Lovers and Liars: An addictive sexy beach read

by Nigel May

  If she was wrong then Nikki Rivers was just about to make another cataclysmically big mistake in her life. Another one that could be added to the catalogue of errors she was already dealing with.

  ‘Are you sure you want to hear?’ she asked.

  Blair pulled her close, his touch both sensual and supportive. ‘I’m sure. It can’t be that bad, can it?’

  Nikki could feel her throat drying, as if defying her to share what she had already decided she wanted to say, needed to share for her own sanity. As the faces of other people she could try and speak to ran through her head, she knew that Blair was the right choice as she crossed the others off one by one in her thoughts. Heather had troubles of her own, Sutton would never understand her betrayal of Velvet, and even the late Max would have found it hard to understand her tragic drunken episode in the car in Harlem.

  ‘Okay, here goes…’ Nikki’s voice was a touch raspy as she began to speak, her breathing uneven. She could feel her heart racing inside her chest. She had gone no further before Blair interrupted her, concerned about her evident distress.

  ‘Hang on, you need a drink, let me fetch you some iced water.’

  Nikki just gave a gentle nod and watched as Blair moved from the bed and walked across the room to the bar area. The image of his perfectly formed butt momentarily quashed all of her fears and inner turmoil as she took in his naked frame. He was truly beautiful and a sight to behold.

  His back was still to Nikki as he spoke. ‘Damn, there’s no ice,’ he murmured, picking up the ice bucket that rested alongside the bottles of water, wine and spirits housed there. Any ice that had been there was now no more than water.

  ‘I’ll ring down for some ice,’ he suggested.

  Nikki snapped her thoughts away from Blair’s carnal delights and back to the contemplation of what she wanted, now needed, to tell him. But her throat was burning, the dryness now uncomfortable; she did need a drink. Rising up from the bed herself she slipped on her panties and grabbed Blair’s sweat top from the floor. It was emblazoned with the name of one of the many festivals he had played at in recent years.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, a little confused.

  ‘Don’t bother ringing downstairs,’ she coughed slightly as she attempted to speak, ‘There’s an ice machine just down the corridor. I know this hotel like the back of my hand. I’ll fetch some, give me the bucket.’

  He did so. It was now Blair’s turn to watch as she glided towards the door and pulled it open, before disappearing into the corridor beyond it.

  ‘Shit, that woman wears my clothes better than I do,’ he said under his breath. He was finding Nikki pure dynamite.

  It was a few minutes later that she returned to the room, the ice bucket full. She shut the door behind her, moved back to the bed where Blair was now seated and dropped some cubes of ice into the glass of water he still held in his hands. She placed the bucket on the bedside table and took the water from him.

  The coolness of it cleansed her throat of any burning that had lodged there. It felt good; she was ready to share.

  She began speaking and didn’t stop until she had told Blair everything. The nightmare of that night in Harlem, the blackmailing ever since, the phone footage of her, the fact that her own bank account was now wiped out and that she had been stealing from her father’s company’s funds. One nightmare flowed freely into another as she spilled the dark contents of her mind to Blair. She even told him about her dealings with Julian and how he had been the one to blow the whistle on her to Sheridan after she had dumped him, ending by telling him just why she had ended it.

  ‘Because I met you…’ Just four words, but it was enough to convey what she felt for him.

  Blair didn’t say a word while Nikki unfurled the script of woes inside her head. His face remained emotionless as she spoke, unable to read the swirls of horror, surprise, sympathy and disbelief that whirled through his mind. He wasn’t sure which emotion was strongest, which outweighed the others.

  As he listened to her final word, he remained silent, but placed his arms around her once more and held her to him. He could feel the gentle sobs begin to emanate from Nikki as he held her tight; tighter than he had held anyone for a long time. The last time he had held anybody so close and so personally was when he cradled a dying Cain in his arms at the record store, watching the life flow from his body.

  He had cried then; he felt the tears falling from his eyes and running down his face now too. One made its way past his chin and ran down his neck until it made contact with the silver chain around his neck, on which swung the cross that had once belonged to Cain.

  Nikki’s body rocked as she gave in to the tears. Had she been right to confide in Blair? She thought so.

  No, she knew so.

  What Nikki didn’t know was what was happening outside Blair’s hotel suite as she sobbed into his chest. It had started when she left the room to fetch the ice.

  As she watched the final cubes of ice tumble into the bucket she had turned back towards Blair’s suite. Behind her the doors of the elevator opened. His room was on the top level of Velvet Toronto and on the most expensive floor of the hotel, which contained only four suites. Those were saved for celebrity guests, dignitaries and, on occasion, Velvet employees.

  It was Velvet employee Julian Bailey who vacated the lift. He had spotted Nikki straight away in profile at the ice machine, just before she turned away. His first reaction had been to call out to her; to let her know he was there. To let her know that he was available for her needs. But he stopped himself, something inside saying he should remain silent.

  Nikki’s appearance intrigued him. He didn’t recognise the sweat top she was wearing – it looked like a man’s. Julian tried to read what was written upon it but couldn’t see clearly enough from where he was. He watched her move down the corridor, ice bucket in hand, and walk back into the suite she had come from.

