Читать книгу Modern Romance July 2015 Books 1-4 - Кэтти Уильямс, Maisey Yates, Cathy Williams - Страница 19

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SHE WAS GONE when he returned from work next evening and as Loukas looked at the single sheet of paper which was all that was left of her, he realised that it came as no great surprise. Last night in his arms, she had been mind-blowing but he’d sensed something in the way she’d kissed him before he’d left for work that morning...a certain sadness which no amount of sexual chemistry could disguise. Her lips had lingered on his in a way which had seemed wistful rather than provocative. And when he stopped to think about it, hadn’t there been a little catch in her voice as she’d said goodbye?

He hadn’t needed to read the few words she’d written on hotel notepaper to know that she wasn’t planning on coming back.

He stared at it.

Thanks.

He frowned. For what, exactly? The job or the sex?

I had a fabulous time in Venice, and I’m glad that the photos were such a success, but I’m missing Cornwall and I have a garden which is missing me.

Take good care of yourself, Loukas.

Jess.

She hadn’t even put a kiss, she’d just drawn one of those stupid, smiley faces and he screwed up the sheet of paper, crushing it viciously in the palm of his hand. She’d walked out on him. She’d turned her back on him. Again. She was arrogant, she was haughty and he didn’t need this.

He did not need this.

Stalking over to the drinks cabinet, he poured himself a glass of vodka and tossed it back in one deft mouthful, the way Dimitri had taught him.

Only the liquor didn’t do what it was supposed to do. It didn’t douse the fury which had started to flame inside him. It didn’t stop him from wanting to haul her into his arms and...what?

Have sex with her?

Yes. His mouth twisted. That was what he wanted.

All he wanted.

He paced around his suite, wondering why tonight it felt like a cage, despite the unparalleled luxury of the fixtures and fittings. Because he’d grown used to having her just along the corridor—was that it? And how the hell could that happen in such a short time?

Because it hadn’t been a short time, he realised. This had been bubbling away under the surface for years.

He forced himself to concentrate on work, losing himself in the negotiations to open a branch of Lulu in Singapore’s Orchard Road. And there was other good news which should have helped put Jessica Cartwright into the background of his mind. His sales team informed him excitedly that sales of precious stones in the London store alone had shot up by a staggering twenty-five per cent following the Valentine’s Day advert—and they were planning to use the same advertisement on a global basis. It really was going to be big.

He went to the gym every night for punishing workouts, which left his body exhausted but his mind still racing. He turned down dinner invitations and threw himself into his work, which for once did not provide its all-encompassing distractions.

But life went on and the press was still going crazy. Gabe Steel phoned to say that his agency had been fielding calls from media outlets ever since Jess’s piece had gone to press, since everyone was keen to discover how the sporty tennis star had transformed herself into such a vamp. Would she like to give an interview to one of the papers? Would she do a short slot on breakfast TV, or the even more popular mid-morning show? Were they planning to use her in another campaign any time soon?

‘And?’ bit out Loukas. ‘It was supposed to be a one-off.’

‘I know, but we’d be crazy not to capitalise on this,’ said Gabe. ‘The trouble is that nobody can get hold of her. She isn’t answering her phone, or her emails. I’m thinking of sending—’

‘No. Don’t bother doing that. I’ll go,’ said Loukas, and it wasn’t until he’d put the phone down that it occurred to him that Gabe hadn’t questioned why the company boss should be chasing down to the other end of the country after some random model.

He set off early in the morning, just as the sun was beginning to rise and the roads were empty, save for the occasional lorry. It was a long time since he’d been to Cornwall and it brought back memories of a different life. He remembered the first time he’d seen it. His Russian boss had owned huge chunks of land there, as well as mooring one of his boats in Padstow—and the summer he’d spent there had been the most glorious of his life. For a boy brought up in the crowded backstreets of Athens, it had felt like a different world to Loukas. The wildness and the beauty. The sense of being remote. The salty air and the crash of the ocean. As the roads began to narrow into lanes and he passed through picture-perfect little villages, he thought how little had really changed.

And wasn’t it funny how your feet automatically guided you to a place you hadn’t seen in eight long years? The Cartwright mansion could still be seen from a distance, like some shining citadel outlined against the crisp blue of the winter sky, with its mullioned windows and its soaring roofs, and the lavender-edged gardens which swept right down to the cliffs. Across to one side, where the land was flatter, was the footpath which passed the tennis court where once he had watched Jess practise.

