The Socialite's Secret

by Carol Marinelli

  She went into his arms and he pulled her right in.

  Scarlet felt that chest naked against her cheek and her hands moved around his waist; she had never been anywhere nicer in the world. Luke felt her sway against him and inhaled the scent of her hair and then lifted her face so he could again meet her lips, and then they danced like no one was watching.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THAT WAS THEN.

  And here they were now, sitting in his office, trapped in the fallout of that time.

  It was too painful to think about that night with the other there in the room. Or rather it would be impossible to think about what had taken place in the morning and hope to hold a sensible conversation.

  And sense was the one thing that he had to maintain today.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Scarlet said, though the words were said more to herself than to Luke.

  Her head was back in her hands as she sat at his desk crying, not for effect, just because she honestly didn’t know what to do.

  She’d had plans.

  Big ones.

  She had told her mother some of them.

  And now this had happened.

  Luke looked again at the picture of her getting into the ambulance and pushed aside the anger he felt. Scarlet had found her mother unconscious and close to death after all.

  For all her money and fame she couldn’t buy the one thing she required most now. More than ever before, Scarlet not only needed space and peace, she deserved it.

  ‘Why don’t you go somewhere else and check in under Lucy...?’ She had told him about that secret name when they had fed each other dinner and he had found out more about her life.

  How her mother’s fame had been declining but then Scarlet had been born and the beautiful baby Anya had worn on her hip had shot her back into stardom.

  He had gleaned that Scarlet had been nothing more than a pretty accessory to wear along with her mother’s designer gowns and had been far too precious to send to school.

  Luke hadn’t said that to her at the time, of course. Whatever he felt, he rarely shared.

  ‘Check in under your alias,’ Luke suggested.

  ‘And that will buy me a couple of hours before someone tips them off,’ Scarlet said. ‘And what happens when I want to visit my mom? The press are everywhere, they’ll be all over me.’

  ‘Only because you’ll arrive at the hospital with your bodyguards in tow,’ Luke said. ‘You could dress down and come in through the maternity entrance. Nobody would even know that you’d arrived. Security could take you straight up to ICU without anyone noticing. Visiting your mother doesn’t have to be a big deal.’

  Scarlet just couldn’t buy it. ‘I need the security now more than ever. The press are more interested these days in me than...’ Scarlet stopped speaking then.

  She couldn’t tell anyone about the jealous row that she’d had with her mother last night.

  ‘Luke, can you help me, please? I need to get away, I need space, peace.’

  ‘We tried that once, remember?’ Luke reminded her. ‘And you blew it.’

  ‘I won’t this time.’

  ‘I don’t believe you, Scarlet.’ Luke shook his head. ‘I actually don’t think you can help yourself. You crave attention...’ Luke halted. He didn’t want to add to her distress but, two years on, he was still hurting and angry and it was proving hard not to show it.

  ‘I know that it might be a disruption for you if I came to stay...’ Scarlet persisted, but Luke swiftly broke in.

  ‘A friend coming to stay shouldn’t be a disruption. It’s only when that friend brings an entourage along...’ He was struggling to hold on to his temper.

  ‘Or is it because your partner wouldn’t like it?’

  Luke didn’t respond. He didn’t say he didn’t have a partner, that really since two years ago every attempt at a relationship had ended not just because he was cold, arrogant and obsessed with work, but for another reason—guilt. He still thought about their one night together and since then nothing had matched up.

  She took his silence the wrong way—that, unlike her, Luke had moved on with his life.

  Scarlet stood. ‘Can I see my mother?’

  ‘Of course,’ Luke said. ‘We’re just preparing to move her up to Intensive Care.’

  ‘I’d better tell Sonia first.’

  ‘Just have some time with your mother.’ He reached for the phone and asked to be put through to the head of security, and Scarlet watched and listened.

  ‘Hi, Geoff. How is it going with clearing the corridor?’

  Whatever Geoff said, Luke rolled his eyes.

