by Lucy Parker
Lainie smiled faintly. “And which of us would be sprawled inside the chalk outline?”
“Debatable. Richard has the worse temper, but he’s also the more irritating.”
“He would disagree.” Her smile widened. “Possibly on both counts.”
“No doubt.” Lynette studied her. “Do you know, I think you’re fond of him.”
Lainie looked down at the tabletop. She traced a line through the ring left by her glass. “You’re not, I take it.”
“Frankly, I find him a walking, breathing migraine. One makes allowances, of course, for his upbringing,” Lynette said, but she spoke without enthusiasm.
“His upbringing?” Lainie repeated, confused. “I gathered that privileged was putting it mildly.”
“Oh, he’s always been wealthy. Poor little rich boy to the core, and materially spoilt rotten. But it’s the usual story: only child, parents absent for one reason or another, boarding school while still in nappies, succession of indifferent nannies in the holidays. His behaviour just screams it, really. Never been hugged in his life.”
Lainie turned that over in her mind, weighing it against her own middle-class childhood with wonderful parents and more siblings than she knew what to do with. “I think there’s a limit to which a person can excuse bad behaviour with a difficult-childhood card,” she said at last.
“Oh, I expect most of his personality defects are his own,” Lynette agreed, draining the rest of the champagne. “And he got shafted on the genetic front. Looks aside, obviously. His mother was an immoral bitch who’d go to bed with anything that bought her diamonds. And his father was a stiff-necked old sod. Sir Franklin Troy, you know, the MP. He died of a heart attack when Richard was at Eton.”
Lainie actually remembered when Franklin Troy had died. She had been at primary school, and her usually mild-mannered father had gone off on a diatribe against the man. “Not wanting to speak ill of the dead, but...” Troy Senior had been rabidly right-wing and, in her dad’s opinion, a bit unstable.
It was probably a good thing that she and Richard wouldn’t need to have a fake family dinner with their parents to cement their fake relationship. She couldn’t imagine it would have been cordial.
Lynette set down the empty flute and got to her feet. She was still rock-steady on her high heels despite the half quart of liquor she’d poured down her throat. “Well, must mingle, I suppose.” She tapped Lainie on the back of her hand. “Pat and Bob will be pleased to hear that the little side performance is going well. Richard’s reputation seems to be minutely improved. The redeeming influence of a good woman. It’s a bit offensive, really. A month ago, the Operatic Guild would have been content to keep him at a safe distance, whispering behind their lorgnettes.” Her lips lifted at the corner. “You maintain it is still an act, do you?”
“What do you think?” Lainie asked shortly.
Lynette looked thoughtful. “I think,” she said before she disappeared into the crowd, “that I hope for Richard’s sake you can’t act as well as all that.”
* * *
Lainie sat meditatively in Richard’s car, watching the lights of London out the side window. Traffic was still heavy around Earls Court; it had taken them twelve minutes so far to advance two blocks. The Ferrari came to a halt once again behind a hooting, hollering car full of teenagers. Tucking her wrap more tightly around her shoulders, she fingered the sequins sewn on the hem and turned her head to look at Richard. He, too, was quiet. He looked tired, his head tilted back and his eyes momentarily closed. His fingers drummed a lazy tune on the steering wheel.
“Long night,” she said, for lack of anything else to say.
His eyes cracked open. They were glinting sleepily in the reflected lights from the street. “I’ve had more pleasurable evenings,” he drawled. There was a pause. “Although the company could have been worse.”
“I do believe that was a compliment.” Lainie tucked a hand between her cheek and the headrest. “Feel free to elaborate. Don’t spare my blushes.”
“‘The lady doth speak,’” Richard murmured, quoting one of Will’s lines from the play. The rest was pure ad lib: “A little too much, methinks.”
Lainie retaliated by borrowing words from Chloe’s mouth: “‘Thy pretty tongue, Bandero, leaves wounds.’”
