Temptation Island

by Victoria Fox

  Xander became animated. ‘And I found him inspiring and exciting and all the things I wanted to be. He knew stuff I couldn’t work out how he knew, about history and politics and people … How people work, you know? How they feel, which is harder to learn than equations and biology and conjugated verbs, complexities that come with the wisdom of age. He knew what people wanted, what they feared and loved and valued—and how far they would go to get it.’ Darkness crossed his face. ‘Our friendship became intense. Quickly.’

  There was the shade of a question on Stevie’s tongue but she didn’t know how to ask it.

  ‘End of the first year, I found out he’d started dating Nicole. He didn’t tell anyone except me. But JB changed. He became brighter. He started to pull away from me, letting the other boys in, and I didn’t like it. Of course everyone was impressed he had a girlfriend and whenever he spoke about Nicole he got this look and this manner that the rest of us were too young to identify. He was happy, for the first time. He lost his heart to Nicole. As far as I know, it hasn’t happened since. He’s never lost his heart, not in that way, to anyone else.’

  Xander stood. He put his hands in his pockets, facing the pool and the sun so that all Stevie could see was a black outline.

  ‘His family were rich, it goes without saying. It seemed like every summer his parents would experience a pang of conscience and realise they hadn’t seen their only son in a year, and so they’d take him on a brief vacation in St Tropez, or to a castle in the French countryside, or on one of their fleet of boats. I couldn’t believe when he invited me out one time. It felt like the golden ticket. I’d been scared he was extracting himself from the bond we’d shared, like I might get replaced, but JB was loyal. Is loyal. He doesn’t do stuff like that.’

  Xander turned to face her. One of his fists was caught in the palm of the other.

  ‘We took the boat out early one morning,’ he said. ‘There was bad weather forecast, but JB’s father didn’t listen. By the time the storm hit, we were helpless. Paul and Emilie were torn from each other, the wind howling and the waves pounding, and I hadn’t a clue what to do though they were shouting instructions I couldn’t understand. JB was an able sailor, he’d spent his early years thrust out of sight on every activity going, but even so it was a lost cause.

  ‘Paul went over first, then Emilie.’ Stevie saw her husband’s knuckles tense, geared for impact, the bone cauliflower-white as it pressed against his skin. ‘It was suicide, JB and I both knew it, but Emilie was the stronger swimmer and she believed she could save him. Next thing their arms were in the air, reaching and stretching, and their mouths were filling up with water.

  ‘They drowned. Lives, memories, everything, snuffed out like a candle flame.’

  ‘You were so young,’ Stevie murmured. ‘Poor JB …’

  Xander looked at her directly. ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ he said. ‘It’s not “poor JB”, it never has been.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘He was watching it happen, Stevie. While I was trying to save them, he was standing there and watching it happen. His parents begged. Help us, please, help us. And I was shouting at JB to do something, because he was the one who knew boats and time was running out, the water was getting higher and the rain thrashing so it made me blind, thinking I saw them then losing them, till I didn’t know what I was seeing any more. I grabbed what I could—a rope, jackets, the lifebuoy I knew they kept on the underside of the cabin—but nothing made any difference. He didn’t help me, Steve. And I couldn’t see fear in him, though I looked for it. He just stood there. He let it happen.’

  ‘That can’t be right,’ she said. ‘He was only a boy!’

  ‘That’s what they thought,’ agreed Xander. ‘And it’s what he relied on. It’s the shock, they all said. Poor child. He didn’t speak for days. He went to stay with his aunt and uncle in Paris and I went, too, for a while, but by then he frightened me. And it wasn’t till we returned to school in the fall that he told me what happened.