  ‘I’m going to bring Anya’s daughter to see her. Can you please have all her entourage move inside the staffroom and close the door? Tell them Scarlet will be in to speak with them when she’s ready to.’

  Luke spoke about logistics as she dug one hand into her pocket and her fingers closed on a stone she had picked up on a faraway beach yesterday.

  Oh, Scarlet had made plans. She thought about the little cottage she had found, the month she had planned where she might sort out her head space. There was no chance of that now, with her mother’s life hanging in the balance.

  Luke was right, though not in the way he had meant—she couldn’t help herself.

  He did his best to prepare her for what she was about to see but he knew that nothing really could.

  They walked out of his office and a security guard stood outside the staffroom and gave Luke a nod.

  ‘Thanks, Geoff.’

  They walked down the corridor and through the department, past all the nudges and stares. Only Luke noticed them. Scarlet felt sick.

  Luke parted the curtains. ‘This is Barbara,’ Luke said. ‘And the anaesthetist, David. And this is Paul, he’s a registrar...’

  Scarlet didn’t hear much else. All she could see was her mother’s deathly white face and all the tubes, and all she knew was that this was her fault.

  After all, she knew what she had said to her mother last night.

  ‘Can she hear me?’ Scarlet turned anguished eyes to the nurse.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Barbara said. ‘Try talking to her.’

  Barbara put her arm around Scarlet’s waist and Luke was relieved to step back as Barbara did the job she was very good at.

  She answered all Scarlet’s questions about the machines and why Anya’s face was so swollen.

  Luke stepped outside.

  Scarlet wasn’t his problem. If Anya hadn’t done what she had, he wouldn’t have even seen Scarlet.

  He glanced at the time.

  She’d have been on her way back to the States by now.

  Then, through the curtain, he heard her voice and it tore at his heart.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mom. I should never have said what I did...’

  Luke took a breath to the sound of Scarlet completely breaking down and, after a couple of moments spent trying and failing to resist reaching out to her anguish, he stepped back in.

  ‘Paul, could you please go and speak with her manager?’ Luke said. ‘Give as little information as you can. Just let them know that her condition is critical but stable.’

  ‘They’ll want to know more than that.’

  ‘Of course they will,’ Luke said. ‘And if we let them, the press would be in here, taking photos.’

  ‘Scarlet,’ Luke went on, ‘can I speak with you outside?’

  He nodded to Barbara and David and then he took Scarlet into one of the relative interview rooms.

  ‘Scarlet,’ Luke asked, ‘what happened last night?’

  She couldn’t tell him.

  ‘We need to know if this was an accidental overdose or deliberate.’

  ‘It was an accident.’

  It had to be, Scarlet thought.

  Please, let it be.

  ‘You can tell me.’

  She couldn’t look at him; she wanted so badly to meet his eyes but she couldn’t.

  ‘Tell me,’ Luke push
ed gently. ‘You said you had a row.’

  She nodded.

  ‘A big one?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have said what I did.’

  ‘Which was?’

  Scarlet shook her head. She was scared to go there, especially with Luke.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I said that I wasn’t going back to LA with her.’

  ‘Okay.’

  He held her hands then and she looked at his lovely long fingers entwined around hers. ‘I said some terrible things.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You can.’

  ‘I said she was jealous of me...I said...’ Scarlet stopped but then she made herself say it. ‘I said something about our baby.’

  * * *

  Silence stretched as she voiced it.

  Not all of it.

  Just the part that rendered them lost or, worse, unsalvageable.

  Wreckage that lay too deep for rescue.

  It was surely time to pack up the equipment and head for home.

  He sat silent for a moment and then dropped her hands and Scarlet sat staring at the floor as Luke got up and walked out.

  She had guessed he would.

  For two years every day had hurt but some days hurt more than others and that was today.

  Scarlet sat in a room where she guessed people found out their loved ones had died and mourned her baby so badly, even if she didn’t deserve to.

