by Susan Lewis
‘Well,’ Penny said, as they walked out of the front door and she gazed up at the quaint, sixteenth-century hilltop village of Mougins, ‘I think you can start drawing up the contract. I’m going back to England tomorrow, but anything that needs my signature can always be sent Chronopost. By the way, you did say that the maid and gardeners are paid from the rental, didn’t you?’
‘That is correct,’ the agent confirmed. ‘And the pool maintenance. And the security system.’
‘Incredible,’ Penny murmured. All this for a mere thirty thousand francs a month, which at today’s exchange rate was round about three and a half thousand pounds. That was five hundred more than her allowance . . . Still, if she didn’t manage to beat the price down she’d make up the shortfall from her own pocket, because this was probably the only chance she’d ever get to live in a place like this. And with one last, disbelieving glance around, she got back into the agent’s car, feeling so good about the extraordinary success of these past two weeks that she was almost looking forward to seeing David, if for no other reason than to gloat at what she’d managed to achieve without him. Childish, she knew, but there was already little doubt in her mind that this forced partnership of theirs was, at best, going to be spiked with feisty little battles of one-upmanship. At worst . . . well, that was something she wouldn’t dwell upon for now, since she was still pretty convinced that she had yet to get a full picture of his real involvement here.
She’d spent many hours trying to imagine what kind of subterfuge or chicanery might be afoot behind David’s appointment, but so far she hadn’t been able to come up with a credible scenario, or at least not one that took account of a magazine of such startling insignificance. In fact, she would have put her suspicions down to her own passion for intrigue if it hadn’t been for the wall of silence she had come up against on enquiring when exactly David might be planning to grace them with his presence. It wasn’t that she wanted to see him – she was experiencing an annoying turbulence in her nervous system at the very prospect – but she had expected to have at least received a telephone call by now.
After finalizing what she could with the agent, Penny thanked her for the lift back and ran up the stairs to the production office. Her spirits were high, not only because of the house, but, perversely, because of the pleasure of knowing she would be back in London by this time tomorrow. In fact she was in such a good mood she was debating with the idea of inviting Marielle to dinner that night to fling a few more shots of friendship at her impenetrable reserve. However, she got no further than pushing open the door before her exuberance was brutally eclipsed by astonishment, which was in turn rapidly displaced by intense irritation. David Villers, in all his manly splendour and proprietorial audacity, was perched on the edge of Marielle’s desk at the far end of the office.
Penny remained standing where she was, bristling with resentment, but neither of them seemed to notice and, considering the gluey intimacy of their laughter and the sultry look in Marielle’s eyes, it didn’t appear they were going to. Penny’s blood was rising to the boil. The fact that he had chosen to turn up unannounced like this, as though he was on some kind of checking-up mission, made her want to flatten his appalling, overblown ego for the sheer arrogance of it.
As she continued to stare at them, for the moment unsure how to play this, she could only feel astounded at her own stupidity for not having realized that something like this would happen. Though he had his back to her and though Penny hadn’t seen him for over a year, the look on Marielle’s face was enough to bring flooding back to Penny’s mind just how irresistible he was. His untidy, curly hair, as blond as her own, was a little shorter than the last time she’d seen him, and though he was sitting down it was easy to tell – and she remembered only too well – how tall and slender and nauseatingly muscular he was. Pursing her lips at one corner, Penny tried to swallow the shameful memory that was burgeoning inside her of how he had once described her and she was dreading the moment when he turned round and recognized her.
‘Ah, Penny,’ Clothilde said, coming out of Penny’s office, ‘you’re back. How was the house? Any good?’
‘Perfect,’ Penny said, assuming a nonchalance she was far from feeling as she slung her briefcase on a desk and hung her coat on the back of the door.
When she turned back, David was on his feet and watching her with a smile of curiosity in his narrowed blue eyes that Penny found intensely irritating. ‘So you’re Penny,’ he said, coming towards her with a hand held out to shake hers. ‘It’s good to meet you at last.’ His voice held a strange mix of Scottish and American accents and Penny detested it instantly.
‘I’ve been hearing a lot about you,’ he told her as she tried to assess whether he was simply pretending not to recognize her or whether his ignorance was, as it appeared to be, genuine. ‘Seems you made yourself a lot of fans over in London,’ he went on as she reluctantly shook his hand. ‘And Marielle here’s been telling me how you’re racing ahead with the new magazine.’
Patronizing bastard, she was thinking, as, forcing a smile, she said, ‘I didn’t realize you were intending to turn up today. If I had, I’d have been here to greet you myself.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s OK,’ and turning back to Marielle he added, ‘I’ve been well looked after.’
‘You don’t say,’ Penny muttered, moving on towards her office. ‘Maybe you’d like to—’
‘I was just acquainting David with the list of possible contributors,’ Marielle interrupted, gazing up at David as though no one else was in the room. Actually, Penny was thinking irrelevantly, he was even taller than she remembered, and, since he hadn’t bothered to use his charm on her when they’d first met, the brazen quantity of it that was flowing out of his powerfully seductive eyes towards Marielle right now was also something new to her. Still, decidedly unattractive as she found it, it was certainly making a new woman out of Marielle, for this was the first time she’d seen Marielle’s teeth. Not that there was anything particularly remarkable about them – she hadn’t really been expecting fangs – they were just small and white and as perfect as the rest of her, revealed as they were in a smile!