  ‘He vowed that his father was a cheat and a liar, and that he was glad he was dead. Because he’d walked into Paul’s office a week before the boating trip and found a fourteen-year-old Nicole on her knees. He told me Paul had been forcing the girl’s head into his lap, the girl JB loved, the only person he’d ever loved and who had loved him back, the only thing that belonged to him alone and not to his parents. And if Paul was forcing Nicole then, how many other times had he forced her? JB believed he should have done something sooner, to help her, prevented it from happening in the first place. She stopped coming by. She stopped holding his hand. She stopped everything, after that. So it was for Nicole that he’d let them drown. Well, his father was for Nicole. I believe his mother was for him.’

  Stevie recalled the furore over the couple’s deaths. ‘You’re saying he let them die?’

  ‘You do believe me,’ Xander insisted, ‘don’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, and she did, even if something wasn’t right. The story didn’t seem entire. There were so many questions. ‘Why didn’t you tell someone?’ she asked. ‘Why didn’t you admit what happened?’

  ‘How could I?’ protested Xander. ‘Anything I said would have been dubious at best, malicious at worst. JB had lost both his parents. What kind of person would accuse him of that?’

  Stevie examined him. ‘You should have told me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why you didn’t.’

  ‘I wanted to.’

  ‘So that’s why you didn’t want me to go to Cacatra?’

  Xander held her gaze for a fraction too long.

  And then he lied. The coward JB Moreau always told him he was.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s why.’

  46

  Lori

  Lori and her father flew to Spain for the funeral. Despite her repeated offers to pay their fare, for Tony’s benefit more than theirs, Angélica and her daughters elected not to come.

  The black-clad procession winding through Murcia was filled with mourners for Corazón. Lori was amazed at the number of lives her grandmother had touched. She would always treasure the precious few months they had shared. If Corazón had done half as much for these people as she’d done for Lori, their affection ran deeper than she knew.

  The following day she and Tony had the difficult task of sorting through Corazón’s belongings. Trinkets, diaries and photographs; string-bound bundles of brittle letters laced with faded ink; drawers packed with clouded silver. Lori remembered how frustrated she’d been last time she had visited, how desperate in the aftermath of Rico’s arrest. How caught up she’d been in her lust for another man …

  Corazón had given her a way out and in doing so had given her everything.

  Now, more than ever, she needed her grandmother’s counsel.

  She needed her mother. She needed a woman she could trust. Turmoil couldn’t come close to describing the state she was in.

  Pepe the dog lay on the stone floor with his chin on his paws, his eyes sad, every so often pricking his ears and sniffing the air, either mistaken in believing the old woman was with them or the only one, perhaps, who could sense she still was.

  ‘What’ll happen to him?’

  Tony was at the table, sorting through papers. ‘Mama organised him to go to a friend.’ The afternoon light was fading, a burned, Spanish light, and bathed him in its glow. Lori saw what he might have looked like as a boy, as Corazón would have seen him in her kitchen.

  ‘I should have been with her,’ he said. ‘After Maria died, I didn’t come back as often as I should, and now—’ he shook his head ‘—it’s too late.’

  Lori rested her hands on his shoulders. They felt thin and small. ‘There is too much death in the world,’ Tony said sadly, ‘isn’t there?’

  Taking her silence for assent, he reached round and took his daughter’s hand.

  ‘Death makes way for life,’ she replied, feeling his fingers entwined with hers. ‘You can’t hav
e one without the other.’ Releasing him, she eased into the chair opposite.

  ‘I have something to tell you, Papa,’ she said, allowing him a moment before she broke her news. She steeled herself, strong as she could be.

  ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

  JB returned to Los Angeles in the same week that Lori departed for Spain.

  He found out about her grandmother’s death. Since the moment of his intervention he had stood by his vow to keep watch over her. The scouts he employed to source for Cacatra were, from time to time, engaged in other purposes. Moreau had his own methods. They knew enough not to ask questions.

  By the same manner he discovered her pregnancy. Or, rather, the suspicion of it. Lori had been forced to cancel several bookings through La Lumière and had been sighted incognito in a downtown pharmacy. It wasn’t long before word reached him that she was being moved into an arrangement with aspiring actor Maximo Diaz.