But when he rang the doorbell, a woman in her thirties appeared—a small child hiding behind her legs. The woman smiled at him and automatically touched her hair.

‘Can I help you?’

He frowned, trying to work out who she could possibly be. ‘I’m looking for Jess. Jessica.’

‘Cartwright?’

‘That’s right.’

‘She doesn’t live here any more. We bought it from the people she sold it to. She’s up on Atlantic Terrace now—near the cliff path. The little house right on the end, the one with the crooked chimney—do you know it?’

He didn’t know it but he nodded, his mind working overtime as he thanked the woman and parked his car in the village, telling himself it was because he needed the exercise and not because he didn’t want to be seen by Jess as he approached.

But that wasn’t strictly true. His thoughts were reeling and he was trying to make some sense of them. Had she sold up to simplify her life, or because it was too big for her and her half-sister?

He found what was in fact a cottage and it was small. Very small. He rapped loudly on the door, but there was no reply and suddenly he wondered what he was going to do if she’d gone away. She could be anywhere. He didn’t know a single thing about her daily life, he realised. He’d imagined her life staying exactly the same, while his own had moved on. It had been part of his fixed image of Jess—the upper-class blonde in her country mansion. Because wasn’t it easier to be angry with a stereotype than with a real person?

He walked to the back of the property and that was where he found her, attacking the bare earth furiously with a spade. She didn’t hear him at first and as he found himself looking at the denim tightening over her buttocks, it was difficult not to appreciate the sheer grace of her movements.

She must have heard him, or sensed him, because suddenly she whirled round—her face growing through a whole series of emotions but so rapidly that he couldn’t make out a single one except for the one which settled there, and it was one which was distinctly unwelcoming.

She leant heavily on the spade as if she needed it for support. ‘What are you doing here, Loukas?’

‘Parakalo,’ he said sardonically. ‘Nice to see you, too.’

She seemed to remember herself and forced a cool smile.

‘Sorry. It just came as a bit of a shock, you creeping up on me like that.’

‘Creeping?’ he echoed.

‘You know what I mean.’ She shrugged, but the movement seemed to take a lot of effort. ‘I mean, obviously, you’re not just passing.’

‘Obviously.’

She looked at him with her eyebrows raised as if she wanted him to help her out, but something stubborn had taken residence inside him and he didn’t feel like helping her out.

‘So why are you here?’

It was a question he’d been asking himself during the four-and-a-half-hour drive but had given up on it because he couldn’t seem to find a satisfactory answer. ‘You haven’t been answering your phone. Or your emails.’

She held her finger to her lips and began to tap them, as if considering his accusation. ‘I don’t think that’s written into my contract.’

‘Maybe it isn’t,’ he said, feeling a nerve beginning to flicker at his temple. ‘But I don’t think it’s unreasonable of us to want to get hold of you, is it?’

‘Us?’

‘Zeitgeist,’ he bit out, wondering what the hell was the matter with her. Why she was being so damned stubborn. And so remote. Hadn’t they just spent the best part of a week being about as intimate as a man and woman could be? ‘And Lulu,’ he added. ‘You know. The people who provided you with work.’

‘I was told it was a one-off.’ She gripped the handle of the spade. ‘And you were the one who told me that.’

‘With hindsight, I might have spoken a little hastily.’

Her gaze was steady. ‘If only we all had the benefit of hindsight, Loukas.’

He frowned. He didn’t want this impenetrable wall between them. He wanted her onside. ‘The campaign has been a huge success.’

‘Ah.’ She smiled. ‘The campaign.’

‘We’ve been inundated with requests for interviews, TV—’

‘So have I,’ she said sharply. ‘My answer machine keeps getting filled up with messages, even though I clear it at the end of every day.’

‘But you didn’t think to answer them?’

‘Actually, I did. And then decided not to.’ She wrapped her jacket more tightly around herself and gave an exaggerated shiver. ‘I’m getting cold just standing here.’

‘Then why don’t you take me inside and offer me some of your legendary English hospitality?’

