This would be it, she thought. He will know after tonight and that will be the end of it. When her phone flashed with a new message, for a minute she had held the device in her hand, refusing to look down. It will go away if I don’t look at it, she thought.
The message had been from Maria. Where are you? I need you. You should be here.
That confused her even more, and an hour later she had gone to bed, pretending to be asleep when Daniel returned home. What did it mean, him returning at this time? It was nearly midnight. Was that long enough for her to have told him everything? Was it long enough for him to have gone back to her hotel room, to have fucked her?
When she was a young girl, like so many children Kris had sometimes lain in her bed and closed her eyes, hiding herself under the blankets to chase away her night terrors. Now, as Daniel came into the room, she hid her head as far down under the sheets as she dared, screwing her eyes shut: thought she pretended to be asleep, in truth it was to fight away her very adult night terrors.
Daniel came into the room and kissed her gently on the cheek. Her body was frozen solid and she dared not move—could not even breathe as he kissed her.
She heard him moving around, his body shifting as he removed his clothes and then he lifted the sheets and climbed in next to her.
“It’s a shame you couldn’t come tonight,” he whispered behind her, then kissed her between her shoulder blades.
She made another show, this time of waking, and turned to him, smiling as though she had just been disturbed from her dreams.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he told her gently.
“It’s okay.” She slid her arm round his waist, pulled her own soft breasts against his muscled chest.
“How are you feeling now?”
“Better for a sleep.” The darkness in the room would hide the lies in her eyes.
He kissed her again, and her mouth, wet, eager, accepted him. She placed her head on his shoulder and lay there, silently for a while. “Was it good?” she asked after a while, wondering what he was thinking.
“Yes,” he replied. “It really is a pity you couldn’t come. Maria told me that I have quite a catch with you.”
“Really?” Kris’s ears were alert, but her body had also frozen slightly at the mention of the other woman’s name.
Daniel’s arm was around her shoulder, and he pressed her further into him. He was silent for a long period again, and Kris’s mind began to spin. What are you thinking? Tell me! Tell me now!
At last he spoke. “You know… Maria and I had a thing, once. Long ago. I mean, really, a very long time ago.”
“Really?” That word again. It sounded stupid to Kris even as she said it, but she did not dare reveal that she knew more than he thought she did.
“Yes,” he replied. Was that sadness in his voice? Regret? “It was… it was after Karen died. I… I just wanted you to know. It was over a long time ago. I doubt Maria even remembers, but I just wanted you to know. I… I owed her a lot. Part of me still feels I owe her a little.”
“Oh.” Kris’s voice was small, insignificant.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and now there was regret in his voice. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I just didn’t want you feeling there were any secrets between us.”
“Thank you,” she said, lifting up her head and kissing his chin. “It’s okay, though. It’s all okay. Go to sleep now.”
And now here she was, standing before a smeared, messy, dirty canvas, a canvas without shape or form or colour. He had spoken to her honestly. She didn’t believe that he had told her everything: Daniel Stone had too many secret shades in his soul, too many dark recesses for them all to be revealed at once but, in this instance at least, she thought that she had nothing to fear from that night when she had cowered like a child in her bed. But how many other times were there? Oh, he has many vices. Maria’s voice echoed around her head.
She was being stupid, she knew it but she could not stop herself. Yet even if there were nothing between Daniel or any other woman for that matter, there remained that unspoken chain that did not just bind them together but also dragged them down, or at least dragged her down.
Maria had seen it instantly. So had his old teacher when first she met her, Elaine Christiansen. The CEO of Stone Enterprises, Felix Coltraine, had mockingly alluded to it when last she met him. Daniel loved her because she reminded him of a woman dead for a decade. There was nothing she could do about it. There was nothing she suspected that Daniel could do about it.
And now Daniel was paying a final visit to Chiado Shipping, with Maria. She would leave after the visit, a conclusion to the business she had undertaken for her master, thought Kris a little bitterly. Once it was over, she was to fly to Paris and out of Kris’s life, forever she hoped. Daniel had invited Kris to come along but she had cried off, asking to be dropped at her apartment in Alfama. She would spend the afternoon painting rather than discussing the delights of trade, finances and international shipping law.
But she could not paint. It was not that she imagined anything happening between Daniel and Maria—his admission that night in bed had made her more secure on that score. Yet she and Maria Gosselin were bound together in a secret compact of guilt. It was guilt that made her flee any encounter with the other woman, and also guilt that made her freeze up now as she looked at the mess before her.
All she could hope was that Maria herself would be bound to silence, either by guilt or at the very least self-interest. What had she to gain from revealing that dreadful night to Daniel? He was generous to her—very generous, that much was clear—and Kris had a suspicion that Madame Gosselin was not the kind of woman to throw away the material benefits provided by working for a man such as Daniel Stone. She was, in the end, an employee of his. An employee who had once provided some very special benefits—Kris herself understood the nature of such a compact—but an employee all the same. But what did that make her? she wondered. Was she simply an employee without a contract?
