‘Niels, Lola came to visit me!’ Jean-Marc protested. ‘I wanted her to come! She’s my fiancée!’
‘Not any more she isn’t, ’ Niels said succinctly.
He stepped into the room, and Lola found herself short of breath, as if Niels’s presence were sucking up all the oxygen. She remembered a nature documentary she’d seen once, flipping channels late-night, coked up, unable to sleep. There’d been a rabbit on it, trapped by a snake. The soft drone of the presenter’s voice had explained how the rabbit was dazed by the raw power of the snake’s eyes, unable to see its mouth opening, its jaw detaching, about to swallow the rabbit whole . . .
She’d switched channel at that point, unable to watch the poor bunny being eaten. Even then, she’d wondered why it didn’t hop away, run for its life. But now she understood: it had been paralysed by fear, just as she was now under Niels van der Veer’s piercing grey eyes.
‘She was telling me something really important!’ Jean-Marc continued. ‘You’re interrupting a private conversation!’
Behind Niels were two white-coated men, big and brawny, and in the background Lola could see Deirdre in her bright blue uniform, hovering nervously.
‘How the hell did you get in here?’ Niels demanded, standing over Lola and folding his arms.
‘I sneaked in, ’ she said defiantly, raising her small round chin and staring back at him, doing her absolute best not to be intimidated. ‘I wanted to see how Jean-Marc was doing. I do love him!’ For some reason, it was very important that Niels be aware of this.
‘And I love her!’ Jean-Marc said.
They sounded like two teenagers, Lola thought, silly and puny against the might of a grown-up. And Niels must have thought it too, because he unfolded his arms (again, Lola couldn’t help noticing the size of them under the superb tailoring) and clapped his hands slowly, one, two, three times, in mocking applause of their pathetic little declaration.
‘Great, ’ he said sarcastically. ‘Fantastic. Really, you two should both go on the stage. Now, if you’ve quite finished the amateur dramatics, I’ll get on with my business here.’
He nodded at the two men, who came over to Jean-Marc’s bedside. One started checking Jean-Marc’s various drips; the other took his pulse, watching a monitor by the bed as he did so.
‘What’s going on?’ Lola asked, hearing panic in her voice.
‘We’re taking your fiancé away, Princess, ’ Niels said, loading the word ‘fiancé’ with irony. ‘You’ll have to find someone else to marry.’ He looked at her, a head-to-toe glance that acknowledged her beauty but was simultaneously insulting, like a man sizing up a prostitute in a brothel. ‘You shouldn’t have much trouble with that. Though it might be hard finding one as rich as Jean-Marc.’
Lola started to exclaim furiously that she had plenty of money of her own, that she didn’t need Jean-Marc’s, but she couldn’t: her tongue was tied by her desperate financial situation. She stared helplessly, furiously, at him, as the male nurses began to unhook Jean-Marc from the monitor.
‘What’s happening, Niels?’ Jean-Marc asked, looking frightened.
Niels switched his gaze from Lola to his brother, and Lola sagged back in her chair, feeling as if she had been released from a tractor beam. Niels’s voice, when he addressed his brother, was completely different. The harshness was gone. This was as gentle, Lola sensed, as Niels van der Veer knew how to be.
‘You’re going to Desert Springs, Jean, ’ Niels said, and his expression softened as he looked at his brother lying fragile and grey-faced in the hospital bed.
‘Now?’ Jean-Marc looked at the nurses, busy checking that the IV drips would slide along the floor easily.
‘Right now. This moment. I’ve had the jet fully equipped for medical transport. And the sooner we get you into a healthier atmosphere, with no bad influences around you’ – he sneered at Lola – ‘the better you’ll be.’
‘Lola isn’t a bad influence, Niels! You’ve got this all wrong!’ Jean-Marc pleaded. ‘And I need to help her now, I’ve dragged her through the mud with this awful scandal—’
‘Everyone you did drugs with is a bad influence, Jean, ’ Niels said coldly. ‘Everyone you drank with. And I think the entire population of Great Britain knows, as of this morning, that your charming ex-fiancée isn’t exactly a drug-free zone.’
Jean-Marc turned his head to Lola.
‘What does he mean?’ he said.
Lola hung her head. ‘Someone sold pictures of me at the hen night to the tabloids, ’ she said.
‘Oh, Lola! Darling, how terrible!’
Lola nodded, unable to speak. She felt covered with shame, humiliated in front of Niels van der Veer. No wonder he was looking at her as if she were dog mess on his beautiful Italian shoes.
‘You’re upsetting my brother, ’ Niels said icily. ‘Up.’
‘What?’ Lola stared at him.
‘Up! Get up! Leave this room now! You’re making Jean-Marc worse!’
Lola’s brown eyes flashed with anger.
‘How dare you!’ she said. ‘Jean-Marc’s upset because you’re yelling at me!’
But she wasn’t expecting the consequences. In two swift strides, Niels van der Veer was looming over her. Before she had time to realise what he was going to do, he reached down, grasped her upper arms and hauled her out of the chair. Her hand slipped out of Jean-Marc’s grasp. She was pulled upright, shocked into absolute capitulation by his strong hands digging into her, the scent of his aftershave, the warmth of his grip. She found herself unable to do anything to resist him as he picked her off her feet and carried her bodily to the doorway.
Behind them, she heard Jean-Marc protesting, but her face was so close to Niels’s neck everything else was drowned out by the rasping sound of his breath. When he put her down in the corridor she staggered slightly, tipping on the same high-heeled boots she’d been wearing before, the ones that were a little too big for her.
Niels was looking down at her, and it was an act of tremendous bravery for her to raise her head and meet his gaze. When she did, it was a physical shock. He looked like the snake she had pictured before, about to eat her up, consume her whole. It was too much. He was too close. She tried to pull away from his hard grip, and now she did struggle against him, because for some reason he didn’t let her go immediately.
When he did, she reached up to rub where he had held her: the tops of her arms felt scorched, as if he had burned through the fabric of her coat.
‘I’ll have bruises, ’ she said furiously.
She was close enough to see that his pupils dilated. With what emotion, she couldn’t tell. He opened his mouth, and she waited, still staring at him defiantly, to see what he would say. It seemed to take forever.
‘Stay away from my brother, ’ he finally snapped.
And then he turned on his heel and strode back into Jean-Marc’s room, slamming the door behind him.
Lola sagged back against the wall; her heart was racing. She hated having been torn away from Jean-Marc like that: she had wanted more time with him.
And, horrible though it sounded, she was also desperate for money. It had been so close – Jean-Marc would have given her anything she needed – and now it had been snatched away. She made some frantic financial calculations to work out how far the money in her bank accounts would go. She needed to get to New York, give George some money on account, maybe pay for a hotel . . .
The door of Jean-Marc’s room was flung open. Niels van der Veer stood there, sneering at her.
‘Here, ’ he said, folding something up and throwing it at her. It fluttered to the floor at her feet. ‘My brother wouldn’t calm down till I gave you this.’
Lola glanced down. It was unmistakeably a cheque. Still, she was damned if she’d stoop down and pick it up in front of Niels van der Veer, like a beggar picking up coins.
‘I’ll pay back every penny, ’ she said, meeting his eyes.
He shook his head.
‘Consid
er it a gift. With one condition. Stay away from my brother.’
And he stepped back and closed the door.
Lola wished with all her heart that she could walk away and leave the cheque where it lay. But she couldn’t. She needed everything she could get her hands on to reach her father and hire lawyers to fight her stepmother.
So, hating that she had to pick the cheque up from the floor where Niels van der Veer had thrown it, she bent down and did exactly that. She couldn’t help unfolding it immediately and looking to see how much it was.
Twenty thousand pounds.
Lola had very little idea of the value of money; her father had kept her so sheltered and cosseted that she had never had to work, never had to pay a bill directly, never had to work out whether she could afford anything, because she always could.
But, added to what was in her bank account, this had to be enough. Enough to get her to New York, to find somewhere to stay, to pay for a retainer to challenge Carin’s power of attorney and her control of Lola’s trust fund.
Enough to get her to see her father, and to find out what had really happened to him.
Lola folded up the cheque again and slipped it into her pocket. And, walking now as if Devon’s Gina boots were made for her, with not a single stumble, she stalked down the hospital corridor, heading for the exit.
Chapter 6
‘Evie? Evie, wake up. It’s morning. Time to get up.’
Defiantly, Evie squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to respond, as Lawrence shook her gently.
‘Evie, I’ve left you alone like you wanted, ’ Lawrence said softly. ‘But it’s been three days now, and you haven’t had a bite to eat in all that time. You have to get up.’
No I don’t, Evie muttered in her head. I don’t have to do anything any more.
‘You need to eat something, Evie. I made you soup.’
She could smell it now that he’d mentioned it. Cooked vegetables, something a bit cabbagey. It turned her stomach.
‘Come on, Evie, ’ Lawrence insisted, as gently as ever. ‘I’ve respected your need to be left alone, but it’s time to get up now. Autumn and I have to go out to run a yoga workshop. I want to see you up and on your feet before I go. The world’s waiting.’
No it isn’t, Evie told herself. He can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. Benny put you up in a fabulous penthouse and gave you credit cards and fed you sushi from Blue Ribbon and bought you anything you wanted, so you had to do stuff for Benny. But Lawrence lives in a shithole and he’s trying to feed you cabbage. You don’t have to do a damn thing he says.
‘OK, ’ Lawrence said, removing his hand. He had slept beside her in the huge loft bed these last nights – three nights, had it really been that long? – and at first had made an attempt to spoon her. She had shrugged him off. And, Lawrence being Lawrence, he had accepted that. So he had slept here too, but without touching her.
Odd: Lawrence had been her lover for six months now, but they’d never slept together. And now they had, but without even touching. Everything in her life was upside down and wrong way round.
Lawrence leaned over and dropped a light, delicate kiss on the back of her head.
‘Eww.’ His voice was full of laughter now. ‘You might want to consider washing some time this year, by the way. You’re beginning to stink out my bed.’
Evie rolled over, full of indignation. She was so fastidious about her personal hygiene, so concerned to be sweet-smelling, depilated, smooth to the touch, that this was almost the worst thing Lawrence could have said.
‘I had a shower before I – before she—’ Evie began.
It flooded back to her now in one go: her lovely shower, the sparkling starry lights on its ceiling, the honey scent of the Diptyque shower gel. And then, that long slow walk through Tribeca, dragging her cases and her pole, sweating heavily under the sunshine and the weight of the three coats . . .
‘Oh God, ’ she said reluctantly. ‘I must reek.’
‘I wouldn’t say reek, exactly.’ Lawrence pretended to consider this, his eyes smiling.‘I’d give you a few more days before you actually start to reek. Right now, I’d say you were just smelly.’
Evie ducked her head to smell her armpit.
‘OK, I need a shower, ’ she admitted.
‘I’ll go and turn on the water, ’ Lawrence said.
I guess I’m lucky this place has hot water plumbed in at all, Evie thought sourly.
Lawrence was back almost immediately, coming up the treads of the ladder to the loft bed so lightly that he hardly seemed to be putting any weight on them.
‘The water heater’s on, ’ he said, ‘and I’ve told Autumn you’re having a shower.’
‘Is it OK for me to be here?’ Evie asked bluntly, spurred into it by the mention of Autumn’s name.‘She gave me a hard time about my stuff.’
Evie wriggled to the edge of the bed platform and peered over it. Her suitcases were nowhere in sight, but her clothes had been taken out and folded on the shelves, her coats hung neatly on the rail. On a small table – or rather, a stack of bricks topped with a piece of board – were arrayed all her creams, lotions and cosmetic bags. Her heart lifted. Suddenly she felt more buoyant. It was ridiculous how far she’d sunk – to be grateful that she had managed to keep the measly possessions she’d managed to claw from the bitch’s clutches.
‘Of course you can stay! It’s an emergency, ’ Lawrence said. ‘Normally, we do have a cruelty-free rule here, but you weren’t to know that. I explained that to Autumn.’
