by Various
It broke the spell. Luis got to his feet. Dragging a hand through his hair he spoke with his habitual wryness. ‘That’ll be the trained assassin now.’
‘I’ll get it.’
Emily darted inside, glad of the excuse to escape, and the chance to recompose herself as the room-service stewards brought out trays laden with silver coffee pots and plates of croissants. She sat down and waited for them to withdraw again, before saying stiffly, ‘I was so sorry about the loss of your brother and his wife.’
‘Not as sorry as I was,’ Luis replied, helping himself to a croissant.
The shutters were down again, his sardonic mask back in place. Determined not to let him see how much his flippancy shocked her, Emily tried again. ‘You must miss him a lot.’
‘You could say that.’ Leaning back in his chair Luis tore the croissant open with long, ruthless fingers, exposing its soft inside. ‘I’d give anything to have him back—’ he glanced at Emily with a bitter smile ‘—so I could get on with my life as it was before.’
‘Of course.’ Frowning, she took a brioche. ‘You’re the heir now. I wasn’t thinking of it like that.’
‘Weren’t you?’ he said bitterly. ‘I wasn’t aware there was any other way to think of it.’
‘Er…well,’ she said with a small, artificial laugh. ‘How about in terms of personal bereavement? You lost your brother and your sister-in-law. Your father lost his son, and your little niece lost her parents.’
‘Thank you for reminding me.’
She shook her head, speechless for a second before stammering, ‘Sorry. I—I can’t even imagine what that must be like…’ She stopped again, looking down at her hands. ‘At least, I can—a bit. How old is she?’
Luis shrugged. ‘Five…maybe six.’
‘You don’t know?’ An image of her sister Annie’s little boy appeared in her mind, and Emily felt her throat close up with emotion. Three-year-old Oliver was the darling of the Balfour clan—doted on by everyone. His birthday was a red-letter day in everyone’s diary, an occasion of extravagant family celebration and an excuse for all the sisters to spoil him shamelessly.
‘I’m not great with little girls.’
‘No.’ Emily speared a curl of butter from the dish and put it on the side of her plate. ‘I imagine they’re completely irrelevant to you until they reach the age of consent.’
Luis looked across at her with dark, dead eyes. ‘You make it sound as if that’s a bad thing, whereas I’d suggest exactly the opposite.’ He smiled thinly. ‘It’s not that I don’t care about her. It’s more that I don’t know where to start. I don’t have anything in common with her. She likes…I don’t know, pink ponies, and ballet…’
‘Ballet?’ Emily stopped, the brioche halfway to her mouth.
‘According to Tomás. Valentina—his wife—is part of the nursery staff, or was until she left to have a baby. Apparently Luciana’s ballet mad.’
He was pouring more coffee, and Emily found herself unable to take her eyes off his hands. Against the delicate white china they looked very big, very tanned.
‘Does she do lessons?’
‘No. She’s always been ridiculously shy, but since the accident she hardly speaks at all. She wouldn’t have the confidence.’
‘But ballet would be good for her.’ Emily sat up, snapping out of the hypnotic grip his elegant, long-fingered hands had exerted over her a moment ago, suddenly alert. This was her area of expertise. Her passion. ‘Some of the children I’ve been teaching at Larchfield have really come out of themselves since they’ve been learning—like Niomi yesterday. She wouldn’t even lift her head and look anyone in the face when she started, but one of the first things you learn in ballet is to stand tall and hold your head up. Everything else follows from there. You should encourage Luciana to take lessons.’
Taking a mouthful of coffee he gave a swift, dismissive shake of his head. ‘Security nightmare. I might take risks with my own life but I wouldn’t put hers in danger. I owe her that much, at least.’
Emily frowned, not understanding. ‘But couldn’t you hire a teacher? Privately?’