  She had signed the consent form after all—crying and shaking, unlike Vince who had calmly handed her the pen.

  It had been the worst day of her life.

  Even with her mother lying near death, it still was.

  But on that day there had been one saving grace—a nurse who had sat with her afterwards and let Scarlet speak.

  There could be no saving grace today.

  She didn’t look up as the door opened and Luke came back in.

  ‘You’ve got two choices,’ Luke said, and Scarlet blinked. She’d never had even one. ‘I’ve got a flat here at the hospital you can stay in for a few days, but on several conditions.’

  She stared up at his chin again. ‘I can stay?’

  ‘As long as you agree to my conditions.’

  ‘Which are?’

  ‘You lose the phone.’

  ‘I need to know how my mother is—’

  ‘I work here,’ Luke interrupted. ‘I’ll be kept updated.’

  ‘But I need to see her, to be with her.’

  ‘She is in a coma,’ Luke said. ‘There will be plenty people keeping a vigil, I’m sure. I think right now you need some time to take care of yourself.’

  ‘What are the other conditions?’

  ‘This time you don’t tell your bodyguards where you are.’

  ‘How?’

  His face darkened but, instead of stating the obvious—that she simply didn’t tell them—he threw her blue theatre scrubs and a theatre cap, and wrapped up in them were some clogs.

  ‘I’ll give you directions...’ But even as he said it, Luke knew it was hopeless. In the flat across the hall from him was one of the radiologists known for gossip. There were the domestics who came in and serviced it. So he told her the other choice. ‘Or you can go to my home. It will be easier to keep things under wraps there.’

  ‘Your home?’

  ‘It’s about an hour’s drive from here,’ Luke said.

  ‘I can’t leave her.’

  ‘That’s up to you. But if you do decide to go there, I mean it, Scarlet, if you call in the entourage, there’ll be no time to give your excuses because I won’t be listening. You’ll be out.’

  ‘Why do you hate them so much?’

  ‘How do they protect you, Scarlet?’

  ‘They keep the public back.’

  ‘But when you wanted to make it worth my while when we met, they were fine with that?’ Luke checked. ‘A quick blow job and they look away?’ He watched her cheeks go red. ‘That’s not protecting you, Scarlet. I can do all that.’

  ‘What if something happens to her and I’m an hour away?’ Scarlet asked. ‘What if she dies?’

  ‘Then I’ll come home and tell you myself.’ Luke didn’t sugar-coat it and she sat there, absorbing his words.

  She would want to hear it from him, Scarlet knew that much.

  ‘You’ll take me there?’ Scarlet asked.

  ‘No. I have to work. My car is in the underground car park. You go out of here and turn right and then follow the sign for the staff car park. I have a navy Audi. If you press the keys the lights will flash but you’ll see it just as you come out the elevator. Can you drive?’ Luke asked, but then checked himself. He knew the answer to that one—not very well, given all the little well-publicised prangs she’d had.

  Scarlet nodded.

  ‘On the opposite side of the road?’ he checked.

  Scarlet nodded again.

  ‘What will you do for a car?’

  ‘There are taxis.’ He did the best not to sarcastically remind her of the last time they had got into one. ‘I’ve got friends who can give me a lift too...’

  It all sounded alien to her, Luke knew, but she either wanted the real world or she didn’t. He wasn’t going to handle her with kid gloves, he was way past all that.

  ‘If I need to speak to you I’ll ring three times and hang up. Pick up the phone the next time it rings.’

  ‘Can’t I call you? Can I page you?’

  ‘No.’ Luke shook his head. ‘If I’m busy one of the nurses often answers my page. I’ll call if I have to but, Scarlet, if I get even a sniff of your bodyguards, or the press find out where you are and it’s your doing, you will be on your own.’

  ‘But people will be looking for me.’

  ‘Write a text now, explaining you’re safe but you just need some time, and I’ll hit Send once I know you’re safely gone.’

  ‘What about seeing my mother?’