No wonder she couldn’t paint, with thoughts so grim—all of them, she realized in the end, motivated by her guilt. She was projecting the nastiest thoughts onto Daniel, the most cynical observations, but she also realised that her state of mind owed more to her own failings.
The screen of her phone flashed again. Sometimes it would be a message from Daniel, but more often it was a message from Maria. The woman had even tried to call a couple of times, but Kris had refused to answer, just as she deleted any messages. She did not block her, however. That would probably provoke her rival, and who knows what secrets she would reveal to Daniel? She did not dare exclude her, not yet, but instead just ignored her in the hope that Maria Gosselin would fade away.
She looked at the phone for a few moments, then picked it up. He’s gone, the message read. But you should have been here. Don’t worry. I have said nothing, and he suspects nothing. But I need to see you.
Kris’s heart sank at these words, just as it had lifted slightly when she read I’ve said nothing, and he suspects nothing. She was going to delete this one too, but before she did so she felt a wave of despair and frustration pouring over her.
Why? she typed onto the screen. Why do you need to see me? Why can’t you leave me alone?
The response came through in less than a minute. I can’t stop thinking about you. Don’t make the mistake of believing this is something I do all the time. I need you.
Kris dropped the phone on the table, among the mess and chaos of her palettes. Her face twisted up as she stared out to the river, shining and glistening far below, the dark smudge of the distant shore line opposite. “Go away,” she said quietly to no one in particular. Then, more loudly: “Go away! Just fucking go away!”
Chapter Thirteen
The messages stopped for a little while, for which Kris was immensely glad. Whatever had happened between Daniel and Maria anything more than simple business was ancient history—at least as far as Daniel was concerned. She could never b
e sure what this meant for herself and him, but what he had told her that night, after he had returned from a meal with Maria Gosselin, she believed that he was telling her the truth.
And of the other five? Kris had no evidence that they existed, and while she knew that once there had been something between Daniel and Maria, she also had her suspicions that the French lawyer was something of a fantasist.
When Daniel said that he had to return to London, she gladly agreed to go with him. Something had soured even for her in Lisbon. This was meant to be her own personal paradise, but a serpent had stolen into the garden of Eden, a serpent with golden hair and green eyes.
Daniel at least was pleased that she was returning with him. “Well, there’s no point staying in Alfama at the moment,” she told him. “My ankle’s just about back to normal, and I don’t think I’m going to be doing much painting. Anyway, I want to spend more time with you.”
He had smiled at this. “I can see the appeal of Portugal—well, anywhere south really—at this time of year, but unfortunately…”
“Yes, I know,” she had told him, squeezing his hand and kissing him on the cheek. “The real world calls.” They had both laughed at this. Indeed, Daniel had looked more relaxed and happier than she had known for a long time. Recently, whenever they had parted he had always left her with a slightly troubled look in his eyes. Whenever she asked what was happening, he would simply shrug and mention business difficulties in a vague and dismissive manner. But this time when they flew to London she had the sense that he wanted her by his side—that he needed her. The Gosselin woman was just a fantasist, playing some game with her, she was sure.
When she returned to London, however, she was not so sure that what she felt about it. For twenty-eight years she had lived in the capital, and in terms of time spent it was still more her home than anywhere else. Time spent. She made it sound like a prison sentence, and with the grey, rainy weather that stayed with them from the time they landed at Heathrow till their arrival in Chelsea, England did feel like a return to prison.
At least, she could reassure herself, if this was a cage it was very much a gilded one. Daniel’s own apartment in Chelsea, a penthouse on top of a brick and stone block that had been built in the 1920s and was now a very desirable gated residence, was completely different to her own home in Alfama, though there was much (weather aside) it shared with his villa in Cascais. Clean, spotless, hygienic, it was, she now realised, even more without soul than the villa. And yet she had been with him many days—and, more importantly, many nights—in this place. If you treated it like a very expensive hotel it was more bearable.
And as she looked around, she remembered him taking her over the breakfast bar. And there, in front of the window, where he had held her down and penetrated her. That chair, where she had been tied up and roughly used. And the bedroom. What had they not done in the bedroom? She giggled as she glanced from lascivious memory to lewd recollection.
“What are you so happy about?” Daniel asked, bringing her a glass of wine and a water for himself.
She shook her head as he passed it to her and instead reached for the water. She had avoided drink since… that night. There were limits to losing control, and she didn’t want to experience that loss of self again for a very, very long time.
Daniel was surprised at this, but she simply took a sip of the water and placed it on the side before hugging him, nearly making him spill the wine down himself as he cried out in mock anger.
“You’re not really mad with me, are you?” she asked, looking up at him, her eyes twinkling.
“Not at all,” he told her. “By the way, before I forget. I know it’s not your birthday for another couple of weeks, but there’s something I have for you. I found it in New York and, quite frankly, I can’t wait any longer.”
“Oh, goodie!” Kris released him and clapped her hands. In truth, however, she was slightly nervous. The last gift Daniel had made a point of giving her had been more a chain than the exquisite piece of jewellery that he had intended it to be.