He looked at her, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes a little before saying slowly, ‘It’s complicated. Recruiting people to work in the household is always a long and tedious process, especially where my niece is concerned. It would have to be someone pretty special, you see. Someone Luciana could relate to, who would understand the situation she’s in…’
He trailed off. For a long moment the only sound was the innocuous singing of the birds. His coffee cup was cradled between his hands, and she was horrified by the tremor of bliss that threatened to shake her as she remembered the way they’d held her foot last night, stroking and massaging. She was aware of a creeping heat in the pit of her stomach, a gathering tension between her thighs…But then in some tiny corner of her rational mind realization dawned.
‘No,’ she gasped, her eyes widening. ‘Oh, no—You want me—’ Words failed her. She got to her feet, shaking her head as she tried to clear it, tried to anchor herself to sanity and reason. ‘After what you did last night you’re actually asking me to come back to Santosa and work for you?’
He got up too, his gaze flicking scornfully over the writing on her T-shirt. ‘Wouldn’t it be better than working in a lap-dancing club?’
She laughed shakily. ‘No. No, I don’t think it would. Because at least the men there don’t bother to hide what they want.’ She threw her napkin down and slid out from her chair. ‘They don’t play games. At least there I feel a hell of a lot safer than I do when I’m around you!’
His head jerked backwards slightly, almost as if she’d hit him and for a moment the blaze of emotion in his gold eyes almost dazzled her. But then he looked away, dragging a hand over his face as if to blank it out again. When he spoke his voice was cool and faintly ironic.
‘Your honesty is startling. Now, perhaps I’d better take you back to London.’
Chapter Five
EMILY’S hand was shaking as she tried to get her key into the lock. Behind her she could hear the low, thrumming purr of the car engine.
Don’t look round, she told herself desperately, gritting her teeth. Just concentrate on opening the bloody door and getting inside where you can forget all about Luis Cordoba and his…his…proposition.
The door opened and she stumbled into the dingy hallway. Instantly she was assailed by the smell of damp, stale air and overboiled vegetables, and automatically held her breath as she tiptoed quickly past Mr Lukacs’s door towards the stairs.
‘Is that you, Miss Jones?’
She froze for a moment on the third step, her heart thudding. No, she thought despairingly. It’s not actually. I’m not Miss Jones, I’m Emily Balfour—what the hell am I doing here? The past twelve hours—the exquisite luxury of Luis’s hotel—only served to make her more cruelly aware of the filthy carpet, the black halo on the wallpaper around the light switch left by dirty, anonymous hands. With a shudder of disgust she raced as quietly as possible up the remaining stairs and along the corridor to her room.
She’d done the right thing, she told herself fiercely. Mr Lukacs’s house in Bedford Street might not be a palace, but at least she was living there on her own terms, without compromising herself or the values she’d already sacrificed so much to uphold. Teaching ballet to Princess Luciana sounded like a dream job on many levels, but it wouldn’t be that simple. Not with Luis Cordoba around. He did things to her head and turned her into a person she didn’t recognize and certainly didn’t want to be.
Turning the key in the lock she slipped inside and shut the door softly behind her, letting out her breath again. For preference she would have continued to hold it, as the damp, mildewy smell was almost as bad up here, but although she’d learned to do without many things she’d considered essential in her old life at Balfour, breathing wasn’t one of them. Suppressing a shudder, she tossed her keys onto the cheap bedside table and quickly crossed the horrib
ly patterned carpet to the wardrobe.
She was late for work, which at least meant that there was no time to dwell on the clothes she had left behind at Balfour as she pulled a black dress off its metal coat hanger. Struggling out of her tights she was just about to take her top off when there was a knock at the door.
‘Miss Jones?’
Emily stiffened, her eyes darting nervously to the door. It was locked, thank goodness. From the other side she could hear Mr Lukacs’s heavy breathing as he bent to listen for sounds of life inside, and felt a fleeting moment of guilt. He was just a lonely, middle-aged man with no one to talk to, she knew that. It was just the way his small, damp eyes scuttled over her as he talked that unsettled her.
‘Miss Jones, are you there?’