“Well, that’s an inapt choice if I’ve ever heard one,” Richard remarked in his usual tones. He sat up straighter as the cars in front began to move. “I don’t think I’ve ever personally been accused of speaking prettily before.”
“You do all right,” Lainie said. “Occasionally.”
She sensed him cast another quick glance at her, but she had reverted her attention back to the window.
Another few minutes passed in silence, punctuated by jerky stops and starts in the flow of traffic. It was going to be dawn before they reached their respective homes at this rate. She was suddenly really hungry too. She tried to predict Richard’s reaction if she asked him to take the Ferrari through a McDonald’s drive-through. Her head turned farther to the side to hide her instinctive smile.
“Almost forgot.” Richard took one hand off the wheel to reach into the pocket of his waistcoat. He had thrown the suit jacket into the backseat of the car, with shocking disregard for the artistry of its designer, and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt to reveal his taut forearms, lightly furred with black hair. She had been trying not to stare at him ever since. His hand came in front of her face with a piece of paper held between his first two fingers.
She took it automatically. “What’s this?” she asked, opening it.
“The new call time for your audition for Somerset County,” he said matter-of-factly, and she stared, first blankly at the piece of paper and then at him in growing astonishment. He intercepted the look and shrugged. “I pulled a few strings. They’ll see you this week.”
“But...” Lainie was aware that she was gaping and mouthing like a stranded fish. She pressed her lips together, and then tried again for a rational tone. “You can’t just...” Rationality fled and her voice rose in pitch. “Richard! You can’t do things like that.”
“As you’re holding a call time, evidently I can and I have.”
“You can’t just call people up and force them to give me a role!”
“I didn’t,” he said, with odious reasonableness. “I called and got them to reinstate the audition you had already earned on your own merit. I couldn’t get you the role even if I wanted to. Mark Forster is a professional. He’s not going to give a job to every woman who passes through my bedroom door just because I ask him to. Which I haven’t.”
“And which I haven’t.”
“No, you haven’t. To my lasting disappointment.”
She set her jaw. “I don’t need favours and nepotism. I can succeed on my own.”
Richard made an impatient noise. “Don’t be naïve. Nobody succeeds on their own. And in this business, they grab hold of every connection they have and squeeze it dry.”
There was an undertone to his exasperation that halted Lainie’s next protest in her throat. His face was very set, and he was concentrating on his driving with far more intensity than earlier.
Had she actually hurt his feelings?
“Well,” she said a bit feebly, after a pause. She added grudgingly, “Thank you.”
His look was ironic. “You’re welcome.” He nodded at the paper. “Forster’s private office line is on there, as well. He wants to talk to you about the charity.”
“The charity?”
“Shining Lights. Regardless of the outcome of your audition, he’s going to arrange for a portion of the profits from the production to be donated to the kids.” Richard seemed to think that side note closed the subject. He returned his gaze out the windscreen, either ignoring or not noticing Lainie’s stupefaction.
“You got him to agree to donate part of the profits to Shining Lights?” she said slowly, reconciling that fact with the picture she already had of Richard in her head
. Trying to make the new pieces fit the existing puzzle.
“Yes.” His shoulders shifted, just a little, and the uncharacteristic fidget brought home to her how uncomfortable and out of his depth he was.
A rush of intense, tender feeling almost drowned her. She actually made a slight sound, so taken aback was she by the sensation. She looked down at the paper in her hand again and made up her mind all at once.
Leaning forward, she pressed a sudden, warm kiss to the side of his neck, in the sensitive hollow below his ear.
He jerked, and the car swerved slightly. Swearing, he cast her a look that was an odd combination of warning and heat.
“The traffic is terrible,” she said lightly.
“Cracking observation there, Sherlock,” he said, taking refuge in irony.
“It would probably save time if you skipped the turnoff for Bayswater and just went straight on to your house.”
He froze. She saw his hands tighten around the wheel.