‘How have you got on with ringing around?’ Penny asked her.
‘I was just telling David,’ Marielle answered, her eyes still on his as he resumed his position on the edge of her desk.
‘Oh good,’ Penny said. ‘Perhaps you’d like to tell me too.’
‘Phone for you, Penny,’ Clothilde called over from her desk. ‘It’s someone from the local English radio station.’
‘OK, I’ll take it in my office,’ Penny said, and with a withering look that was wasted on both David and Marielle she walked into her office and closed the door behind her.
When she came out again a few minutes later, having told the caller that she’d get back to him nearer the time regarding advertising space for the new magazine, it was to find Marielle’s and David’s heads very close together as they pored over the blueprint of the magazine.
‘And here,’ Marielle was saying, ‘I thought it would be a good idea if we ran a few real-estate pages, complete with photographs, the way they do in the English country magazines.’
‘Terrific,’ David said, the unmistakable resonance of seduction in his approval.
Penny glared at Marielle in dumbfounded fury, for she had just quoted verbatim what Penny herself had said only a few days ago.
‘And on the page following the real estate I thought it would be a good idea to run the column on living in France,’ Marielle went on, ‘for which I’ve managed to find both a French and an English expert. It’ll be more of a letters column really, with the experts giving advice.’
Unbelievable! Penny was thinking. How the hell did she have the gall to pass all that off as if it were her own when she, Penny, had found the experts courtesy of the editor of Nice-Matin? ‘David,’ she said tightly, ‘I think we should get together on costings.’
‘Sure,’ David said, witho
ut looking up, ‘we can do that. I’ll be right in when Marielle’s finished up here.’
Seething with rage, Penny went back to her desk to try to work out the best way to handle this without appearing petty.
Half an hour later, when there was still no sign of him, she once again ventured out to the production office, only to find him putting on his coat.
‘I thought we were going to go through some figures,’ she snapped.
‘Sorry. I don’t have time right now,’ he grimaced, looking at his watch. ‘Things to do, people to see – you know how it is. But I’ll take you two ladies for dinner tonight, if you’re both free.’
‘You mean you’re leaving, just like that!’ Penny exclaimed, very close to losing her temper.
He looked at her in surprise. ‘Why, how else would you like me to leave?’ He grinned.
Penny’s jaw tightened and, resisting the urge to say ‘on a stretcher’, she turned back into her office.
Marielle was already proprietorially ensconced in the front passenger seat of the black Saab convertible when David stopped by the Carlton Hotel to pick Penny up at seven-thirty. So, having no choice but to climb in the back when David tilted his seat forward to make way for her, Penny greeted Marielle warmly. She was damned if she was going to let either of them know how much they were getting to her.
The journey up through the hinterlands to the clifftop restaurant at Gourdon – overlooking the spectacular Gorge du Loup, which they might have been able to see if the night hadn’t been pitch-black – took over half an hour, during which time Penny might have been more comfortable in purgatory. She caught only snatches of their conversation, but it was clear they weren’t talking business and if David looked at Marielle’s legs one more time they were all three of them going to hurtle off into the Gorge. Maybe she’d get a taxi back, Penny was thinking to herself as they were shown to a table beside a roaring log fire in Le Nid d’Aigle – ‘The Eagle’s Nest’.
Having come as far inland as they had, Penny had assumed that Marielle had chosen the restaurant, but if that was the case she certainly hadn’t had to give David any directions to get there; nor, Penny noticed, had she introduced David to the maître d’, who was in the process of greeting David like a long-lost brother. To Penny’s immense satisfaction, when David presented Marielle to the maître d’ he mistakenly called her Marianne, but unfortunately Marielle didn’t seem too put out about it. Instead she used the opportunity to put an admonishing, but none the less provocative, hand on David’s as she corrected him.
Having recommended various dishes, the maître d’ left David with the wine list, which Marielle proceeded to peruse with him, managing to make an innocuous label such as Domaine Jean Gros sound as though it were some kind of erotic vintage endorsed by the Kama Sutra. Having finally made her choice, she sat back as David turned to Penny to ask if she had a preference.
‘Whatever you choose is fine by me,’ Penny answered, surprised he’d remembered she was there.
But it turned out to be only a fleeting recall, for he and Marielle then continued getting to know each other while Penny smarted away in silence, wishing she could think of something to say that would cut them both down to size but wouldn’t dent her dignity in the process.
Eventually, having borne up throughout the starter, she decided to try swallowing her chagrin along with a succulent piece of lamb and suggested that they might like to discuss whether or not the new magazine should take any sort of political stance.
‘Oh, but that can wait,’ Marielle protested, screwing up her beautiful little nose. ‘We are having such a wonderful time. Why spoil it by talking boring politics?’
Ignoring her, Penny looked to David.
‘French or British?’ he asked, his dark eyes resting on hers and seeming to emanate a power that Penny felt horribly diminished by.
‘I thought European might be more appropriate,’ she answered, failing to keep the edge from her voice.
He nodded. ‘Of course. Left or right?’
Seeing Marielle’s hand snake under the table towards David’s thigh, Penny bit down hard on her anger and, deciding to forgo the pleasure of talking politics while they fondled each other, said, ‘Perhaps Marielle’s right: we should save it for the office.’
‘As you like,’ David responded, seeming either not to notice Marielle’s hand or happy just to enjoy it.
‘What were you doing in Miami?’ Penny enquired as he turned back to Marielle.
He shrugged. ‘Oh, a little of this, a little of that,’ he answered. ‘Have you ever been to Miami?’
‘No.’
But Marielle had and once again Penny was cut out of the conversation.
Penny wasn’t sure whether there was any real malice on David’s part, maybe, she tried comforting herself, it was just a total oblivion to everything beyond Marielle’s figure-hugging dress that clearly defied the wearing of underwear. Her nipples were so prominent that even Penny found her eyes repeatedly drawn to them. Turning away to gaze absently at the other diners and the various knick-knacks on the walls, Penny began asking herself again how she was going to handle this, for as David’s so-called equal partner she must not allow herself to be treated like a nonentity.
The situation continued for several more minutes, during which time Penny persevered with the struggle to control her temper. They appeared so impervious to her discomfort and so engrossed in their flirtation that she began to wonder if by some strange quirk of the atmosphere she had managed to become invisible. Their heads were so close together as they murmured and laughed and curled their fingers around each other’s that Penny could feel the colour blazing a route to her cheeks. But whatever happened she was determined to hang on to her temper. She wouldn’t, mustn’t, allow herself to make a scene that might be construed as jealousy. She watched Marielle’s fingers slide along the back of David’s hand and bury themselves inside the sleeve of his thick, navy sweater; then, lifting her eyes to his face, which appeared more handsome than ever as the firelight bathed his skin with a warm glow and made his smile impossibly white, Penny found herself wondering if there was some kind of conspiracy going on here. Were they intentionally trying to put her in her place, to make her feel of such lowly importance that she might just give up and go back to London for good?
Tearing her eyes away, she felt a great swell of resentment rise within her. It was going to take a damned sight more than their sordid flirting to get her to abandon ship now. After all, she was the one who’d put it together so far, so the hell was she going to hand it over to them.
Looking up as the waiter handed her a dessert menu. Penny detected a light of sympathy in his eyes, which was almost too much to bear. But, with a warming smile of reassurance, she said, ‘Cogito, ergo sum.’
‘What?’ Marielle said, running her eyes down the menu.
‘Descartes,’ David enlightened her, his eyes laughing as he turned them to Penny’s. ‘I think, therefore I exist,’ he translated.
Marielle appeared none the wiser; nor did she appear to appreciate the way David was regarding Penny. Penny turned haughtily to her menu, made her selection and realized too late that she was the only one taking dessert. This, coupled with the fact that David was again preoccupied with Marielle, didn’t do anything to help alleviate the feeling that she was once more the big fat gooseberry.
However, as they waited for the dessert to arrive, David began making a half-hearted attempt to bring her into the conversation . . . until Penny’s stony reception caused him to say, ‘Hey, come on, lighten up, will you?’
Penny glared at him, speechless with indignation but before she could think of a suitable rejoinder her tiramisu arrived and her temper instantly deflated as she regarded it with dismay. It was such an enormous helping she felt sure that everyone was looking at her with disgust.
Closing her eyes, she dug in her spoon and was just lifting the creamy, chocolatey evil to her mouth, when David said, ‘You’re not actually going t
o eat that, are you?’
Penny stopped dead and turned to look at him. The sex-starved Sumo remark was screaming through her mind and, looking down at her plate she suddenly saw red!
‘Not now, no,’ she said through her teeth.
‘Oh, là, là!’ Marielle murmured as Penny landed the dish splat, in David’s face.
‘Jesus Christ, what did you do that for?’ he cried, grabbing a napkin. ‘I was only trying to tell you there was silver foil on your spoon.’
As the fury drained from Penny’s face, mortification turned her rigid. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘I thought . . .’
‘You thought what?’ David laughed, attempting to wipe the gooey custard from his face.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I just . . . I just misunderstood, that’s all.’
The other diners were all looking in their direction by now and, as David got up to go and clean himself off, Penny wished that the eagle whose nest they were dining in would come back and carry her off to a distant land. Brilliant, she was thinking to herself, just brilliant. After an entire evening of amazingly uncharacteristic restraint you go and blow it all by jamming a damned custard pie in his face. What will you think of as an encore!
They travelled back to Cannes in near silence, except for David’s occasional burst of laughter. Penny was in the back seat again, wishing she could flick the little bit of cream off his hair that he’d obviously overlooked. It was a nasty little reminder of what a toe-curling idiot she had made of herself and what was worse was how funny David seemed to find it. She wasn’t sure why she minded so much about that, she just did.
When they got back to the Carlton she was tempted to invite him in for a nightcap to try to make amends, but guessing that he and Marielle had other things to do she simply said good night and started to get out of the car.