  ‘We can work out those details later. Right now I need to get back to work.’ He handed her one of the large yellow garbage bags. ‘Leave your clothes and phone in this.’

  ‘I’ll need my clothes to change into when I get there.’

  ‘You’ll stand out like a sore thumb where I live, wearing that.’

  ‘Luke, I don’t know.’

  ‘Then decide. Go back out there and be with your people or you hit the sat-nav in my car and press Home. It’s up to you.’

  He refused to make decisions for others unless he was paid to.

  ‘Will you be okay with me being in your home?’ Scarlet asked.

  Luke chose not to answer that. He was about to; he could almost feel the sneer of his lips as he went to ask when she had ever taken his feelings into any equation.

  But today wasn’t the day to row, he told himself.

  ‘It’s up to you,’ Luke said again. ‘You need to speak with David before you leave, though,’ he added.

  ‘And tell him what?’

  ‘That you’re staying with a friend.’ He wrote down his home number and handed it to her. ‘Tell him if he needs to reach you to leave a message on the answering machine and that you’ll call straight back.’

  And then Luke was gone.

  David was thorough, going through all that Luke had and more.

  ‘We’ll talk again once I’ve got her settled into ICU,’ he said.

  ‘I shan’t be here.’

  Scarlet met David’s solemn gaze.

  ‘I’m going to be staying with a friend.’ She waited for him to chide her.

  ‘I think that’s wise,’ David said. ‘Can I have contact details in case of an emergency?’

  ‘Don’t let—’

  ‘I shan’t.’ David nodded and Scarlet handed him the phone number that Luke had given her.

  ‘If you leave a message, I’ll call straight back.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He left her then and once alone she took off her silver jacket and her leggings and top and her shoes and then sl
ipped on the scrubs and the disgusting clogs Luke had brought her.

  Her hair she tucked into a hat.

  With shaking hands she wrote a text to her bodyguard but didn’t hit Send and then she threw her phone in the bag.

  But then she retrieved it.

  She needed it. Her mother was desperately ill after all but, recalling his rules and knowing Luke always meant what he said, Scarlet threw it back in the yellow bag.

  She walked out and followed his directions and it was slightly dizzying that no one really gave her a second glance.

  Past the canteen she went and then she saw a sign for Maternity and beneath that an arrow that pointed to the staff car park elevator.

  She stood beside a blonde woman, waited for the doors to open and then stepped in.

  ‘Hi...’ The blonde woman nodded to her in the elevator and Scarlet nodded back.

  ‘Are you new?’

  ‘I just started,’ Scarlet said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I’m an OB...a midwife,’ Scarlet replied.

  She wished that she was. How she wished this was where she worked and that she had just come from meeting Luke.

  Oh, she wanted that to be her life so very, very much.

  The woman was waiting for her to give her name, Scarlet knew. ‘I’m Lucy.’

  ‘Angie.’ She returned her name with a tight smile. ‘You’re supposed to always wear your ID, Lucy...?’

  Scarlet could hear the question mark and the woman’s demand for her full name and more information. ‘Lucy Edwards.’ Scarlet borrowed Luke’s surname and gave Angie another smile and then almost folded in relief as the elevator door opened.

  She pressed the key and a very dirty navy Audi flashed its lights. Scarlet went to the wrong side of the car, of course, but then remembered and walked to the other side.

  She was sweating and breathless, as if she’d been running, and that damn woman was watching her, Scarlet knew. She climbed in, turned on the engine and reversed out, and as she did so she glanced up and saw that Angie was still watching.

  Angie thought she was an impostor, Scarlet was sure. She just hoped that she didn’t call Security.

  Any minute now the call that she was missing would go out, Scarlet knew.

  And Luke knew it too.

  It was already starting.

  Scarlet had been gone for too long. Her bodyguards were walking down corridors and knocking on doors. Luke went into the interview room, picked up the yellow biohazard bag and walked through the department into his office. He turned on the engaged sign.