Jessica hesitated when she heard the sarcasm in his voice, but she could hardly say no. And the trouble was that she didn’t want to say no. She wanted to know what had brought him here—appearing on her horizon like some dark avenging angel. Most of all she wanted him to kiss her, and that was where the danger lay. She had missed him so much that it had hurt and yet now that she had seen him again her heart had started aching even more. This was a lose-lose situation and his presence here wasn’t going to help her in the long term. But you couldn’t really turn a man away when he’d driven all this way to see you, could you?

‘You’d better come in,’ she said.

He followed her into the kitchen and she could sense him looking around as she put the kettle on. What did he think of her dresser, with the eclectic collection of jugs, or the cork board studded with all the postcards which Hannah had sent from her travels? Was he comparing it to his huge but cold suite at the Vinoly and did it all look terribly parochial to his sophisticated eye?

The wind had ruffled his black hair and he was dressed in jeans more faded than hers, along with a battered brown leather jacket. His casual clothes started playing tricks with her memory. Like a flashback, they gave her a glimpse of the man he had once been. The big bear of a bodyguard who used to watch her from the side of a tennis court. But flashbacks were notoriously unreliable—they always painted the past in such flattering shades that you wanted to be back there. And that was impossible. The past was the refuge for losers who couldn’t cope with the present, and she wasn’t going to be one of those losers.

She made tea and took the tray into the small sitting room which overlooked the Atlantic. She thought about lighting a fire but then decided against it, because he wasn’t staying long. He definitely wasn’t staying long.

‘So...’ She put a steaming star-decorated mug on a small table beside one of the chairs, but he didn’t take the hint to sit down—he just strode over to the window and stood there, staring out at the crashing ocean, his silhouetted body dark and powerful and more than a little intimidating.

He turned back, eyes narrowed. ‘Did you move because the house was too big?’

She thought about saying yes. It would be understandable, after all—especially now that it was just her. But Jessica knew that she couldn’t keep hiding behind her cool mask, thinking that to do so would offer her some kind of protection. Because she’d realised that it didn’t. Masks didn’t stop you wishing for things which were never going to come true. And they didn’t stop your heart from hurting when you fell for men who were wrong for you.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I moved because I had to. Because my father had built up massive debts which were only revealed after he was killed in the avalanche.’

His eyes narrowed, but there wasn’t a flicker of emotion on his own face. And suddenly she was glad that he hadn’t come out with the usual platitudes which people always trotted out, platitudes which meant zero and somehow ended up making you feel even worse. Maybe they were more alike than she’d thought. Or maybe now that they had entered the dark worlds of death and debts, he suddenly felt on familiar ground.

He sat down then, lowering his mighty frame into a chair which up until that moment had always looked substantial.

‘What happened?’

She watched as he picked up his tea and sipped it. ‘Like everyone else, he was banking on me winning a Grand Slam, or three. He was very ambitious.’ She shrugged. ‘They say that fathers make the best and the worst coaches.’

‘You didn’t like him very much,’ he said slowly.

His words came out of the blue. Few people would have thought it and even fewer would have dared say it. It would be easier to deny it but her chin stayed high and defiant as she met his eyes with a challenge. ‘Does that shock you?’

He gave a hard smile in response. ‘Very little in life shocks me, koukla mou.’

The soft Greek words slid over her skin, touching her at a time when she was feeling vulnerable, but she tried not to be swayed by them. She cleared her throat. ‘He did his best. He did what he thought was right. It’s just that he never really allowed me to have a normal life.’

‘So why didn’t you stand up to him?’

Recognising that his question was about more than the unbending routine of her tennis years, Jessica picked up a match and struck it to the crumpled-up paper in the grate, seeing the heated flare as it caught the logs and hoping it would warm the sudden chill of her skin. Because sometimes it was easier to be told what to do than to think for yourself. It meant you could blame someone else if it all went wrong. And it was hard to admit that, even to herself.

‘There were lots of reasons why I didn’t stand up to him, but I suppose what you really want to know is why I wasn’t stronger when it came to you. Why I let him drive a wedge between us.’ She sensed that he was holding his breath but she couldn’t look at him. She didn’t dare. Because if she removed her mask completely—mightn’t he be repulsed by the face he saw beneath?

She threw an unnecessary log onto the fire. ‘I thought we were too young to settle down and my career was very important to me.’

