“Don’t overreact,” she told herself sternly. “You’re meeting a dealer, with a view to buying a ring. It’s no different to walking into a jewelry store.”
Danny’s blue eyes, kind face, and sonorous, deep English accent had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.
Later that evening, Danny sat alone at a corner table at Jean Paul’s, a minuscule café-cum-bistro around the corner from his apartment, wiping his sweating palms on the tablecloth and wishing he didn’t feel so sick with nerves.
What if she stood him up? It wouldn’t be the end of the world, he told himself. God knew he’d been stood up by enough women in the past. But somehow tonight’s date with Diana—if it was a date; was it a date?—had assumed massive, terrifying significance. He didn’t know what it was about her—that combination of beauty, vulnerability, and a repressed spirit yearning for release—that was so hard to describe, or even capture in his memory. But she’d gotten to him in a way that no woman had since…well, since ever, really.
He was well aware how ridiculous all this was. He barely knew the woman; she was married and way out of his league on almost any scale you cared to measure: wealth, breeding, beauty, and probably brains too. For this reason, he’d said nothing about today’s activities to Jake, or indeed to anyone. If he crashed and burned with Diana, he wanted to do it in private.
“You still wait, or you wanna order now?” The surly, pinch-faced waitress stood sullenly at his elbow awaiting a response. Danny had been coming to JP’s for years, addicted to the outstanding food and the cozy candlelit atmosphere. But the service was without doubt the worst in all Manhattan.
“I’ll wait,” he said firmly, watching the waitress grimace as though he’d just squirted lemon juice in her eye. “She’s not very late yet. Give us a few more minutes.”
The harridan shuffled off, muttering something half audible about “obviously a no-show” and “waste of a table.” Danny wasn’t a religious man, but he closed his eyes and said a little prayer that she was wrong.
“Sorry I’m late.”
When he opened his eyes again, the first thing he saw was Diana, radiant in a floaty cream lace sundress and sandals, dancing her way through the maze of tables like an angel.
“I know it sounds insane, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t being followed, so I took a bit of a circuitous route.”
Danny’s eyes glowed with relief.
“I’m just glad you’re here,” he said, beaming. “Please, sit down. I’ll get us a bottle.”
The waitress, who’d been buzzing around his table like a fly on a turd for the last twenty minutes, now seemed intent on ignoring him. But he wasn’t bothered by the delay. As far as he was concerned, the longer this evening lasted, the better.
“Perhaps we should get the business part out of the way first,” said Diana, reaching into her white Mulberry handbag and pulling out a crisp JP Tyler check. “Fifteen thousand. It’s from my private account, so Brogan needn’t know.”
Danny relieved her of it, handing over the ring box with a frown. “Are you always so nervous about your husband’s reactions?”
Diana began playing awkwardly with her napkin.
“You’re buying a ring, not a shipment of uncut heroin. Would he really care?”
She laughed bitterly. “Yes, he’d care. He’s a generous man, but he likes to be the one to buy my jewelry.”
“Controlling, then?” asked Danny. It was a dangerously personal question to put to a woman he’d just met. But something about Diana gave him the feeling that she was burning to open up to somebody. “You mentioned being followed.”
“I suppose he is controlling.” She was staring at the napkin again, as if it were a map that could somehow lead her out of her troubles. “He doesn’t see it that way, though. To him, it’s a way of showing love. He thinks it’s his job to protect me. Like a child or an endangered species or something.”
“He sounds like a right nut-job,” said Danny robustly.
Diana laughed. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m the nut-job, as you put it, for sticking with him.”
“Yeah.” Danny looked at her seriously. “Maybe you are.”
As the evening wore on and the wine started to flow, conversation came more easily. They chatted happily about everything from art to politics to the diamond business. Danny was surprised to learn how little she knew about the nitty-gritty of Brogan’s vast mining empire.
“I know he had political problems in Africa years ago, and that’s why he pulled out,” she said, lassoing a stray linguine onto her fork. “Moving to Russia was supposed to put a stop to all of that, but he’s gotten a lot of flak recently for conditions in his mines.”
“D’you think that’s unfair?” asked Danny, genuinely curious. Diana looked surprised by the question.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never been there. From what I understand, the workers have more rights with O’Donnell Mining Corp. than they had before, working for the Russian government.”
Danny smiled. “Isn’t that a bit like saying that AIDS is better than cancer? I mean, a shit life is a shit life, isn’t it?”
“That’s what my husband’s opponents say,” said Diana. “He’s become quite obsessed with these Trade Fair people. He thinks they’re against free enterprise. He particularly loathes the English girl, the one who accosted him at the Tiffany party. She’s a friend of yours, isn’t she?”
“Scarlett? Not really,” said Danny. “My brother wants to get into her pants. Then again, that applies to half the women in London, so I wouldn’t say they were exactly close.”
“Do you support her campaign?”
Danny thought about it for a minute. “No,” he said. “Not really. I hate to agree with your bloody awful husband, but I think she’s naive. The diamond industry is grossly unfair, granted, but then show me a business that isn’t. Not that I approve of the conditions in Yakutia, especially in your old man’s mines.”
They finished their entrées, and silence fell for a moment as the hostess with the leastest cleared away the plates. Although the restaurant was full, the low buzz of muffled conversation acted as an effective sound barrier, and their corner table felt safely intimate. Covered with a simple red cotton tablecloth and lit by a single candle, it was also dark enough to hide in, the low light and cramped physical space—Danny’s knee was necessarily brushing Diana’s under the table—lending it an unavoidably romantic air.
Whether it was this, or the wine, or a more general sense of panic that the meal was drawing to a close, Danny found himself reaching across the table for her hand and blurting out the question he’d been dying to ask all night. “Why do you stay with him? I mean, it’s obvious you’re unhappy. And it’s not like you have any children together or anything.”
To his horror, at the mention of the word “children” Diana burst into tears.
“Oh, darling, no, please don’t cry,” he said, passing her a clean handkerchief from his jacket pocket. “I’m sorry, that was crass of me. Your marriage is none of my business.”
“It’s OK,” she sniffed. “It’s not the marriage; it’s the children, or rather the lack of them. Oh God, Danny!” Piece by piece, the entire long story of her IVF roller coaster, the years of desperate hope and ultimate crushing despair, came tumbling out.
When she’d finished and at last cried herself out, he inched his chair around to her side of the table so he could put his arm around her.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, embarrassed. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”
“I do,” said Danny gently. “Because you can’t tell Brogan.”
She looked up at him through eyes red and bleary with tears. He was so solid and sure and gentle, and he understood her so well. The urge to climb into his lap, curl up into a ball, and shelter in his arms forever was almost overwhelming.
“Come back to my place,” he said, seizing the moment. “For coffee,” he added hurriedly, not wanting to scare her off.
“We can talk some more. It’s only around the corner.”
Diana looked at his face, searching for some clue, some reassurance that she was making the right decision. Then, to her own surprise as much as Danny’s, she heard herself saying, “OK. Let’s go.”
Danny’s apartment was less than reassuring. She’d never seen quite such a stereotypical bachelor pad in her life.
Although a loft, with the high ceilings and big windows beloved of urban single males and advertising directors shooting commercials for expensive coffeemakers, the apartment was small, with one all-purpose living space leading off into a single master bedroom and bath. There wasn’t a print or color or vase of flowers in sight, but the money saved on interior design had clearly been spent on gadgetry—a huge plasma TV dominated the living room, which also boasted state-of-the-art Bose speakers, an automatic retractable glass skylight, and a pair of matching La-Z-Boy reclining chairs in chrome and black leather.
Walking into the kitchen area, she noticed that the gas stove still had its plastic showroom wrapping on. The two fridges contained nothing but alcohol and coffee, and the food cupboard revealed only two tins of Dean & DeLuca’s martini olives and a supersize jar of Marmite.
“Not much of a cook?” she asked, as Danny forgot the coffee and uncorked a decent bottle of Sangiovese instead, grabbing two crystal glasses from the dishwasher.
“It’s a crime to cook in New York,” he said cheerfully. “Best restaurants in the world. Come, sit.”
As he flicked on the stereo (Joan Armatrading was already loaded—his seduction music?), lit candles, and filled her glass with the richly aromatic, purple wine, Diana couldn’t help but wonder how many other hundreds of women he must have tried it on with up in his spider’s lair. She could practically feel the sticky, silken thread of his web on her bare arms, and shivered.
“I know what it must look like,” he said, reading her thoughts exactly. “But I said I wouldn’t jump on you, and I meant it. Not unless you want me to, that is.”
It was a joke, but the next thing he knew Diana was kneeling over him on the sofa, kissing him on the lips with totally unexpected passion.
“What was that for?” he asked breathlessly when she pulled away.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I’ve never been unfaithful to Brogan before. Never.”
She’d sat back down, and although Danny was desperate to touch her again, he sensed it would be more politic to wait.
“So what’s changed? If you don’t mind my asking.”
She shook her head, either unwilling or unable to answer the question.
“Is he faithful to you?”
Another head shake.
“So why…?”
“Because,” she said almost angrily. “Because I’m married to him, Danny. Because he wasn’t always the way he is now. I mean, he was always driven. But these last few years, since he became superwealthy, since the modeling agency and all of that bullshit, he’s changed. I don’t know what it is about diamonds, but they bring out the very worst in people. Haven’t you found that?”
“Yes,” Danny admitted. “Yes, I have. But they can only bring out what’s already inside. Your husband isn’t a good man.”
“Oh, I see. And you are, I suppose?” Diana raised an eyebrow teasingly.
“Perhaps not,” he said seriously. “But I wouldn’t treat a dog the way that Brogan treats you, darling. And that’s God’s honest truth.”
He kissed her then, slipping his warm hands under the soft lace of her dress and finding them suddenly full of her small, pert, braless breasts.
“Christ, you’re sexy,” he whispered. “Your old man must be out of his mind to mess you around.”
Diana closed her eyes and for the first time in years let go of her emotions. She knew it was wrong to betray one’s husband. And yet every inch of her flesh seemed to cry out in rightness. Despite Brogan’s best efforts at concealment, she was no fool, and she knew that he cheated on her regularly with girls from his agency. In the beginning it had hurt her deeply. Now it was more like a dull, aching grief, an outward symptom of a much deeper cancer that had long ago eaten away the heart of her marriage. Did she stay with him out of love and loyalty, as she told herself? Or out of fear? Tonight, talking to Danny, she’d started to wonder for the first time if perhaps it was the latter.
As for sexual desire, it had been so long since she’d felt what she was feeling now—that delicious, physical tugging, like an erotic riptide, sucking her into the vortex of pleasure and need—she was amazed she was still capable of it. Sex with Brogan had become a military operation, planned around ovulation charts and hormone injections. Perhaps, subconsciously, the IVF had distracted her, prevented her from having to face everything else that was wrong between them. Either way, there was something about Danny’s touch, the touch of a kind, desiring stranger, that unlocked every trapped sexual nerve in her body. She had never wanted someone more.
Tentatively, she put a hand on his thigh. It felt like a slab of concrete wrapped in suit pants.
“I feel so nervous, it’s crazy,” she whispered, as his hands began exploring her bare back, easing the dress down over her slender shoulders. “Like a teenager.”
“Speaking of teenagers,” said Danny, fumbling with his fly, “I’m afraid I might not be able to hold out much longer. You’re far too exciting for your own good, Mrs. O’Donnell.”
