by Susan Lewis
‘But it wasn’t so bad. Most women have got one.’
‘Obviously not the women he knows.’
Sammy looked away for a moment, wanting to say a lot of things but understanding that perhaps the moment wasn’t right. ‘He wants to talk to you,’ she said, bringing her eyes back.
Penny shook her head. ‘No. I know I owe him an apology, but I can’t face doing it tonight. I’m still too mad at him and—’ She broke off with a humourless laugh. ‘What am I talking about, he probably wants to tell me it’s all over for me down here. Well, I can’t face that either right now. Tomorrow will be soon enough.’
‘It’s all right, old thing,’ Wally was saying, ‘you can come out now. I’m not angry any more.’
‘I didn’t volunteer anything, honestly I didn’t,’ Esther wailed, her face pressed up against the bathroom door. ‘Only her phone number. But he made me tell him, Wally.’
‘I know he did,’ Wally replied. ‘But listen to me old thing. The girl who works with Penny, she was asking me about Christian tonight. So do you understand now, dear, that Penny is just after a story? They all are. And we can’t let that happen now, can we?’
‘No. Oh no,’ Esther agreed.
‘So what we’re going to do in the morning, old thing, is start looking for a new house, the way we’ve been told to. And you must stop seeing Penny Moon now, do you understand? I know you’re fond of her, but we have to think about ourselves, Esther. We need this job, remember? And we only have the job as long as Christian is around.’
‘But if he’s prepared to take the risk to meet her . . .’ Esther pointed out.
‘Then it is up to us to save him from himself.’
Esther was about to say more, but she stopped herself, knowing that it would only make Wally angry again. But Christian would meet Penny Moon, she knew that, and when he did they were going to fall very deeply in love. Esther knew because Billy had told her.
It had been a long, stiflingly hot day, throughout which Penny had suffered in silence as Marielle strutted triumphantly around the office, clearly as certain as Penny was that last night Penny had gone too far.
David had already left the house when Penny had got up that morning. She’d known he was going to see Sylvia and that was what had turned the morning, the entire day, in fact, into such agony. Was he telling Sylvia that he didn’t want her here any more? Was he saying that he couldn’t, wouldn’t, put up with her hysteria any longer? Sylvia must have heard the outburst, so had she reached the same conclusions: Penny Moon was good at her job, but she couldn’t control her emotions? It was true, she couldn’t, for throughout the unendurable wait to find out what her fate was to be, still all Penny could think about was Christian. She was at the point now where she’d do anything, anything at all, just to stay in France. It was irrational, it was insane, but as each obstacle presented itself all Penny could feel was an even deeper desperation and determination to meet him – before it was too late.
By the time she got home from the office she was convinced the only thing to do was to start packing. She hadn’t heard from David all day, but his silence was enough to confirm her worst fears. She’d been surprised to find him there when she’d pulled up in her car. Surprised and embarrassed. Sammy had disappeared, so too had Cassandra, and the caterers who had come back to clear up had long since gone. There was only Penny and David and the two chairs beside the pool on which they now sat, half facing each other, half facing the black expanse of night beyond the circle of light surrounding them.
They’d been sitting there for a long time now, watching the sun go down and the moon rise, listening to the distant sound of yachts signalling to each other, the sibilance of night insects and the telephone ringing inside the house that went unanswered.
They’d talked about so many things that Penny could hardly remember them all. But some she could. He’d told her about his childhood, about his time in America and the death of his father, six years ago, that had been so devastating it had changed his life completely. He’d talked a little about his marriage, but mainly about his sons and how much he missed them. And somehow he’d made her laugh, had laughed himself, when she didn’t think either of them were capable. Not a word had been mentioned about what had happened the night before.
‘Are you cold?’ he asked, looking over at her as she shivered.
‘No,’ she answered.
It was the first time either of them had spoken for a while and knowing that they couldn’t put it off for ever Penny decided that now was as good a time as any to try bringing things to a head. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘that I’m afraid.’