‘But that’s not the only reason, is it, Jess?’

There was a pause. ‘No.’ Her voice sounded quiet against the crackle of the fire. She stared into the forest of flames, losing herself in that flickering orange kingdom. ‘I was an unsettled child. My parents split up when I was very young. My dad left my mum for a younger woman who was already pregnant with his child—Hannah—and my mum never really got over that. I lived with her shame and her bitterness, which didn’t leave much room for anything else.’

She picked up her tea and cupped her hands around it. ‘When she died I went to live with my father and that’s when the tennis really kicked off. At last I had something to believe in. Something I could lose myself in. But my stepmother resented the amount of time it took him away from her and I think Hannah was a bit jealous of all the attention I got.’ She gave a slightly nervous laugh. ‘I mean, I’m probably making it sound worse than it was, but it was—’

‘It sounds awful,’ he interjected and she found herself having to blink back the sudden threat of tears, because his sympathy was unexpectedly potent.

‘I’d already learnt not to show my feelings,’ she said. ‘And that became a useful tactic on the tennis court. Soon I didn’t know how to be any other way. I learnt to block my emotions. Not to let anything or anyone in. Now do you understand?’

He nodded. ‘I think so.’

‘I didn’t want to make you any promises I couldn’t keep,’ she rushed on. ‘And marriage was an institution I didn’t trust.’

But it had been more than that. On an instinctive level she had recognised that Loukas was a man who had been in short supply of love, who needed to be loved properly. And hadn’t she thought herself incapable of that?

‘There’s something else,’ he said. ‘Something you’re not telling me.’

It hurt that he could be so perceptive. She didn’t want him to be perceptive—she wanted him to be brash and uncaring. She wanted him to reinforce that she’d done the right thing, not leave her wondering how she could have been so stupid.

‘Jess?’ he prompted.

‘I thought you would leave me,’ she said slowly.

‘Like your father left your mother?’

‘I was so young,’ she whispered. ‘You know I was.’

He looked at her and started speaking slowly, as if he was voicing his thoughts out loud. ‘I’d like to tell you that my feelings haven’t changed, but that would be strange, as well as a fabrication—because of course I feel differently eight years down the line.’

Her lips had started trembling and no amount of biting would seem to stop them. ‘You do?’

He nodded. ‘I still care about you, koukla mou. You’re still the one woman who makes my heart beat faster than anyone else. Still the one who can tie me up in knots so tight I can’t escape, and I don’t think you even realise you’re doing it.’

‘So what are you saying?’ she whispered.

Loukas opened his lips to speak, but an inbuilt self-protection forced him to temper his words with caution. Just like when you were negotiating a big takeover—you didn’t lay all your cards on the table at once, did you? You always kept something back.

‘I’m saying that it still feels...unfinished. That maybe we should give it another go. What’s stopping us?’

She put her mug down and pulled the scrunchy from her hair, shaking her head so that a tumble of hair fell loosely around her cheeks.

‘Loads of things. We live in different worlds, for a start,’ she said. ‘We always did, but it’s even more defined now. I’m a country girl with a simple life. The annual photo shoot in London was just something I did to finance this life. The rest of the time, I forget all about it.’

‘I’m not forcing you to become the global face of Lulu if you don’t want to be,’ he said impatiently. ‘That’s not what this is all about.’

‘You’re missing my point, Loukas,’ she said, and now she was gesturing to something he hadn’t noticed before, which lay on a small table in the corner of the room. A piece of cloth covered with exquisite sewing. He narrowed his eyes. It looked like a cosmic sky, with bright planets and stars sparking across an indigo background.

‘Yours?’ he questioned.

She nodded. ‘Mine.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ he said automatically.

‘Thank you. It’s something that’s become more than a hobby and I’ve sold several pieces through a shop in Padstow. I’m into embroidery and gardening and now that Hannah’s gone away, I was even thinking of getting a cat—that’s how sad I am. You, on the other hand, live permanently in a hotel and drive around in a chauffeur-driven car. You occupy a luxury suite in the centre of London and you get other people to run your life for you. We’re polar opposites, Loukas. You don’t have a real home. You don’t seem to want one and I do. That’s what I want more than anything.’ Her voice trembled, as if it hurt her to say the words. ‘A real home.’