Wriggling out of his clothes with the speed and skill of an Olympic swimmer, he pulled her down onto the floor, laying her gently on the fluffy sheepskin rug between the couch and the fireplace. Marveling at her body in the flickering candlelight—she was tiny, and as softly rounded and pale as a Renaissance marble statue—he began slowly peeling off her panties, revealing a sleek blonde bush already damp with desire.
“Oh fuck,” he mumbled, under his breath. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” And with one swift movement he guided himself inside her. She was so slick and ready it felt like diving into warm paraffin oil. He came in a matter of seconds.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” he murmured into her hair afterward. “That never happens to me. I can’t believe that just…oh God, have I blown it? Angel, why are you crying?”
“It’s not you,” she sobbed, swallowing air in great gulps like an inconsolable child. “Or rather, it is you. You were lovely. That was lovely. It’s been an awfully long time, that’s all. Since I’ve felt…”
“Happy?” offered Danny. “Desirable? Because Christ knows you are. You’re a fucking goddess. Brogan doesn’t know what he’s got.”
“I was going to say ‘safe,’” said Diana, leaning into his thick mass of blond chest hair and breathing deeply. “And he does know what he’s got,” she added. “I know it’d be easier to believe otherwise, but he loves me. He just doesn’t know how to love me.”
Danny sat up miserably and put his head in his hands. “Judging by tonight’s performance, neither do I. Can I blame the wine?”
“You don’t have to blame anything,” said Diana, kissing him on the cheek. “It was perfect. Wrong, but perfect.”
“Don’t say that,” said Danny, his face falling. “Don’t say it was wrong.”
Reaching for her dress, she slipped it on over her head, then sat on the couch to pull her panties back on.
“Where are you going? Can’t you stay the night?”
She smiled and shook her head. “If I don’t come home tonight, Brogan’ll smell a rat for sure.”
“But he’s in Moscow,” pleaded Danny. “How’s he gonna know?”
“I’ve told you,” said Diana. “He watches me.”
“Well, how should I reach you? When can I see you again?” asked Danny. He could hear he was sounding desperate but didn’t know how to stop himself. He felt ridiculous, sprawled naked on the floor while she stood over him, fully dressed and checking her purse in case she’d forgotten anything.
“I don’t know,” she said sadly.
“But how—”
&nb
sp; “Danny,” she interrupted him, “please. I don’t have any answers for you. Not tonight. But I’ll think of you, I promise.” Reaching into her purse, she pulled out the ring box. Clicking it open, she slipped the sparkling band onto her finger. “Every time I look at this.”
And before he could think of anything else to say, she’d gone, closing the apartment door behind her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
GAZING OUT THE taxi window as the driver sped through the Scottish countryside, Scarlett thought again how beautiful the Banffshire landscape was in autumn. Thanks to the swaths of evergreen forests, their pines and fir trees crammed together like battalions of Nordic sentries, it wasn’t an entirely russet view. Some might say that the intermingling of dark-green leaves with the amber of the deciduous woods made the Scottish autumn less dramatic, less striking than the uniform golden blanket of somewhere like Vermont, or even the New Forest. But to Scarlett the contrasting colors heightened the season’s charms. Throw in the pale-gray granite architecture and vast, low sky with its deadened light, like a ceiling of frosted glass, and the overall effect was one of such romantic wilderness it was impossible not to be seduced, even without the sentimental attachments of childhood.
“There she is; look,” said the taxi driver, as the tips of Drumfernly’s turrets inched into view above the treetops. “Is it guid to be home, miss?”
“It is,” said Scarlett wistfully. “Actually, it really is.”
Tomorrow was Hugo’s birthday, his seventieth, and a huge ball with reels and bagpipers had been organized for tonight. Scarlett, who hadn’t been home since Christmas, had had predictably mixed feelings about the trip. She was looking forward to seeing her father and to giving him the gift she’d been making for him for the past four months—a beautiful pair of enamel-and-platinum cuff links in the colors of the Drummond Murray tartan. She was also grateful for the chance to get away from London and all the pressures at work that seemed to have been piling ever higher onto her shoulders with each month that passed.
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