“Thanks. Sorry. You must be wondering what the hell’s going on. I don’t suppose you get a lot of weeping girls in here.”
“Nah. Mainly drunk teenage boys in back to front baseball caps. You’re a refreshing change, actually. Are you okay, then? Do you need…Rocky…urgently?”
“Depends what you call urgent. I’ve had a bit of a shock. I need to talk to him about it…but he probably won’t want to know.”
“Is he…are you…some relation of his?”
There was a bark of laughter, devoid of mirth. “In a way. You could say that…now. The mother of a man’s child is a relation of his, isn’t she?”
Flipp’s fist closed on the tissue, balling it up at lightning speed.
“His child?”
“Unborn.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah. That’d be a shock.” And not just for you. “I can put the kettle on if you want.”
“Oh yes, why not? Tea solves all problems, doesn’t it? Except it doesn’t. Especially the kind of problem that hangs around your neck like a millstone for eighteen years eating your time and money.”
“Babies aren’t all bad, are they? You might…want it. Or if you don’t…” She left the implication unspoken.
“I know all that. I know. But I won’t let him get away with what he’s done to me scot-free. I want him to know and I want him to pay. I’m not joining the other mothers of all the Rocky Junior bastards he’s fathered around town, moaning about maintenance at the school gates. I’m going to make damn sure he acknowledges this and accepts his responsibility.”
“Rocky Juniors? Are there many?” Flipp’s dismay was trickling down her spine like cold gravy. She felt sick.
“He’s like a one-man stud farm, darling. What’s your name, by the way?”
“Flipp.”
“Well, Flipp, I don’t know if Rocky has turned his devilish charms on to you yet, but believe me, he will. And when he does, don’t get caught out like me. Run for the hills. Run before you can’t move because he’s got you knocked up too. Get right away from him.”
Flipp was still not sure she recognised the heartless lothario being painted for her nonedification. She fidgeted with her bangles for a minute, trying to decide if it would be heartless to get rid of this unwanted visitor as soon as she humanly could.
“I don’t really know him, love,” she opened guardedly, but the girl hissed in her face, almost spitting the words.
“Don’t really know him. You’re fucking him, darling. How is that not really knowing him?”
Flipp, senses on alert, pressed herself against the back of the booth, preparing to strike if necessary. “What the fuck do you know about my sex life? Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“You don’t need to know who I am. But you do need to know that Rocky is off-limits. Do you get me? Do you, Flipp, or whatever your name is? Eh?”
“Get out of here.” Flipp flung the little door at the side of the booth open and began to manhandle the other girl out of it, with considerable difficulty given her adversary’s stature. Coins were swept from the counter and hair pulled, then there was screaming and struggling that rose above the endless unmusical music and boom-boom of the arcade.
“Laura.”
The bundle of combined hair and teeth paused midwhirlwind, staring madly at the black leather apparition that stood glowering at them.
“What the fuck is going on?”
“Ask her.” Laura spat. “Ask your floozy.”
“I don’t know what you mean, but I think you’d better leave, don’t you?”
“She just came at me,” Flipp blurted, still shaking from the shock of it. “She says she’s pregnant.”
Laura held Rocky’s consternated gaze, level and fiery eyed.
“Yeah,” he said after a beat. “Well, call me cynical, but I think you’ll need to show me the test before I go out shopping for prams.”
“You’ll see,” said Laura, wild-eyed.
“Right. Here’s a tenner. Get down to the chemist and buy a test. And I want to watch you pee on the stick.”
Laura hesitated for a moment, then made a sound of inarticulate disgust and flew off, knocking Rocky’s shoulder in her haste to vacate the scene.
“You know she was lying, don’t you?” he asked urgently, stepping forward, bending down to Flipp’s draggled figure in the booth doorway.
“Who is she?”
“Nobody. Nothing.” Rocky, noticing a tear in Flipp’s lacy vest top, put a finger over the hole, the gloved pad of it cool against her scratched skin. He looked down at it, his breath held, his eyes in a place of distant trouble that looked as if it contained fighting and smoke, then he looked up at her and the sheer heat of it made Flipp tremble all the more. Unconsciously she moved towards him, pressing the finger farther into her flesh, her whole body wanting to be on his.
“Better…go upstairs. Can’t have Cordwainer guessing anything.”
Rocky swallowed and pulled himself away, walking swiftly to the office door without a backwards glance.
Laura slammed the tears out of her eyes with the heel of a hand, leaning over the pier railings to breathe in huge lungfuls of fresh sea air, hoping they would replace the sick feeling in her stomach—a sick feeling that had nothing to do with the impending joys of motherhood.
Staring at her shoes—the red slingbacks from Office—she became gradually aware of somebody behind her, then beside her, then a hand on the rail beside hers.
“Are you okay? Feeling faint?”
It was a man’s voice, vaguely familiar. Laura tried to quell her irritation at the unwanted company and muttered, “No’m fine, thanks.”
She took one last gasp of saline oxygen, straightened up, wiped her brow and looked at the speaker.
“Oh, you,” she said. “You’re…I’ve met you before, don’t tell me…you work for the Gazette.”
“Yes,” he said, clearly pleased to have a coveted spot in the golden girl’s memory. “Jeremy Weill. I interviewed you when you won the Carnival Queen vote.”
“That’s right. Jeremy.” She smiled in recollection of past glories. “You asked the most dreadfully bland questions of all time. Favourite nail polish. Did I have any pets? What were my ambitions?”
“Carnival Queen interviews aren’t meant to stir controversy.” Jeremy smiled back. “But I can do a no-holds-barred confessional now, if you like.”
Laura managed a laugh, her fury at Flipp and Rocky simmering down to a low boil. “Not sure about confessional,” she said. “But no publicity is bad publicity. Perhaps a periodic feature about my adventures in the modelling business—would you be interested?”
“There’s a thought. Could be interesting—glamour, showbiz, something to hook the younger readers. I’ll pitch it to my editor if you like. Tell you what, it’s…six-thirty now. Have you eaten? Can I buy you dinner? If you’re free, of course.”
Laura looked over at Caesar’s Palace, at its garish frontage and battered paintwork. She didn’t belong there. She was better than that.
“Why not?” She smiled charmingly and took Jeremy’s proffered arm.
Over spaghetti alle vongole in a backstreet Italian place, Jeremy steered the subject, with some difficulty, away from Laura’s incessant self-promotional chatter and asked, “So, about that confessional. Are you secretly addicted to penny fountains?”
“No.” She laughed, puzzling over the Chianti glass.
“Fruit machines? Bike simulators?”
She caught his drift and looked away for a split second, gathering her wits.
“Of course not,” she said coolly.
“So what were you doing at Caesar’s Palace? It’s like bumping into the queen down at Poundstretcher.”
Laura, softened by the flattering comparison, let her guard back down.
“I was looking for Daddy. He does some business with Mr. Cordwainer sometimes.”
“Oh really? He’s a builder, though, isn’t he?”
“He owns a build
ing company,” Laura corrected frostily. “The biggest one in the county, as I’m sure you know.”
“Sorry. Yes, I do know that.” Laura liked the way Jeremy put his head to one side and hid behind his eyelashes, like a schoolboy caught out in a misdemeanour. He was in awe of her. She liked that. And he was handsome too. Bonus points. “Is he building something for Cordwainer, then? More arcades?”
“Who’s a good little cub reporter, then,” trilled Laura, touching the tip of his shoe under the table with her stockinged toes. “You’re up to something, aren’t you, Jeremy?”
“I’m just taking an interest in my surroundings,” Jeremy said. Laura thought he had practised that innocent look in front of a mirror. It went so nicely with his enthusiastic response to her invitation to the footsie dance. “It’s my job to notice things, so I can’t really stop myself, even when I’m off duty.”
“I bet you’re never off duty.” Laura’s foot nudged his calf.
“I see things.” Jeremy’s breathing was a little laboured now. “And I just want to know what’s behind them. Like earlier on…I saw Rocky Anderson go into Caesar’s Palace…and then I saw you come out…looking upset…and it makes me wonder…”
Laura’s foot jammed its way between Jeremy’s thighs and landed firmly on the bulge in his trousers. A little too firmly, causing him to yelp a little and spill some wine.
“What’s your angle?” she asked harshly. “You’d better tell me what this is all about, sonny boy, or I’ll have you tied to the tracks right at the top of the Dive of Doom before you can say ‘investigative journalism.’ Oh. You like it when I play tough.” Suddenly the mound beneath her foot was like iron. She pushed at it, feeling for some give, enjoying the expression of ecstatic consternation on Jeremy’s face.
“I want to know about Rocky Anderson,” he blurted. “There are rumours. I keep hearing the same names mentioned. Cordwainer and his cronies. And Anderson is his heavy, isn’t he? His enforcer?”
“His goon,” said Laura disdainfully. “Go on. What sort of rumours?”
“Insider dealing. Gambling. Vice and drugs. All that.”
“In Goldsands?” Laura feigned wide-eyed shock before shooting Jeremy a teaser of a smile. “Seriously, you want to mess with Cordwainer? I wouldn’t if I were you.”
“Why not?”
Laura sat back, her gaze roving over the rumpled, slightly agitated but handsomely patrician brow of Jeremy Weill.
“Come home with me and I’ll give you a few pointers,” she said.
“I’ll get the bill.”
The Trewin residence lurked in leafy splendour near the edge of Goldsands’s least eroded cliff, its acres of garden ending abruptly at the chalk and limestone drop, but not before a pool, a croquet lawn and a tennis court with a view had impressed the visitor.
Jeremy was not treated to a tour of the extensive grounds on this occasion, however, finding himself bundled unceremoniously through the spacious lobby and up the stairs to Laura’s domain—a suite of rooms gathered around a terrace at the rear of the building, far from her father’s bedroom on the other side of the house.
“Daddy doesn’t forbid male visitors,” she explained in a low mutter, pushing him into a generous sitting room. “But he doesn’t like me to rub his nose in it. I’m still his little girl, you see. His little princess, winning Pony Club rosettes.” She smiled, rolling her eyes a little.
Jeremy refrained from countering with, And he’s still your daddy. Despite his dodgy dealings in the seediest underbelly Goldsands has to offer.
Instead he sat himself down on a cream leather couch and looked through the picture window to the cliffs and the dark, dark sea beyond.
“Don’t you win Pony Club rosettes anymore?” he asked.
She turned around from the drinks she was mixing them and smirked.
“The glittering trophies I have my eyes on aren’t for dressage,” she said. “Not anymore.”
“The modelling?” Jeremy accepted a dry martini, sipping and wincing a little at its unexpected strength.
“The modelling.” She nodded contemplatively. “Leading on to other opportunities. A part in Hollyoaks, perhaps, then on to presenting, or even a singing career.”
“You’re ambitious. How is the modelling going?”
Laura sucked provocatively on her cocktail-pronged olive.
“Slower than I’d hoped,” she admitted in the end. It seemed Daddy’s clout, alas, did not extend very far beyond Goldsands after all. “I’m an unfashionable type. Nowadays it’s all about the jolie laide. I’m more the golden glamour girl. Too many curves. I’ve tried to flatten myself out, but my stupid bloody boobs won’t play along.”
“Your stupid bloody boobs look just perfect as they are. You don’t need to change a thing.”
“Oh, I don’t care what men think, Jeremy dear. Apart from the powerful gay ones who dictate the direction of fashion. I know all you testosterone-charged boys want to fuck me. That’s irrelevant, though. I don’t want to be fucked. I want to shine. I want to shine like a star.”
Jeremy found that he had no coherent reply to this. He found Laura’s nakedly expressed ambition disturbing and alluring in equal measure. Exquisite beauty and calculating coldness were an exotically potent mix and he simply licked his lips and pushed a hand through his hair.
“I’m sure you will,” he said eventually. “Quite sure.”
“And you’ll help me, won’t you?” she beseeched, perching next to him on the cold cream cushions.
“If I can.”
“If you can? Oh, I’m disappointed.” Laura pouted, moving her knee closer to Jeremy’s in its light chino cotton.
“I’ll talk to the editor about that feature. I have a friend at Larging It magazine.”
“Larging It? Not my style, Jeremy. Grazia would be better.”
“I’ll email round the crowd from college. I’m sure some of them must be doing something useful.”
“Thank you.”
The knees bumped, lightly but meaningfully, as if glasses had been clinked.
“So…” Jeremy began, greatly daring, hoping that this gambit wouldn’t result in the flinging of dry martini and the wettening of a good shirt. “If you don’t want to be fucked…why were you fucking Rocky Anderson?”
For a second, the possibility of murder crackled in the air. Then, with an artificially light laugh, Laura turned to fully face Jeremy and said, “Because he was begging for it.”
“Begging for it?”
“Yes. Dirty little slut, strutting around in all that black leather, trying to get all the girls into bed with him. He needed a woman who wasn’t going to lie down and roll over for him. There’s only one woman who could give him that. And besides, he was so gorgeously rough. The absolute opposite of all those perfumed hair-gelled Henries Daddy is always trying to pair me off with. I could smell him, Jeremy, and he smelled of man. Pure man. Mmmm.”
Laura’s hand rubbed her knee, then a bloodred fingernail trailed up the seam of her skirt from hem to midthigh.
“He got me so hot and bothered,” she whispered. “He’d try to take control, and then I’d fight him, and it turned him on even more. We fought like cat and dog, Jeremy, hissing, spitting, clawing fights that ended up in bed every time. I suppose it was doomed, though, right from the start. Two control freaks are a bad combination. And I do simply have to be in control, you know.”
“I see that.” Jeremy was afraid to move, his hair no longer floppy but frozen in appalled, thrilled stasis.
Laura broke the tension with a long, tinkling laugh, leaning back and subjecting Jeremy to mocking scrutiny. “Oh, look at you,” she gasped. “You look like one of those men in wildlife documentaries, trying to find the right moment to grab the poisonous snake by the neck. Poor Jeremy. I don’t bite, you know.” She put a hand on his knee. “Okay, I lied. I do bite. But only in a nice way.”
Jeremy threw back his head, exposing a long, stubble-dark neck.
“Bite me,
” he whispered.
“I’ve been wanting to all night.”
He put his glass down hastily and let her yank him forward by his loosened tie until their mouths met and converged in a kiss that Laura seemed determined to treat as a battle.
Laura loved those fighting kisses, and this was one of the best. She wanted to capture and conquer his tongue, his teeth, the insides of his cheeks—she wanted dominion over the throat that brought forth his speech. She flung the little helpless sighs that came up from his chest right back down, pushing them back with her determined tongue. She nibbled at his lower lip, snagging it with sure teeth before biting down, holding his shoulders steady to preempt the escape attempt that always followed this move. She enjoyed the way his head shook, and the strangled sounds of objection that emerged into her mouth, and his complete inability to dislodge her. Poor Jeremy, she thought indulgently. What has your inquisitive little nose got you into, eh? Taking eventual pity, she released him and watched him wipe his mouth and press against the now swollen lower lip with indignant fingers.
“Christ, Laura, are you a vampire? I’m not into pain, you know.”
“Not even a little bit?” she coaxed, stroking the bitten flesh. “I thought you might be. Oh well. Never mind. Lie down and let me kiss it better.”
“You will just…kiss, right?” Jeremy was wary but seemingly compelled to obey, flattening his spine against the couch and removing his spectacles.
“I will make you feel so good, Jeremy. So good.” She bent over him, a ravenous goddess intent on her prey, and straddled his hips, her skirt riding well up to reveal taut golden thighs. Her lips descended on his neck, tasting warm, salt flesh so tempting that she had to lick it. Tiny nibbles rose in a winding path to his ear, and Laura groaned at the spasms and shivers that his body transmitted. He was clay in her skilled hands; she could mould him with sex. He would be hers, a pet journalist, to use as and when she wished. What could be more useful or ornamental than that? When she pushed her tongue with blunt force at the spot beneath his earlobe, he cried out and she chuckled, chewing and sucking for good measure. His erection bumped and brushed her thighs, straining against the restrictive cotton trousers, bursting for release.
Erotic Amusements Page 9