He returned with a box nearly a foot in length and half that in its depth and breadth. It was plain and white. “I nearly brought it out to Portugal,” he told her, “but at that point I was still making a pretence that this was going to be a birthday gift. Don’t worry about that,” he told her reassuringly. “I still have something planned on that score.”
Frowning slightly, Kris took the box from his hands. It was heavier, much heavier than she had expected. “Be careful,” Daniel told her. “I don’t think it’s that delicate, but I would hate it to break.”
Curiouser and Curiouser thought Kris. Placing the box on the table, she stared at its smooth, white surfaces for a moment. There was something embossed on it, but she could not quite read the monogram clearly and, in any case, it meant nothing to her. She had thought it was card at first, but then realised it was finely polished wood. Expensive.
The line at the bottom of the box indicated that it was a case of some sort and, very carefully, she lifted it up.
Beneath that white sheathe was another polished object, of honey gold wood with a tear-shaped eyelet carved through it. Across the space, thin spindles of brass ran from one side to another, and about a third of the way down the dome-shaped wood a piece of stone—quartz or some other crystal, equally polished as the wood—had been set.
“It’s beautiful,” she said at last, very quietly. That sculpture, not large but so fine, so subtle, brought back a thousand memories to her.
“You recognise it?” he asked.
She did not answer, but nodded her head. For a little while she simply couldn’t speak. Instead, she had a memory, herself perhaps not ten years old, looking up at Edward Avelar as he smiled at her. He was sitting at a workbench in the old, tatty studio that he hired to create his sculptures. The piece that he had on his bench, among all the chisels and awls and other tools, was smaller than the large lumps of stone, most of them unfinished, that were scattered around the studio. That was the Avelar curse, she knew: why should she ever give a title to her own works, other than unfinished, untitled.
This one had been different, however. “I’m making this for someone in America,” he had told her. “She likes my work, and wants something not too fancy for herself.” He had lifted her up onto his lap, his hands rough against her skin. There was the smell of oil and wood and a slightly smoky, burning scent that overlaid the familiar scent of alcohol. She had liked the smell of him that day.
“I like how the quartz is set into the wood,” Daniel said, gesturing to it as her fingers stroked the silky smooth texture of the wood.
“It’s amethyst,” she said. “Not a particularly fine piece of rock, but he ground it down, polished it.”
Daniel nodded, but for a few seconds she did not notice him. Her fingers were tracing each substance, each material, and when she moved from stone to wood to metal another memory was released. There were tears forming in her eyes, and her smile was joyful as she finally looked at him.
“Thank you,” she said, throwing her arms around his shoulders and kissing him again and again and again. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“It was nothing,” he said, almost shyly. “Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you, but Edward Avelar does not command a high price, though tracking down a completed piece was a task and a half.”
“The Avelar curse. It doesn’t matter what it cost you in money. I’d pay every penny of it back. To me, it’s priceless, but you know that, don’t you.”
He nodded his head, sombrely. “I do,” he replied.
“I love you,” she told him, kissing him again and pressing her face against his chest.
He kissed the top of her head. “I love you too,” he whispered.
For a day she was lost in her memories, and when she emerged from them it was simply to make love to Daniel again and again and again. This was soft and gentle. He had some knowledge of what he had released in her, and the tenderness with which he to
uched her was everything she needed at that point. If she had expected a reprise of their orgiastic flinging at each other when she returned to London, this was very different. Indeed, though he did not talk about them much, she was sure that when he watched her looking at her father’s sculpture his mind was filled with memories of his own parents.
And so although she was not necessarily glad to be back in London, she was more grateful than ever to Daniel. For a day, she was happier and more at peace than she had been for a long time.
Which was why, when they started again the day after, the messages were even more painful than they had been before.
Some were simple texts, but others were missed phone calls. Kris did not respond at first, even turned off her phone so that she would not have to reply. But it left her with a cold feeling of paranoia. At first, they were insistent and repetitive: Call me, please, or Why are you ignoring me? She did not dare answer, but then an abusive tone, something mocking entered into the texts she received.
I remember your taste, how sweet it was when I fucked you with my mouth, my fingers in your ass. When she read that, Kris frowned. It was childish, stupid. What on earth was this woman doing? Indeed, after a couple more like this, she was tempted simply to block Maria Gosselin. Kris did, indeed, remember more than she cared to admit, but it had been a stupid mistake, a one night stand.
The final message, however, the one that forced her to respond, made her blood run cold.
Answer me, bitch, or I’ll tell him everything.
For half an hour after that one, Kris sat looking at her phone. Daniel, fortunately, had some business to attend to and she was on her own in the apartment. She felt sick in her stomach. What was wrong with this woman? From what Daniel had told her, Maria had been perfectly civilised when he had sent Jorge with her to the airport, and the last day that he had been with her at Chiado Shipping she had been nothing less than professional. And now here she was sending texts to her like some crazy bunny boiler.
What she didn’t want to do, however, was to spoil everything—anything—with Daniel. Finally she dialled the number.
Fragile Crystal: Rubies and Rivalries (The Crystal Fragments Trilogy) Page 12