A policy she’d pursued with reasonable success ever since. And the main reason she’d backed away from being a bridesmaid at the wedding, when Carrie had asked her months before.
‘Simon—hi.’ She tried to sound pleasant, but not unduly welcoming. ‘Didn’t Carrie tell me you were in Glasgow?’
‘A temporary secondment,’ he said. ‘I came back a week ago.’ He looked at Donna, assessing the heart-shaped face and enormous brown eyes, and his smile widened. ‘Won’t you introduce me?
She did the honours briefly, then signalled to the waitress to bring the bill.
‘It seems we’re having coffee at home,’ Donna said with faint disappointment, then brightened, her eyes shining. ‘I know—why don’t you join us, as you and Rhianna are such old friends? Then you can catch up with each other’s news.’
‘I’d love to.’ He turned to Rhianna, brows lifting. ‘No objections, have you, sweet pea?’
Enough to fill a telephone directory, thought Rhianna.
‘Of course not,’ she said briskly. ‘Although it will have to be a flying visit, I’m afraid. Donna and I have an early start tomorrow.’
‘Well,’ Simon said softly, ‘instant coffee will be fine.’
She’d supposed afterwards that they must have swapped contact numbers while she was in the kitchen, because it had been within the following week that Donna’s unaccountable absences had first begun.
But even then the penny hadn’t dropped, Rhianna thought, because she’d seen Donna lunching in the canteen more than once with one of the assistant producers on the show, who was known to be something of a Lothario, and drawn her own conclusions.
I’m not her Mother Superior, she’d told herself, shrugging. If she wants to stay out all night with Hugh the Rover, she’s entitled. She just doesn’t seem the type, that’s all.
She might have remained in the dark indefinitely, their unwitting and witless accomplice, but for that opportune headache.
She’d waited in her room that night until she heard the door slam behind Simon, then she’d gone in search of Donna. She’d found her crouching in a corner of the sofa, her dressing gown thrown round her, clutching a damp ball of a handkerchief in one hand. She’d looked at Rhianna with drowned eyes.
‘I’m so—so sorry,’ she gulped.
‘Sorry?’ Rhianna repeated incredulously. ‘For God’s sake, Donna, Simon’s engaged to my best friend. The wedding’s only a couple of months away. You know that perfectly well. The invitation’s right there on the mantelpiece.’
Donna swallowed convulsively. ‘Yes, I know. And Simon’s told me all about it—how they were childhood sweethearts. But he’s not going to go through with the wedding,’ she added defiantly. ‘He can’t. Because he’s fallen in love with me.’
‘No,’ Rhianna said bluntly. ‘You’re fooling yourself. Simon may be enjoying a bit on the side, that’s probably the way he is, but he won’t let Carrie go—not when push comes to shove. I can guarantee that. So stop this now, before you, and other people get hurt.’
‘You’re just jealous.’ Donna rounded on her tearfully. ‘You wanted Simon yourself years ago, and you made a really heavy pass at him. But you were found out, and as a result you got turned out of your own home by your aunt. He’s told me all about it.’
‘Then he’s lied,’ Rhianna told her icily. ‘Not that it matters. You disgust me, the pair of you.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You’ll have to move out, Donna. I can’t let you stay after this.’
‘So what are you going to do?’ Donna demanded sullenly. ‘Spill the beans to your little friend, I suppose?’
‘On the contrary,’ Rhianna returned curtly. ‘I’m simply going to wait for Simon to come to his senses.’
Donna flounced past her to the door. She was gone within the hour—presumably to Simon. Rhianna didn’t ask, and could only look forward to when the final episode of the current series was finished, and they didn’t have to encounter each other on set any more.
Even so, she had to listen to the girl bragging about her gorgeous, sexy boyfriend, and how he was paying for her to meet up with him in Nassau.
Was Donna aware that she was simply an add-on to Simon’s stag party in the Bahamas? Rhianna wondered wearily. And if so, did she care?