‘Afraid? What of?’
‘You and what you’re going to say about the way I spoke to you in front of all those people last night.’
He bowed his head, looking down at his near-empty glass. ‘Last night was my fault,’ he said. ‘I’d had too much to drink. I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing.’ He turned to look at her. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you like that, Pen,’ he said softly. ‘In fact, it was the last thing I wanted.’
‘I overreacted,’ she said, feeling herself respond to the tone of his voice. ‘Things have been getting on top of me a bit lately and I suspect I’d probably drunk too much too.’
‘Sure,’ he said.
It was a long time before he spoke again, so long that Penny turned to look at him. In the moonlight he looked . . . But, no, she didn’t want to think about the way he looked, and knowing that he was aware she was watching him she turned away.
‘So where do we go from here?’ he said, gazing out at the stars.
‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘All I know is that I want to stay, that I want to see things through, but . . .’
‘But what?’ he said.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
Their whole conversation had been fractured by pauses, gentle silences in which they had absorbed the lazy intimacy of the night, easy in each other’s company yet somehow moved by it too.
At last he stood up, walked to the edge of the pool, then turned back to look at her. ‘Last night was a mistake on my part in a lot of ways,’ he said. ‘More ways than you know.’
‘Then why don’t you tell me?’
‘Well,’ he said, dropping his head, ‘to begin with I thought . . .’ He rolled his eyes and looked off across the garden. ‘Well, I guess I thought something was happening between us.’
As his eyes came back to hers Penny felt as though her insides were being crushed. Everything about him seemed suddenly so powerful. ‘You could have fooled me,’ she said in a half-hearted attempt to lighten things.
He continued to look at her; then, lowering his eyes to his glass, he said, ‘Yeah, OK, I was wrong. I know that now, but last night it got to me. I drank too much, I went too far . . .’
‘Why don’t we just put it behind us?’ she said.
His eyes came back to hers then slowly he started to nod. ‘Yeah, why don’t we do that?’ and raising his glass he drained the rest of his wine. ‘Do you want to talk about Los Angeles?’ he said. ‘You’re leaving in a few days.’
Penny felt her heart sink. What she wouldn’t give to be able to cancel this trip. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s talk about Los Angeles.’
‘I’m going to get more wine,’ he said. ‘Do you want some?’
She nodded. They’d already drunk a bottle between them, but what did it matter?
When he was gone she found herself going back over all the things he’d told her that night, which was why, when he sat down again, she said, ‘Why don’t you come to the States with me?’
He laughed, but there wasn’t much humour. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.
‘But why? You want to see your children and you never know, maybe you can get things back together with your wife.’
He was shaking his head. ‘It’s too late for that,’ he said. ‘Besides, they’re not in LA.’
‘Then where are they?’
&
nbsp; ‘Florida. Staying with my mother.’
‘Your mother?’
‘Yep, my mother,’ he said flatly. ‘It’s a story you don’t want to hear, so let’s just leave it at that.’
Not sure what she wanted to say next, Penny pulled herself up from the chair and went to sit at the edge of the pool, dangling her feet in the water. When at last she turned round, drawing her knees up in her arms, she found him watching her.
He smiled. ‘You’ve got the wrong idea about yourself, do you know that?’ he said.
She could only just see him in the darkness, yet somehow it was as though she could feel him. ‘What do you mean?’ she whispered.
‘You’ve got no confidence in yourself which is crazy when there’s more to you than most women I’ve met.’
Penny laughed self-consciously. ‘You didn’t say that the first time we met,’ she told him. ‘Or maybe, in a roundabout way, you did.’
He frowned. ‘Why, what did I say?’
Penny was on the point of reminding him, then thought better of it. What did it matter now? Why rake it up when she hadn’t even really known him then? ‘It’s not important,’ she said. ‘I’ve just got a hang-up about my weight and—’
‘What did I say?’ he repeated.
