserve it.’
‘For what? Dancing?’
‘I couldn’t give a damn if you dance with an entire troupe of naked go-go dancers—but not tonight! Not when you invited me here as your partner. Even though you’ve spent the past five hours making it perfectly clear to me and everyone else that that’s the last thing I am!’
‘It was only a dance. I know her. She’s an old friend, for God’s sake.’
‘It looked to me as if you’d like to get to know her a whole lot better. Your hands were all over her backside. Is that it, Dante? Have you spent too long with just one woman? Did it all get a bit stale after—what?—five days? Are you reminding yourself what its like to have your pick? Just to reassure yourself that your commitment phobia is absolutely the right thing to have?’
For a moment it was as if a torch had been lit behind his eyes. For a moment she saw through the glare to the man. Anger. Passion. His eyes were like bright blue flames. Fire inside. And then as quickly it was doused.
‘I was having a dance with an old friend. And you made a fool of yourself.’
‘Yes, I did, didn’t I? By agreeing to this stupid charade. But there’s no point crying about it. We’ve only got a few hours left, and then we can chalk this one up to a very bad experience.’
‘You don’t mean that. We had a great time.’
‘Had a great time. Had. Until you turned out to be a deluded liar. Now, get out of my way.’
She pushed past him. The corridor stretched ahead. Candelabra stuck out like wizened brass claws, grasping into the empty air. Ugly oil paintings of pastoral scenes in hugely ornate frames studded each wall. A little girl in a wide skirted dress with a satin bandeau ran past her, chased by another, laughing and screaming.
‘Lucie!’
‘Go to hell,’ she said to the stagnant breeze.
Too angry for tears, she kept her head high and her chest out. She passed by the bathrooms. Too late now to hide out. She made her mind up to go on. The hateful crowd and the throbbing music were drawing her like some hideous harpies, luring her to the rocks.
The ballroom itself was thronged with people, slowed by the seven-course dinner and made noisy by wine. She paused for a second, to locate Eleanor and the others. She had to say her goodbyes. It was the least she could do. And then she could simply leave. It would be that easy. Leave and grieve and get on with her life.
‘Lady Lucinda—how lovely to see you here in New York. And with the Woman of the Year Lifetime Achievement recipient herself! May we ask how you are connected?’
Lucie stared into the overly made up face of a reporter who had materialised from thin air. She could see thick lines of kohl eyeliner drawn around each slightly wrinkled eye, every mascaraed spike of her eyelashes, the slight smudge of her lipstick where it had bled past her mouth. She saw the scratchy black head of the microphone that had been thrust under her nose and the camera that sat on some man’s shoulder.
‘I...I...’
She stepped back, suddenly aware of the aeons of time and space that were opening up all around her as the woman waited for her to finish the sentence. She could sense a wave of movement as people close by turned their heads to watch, and she tried again to speak. But the voices had started in her head. Chattering on in their infernal way, telling her that she wouldn’t be able to answer, that she would let her mother down and her father down. And now, to add to it all, Eleanor Hermida, who radiated such composure, would know that silly, ungainly Lucinda Bond couldn’t even answer a simple question.
Her legs began to shake and her heart raced, and a sickening black fog suddenly began to fall all around her. The sea of people became a yawning pit of faces, greedy for her failure. She felt vomit rise.
And then she felt him.
Dante’s arm was upon her shoulders and he pulled her to his side. He held her cold, clammy hand in his, and then there was his voice in her ear, telling her to breathe. She did. She breathed. And she felt him nuzzle the side of her face, felt his lips on her cheek.
Fear trumped anger—but love trumped fear.
She let him.
‘Well, that answers one question!’ said the reporter as she beamed a smile right into the camera. ‘I guess you’re here to give respect to Eleanor Hermida? You’ve heard for yourself of her many accomplishments this evening. What do you want to add for the people back home?’
Lucie lifted her chin and smiled. Those spiky mascaraed eyes were still blinking at her, but the reporter’s face was beaming in an expectant smile. She felt the air pass through her nose, her throat. In and out slowly. She felt her mouth opening. She looked into the square black box of the camera.
‘She’s a wonderful woman,’ she said.
It wasn’t exactly the Declaration of Independence, but for Lucie it was the speech of her life.
The reporter nodded enthusiastically and then whooped off with her crew to another group. Lucie stood, stunned. Her heart pounded in her ears and her cheeks burned like firebrands. The mental chatter started up again in her head, but this time it was cheering her on. She had done it. She had actually overcome the sickness and formed a sentence in front of strangers. In front of the world. She had found her voice.
She turned to look at Dante. He had helped her. He had given her that little push of confidence, shown that bit of faith—all she needed—but she had done it herself.
But no amount of well-timed pecks on the cheek could erase what he had done to her this evening.
‘Thanks,’ she said. And turned to walk away.
‘Lucie, wait,’ he said. ‘I owe you an apology.’
She stopped in her tracks, waited until he came level with her.
‘We owe each other nothing. Remember?’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE COPPER-PLATED ELEVATOR moved at a sedate pace. Lucie stared at their silent shimmery reflections. The doors opened into their suite, lit lamps glowed. Lucie walked in ahead of him—ten steps across parquet, three steps down on silk-carpeted stairs. She longed to rip the heeled shoes from her feet and hurl them in the bin, to get out of the dress, the underwired bra and the Brazilian thong and throw open the window and launch them into the night air. She longed to be free of this whole experience.
‘I hope your mother enjoyed her evening,’ she said instead. ‘Despite your glacial mood.’
‘It was a sham, and you know it. The whole thing. End to end.’ He walked on through the lounge, unfastened his cufflinks—one then the other—his words as wooden as the floor.
‘So now it’s your mother’s fault you’re in this awful mood?’
He sat on the bed heavily, as if he really was made of rock. Shoes came off, tie was flipped open, pulled off and cast aside. Shirt swiftly unbuttoned. He stood then. Faced her. Peeled it off. And there he was in all his pure male form, and her eyes burned with the image.
‘My relationship with my mother is not up for discussion.’
‘Perhaps not. But your relationship with me is.’
He almost flinched when she said the word ‘relationship’. His eyes squeezed shut, just for a second, but there was no mistaking it.
‘I owe you an apology and I meant it. I should never have asked you to do this. It was naïve of me to think that you and I could pul
l this off without someone reading more into it than there is.’
‘“Someone” meaning me?’
‘I thought I was clear, Lucie. I tried to be clear that this was only a short-term affair. I said at the start that there would be no happy-ever-after.’
‘Yes, you were honest. At the start. But things changed, Dante. I know they did. For both of us.’
He looked at her, but there was no light, no life in his eyes—as if there was no audience to play to any more. She’d never seen him like this. Never seen him so closed down. The contrast between her Dante and this was unbearable. She couldn’t comprehend it.
‘What are you going to say next, Dante? That none of those things happened? That you didn’t say you loved me? Of all the things I pegged you for, being a liar wasn’t one of them!’
He stared at her. And she saw it again—she’d penetrated his mask. His eyes were lit up and his mouth was a thin, angry line.
‘Good try, Princess. But it isn’t going to work. I learned a long time ago not to take the bait.’
‘Why do you think everything is a game? I’m not baiting you! I’ve had it now. All I want is to understand why you did what you did. Why you spent all that time...’
Her voice trailed off as she furiously bit down on the giant sob that had risen like a fist into her throat.
‘Why you spent all that time loving me. Because that’s what you did, Dante. You made love to me.’
He unfastened the strap of his watch—his grandfather’s watch. The one he’d been wearing when he’d hauled her onto his speedboat. The minute they’d got to the Hamptons he’d had it picked up and repaired. For a moment she recalled the joy in his face when he’d got it back—real joy.
He slid it off and cradled it in his hand, then walked to the bedside table and laid it down gently, lovingly. And in that single motion she saw a flicker of something—something worth saving. Something worth all the effort in the world.
She paced towards him, arms out, imploring.
‘Maybe if you explained what happened? Maybe if you opened up about it?’
‘Opened up about what? I’m not the guy you want me to be. That’s it.’
‘You know what I’m talking about, Dante. You’re capable of love but you’ve made up your mind that you don’t want it because of whatever it was that happened all those years ago.’
‘Whatever it was? I was a fifteen-year-old, having a love affair with a woman twice my age. If you could call it that. Miss di Rosso. She was supposed to teach us science.’ He scoffed woodenly at the word. ‘Taught me plenty of other stuff. Is that what you want to hear? Are you shocked, Lucie?’
He looked right at her now.
‘You in all your first-time innocence.’
‘I’m not so innocent now. Why don’t you let me in? I could help, Dante—I’m sure I could.’
But he just shook his head, as if she was a memory herself—a fading figment of his imagination.
‘Celine di Rosso...’ He lifted his grandfather’s watch. ‘I would have done anything for her. Anything she wanted. I stole this watch.’ He lifted it up, showed it to her from across the room. ‘From my own grandfather. She wanted nice things, good times. She thought I had money. Of my own. I stole this to sell it, to pay for us to have sordid sex in a sordid motel out of town.’
Lucie watched, mesmerised. His face shifted from glazed and expressionless to anger, revulsion.
‘I pawned my grandfather’s watch so that I could take that woman to a sleazy dump and have sex with her because that was what she wanted. And what Celine wanted, Celine got. Every time.’
‘But she was your teacher, Dante. You weren’t old enough to know what was going on—she was abusing you!’
He made a face, replaced the watch on the bedside table and stared down at it.
‘And I let her. We all have choices. I was old enough to know what I was getting myself into. I just wasn’t smart enough to know how to get myself back out.’
‘But surely she was terrified that someone would find out? Surely she saw it was going to end in disaster?’