And then, several weeks later, Donna made that sudden unwanted reappearance back at the flat, confessing in floods of hysterical tears that she was pregnant, and that Simon had done a total and brutal about-face, telling her the affair was over and that she had to get rid of the baby.
‘You were right about him,’ she sobbed to Rhianna when they were alone. ‘You said he’d marry her in the end. But I still love him. I can’t bear to think of life without him. And how can he tell me not to have our child?’
Quite easily, Rhianna thought, when he’d never seriously considered relinquishing his commitment to Carrie. For him the baby was just a temporary inconvenience, to be dealt with swiftly and expediently.
The last thing she’d expected was to find herself dragged unwillingly into Simon’s battle with Donna over the proposed termination, or to face its damning effect on her relationship with Diaz.
After the evening when he’d found her with Simon and walked out, she’d heard nothing from him for nearly two aching, unhappy weeks.
Then she’d gone to an opening night party for a friend from drama school in her first West End role, and Diaz, to her amazement, had been the first person she saw as she entered the room.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, her heart jolting painfully as he reached her side.
‘I got a journalist friend to speak to your PR company,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘They said you’d be here, so I wangled an invitation.’
She looked at him uncertainly. ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier just to telephone me?’
‘I tried that,’ he said grimly. ‘And I spoke to your flatmate who was doing her ongoing impression of a watering can. Something told me you might not get my message, so I decided to find a different way to make contact with you.’
Rhianna hesitated. ‘Donna’s not living with me,’ she said. ‘She comes round to see me because she’s not—very happy.’
Not happy? She’s totally hysterical most of the time, still threatening to harm herself. Sometimes I dare not let her be by herself…
‘You amaze me,’ he said. ‘God preserve me from ever being in the vicinity when she’s totally miserable.’
I wish I could tell you about it, she thought passionately. I wish I could go into your arms and unload the whole, horrible sordid mess and ask you to deal with it, because it’s getting beyond me.
Yet I can’t—I dare not. For Carrie’s sake. Because even if you didn’t half-kill Simon, you’d certainly do everything possible to stop the wedding, which would break her heart.
And it’s still just possible that something can be saved from the wreckage, if I can just persuade Donna that Simon really isn’t coming back. That even if the baby doesn’t wreck her career, being a single mother in a chancy profession like acting isn’t a sensible option. And besides, as she’s said herself through floods of tears, it would destroy her mother.
Simon doesn’t deserve Carrie, but maybe marriage will change him. Who am I to say that it won’t? Maybe this thing with Donna has given him the scare he so badly needs, and he really will behave himself from now on?
I have to try and believe that, anyway.
She looked away from Diaz’s intent gaze, afraid he would read the uncertainty and trouble in her eyes. ‘Did you have something in particular that you wanted to say to me?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I need to apologise for my total overreaction the other night. I have no excuse except that Simon Rawlins has never been my favourite person.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Frankly, I find it hard to trust him.’
Her heart skipped a beat. Oh, God, if you knew. If you only knew…
She said in a low voice, ‘Perhaps trusting isn’t that big a deal where you’re concerne
d?’
‘I’d deny that,’ he returned, unfazed. ‘And so, I think, would the majority of my loyal and devoted staff around the world.’ He paused. ‘On the other hand they’d also tell you I don’t cope well with being thwarted, although I appreciate that’s no excuse for behaving like a bear with a sore head.’
She studied his waistcoat buttons with minute attention. ‘Is that what you were? Thwarted?’
‘Yes,’ he said, his eyes lingering on her mouth. ‘As you know perfectly well, my sweet, so don’t play games.’
She shook her head. ‘I—I don’t think I know very much about you at all.’
‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘with your co-operation, I’m hoping to change all that.’
She looked back at him then, her eyes wide and candid. ‘Do you think that’s wise—given past history?’
‘I wasn’t considering wisdom,’ he said. ‘I had sheer necessity in mind. I thought you felt that too.’ He allowed her an instant to digest that, then added more roughly, ‘I’m not pretending it’s going to be easy, Rhianna, but we’d be crazy not to try.’