After a single, comprehensive look into her eyes, he indicated to turn right toward Belgravia.
* * *
Richard’s home was one of those sparkling white mansion flats with black-and-white tiled steps leading up to the front door. She often passed similar houses on the various millionaires’ rows, but never seemed to see anyone going in or out. They were like the residential versions of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. She stood in a very plush lounge and tried not to think about the size of Richard’s income. She failed, and blanched. Her own conception of financial independence had been shopping at Topshop more often than she did at Primark.
Richard handed her a cup of strong coffee. After that one betraying moment of stillness in the car, he had been behaving quite normally. She didn’t know what she had expected—that he would flip a dimmer switch and activate mood music? Clearly she’d spent too much time with Will.
Sipping her coffee, she strolled awkwardly around the room. They were in Richard’s study, and she was afraid to touch anything. It was like going into shops full of breakable knickknacks and feeling as if any wrong movement would bring a priceless ornament crashing to the floor. Not just when she was small and tagging along with her mother: she still tended to feel that way now.
She stopped in front of a large oil portrait set into the wall above the fireplace. Her eyes went from the intense painted features to the flesh-and-blood man sitting sprawled in a Regency chair. “You don’t look much like your father,” she ventured.
Richard swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “Not at all.” He sounded completely unperturbed as he added, “Knowing my mother, it’s possible there was no blood link. We can but hope.” He frowned as he looked at the portrait. “It’s inset into the wall and it appears that removing it would damage two-hundred-year-old fixtures around the mantel. Otherwise I’d have taken it down.”
Lainie didn’t know how to respond to that. She said, rather uncertainly, “Your father was...fairly conservative, I take it.”
Richard snorted. “My father was about as far right as it was possible to move without falling completely off the grid. I’m not sure what policies his party actually supported. They were too busy opposing everything under the sun. Equitable rights, be they racial, sexual, or gender-oriented. Immigration. Public healthcare. Accessible education. The arts.”
“The arts?”
“Hmm. A waste of time and public funds that ought to be directed into an aggressive overhaul of the military. The practise of licentious and unpatriotic tomfoolery by a bunch of Bohemian layabouts. Loose women and homosexual men.” Richard swirled his coffee. “Franklin and his cohorts would have had ninety percent of the population exiled to Australia—still a jumped-up penal colony, by the way—if they could. Or just lined up against a wall and shot.”
“Nice.” Lainie sat down on the edge of the Queen Anne chaise. “I imagine he wasn’t exactly thrilled to have a son who wanted to go to drama school.”
“He died when I was still at school, and I hadn’t made up my mind what I wanted to do at that stage.” Richard grinned suddenly. “I think I was going through a very late-blooming astronaut phase, which would never have done. Rubbish at physics.”
Lainie could suddenly imagine him as a teenager, and the image was more endearing than she would have expected.
“I did my first school play a couple of months before he died.”
“Did he go?”
“No. He tried to have the drama teacher fired.”
He wasn’t joking. Lainie winced.
“At the time of his death, he was campaigning to eliminate almost all public arts funding. Government cultural grants were to be limited to a select few projects approved by the appropriate ministers, and art education was to be beaten out of the school curriculum with a barbed stick.” Richard’s voice was weary and disgusted. “Cultural resources were even more scarce then than they are now. The system needs a sharp boost, not to be dwindled into bleak totalitarianism.”
Lainie was becoming clear on a number of things. “So first step, the RSPA,” she said slowly. “To pick up the reins that your father dropped and turn the battle in the opposite direction.”
“He would have approved the military allusion.” Richard shrugged. “Perhaps not quite that dramatic, but yes. If he could have, my father would have done this country a monumental injustice in a number of areas. I intend to help correct at least one of them.”
“It still must have been hard. When he had the heart attack.”
There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of their breathing.
“He didn’t have a heart attack,” Richard said. “He was about to be found out in tampering with a parliamentary vote, and he shot himself in the head.”