‘Terrified? She wasn’t afraid of anything. She was a manipulative, crazy bitch. She wanted control—in everything. Where we went. When. What we did. What gifts she was to get. And when I started to wake up—when I began to call time on her demands—that’s when things started to get really heavy.’
He looked round the room, as if seeking some sort of distraction.
‘Anyway, you don’t want to know this stuff. It’s all in the past.’
‘But it’s haunting your present.’
A jug of water stood on a sideboard between two lamps. Four crystal tumblers and a small silver ice bucket. A tiny bowl of sliced fresh lemon. She followed his gaze as he walked over and began to pour himself a glass of water. Carefully he picked up the tongs, opened the ice bucket and dropped in three cubes. He swilled the glass, stared at it.
‘It’s all in the past,’ he said again, his voice hollow.
‘That woman did you a disservice, Dante. She was in a position of trust and she abused that trust. And now you have a terrible view of all women because of that. She was unstable.’
He swallowed the water, drained the glass, placed it on the table.
‘She blew my mind—and then she blew her own. Called me on the phone while she did it. I heard the gun. I was on my way to see her at the boathouse where we would meet. I was going to tell her it was over. She beat me to it.’
Lucie felt her hand fly to her mouth. ‘Oh, my God. I’m so sorry.’
‘That’s when I really learned the meaning of the phrase “emotional blackmail”. It doesn’t get more emotional than that.’
He picked up the glass and tipped the ice cubes into his mouth, crunched them.
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘There’s nothing to say. It happened. Life moves on.’
‘But not yours. Your life is stuck. Normal people don’t act like that. She seduced a boy half her age and then—then killed herself. It’s possible you have such a jaded view of women because you went through all that.’
‘Don’t psychoanalyse me, Lucie. I’ve spent years going over what happened—I don’t need your ten-second therapy.’
Hot sharp tears sprang to her eyes. He walked back over to the bedside, oblivious.
‘I’m not psychoanalysing you. I’m only trying to understand you.’
He pulled his phone from his pocket and stood staring at it, each broad groove and cleft of muscle and bone in his chest and shoulders in light and shade from the lamps. Lucie could feel her fists bunching in the watery satin of her dress, could feel the world she’d thought she’d found slipping away as the ravine between them yawned into a gaping gorge. Soon there would be no way back.
‘What time do you want to go to the airport? I don’t think joining the family for breakfast is the best idea.’
She had to try one more time.
‘Dante—you did more for me than anyone has ever done. You helped me—you rescued me! You showed me things and mended me and...’
Tears oozed from her eyes. She wiped them furiously.
‘You told me loved me, Dante.’
Her voice closed over those last words—words that were her lifeline. She had thrown it out and all she could do now was watch to see if he would catch it.
Still and silent he stood. As perfect a figure of a man as it was possible to imagine. But only so much of him was flesh and blood. He was a man whose heart was stone.
She felt the tracks of her tears as they streaked down her face. She felt the painful lump form in her throat. She tried to swallow as the entire room slipped into a series of glazed shapes. She longed for him to come to her, to hold her, cradle her.
‘I’m sorry, Lucie. It should never have happened.’
He walked into the bathroom.
And closed the door.
In the silence of the room candles flickered skittishly, mockingly doubled in each
mirror’s glare. Each flame a tiny glassy yellow flicker, dancing in the dim light.
There was the dull sound of the shower... The deadened hubbub of the never sleeping streets... The sounds of life starting up again...
She had done what she could. She had truly tried to make him see. But he was locked in his own glass coffin, frozen in time, living a life with the guarantee of never being hurt again. Because how could he be hurt if he kept his heart buried away?
He would have his fun—he would have his parties and his women. And in time when she heard his name she might remember him fondly. But right now she had to put as much distance and time between them as she could. She had to get herself away from the sight of him, the scent of him, the sense of him.
She couldn’t see that body one more time and know she would never feel those arms around her, never lay her face against his smooth firm chest... Never hear her name from his lips...the way he rolled the ‘L’...the way he smiled when he said ‘Princess’...
To know that those moments of wakening together, when he’d gather her into his arms, press himself into her back, slip inside her...to know that it would never happen again.
Tears coursed freely down her face. She saw nothing but images of Dante. Facing her open-mouthed on his speedboat, mocking her as he stood between the turtle posters, beaming with two dimples and lifting her, spinning her in the air at Little Hauk. Walking along the beach.
Huge, silent sobs racked her body as the shower continued to flow.
She wiped her hands across her eyes, her nose and cheeks. She gathered up her bag and her passport. Her phone.
She looked around to see the debris of their day, but it was too painful now. She couldn’t bear to see their shared things, his things she’d never see again.
She crossed the opalescent carpet, moved up the three steps and onto the landing. Back across the parquet floor. She pressed the button and waited for the copper-tinted elevator.
Two steps in, she turned. The doors closed. Her own image, alone, was the reflection now.
The Argentinian's Virgin Conquest Page 14