  Wednesday lunch, JB met with a global clothing chain interested in acquiring a customised Moreau range. He ordered well, and ate and drank with apparent enjoyment. To look at him it would be impossible to know that anything in him was altered.

  It was. As plans were laid before him, proposals set forward and pitches anxiously articulated, he listened with the same removed expression, the same still blue eyes that had become his trademark. Personnel elected for the meeting had been briefed that this was a practice designed to draw associates into saying more than they wished to: silence was a powerful negotiator. In reality it was nothing of the sort. It was the guard going up, the hatches slowly battening, the armour reassembled. A door ajar pulled shut.

  ‘Let us talk you through stock changes,’ chattered a nervous buyer, fumbling to retrieve her paperwork. ‘We’d anticipate an autumn-to-winter range,’ she babbled. ‘Chunky-knit coats, leather accessories, the works—let’s call it country chic with the Moreau signature twist.’

  He supposed she had been with Maximo just after they had been together on Cacatra. Her dates would suggest as much. But then Lori’s declaration that he had been her first was no guarantee, for when had a word counted for anything? It was actions that mattered. If anyone should know that, it was him. And if she had been able to lie about her feelings then she would have lied about that.

  But, then, what feelings had she admitted to? None. Lori had given an impression, certainly, but she’d never confirmed it. The rest had been his invention.

  JB wasn’t a man who indulged in imagination. He dealt in facts. And he hadn’t realised till now that he’d started imagining again. He’d started dreaming.

  The buyer was arranging a stack of documents on the table. It was awkward, she should have waited till coffee had been served, but enthusiasm or pressure was getting the better of her.

  ‘As you can see—’ she indicated the charts ‘—our yield at this time of year is streaks ahead of our competitors …’

  If there was one thing JB Moreau could not abide, it was being made the fool. He himself had not been with another woman, not even his wife, since the night with Arabella Kline in Vegas. Wrongly he had expected the same of Lori—he’d assumed the same. He’d taken for granted that she would wait for him, when in truth during those first few months of their reacquaintance he’d given her no reason to do any such thing. Who knew how long she’d been with other men? He’d understood the agreement with Peter Selznick, much as he’d hated it, to be platonic, but, then, who knew how far they had gone behind closed doors? Had she been with Peter in the way she had with him? And now, with Maximo? Pregnant with another man’s child when she knew the painful truth? When he’d confided the sad, sad reality that he was unable to ever become a father himself?

  And at the centre of it all, the fact that he had made an error of judgement. JB was not accustomed to being wrong. He knew people, he was able to work for Cacatra by knowing people, and the discovery that he had misread Lori Garcia so dramatically did not sit easy on his mind. He’d been blinded by emotions, reeled in by imagining her to be reminiscent of somebody else when she wasn’t. She was an entirely different person.

  Emotions, as he’d always known, were the dominion of the weak.

  ‘So—’ the buyer was flushed in the face, exhilarated following her presentation ‘—do you have any questions for us?’

  For the first time since the meeting began, JB smiled. He suppressed a sensation that for any other would have been heartache, but for him was a silent thunderstorm, breaking over distant hills.

  When Lori landed in California ten days later, she had a deluge of voicemails waiting. Three were from Maximo Diaz. On seeing the blinking lights, she’d hoped JB might have got in touch. She knew he’d been in Europe on business but would now be back in town. It was imperative she spoke to him.

  To her disappointment, it was a different voice that emanated from the machine.

  ‘I haven’t stopped thinking about you,’ the first message said. ‘I must see you again.’ The second was a direct invitation: ‘I’m having dinner with friends on Saturday. Join me?’ The third, Maximo seemed to remember the reason for her absence: ‘Anything you need, I’m here. ’

  She and Maximo had met just once, as promised to Jacqueline, days before she left for Spain. Maximo had been courteous, friendly, and as incredible in the flesh as One Touch had promised. But Lori had felt nothing. How could she, when every waking moment was consumed with memories of JB Moreau?