She drew in a sharp breath, and he continued, “My family had a PR team who make Pat look like a kindergarten teacher by comparison. They hushed up the truth about the suicide, the reason for it, the extent and range of my mother’s affairs, and God knows what else.” He met her eyes, and his smile was awful. “Pretty sort of background, isn’t it?”
Lainie sensed instinctively that if she put a foot wrong now—and if she offered anything resembling pity—he would shove her so far out of his life, she would be left reeling on the street. “I hope,” she said, in tones that were 5 percent compassion and 95 percent admonishment, “that you’re not going to blame your tendency to behave like a complete prick on your parents. Because I would wager my entire salary for The Cavalier’s Tribute that you were a stubborn, bolshie little horror in your pram.”
For a few tense moments, while her stomach twisted, Richard’s face remained expressionless. Then he laughed, and it sounded genuine.
Taking her by surprise, he reached out, grabbed hold of her wrist and pulled strongly, tumbling her onto his lap.
“Bob Carson had no idea what he was setting in motion,” he said, and he kissed her.
It took her a few stuttering breaths to catch up, but she had always taken direction well. She slid her hands along his jaw and into his hair, meeting the demanding thrust of his tongue with her own. He was stroking her own hair, sifting the silky strands through his fingers and humming his appreciation against her mouth. His lips trailed kisses along her cheek, her hairline and the curve of her earlobe. She jerked when he bit down. She could feel his hard thighs beneath her hip, and the subtle shifting adjustments of his body.
Lainie’s fingers went to the buttons of his sexy waistcoat, tugging it open, and then to work on the fine lawn shirt beneath. She flattened a palm on his chest and gloried in the deep shudder that shook through his taut muscles.
Warm fingers traced the lines of bone in her shoulders and clavicle. His hand slid down her spine, igniting a shivering path of nerves as he lowered the zip of her dress, before he retraced his path back toward her neckline.
He came to a frustrating pause before the more interesting part of the proceedings.
Lainie’s heavy eyelids parted and she inhaled sharply, trying to catch her brea
th. “What’s the matter?” she murmured huskily.
Richard tilted up her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. His eyes were almost black with arousal. “Tell me you want this. Me.”
It was enlightening that she could be this far gone with desire yet still capable of irritation. “Richard.” She braced herself against his stomach. “I am prepared to stroke many things right now, but your ego is not one of them.”
He didn’t relax his grip. He was scanning her eyes, looking for—what? Reluctance? Sobriety? Temporary insanity?
“A few weeks ago, you couldn’t stand me,” he bit out, and she held his gaze without flinching.
“The feeling was mutual.”
“No. I never hated you.”
“No. You barely knew I existed.” She added thoughtfully, “I think that’s worse.”
He moved an impatient shoulder. “I don’t want to do this if it’s not for the right reasons. If it’s anything to do with what I told you tonight.” Purposely crude, he said harshly, “I have no need or desire for a pity fu—”
Lainie’s hand left his belly and covered his mouth. “If you want to retain the necessary equipment for this interlude, I suggest you don’t finish that sentence.” Her fingers moved, stroking his lips. “Richard. All I’ve had to do is look at you tonight and I want to curl up against you and purr like a cat.”
His slow smile was equally feline. A black panther rather than a cosy house cat.
She put her hand over his and moved it down, sliding it over her jaw and down her neck to shape the heavy fall of her breast. Still he hesitated, until she ran a fingertip from the hollow of his throat to the top of his belt. His body arched sharply under her touch, and his thumb found a racing pulse under clinging silk. Her nails dug into his shoulders.
“A cat with claws,” he murmured, and stood up with her in his arms. She breathed in the clean scent of his hair as he carried her up the stairs. Impressively, he managed to keep kissing her without walking them into any walls. His house was far too big for one person. It took so long to get to his bedroom that he was lucky he was sexy or the mood might have waned.