‘I bet she took that really well, ’ Evie said with great satisfaction. The thought of Autumn’s discomfiture was so pleasing that it gave her the energy to sit up.
‘The fur really is too much, though, Evie, ’ Lawrence said, fixing her with a pure, serious gaze, his eyes wide and limpid. ‘We do need to get rid of that when you’re feeling better. It’s terrible karma.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll sell it as soon as I can, ’ Evie said sadly.
Lawrence looked troubled.
‘I think you should just hand it into PETA, ’ he said. ‘They have a fur collection amnesty.’
Evie snorted with laughter.
‘You’re kidding, right? I’m totally broke, Lawrence. I need every cent I can get my hands on.’
She swung her legs out from the covers, over the edge of the platform, and started to climb down the ladder. But she was appalled to find her legs practically giving way under her. Lawrence grabbed onto her, steadying her.
‘Easy, tiger, ’ he said. ‘You’ve starved yourself for days now, and it wasn’t like you had much weight to lose. I’ll go first and help you down.’
Evie was too shocked at her feebleness even to protest. Lawrence helped her down the ladder and then swung her up and into his arms, carrying her effortlessly into the bathroom.
Evie had been hoping that it wasn’t as bad as she remembered from her brief forays into it, when the pressure of her bladder had got so insistent that it had driven her to the toilet. But, if anything, the bathroom was worse in daylight. If the cheap industrial tiles had once been white, they’d lost that freshness decades ago. Now they looked like English people’s teeth: yellowing, chipped, broken in places. Any grouting left was so mouldy and green that it looked like moss.
The toilet had no lid, and the seat was from a different model, too large, so you had to position yourself carefully not to leak pee onto the floor. And by the yellow streaks on the concrete below, many people had failed to do that . . . The floor slanted down in the centre towards a drain, which caught the water from the shower head jerry-rigged on the far side of the room. There was no shower stall, no tray, no curtain. The sink was industrial, an old ceramic one bleached and stained by various chemicals, and the only place to put any sort of beauty products was the windowsill, high up on a wall. The window itself was so thickly smeared with pigeon shit that it hardly let in any light at all.
‘It’s not much at the moment, ’ L
awrence apologised, lowering Evie to her feet. ‘But I’m going to do it up once I’ve finished the kitchen.’
‘Once you’ve finished the kitchen?’ Evie echoed feebly. From the state of it, she hadn’t imagined that anyone could have started on the kitchen yet.
‘Oh yes! You should have seen it when we moved in!’ Lawrence said blithely.
Evie closed her eyes in horror.
‘I’ll turn on the shower for you, ’ Lawrence said.
He had already brought through her beauty products. She could hear him turning the tap on the ramshackle water heater. Steam began to fill the room, steam and heat. It softened her mood. She opened her eyes and started to peel off her clothes, the stinky T-shirt and sweatpants she’d been sleeping in for three days and nights now.
‘Shall I leave you alone?’ Lawrence asked.
Naked now, Evie looked at him standing there in his cotton sweater and loose track pants, his hair, drawn back in its ponytail, his clear light eyes regarding her with the sweet, gentle calm that was the very centre of his nature. Most men would have been unable to stand still under a long stare from a very pretty naked woman, but not Lawrence: hands hanging by his sides, his back straight in perfect posture, his feet set just a little apart, he returned her gaze, his full lips quirking up at the sides in a little smile of reassurance. He looked like a yogi, or a martial artist, perfectly poised, perfectly comfortable in his own body.
‘No, ’ Evie said finally. ‘Stay with me.’
‘Shall I shower with you?’ Lawrence asked, careful to take nothing for granted.
She nodded, and stepped under the spray of water, bending to pick up her shampoo. As she soaped her hair, she watched Lawrence undress, pulling the sweater over his head, hiding his face for a moment but revealing his flat stomach, his smooth, almost hairless chest, his lean, muscled shoulders and arms, the erotic shock of light brown hair under each one. He pulled down his tracksuit pants and his boxers in one go (Lawrence only wore loose underwear, believing genitalia shouldn’t be confined too tightly), kicking off his yoga slippers as he did so. In one swift, elegant move, it seemed, he was naked, walking towards her.
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