‘Or die in the attempt?’ She tried to smile.
‘I’d much prefer to live,’ he said quietly. ‘And with you.’ He paused, glancing round. ‘But there are a lot of people who also want to talk to you looking daggers at me, so don’t answer me now. But soon—please.’
He reached for her hand and kissed it, his lips grazing the softness of her palm, making her whole body shiver.
She wanted to say, ‘Take me with you. Take me—now.’ But he was already turning away, and she could see an influential director bearing purposefully down on her, so realised she must wait for the glimpse of paradise that Diaz had offered her. The dream of joy, secretly nurtured for so long, and now astonishingly, incredibly, within her reach once more.
And she greeted the director with a smile so radiant that he almost jumped back in surprise.
She’d assumed that Diaz would stick around until they could leave together, and her heart sank when she suddenly realised that he’d already gone. Slipped away into the night at some point while she was talking to Helen, the euphoric lead in an undoubted hit.
As soon as she could she made her own excuses and left too. Sitting in the back of a cab, she let herself think about Diaz—how he’d looked, what he’d said, and the way his lightest touch could make her feel—until she tingled all over, wondering how soon she would see him again. Praying she would not have to wait too long. Teasing herself that she ought to be ashamed of her eagerness. Hoping that he would not be too disappointed when he realised she didn’t have the experience he expected.
All the lights in the flat seemed to be on when she let herself in, and she halted abruptly, brows lifting, when she saw the dining table laid for two with her nicest lace placemats and crystal, and tall ivory candles already lit in their ceramic holders.
As Donna came in, carrying the salt and pepper shakers, Rhianna turned on her. ‘Just what is going on here?’
‘Simon’s coming over.’ The other girl’s face had a sharp, intense look. ‘He rang earlier, sounding completely different, and said he wanted to talk.’
‘And you’re cooking him dinner—here—in my flat?’ Rhianna fought the sheer rage welling up inside her. ‘Knowing how I feel about all that’s happened—about him?’ She punched a clenched fist at the ceiling. ‘How dare you?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Well, that’s the end, Donna. From now on you’re on your own. You can give me back the key you’ve been using and go.’
‘Rhianna, please—let me stay—just one last time. Simon and I can’t talk properly, not in that shoe box I live in, and I simply have to see him—don’t you understand?’ Donna’s voice trembled. ‘Something’s changed with him. I know it has. And I have a really good feeling about it.’
‘Which makes one of us.’ Rhianna walked to the mantelpiece and took the embossed invitation wedged behind the clock. ‘Recognise this?’ She flung it on the table. ‘The wedding is still going ahead, whatever you may think.’
She saw the other woman flinch, and, remembering her charged emotional state, made herself speak more gently. ‘He’s messing you around, Donna. Playing with your head. He won’t give up Carrie and he wants you to go ahead with the termination, as agreed. In your heart you must know that.’
‘Heart!’ Donna spat the word. ‘What would you know about hearts?’
‘More than you think, perhaps.’ Rhianna stalked to the bedroom, pulled out an overnight bag and began to fill it, swiftly and economically.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Getting out of here and going to a hotel. I can’t throw you out physically, though I’d like to, but I’m damned if I’m going to hang around as if it’s all right when it’s all wrong.’ Rhianna zipped her bag and swung it off the bed, giving Donna the look with which Lady Ariadne regularly curdled men’s blood—and never to better effect.
‘As it is,’ she went on, ‘you’ll kindly get both of yourselves out of here when you’ve eaten. I’ll be back by seven a.m. tomorrow, and I’d better not find you here.’
The hotel she went to had only a suite available, but as Rhianna slapped down her credit card she told herself it was worth every penny.
In the end she waited until gone nine o’clock the following morning before staging her return, to find the flat deserted and her bed ominously stripped.
She would consider the implications of that later, she told herself, drawing a deep breath.
The dinner table, however, had not been cleared, and although Rhianna wrinkled her nose at the used plates and cutlery, the crumbs and dribbles of wine, and the candle wax that had been allowed to spill down the holders, at least it was a mess she could deal with. Besides, it seemed a small price to pay in order to be rid of that precious pair and their squalid affair.
But don’t rejoice too soon, she thought with sudden grimness. If Simon has changed his mind and they really are together permanently, how am I going to cope with the fallout? And how can I possibly explain my part in it all to Carrie? Come to that, what the hell will she do?
She went into the bathroom and began to run water into the tub.
‘Survive,’ she said aloud. ‘That’s what women do when they’re dumped by the only men who’ll ever matter to them. When they’re torn and bleeding and stumbling around. They survive. Somehow.’
But please—please don’t let it come to that…
She was clean, dry, scented and in her robe, making coffee in the kitchen, when the buzzer sounded.
Donna? she wondered ironically as she went to answer the door. Come back to lend a hand with the washing up, or offering to take the sheets to the launderette?
But it was Diaz who was waiting outside.
Diaz as she had never seen him before—heavy-eyed, unshaven, and still in the clothes he’d been wearing the previous night, minus the silk tie, and with his waistcoat and shirt unbuttoned.
‘My God, what’s happened?’ She took a pace towards him and he stepped back, flinging up both hands as if to ward her off.
‘Don’t touch me,’ he grated. ‘Or I might do something we’ll both regret for the rest of our lives.’
‘I don’t understand.’ She stared at him. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘You are,’ he said. ‘My sweet, treacherous Rhianna. Stringing me along. Encouraging me to make a total fool of myself. You’re what’s wrong. You—and Rawlins, of course.’
‘You—you must be mad.’ Her mouth was dry, her heartbeat quickening into panic. He knows—but what does he know?
‘I was,’ he said. ‘But fortunately my sight wasn’t affected. I saw him arrive last night, and let himself in with his own key. A very convenient and intimate arrangement.’
A key? Donna actually gave him his own key?
His eyes were on her face. He said harshly, ‘It’s all right, Rhianna, don’t look so shocked. I know he’s not here now, because I also saw him leave just after dawn. I was
sitting in my car across the street, so I was able to time his visit to the minute.’
He threw back his head. ‘And now I’m back again, to take a long look at you in daylight. No lamps, no candles, no moon, and no shadows for you to hide in.’
She could feel the anger radiating from him, hot and dangerous. She tried to say his name, but no sound would come.
He walked past her into the flat, into the living room, his mouth curling in distaste as he surveyed the debris on the table.
‘A cosy dinner,’ he observed flatly. He walked across to her bedroom, glancing at the unmade bed. ‘Followed no doubt by an ecstatic end to a perfect day? I do hope, Rhianna, that you weren’t also planning to share that bed with me?’
She found words. ‘It’s not what you think…’ Oh, God, couldn’t she have come up with something better than that hackneyed formula, usually employed when someone had been caught bang to rights? As he assumed she had.
‘Did you tell him I wanted you too, Rhianna? Did you share that with him during pillow talk, or were you too preoccupied?’ He shook his head. ‘You should have dumped him for me, darling. I’m a very rich man and I’d have paid a great deal for the pleasure of you. Actresses, even with bodies as lovely as yours, are two a penny. You could have made a small fortune allowing me access to that treacherous, delectable little body of yours. Used it as your pension fund when your other work eventually dried up.’
He added mercilessly, ‘You’ve used me. Just as your mother used my father, years ago.’ He gave a short mirthless laugh. ‘“Past history”, you said. The pair of you, mother and daughter, unable to keep your greedy, selfish hands off other women’s men, and I wouldn’t let myself see it.’
He drew a breath. ‘All this time—cheating on Carrie. Pretending to be her friend when you were out to steal her fiancé. I should have remembered that you’re an actress, trained to deceive. You’re even better in real life than you are on television.’
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