  And how could she, when she was carrying his child?

  Oh, she had battled it. Pretended it wasn’t happening. Buried it and unearthed it and dusted it off and tried to find a way of handling it that made any kind of sense.

  Even now she could scarcely believe it was true.

  Tony had taken the news badly. He had imagined his daughter to still be the good Catholic girl he and Maria had raised. The irony was, for a long while, she had been.

  ‘How could you do this?’ He had charged across his mother’s kitchen, reeling from the blow. ‘What were you thinking?’

  Lori had fought to restrain her own temper. Her concern was for JB and their unborn child. She had neither time nor inclination for trial in her father’s court.

  ‘I found what I was waiting for.’

  ‘Which was?’ He had been unable to comprehend why she would even consider keeping the child, jettisoning her career in the same sweep as shaming herself.

  ‘Love. ’

  ‘You know nothing about love—and even less about this man. And yet you’re prepared to throw your life away for him?’

  ‘I don’t see it as throwing my life away.’

  ‘He’s married, Loriana.’ Tony could barely spit the words out, he was so furious. ‘He has a wife. Are you mad? How could you be so thoughtless?’

  But, in spite of how Lori feared the discovery of her pregnancy, she had never before been thinking more clearly. Her time on Cacatra had been the most lucid of her life.

  Now she was back in America, it was clear what she had to do. If Tony didn’t want to help her then she was not going to beg. It hurt, but what choice did she have? She was a woman now, not a girl. JB had shown her that. Once she spoke with him, everything would be OK. They were meant for each other and this child was proof. She wanted to tell him that Rebecca Stuttgart had been wrong. That he could and would be a father. That their union had resulted in the miracle she had no doubt he longed for. That she loved him.

  How would he take it? What would he say? He’d be shocked at first, but then what? He’d be overjoyed, she was sure, but he’d tread carefully, too—the timing was far from ideal and there were people, commitments, to consider. Lori moved between states of ecstasy and unease, knowing her news would change both their lives beyond recognition.

  Lori managed to put it off for most of the day, returning Maximo’s calls and politely declining the invite to dinner. She swam and fixed lunch. She spoke to Desideria about the fragrance brand she’d been signed for. She welcomed her assistant, a fresh-faced, efficient gir
l named Anne, who talked through her schedule for the week and brought her mail.

  ‘Most I’ve sorted,’ she said, ‘but it’s really piled up since you’ve been away.’

  By evening, Lori had exhausted all avenues of diversion.

  She dialled JB’s number and it rang and rang. She considered trying the agency but knew the chances of him being there were minimal. Perhaps she would leave a message.

  Hello, it’s Lori. I’m pregnant with your child. Call me.

  She’d try again in the morning.

  Sleep evaded her that night. Lori’s mind fevered with thoughts of Corazón and her father, the island of Cacatra, the feel of JB moving inside her and the feel of a life growing, now, where he had been. The mystery number—LA864—that insisted on surfacing though she tried to keep it down. She dreamed of the Indian Ocean littered with torn pages and woke needing water.

  At one a.m., she padded downstairs in the gloom. The stack of mail Anne had left caught her eye and automatically she sifted through it.

  Immediately, she spotted them.

  Three sealed, plain white envelopes, identical to the one she had received weeks ago.

  Quickly, before she changed her mind, she tore them open, one after the other. Presumably an order had been intended, but her absence meant they had lost their sequence.

  d E S e r V e t O b e P U ni s H e d

  P r E Tt y Gi R L s w H o bRea K Pr Om I Se S

  R e M em b e r Th a t

  Rigid with fear, Lori read the notes a second time, then a third.

  All possessed the same quality that had concerned her about the first. They were somehow knowing, somehow familiar. Messages meant only for her.

  Temptation was to send them the same way, but sense told her to keep the evidence. Whoever this person was had crossed a line. They had been to the house … more than once. They knew where she lived. They might be on her right now.