Uneasiness crept up the back of Emily’s neck as, taking great care not to make a sound, she lifted her top over her head. Hopefully he’d give up and go away in a minute, she thought, tiptoeing over to the sagging chest of drawers and wondering how she was going to open them and get her underwear out without making any noise. The top drawer was broken so you had to wedge it shut in a certain way and then yank it out…
She stopped dead. The drawer was open a little way, its broken front gaping, some of the knickers and bras spilling out. Had she left it like that?
The scrape of a key in the lock made her blood run cold and answered her question. In slow motion she watched the door open, feeling as if icy, invisible hands were gripping her body and covering her mouth as a bulky, lumbering frame sidled into the room.
‘Mr Lukacs,’ she croaked grabbing the top she’d just discarded and clutching it against her, she shrank backwards. ‘What are you doing?’
For a moment she saw alarm flare in those tiny, furtive eyes. ‘Miss Jones…I…’ He held up the key. ‘I thought you were out.’
Her heart pumped adrenaline through her shaking body, returning sensation to her limbs and her numb, horrified brain. ‘Wh-what do you mean? If you thought I was out why are you letting yourself into my room?’ Her eyes flickered back to the underwear drawer, but she swallowed back hysteria and forced herself to keep her voice steady. ‘You have no right to come in here and look through my things.’
His black eyes slid away from hers. ‘I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that you’re very behind with your rent,’ he wheezed, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. ‘So you can’t very well talk to me about rights, Miss Jones.’
The apologetic note in his voice was horribly sinister. With his greying shirt straining across his dough-like stomach and his thin, greasy hair there was something pathetic about him, and Emily would almost have felt sorry for him if she hadn’t been so thoroughly unnerved.
‘No, well…’ She swallowed. ‘I’m sorry about that, but I’m on my way to work right now, so I can pay some of what I owe you…’
‘Some of it? Oh, dear.’ His beetle-like eyes had come to rest somewhere around Emily’s midriff. Surreptitiously she edged backwards as he ran his tongue over his lips before continuing. ‘However, I like to think that I’m a reasonable man, and in view of your…financial difficulties…maybe we could come to an arrangement. A friendly arrangement…’ His eyes flickered briefly up to meet hers, and there was a hungry look in them that made Emily feel sick.
‘No,’ she said in a small, strangled voice. The wardrobe was right behind her now—there was nowhere left to run. He was too big to fight off, so she took a gamble on the only option left open to her. Standing as straight as she could she spoke in the chillingly upper-crust voice of her headmistress at ballet school. ‘No. I’ll make sure you get the money. Now, please get out.’
For a moment Mr Lukacs’s face worked and she thought he was going to argue, but he seemed to think better of it and with one last malevolent glance he was gone. Emily managed to stay upright until the door had shut behind him, but then her legs gave way and she collapsed onto the sagging bed. In the mirrored door of the wardrobe she could see her face—a waxen oval with two dark smudges for eyes.
Shaking, she closed her eyes, dropping her head into her hands and holding her breath against a sudden rush of hideous, debilitating homesickness as she thought of her bedroom at Balfour. Vividly she could picture the sun pouring through the windows with their view out over the garden, the rose-patterned curtains, the bed with its little gold corona and white muslin drapes. Unconsciously she got to her feet, light-headed at the idea of walking out of this horrible house and going home. So what if she didn’t have enough money for the train fare? All she had to do was go and flag down the nearest taxi and Oscar would pay when they arrived at Balfour. For the taxi and the rent she owed to Mr Lukacs…
Call me when you grow up.
Luis Cordoba’s voice echoed in her head, just as if he’d been in the room and whispered the words tauntingly into her ear. She sank back down onto the bed with a moan of despair. Of course she couldn’t go running back to Daddy and get him to make everything all right. She had to do this on her own.
Whatever that meant and whatever it cost.
The moment the car door shut behind him, Luis’s smile disappeared as instantly as if it had been switched off and he slumped back against the seat.