  It was only when she was safely inside that Julian walked to his own suite, directly opposite the one that Nikki had entered. He was staying there for a night as it was vacant and convenient for the meeting he’d arranged for the following morning to discuss the new annex to the hotel. After that he would spend a few days at his own home on Algonquin Island, one of the islands located offshore from Toronto city centre. He loved the quirkiness of the islands, a small chain popular with tourists but also home to a tightly woven community who lived a rich yet peaceful life away from the hustle and bustle of the city. For Julian, it was the perfect place to unwind.

  But before he could head home there were other matters to deal with, including one of the heart – albeit a broken one: the matter of Nikki. She should have been back in Barbados, being torn into by Sheridan and disowned from the Velvet empire, but she wasn’t. She was here in Toronto, half-dressed, wearing some man’s sweat top and swanning around the most exclusive floor of the hotel. So why was she in town?

  Julian phoned down to reception. ‘Hello, Julian Bailey, Sheridan Rivers’ accountant in suite number two here. Can you tell me if Nikki Rivers is staying in suite number one, please?’

  The voice on the phone confirmed that she wasn’t. ‘No, Mr Bailey, Miss Rivers is booked into suite number four, she arrived earlier this afternoon after phoning through to let us know she was on her way. You’re in two and one of the divas appearing at the opera house is staying in three.’

  Julian’s curiosity went into overdrive.

  ‘So who the fuck is in suite one?’

  The girl on reception ignored the sudden unnecessary use of the F-word and remained professional. It was expected of a Velvet employee and certainly of one who was talking to the right-hand man of the tycoon who owned the company.

  ‘That would be Blair Lonergan, the DJ, Mr Bailey. He’s playing three nights at the hotel nightclub. All sold out. Everyone loves him.’

  Julian hung up. Blair Lonergan… He knew that name. Velvet paid him a fortune to play at their hotels. Good-looking guy, too. Julian cou
ld see why people loved him. But it was clear that Nikki did too. He knew that she had been seeing someone else, even though she hadn’t confessed to it during the altercation at The Cliff in Barbados. She’d lied to him; he’d felt it. And now it was up to Julian to make sure that Nikki and her pretty-boy DJ lover paid for it. He’d make sure that they did.

  Picking up the phone again, he dialled, this time an external number.

  ‘Hello, it’s Julian. You’ll never guess who’s here…’

  ‘Who?’ said the voice at the other end of the phone.

  ‘Nikki, and it seems your daughter might have been stealing all of that money from under your nose for her poxy little lover boy,’ sneered Julian. ‘Isn’t she supposed to be with you?’

  ‘She never showed. And who the fuck is lover boy?’

  ‘The DJ that Velvet employs, Blair Lonergan. I think he’s playing her a selection of his own tunes as we speak right now. Under the duvet of the hotel suite Velvet is paying for while he’s in town. Talk about rubbing your nose in it, Sheridan, old man!’

  Julian had to pull the handset away from his ear as Sheridan Rivers let rip. His scream of fury was almost loud enough to be heard at any of the worldwide Velvet hotels that Blair was employed at.

  ‘Well, I’ll soon put a stop to that!’ barked Sheridan. He had barely finished his sentence before slamming the phone down.

  38

  As the majesty of Toronto’s CN Tower streaked its neon glory across the jet-black darkness of a cloudless Canadian night, various people were making their way towards the Canadian city and they all had a tangle of very different thoughts and emotions streaking through their heads.

  Sutton Rivers was very much looking forward to her time in Toronto, a city she loved. She always had, ever since her first visit there two decades earlier. As she stared out the window of her private jet and gazed down at the circuit board of coloured city lights she knew that the next few days would definitely be pivotal ones. During the flight from Barbados to Canada she had made a few decisions and was determined to stick by them.

  She closed the lid on the laptop screen she had been reading for the last twenty minutes. She’d been engrossed in an article about the upcoming Belter in the Swelter fight in Barbados. News had hit the bloggers and vloggers that Blair Lonergan would be playing one of his infamous DJ sets before the big fight between Hatton Eden and Orlando Vince at Velvet Barbados in a few weeks’ time. In an age where one click of a button could send a story worldwide in a nanosecond the news had exploded across the Net and was already trending on Twitter. And that was all beneficial to the kudos of Velvet, which meant that Sheridan would be a happy man.

  Not that Sutton was particularly concerned about the happiness of her husband right now. He was the reason for the misery that was drenching her brain. All of her insecurities about how she looked and her inner turmoil about what people saw in her came from his treatment of her. They always had and yet somehow she had always put up with it. She had allowed him to parade his infidelities in front of her with the swagger and nonchalance of an uncaring bastard but she had always swallowed the bitterest of pills. And she knew why. She was shallow enough to realise that she loved the riches that Sheridan provided, ones the grubby men from her days in Harlem, pre-Sheridan, would never have been able to furnish her with. The fashion, the jewels, the exotic travel… She loved it all – but it came with a price. The price of her own heart cracking every time the man she loved, because indeed she did, and loved adoringly when they first met, trod on yet another little piece of her heart.