‘I told you, it’s not important. Let’s talk about my trip to LA, shall we? You obviously know hundreds of people there, so who are you going to put me in touch with?’
‘Why have you got a hang-up about your weight?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, David,’ she laughed. ‘Let’s not fool ourselves here, eh?’
His face was deadly serious and as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and looking deep into her eyes Penny felt an incredible warmth moving through her as her heart started to quicken.
‘Why don’t you get undressed and let me look at you?’ he said softly.
The flare of lust was so intense it took her breath away and the image of his naked body that had never quite left her was suddenly so razor-sharp in her mind it was as though the very hardness of him was even now beneath her fingertips. And, were it not for Sammy driving in through the gates at that moment, she knew that she would have done as he asked, for her need to be held, to feel a man in her arms and the power of a body like his pressing against her, was wholly overwhelming.
But as the headlights of Sammy’s car bounced over the potholes in the drive she said, ‘You’re tempting, David, but I don’t think either of us need another notch on the bedpost, do we?’
Chapter 12
ROBERT STIRLING WAS in his usual position on the sun deck of the motor yacht, a pair of binoculars pressed to his eyes. The twilight bathers on the Cannes beaches were drawn so close by the lenses he could almost see the blackheads in teenage boys’ ears.
As he tilted his head back, the creamy-white hotels and striped awnings of the apartment blocks along the Croisette rushed past in a blur until he came to focus on the wide, glassed-in balcony of David Villers’s apartment.
‘Fuck!’ he spat as Villers, with his own set of binoculars, gave him a wave. ‘Bastard,’ he grunted, dropping the binoculars into his lap.
He was on the point of getting up and going into the cabin, when a messenger pulled up on his scooter, calling out that he had a package for Monsieur Stirling.
Stirling, whose corpulent frame was no hindrance unless he wanted it to be, swung himself out of the chair and on to the passerelle. Taking the package, he signed the messenger’s docket and went back on board and into the cabin.
‘D’you tell Villers where to find this boat?’ he growled at Marielle, who was preparing supper.
‘Of course not,’ she answered, glancing over at him. ‘What’s that?’
‘Mind your own business,’ he told her, stopping a moment to look at her, bare-assed in a bib-apron. Then, sliding the documents out of their wrapping, he went to sit at the table, where he began leafing hungrily through the reams of typewritten pages. At first glance there was no sign of what he was looking for, but they’d talked to Villers’s wife, so it had to be there somewhere. He’d go through it later with a fine-tooth comb, looking for just one word, one nuance, one fucking anything, that would give him what he needed. But he’d do it tomorrow, when Marielle was out of the way and a couple of the boys were on board to lend a hand. He didn’t mind waiting, especially not when he was in the mood for a few games right now. Shit, were things going well for him! Yeah, things sure were looking up.
‘Get yourself over here,’ he barked at Marielle.
Marielle looked back over her shoulder, then putting down the whisk she wiped her fingers on her apron and padded across the cabin.
‘I need some help with this,’ he said, putting his left hand on the documents while brandishing the index finger of his right hand. Let’s see how long it takes her to work this one out, he was grinning to himself.
Marielle’s tongue pushed out the side of her cheek as, frowning, she looked at the finger. To give her a clue he waggled it back and forth a couple of times, crooking it as though beckoning to her.
As enlightenment dawned, Marielle’s eyes clouded and a small, catlike smile curled her sumptuous lips. Then, hooking up her apron, she parted the lips of her vagina and bared herself to him.
Stirling was impressed, she caught on quick, and wetting his finger in her sex he began to employ a laborious method of leafing through the document. Each time his finger dried he went back for more, digging it in slowly, sliding it back and forth a couple of times, then peeled away a few more pages. This was a good game, he was thinking, he kind of liked it. Being treated like a whore was obviously what Marielle got off on and he had no problem with that. ‘Course she probably thought she was gonna get what she wanted out of him at the end of it, but she’d learn soon enough that she’d got the wrong guy here ’cos his head sure as hell didn’t take no orders from his dick. He chuckled inwardly. Life felt real good tonight. Villers was in his sights, was gonna get what he had coming – and Stirling was pretty damn certain it wasn’t gonna be long in the coming now.
‘How long’s Penny the Moon gonna be away?’ he asked, not bothering to raise his eyes from the page to look at Marielle as he prodded around a bit.
‘Another week,’ she answered huskily. ‘Why?’
‘Just wondered. Must be a good time for you, having her out the way a while.’
‘She’s going to be gone a lot longer than she thinks,’ Marielle answered, with a slight catch in her voice as he tapped his fingers against hers, indicating she should open herself wider.
This time he looked at her. ‘What’s that mean?’ he said. ‘You told me she was gonna be gone two weeks, three at the outside.’
‘She is,’ Marielle confirmed, wishing he’d stop looking at her and put his finger back where it belonged.
‘Three weeks is up Friday,’ he said. ‘You telling me she’s not coming?’
‘She’s coming,’ Marielle said. ‘But she won’t be staying long.’
‘Why? Where’s she going?’
‘I don’t know,’ Marielle answered, twitching her hips to signal she wanted more.
Stirling’s top lip curled. ‘You pull off whatever little stunts you want over there, Marielle,’ he told her, poking her clitoris with his finger, ‘but I don’t want you getting in my way, do you hear? I want Penny the Moon back here in France and I want her staying as long as I say, not as long as you say. You got that?’
Marielle nodded. Just tell him what he wants to hear, she was saying to herself. ‘I’ve got it,’ she said. ‘You’re the boss. I do what you say.’
Stirling smirked. ‘You’re a fast learner, Marielle,’ he said. ‘I like that in you.’ He put his finger in his mouth, sucked it, then withdrew it with a loud kissing noise. ‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘just to show how appreciative I am of how smart you are, I reckon I’m gonna fuck you.’
Marielle tried to look meek, but couldn’t quite mask the triumphant gleam that shot to her eyes. He’
d done plenty to her these last few weeks, got her to do even more to him, but what he hadn’t done yet was screw her.
‘Yeah,’ he said, reaching under his belly to unzip himself, ‘I reckon I’m gonna put this here dick in you, Marielle, and get you screaming out for your Maker. Now, what do you say to that?’
‘Whatever you want,’ she said humbly.
‘Good girl,’ he said approvingly. ‘Now get yourself over this table and spread those pretty legs of yours nice and wide.’
Obediently Marielle bent over the desk, gripping the sides with her hands and resting her face on the documents.
‘Oh no you don’t,’ he said, pulling the documents out from under her and patting her bottom. ‘We’re gonna find somewhere else to put these, so you just stay right where you are. I’ll be back.’
Marielle did as she was told, her long slender legs widely parted, her smooth, tight buttocks tilted upwards, ready to take him. She felt so sluttish she could come just thinking about it.
‘Well now, I do believe I recognize that smile,’ a voice drawled from the doorway.
Marielle spun round to find David Villers grinning down at her, one shoulder resting on the door frame, his arms casually folded.
‘Hello, Marielle,’ he said. ‘Having fun?’
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she hissed, pulling herself up quickly and unsuccessfully trying to cover herself with the apron.
‘I could ask you the same question,’ he said, ‘but I’m a big boy, I reckon I can work it out.’
Marielle was about to answer, when a door behind her opened and Stirling came in. ‘Right, where were—?’ He stopped dead as he saw Villers standing at the threshold.
‘My, Bobby, I sure didn’t expect you to be this pleased to see me,’ David grinned, looking straight at Stirling’s erection.
Stirling’s face was beetroot-red as he fumbled his dick back in his shorts. ‘What the hell do you want?’ he growled. ‘I don’t remember inviting you here.’