According to Tomás it had been a successful afternoon. The visit to the mother-and-toddler group had passed off smoothly, apart from the moment when one particularly attractive young mother had handed him her baby to hold and he’d been so horrified he’d almost dropped it. Women thrusting babies at him had been a stock image from his worst nightmares for years, but luckily he’d managed to make a joke about it and hand it back quickly. The sports project had been better. Sport—the urge to compete and the natural compulsion to win—was something he understood. He’d been genuinely interested to watch the children. So much so that for a while he had almost been able to stop thinking about Emily Balfour.
Consciously anyway, although the little pulse of dissatisfaction, an uncomfortable sensation of having failed, still crouched in the back of his head like a migraine waiting to strike.
The car began to move, and with massive effort he raised his hand to wave to the small crowd of elderly people gathered outside the residential centre before pushing it wearily through his hair and exhaling through tight lips.
He’d failed Oscar. And now he’d seen where Emily was living he understood that he’d failed her too. Deus…the place where they’d dropped her off earlier was beyond belief. The only positive thing he could think of to say to Oscar about the house in which his daughter was renting a room was that it didn’t have its windows boarded up, like most of the others in the street.
Guilt—his familiar companion over the past ten months—settled on the leather seat beside him, enveloping him in its suffocating embrace as he thought back to this morning. When she had refused his offer there had been a part of him that had been relieved.
Because she was right about him. She seemed to be able to see through him, right into his hollow heart in a way that few other people could. What was it that Oscar Balfour had said? She’s good, through and through…She applies the same rigorous standards she expects from herself to those around her…
And that was what had stopped him trying to change her mind about coming to Santosa. He was already perfectly aware of the coldness of his own heart, the blackness of his own sins, without having Emily Balfour pointing them out.
But that was before he’d seen where she was living.
‘I think that went very well, sir,’ Tomás said brightly, settling back into his seat and shooting a sideways glance at Luis. ‘You certainly succeeded in charming the ladies. They were all eating out of your hand.’
‘Nice to know I haven’t completely lost the ability, then,’ Luis said, staring moodily out of the window.
‘Ah. You’re still thinking about Miss Balfour? Don’t worry, sir. We’ll think of something else to help your image. You did all you could.’
‘No. I didn’t.’
Luis sat up, a muscle flicke
ring in his cheek. ‘We’re going back to the community centre where she works. Forget charm. This time we do it my way.’
‘Sir?’
Luis turned to Tomás with a grim smile. ‘This time we try blackmail.’
Compared with the other stains on his conscience, it would hardly cause a shadow.
‘No…!’
Kiki stopped, her custard cream halfway to her mouth, her eyes wide with horror. ‘He actually let himself into your room? While you were getting dressed?’
Emily nodded miserably, taking a mouthful of gritty instant coffee. ‘He has his own key apparently, and I have a nasty feeling it wasn’t the first time…’ She had a sudden image of the drawer containing her underwear, open slightly, its broken front gaping and the contents spilling out. She suppressed a shudder and took another hasty mouthful of coffee.
‘Pervert,’ Kiki said disgustedly. ‘Oh my God, that is so creepy. I know the room’s cheap, Emily, but really, you have to find somewhere else.’
They were standing in the kitchen at Larchfield. Or at least Emily was standing; Kiki was perched on the countertop, the packet of custard creams beside her.
‘I know,’ Emily said with quiet despair, gripping her coffee cup in both hands and staring unseeingly out of the window. ‘But it was the cheapest room I looked at by miles, and I’m already struggling to afford the rent. I just didn’t know…I never thought…’ She shook her head, struggling to explain without giving herself away how little idea she’d had about the realities of living on the minimum wage. ‘I had no idea how expensive living in London would be.’
Kiki regarded her thoughtfully. ‘I take it your move down here wasn’t exactly well-planned, then?’
she said, through a mouthful of biscuit. ‘Were things at home difficult?’
Emily nodded. She’d come to regard Kiki as a close friend, but they’d never discussed anything personal. For obvious reasons. Like the fact that if they did, Kiki would realise that Emily had been deceiving her from the start.