  Men like Hatton Eden, whose chiselled torso had again delighted her thoughts as she let her eyes travel around his photo on the article she’d just been reading, may have turned her down, but that was their prerogative. Despite the mesh of insecurities that constantly fused inside of her, Sutton had decided maybe it was time to make Sheridan realise that she was quite capable of attracting men with influence and power, even if they weren’t granite-chested beauties half her age. No, she was travelling to Toronto to see Julian and to let him know that she was going to drop a hefty hint or three to her husband that she was perfectly catered for in the bedroom department. The fact that it was with someone he trusted implicitly would make it all the more spiteful. Sutton had always been concerned that she would lose everything if she and Sheridan split but with two children and decades of marriage under her designer belt, maybe the fact that she’d signed a pre-nup wouldn’t matter after all. Maybe she didn’t have that much to lose. Right now the only thing she was losing was her dignity, letting Sheridan make her feel less than the woman she was. Which is why Julian’s attention was good for quashing her inner demons.

  As Sutton’s plane touched down at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport she smiled to herself. Sheridan would finally receive a small and deadly dose of his own medicine. If there was one thing that he couldn’t stand it was betrayal, and his wife admitting to an affair with his best friend would be betrayal of the most malevolent nature. He wouldn’t dare divorce her – the press surrounding that would far outshine any kudos he could gain from the upcoming boxing match, and that was something he would never risk.

  For once, Sutton Rivers was going to do things her way. To boost her inner confidence and to satisfy her own desire to finally serve up a delicious slice of homemade revenge pie to her husband. She’d always believed women made the best chefs, whether the feast was culinary or not. And heaven knows Sheridan had made her doubt herself for the longest time. It had started so very long ago.

  Nearly three decades earlier…

  Sutton stared at her naked body in the mirror. Despite the beautiful prize of a baby growing inside her swollen belly, she hated what she saw. The sweet inside may have been a delicious one but the wrapper was a sight that she was struggling to cope with. Many of her friends who had gone through the rigours of pregnancy had told her that they had loved the sight of their sweeping curves and generous proportions. As far as Sutton was concerned there was nothing generous about it all. If she ever discovered who decided that itchiness, continual fatigue, haemorrhoids, leg cramps, sore breasts and throwing up at the merest hint of certain foods was a wondrous thing then she would happily take that individual to one of the darkest and most dangerous back alleyways in the ghettos where she grew up and pummel them out of existence. Picture-perfect pregnancies were the thing of fairy tales as far as she was concerned. Swollen ankles and varicose veins were no happy ever afters. She was counting the days until her first baby arrived and thankfully it was only a matter of weeks until it was due, a baby girl. She and Sheridan had already decided on the name: Nikki.

  It was one of the few things that she and Sheridan had agreed on lately. He seemed to be finding her pregnancy just as irksome as she did, albeit for completely different reasons. Whereas Sutton hated what she saw when she looked at herself, Sheridan seemed to dislike what he heard. The pregnancy had made her snappy and short-tempered, prone to fly off the handle at the slightest thing. Sutton could be fiery at the best of times but the small matter of her ballooning body had acted as petrol to the flames of her already combustible nature. She couldn’t help herself. Sheridan would only have to cup her belly and tell her she was growing nicely and she would see fit to bite his head off for telling her that she was a size of a baby elephant – her thoughts, not his. And as for sex… Well, there was no way she was letting him anywhere near her body as it was right now. He’d tried on many an occasion, as any red-blooded man in the relatively early stages of marriage would do, but she was having none of it. Her response: ‘What do you want to screw a freakin’ beach ball for?’ Irrationality, pregnancy and her plummeting sense of self-worth were bedfellows as ill-suited as she and Sheridan were becoming. But even in her irrational state, she knew that the distance and irritation constantly growing between them was something that had to stop.

  Sutton moved away from the mirror of the Velvet London hotel room she was currently in. Sheridan had chosen the best hos
pital in London for the delivery and until the day that Baby Rivers decided to venture forth into the world, Sutton was spending her time waddling around her London hotel suite feeling like a Weeble, watching endless hours of The Golden Girls and having room service bring her trays of food with plates piled so high that a Sherpa was needed to reach the top. The only joy of being pregnant as far as she was concerned was eating for two and enjoying every calorie-laden morsel.

  Sutton picked up a silver bangle from the dressing table in her room. It was a gift from Sheridan. A heart hung off it, the metal lustrous, shiny and new – everything that she didn’t feel about herself right now. She slipped in round her wrist, the colour a beautiful contrast to the liquorice of her own skin.

  She loved the look of it. It had been waiting for her in a small chartreuse box tied with a ribbon on her pillow that morning. Sheridan had left it for her, having slipped out for yet another business meeting before she was even awake. She’d been up most of the night, unable to get comfortable, and when she finally achieved sleep, it had been fathoms deep.

  Sutton dressed, the maternity wear she was sporting making her feel frumpy, despite being the best that money could buy. How come the likes of Oprah and Queen Latifah could gain weight and still rock a designer or street look, yet she felt like a black version of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters.