by Liz Fielding
She didn’t stir. His arm went to sleep. A muscle in his back began to niggle. He welcomed the pain.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SOMETHING hard and sharp was digging into Belle’s cheek. She turned her head, reaching up to grab the pillow, turn it to the cool side.
Her hand encountered something-warm, firm. Not smooth cotton, but soft to the touch. Cashmere…
She’d fallen asleep on the sofa?
There was a blank moment as she groped for memory, then, as she shifted to a more comfortable position and a dozen niggles from back, arm, neck brought the hideous events of the night back to her in a rush, she opened her eyes, only to be distracted by the thought that the pashmina she’d draped over her sofa to disguise its age was not grey.
But then, as the fog of sleep cleared, it became obvious that she was not alone on the sofa.
She raised her head. Ivo, unusually rumpled, with a shadow several hours past five o’clock darkening his chin, was regarding her with sleepy eyes and she felt herself blush.
She’d slept all night on the sofa with Ivo, her head on his chest, her arm around his waist, their limbs tangled together and somehow the fact that they were both covered from neck to ankle in several layers didn’t make it any less intimate.
Any less awkward.
She’d left him. She’d cut him out of this part of her life, had told him, more than once, that she didn’t need him. But last night, despite the cruel way she’d rejected his offer of friendship, had walked away from him, he hadn’t left her stranded without money or keys-which plainly she’d deserved-but had come to find her. Even when she’d turned on him, had blamed him when Daisy had run off, he’d spent hours patiently searching with her.
And when, finally, she’d told him the truth about her life, he’d stayed.
All night.
Of course the fact that she was lying on top of him, that he couldn’t escape without waking her, might account for that. But he hadn’t had to lie there and hold her as she’d finally succumbed to sleep. Hold her, whisper comfort in her ear. Call her ‘my love’…
No. She’d imagined that. He didn’t do those words. He was a minimalist husband. Beautiful to look at. Perfect in every detail. But cold…
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘What for?’
‘Everything.’
For the fact that she didn’t want to move, ever, but to stay pressed up against his warm body.
That she’d lied to him.
‘For falling asleep on you,’ she said, picking on the smallest reason. The one that wouldn’t embarrass either of them.
‘You’d have been more comfortable in bed, but I didn’t want to disturb you,’ he said, stroking a thumb beneath one of her eyes. Last night there had been dark smudges that it had taken some very expensive concealer to disguise. ‘How long is it since you really slept?’
‘I looked that bad?’
The phone rescued him-rescued both of them-jolting her out of a desperate longing to just stay where she was, in Ivo’s arms, to forget everything else.
‘What’s the time?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes.’
No…
She lifted Ivo’s fingers from her face and for a moment just held them. How easy it would be to turn his hand, trail her lips along his fingers, enticing a response, a touch, a kiss, the slow peeling back of her robe, Ivo’s mouth on her neck, his fingers trailing over her skin in a slow prelude to the closeness, the precious intimacy her body craved.
She’d missed him so much…
Realising that she was still holding his fingers, she twisted her head to look at his wristwatch. ‘No,’ she said. ‘That can’t be right. My alarm…’
‘You might have forgotten to set it.’
‘The studio! I should have been there hours ago. Why didn’t someone call? Where’s my BlackBerry?’ she wailed, attempting to disentangle arms, legs.
‘Still in your bag, switched off, I imagine.’ She stared at him blankly. ‘The award ceremony?’ he prompted.
She groaned and, finally free, she jerked away from him, only to find herself hurtling back into Ivo’s arms.
‘Let me go!’ she demanded.
He held up his hands. ‘I didn’t do a thing.’
‘What?’ She eased up, discovered it was her dressing gown trapped between Ivo and the sofa. ‘Well, move!’
‘My leg’s gone to sleep.’ He caught her arms, holding her. ‘Calm down; whoever it is will leave a message.’
‘No…’ Didn’t he see? Didn’t he understand? ‘It’s Daisy! It’s got to be Daisy-’
The machine picked up, her brief message played. The caller hung up.
‘She was always going to hang up,’ Ivo said as, not looking at him, she carefully extracted herself from the sofa.
She knew it, but it didn’t help.
‘It’s a game, Belle.’
‘No…’
A long, insistent peal on the front door-bell cut her off and, heedless of Ivo’s warning, ‘No!’, she didn’t stop to use the entry phone, but raced down the stairs in her bare feet, wrenching open the front door.
‘Good grief, Belle, you look as if you’ve had a rough night,’ Manda said, immaculate from the top of her sleek dark hair to the toes of the Manolos she was wearing on her narrow feet. ‘It’s just as well Ivo asked me to call the studio and warn them not to expect you this morning.’
He had?
‘He did?’
When?
‘Didn’t he tell you?’ Manda shrugged. ‘He is here? I’ve brought him a change of clothes,’ she said, lifting one hand, in which she was carrying a suit carrier and a document case. ‘I’m sure your problems are much more pressing, but I’ve been apologising for cancelled engagements ever since you arrived home and since this one is with the PM-’
‘I didn’t ask him to stay,’ Belle snapped, disappointment sharpening her tongue. Then, ‘What are you talking about? What cancelled engagements?’
‘Nothing important,’ Ivo said, placing his hand on her shoulder, ‘but you’re right, Manda, I can’t expect the PM to reschedule.’ Then, regarding the paper carrier she was holding in the other hand, ‘Please tell me that’s coffee you’ve got in that bag.’
‘Coffee and a muffin,’ she said. ‘Less messy than a croissant. You can eat while I’m briefing you on the way to Downing Street. I’ll wait in the car.’
‘There’s no need,’ he said, relieving her of the bag and the suit carrier. ‘Save time and tell the PM yourself.’
‘Ivo…’ Miranda was, for once, the one left doing an impression of a goldfish.
‘Do you have a problem with that?’
‘You want me to go to Downing Street in your place?’
‘He wants my help with some overseas aid project. If it goes ahead you’ll be doing all the work. I’m just cutting out the middle man.’
‘Yes, but…’
‘I need you to do this for me, Manda.’
Belle sensed that this was important. That this kind of trust was something major. Something new.
‘But…’ Manda struggled for a moment with the idea, then said, ‘Right…’ She took a step back and Belle could almost see her giving herself a mental shake. ‘I’d better, um, go, then.’ Miranda glanced at her, then back at Ivo and said, ‘I’ll see you later?’
‘Later,’ he agreed.
She nodded once, turned, then, as she ducked into the back of the car Belle instinctively followed, stepping out on to the path to look up and down the street, hoping against hope to catch a glimpse of her sister loitering somewhere near.
‘Don’t,’ Ivo said, taking her arm, drawing her back inside so that he could close the door. Then, presumably to distract her, he lifted the hand holding both his suit and the paper carrier and said, ‘Coffee?’
‘I don’t think Miranda included me in the breakfast invitation,’ she said, taking the carrier, looking inside. ‘No, I thought not.’
&nb
sp; ‘We can share.’
‘The only thing we’ve ever shared is a shower and a bed.’ And, last night, a sofa…
She turned away to run back up the stairs, into her flat, into the kitchen.
Damn, damn, damn!
Why hadn’t he just gone with Miranda?
She’d left him. Didn’t he understand? This wasn’t his concern. And even when they’d lived together they didn’t do this cosy breakfast stuff.
Then, as he followed, favouring his left leg, she forgot that and said, ‘How is it? Can I do anything?’
For a moment their eyes locked and her mouth dried at the rush of memory. His thigh beneath her fingers. The warmth of his skin. The power-packed muscles beneath it.
‘No,’ he said abruptly. ‘It’s fine.’
‘Right.’ Then, as the silence stretched to snapping-point, ‘I can’t believe you just did that.’
‘What?’
‘Sent Miranda to see the PM in your place. You do realise that you’ve probably just thrown away a knighthood? Maybe even a seat in the Lords.’
‘Do you think I give a damn?’ he asked, taking the lid off the coffee, reaching for a couple of mugs, sharing the contents between them.
‘To be honest, Ivo, beyond the bedroom I haven’t a clue what you think.’
‘About a knighthood?’
‘About anything.’
‘Then let me enlighten you about one thing. A couple of days ago I told Manda that she underestimated you.’
He did? No, no…‘I won’t embarrass you by asking what she said in reply to that.’
‘It wouldn’t embarrass me, but I suspect Manda would never forgive me for telling you that you make her feel inadequate.’
Inadequate? ‘I don’t believe that.’
‘As a woman.’
‘They can do wonders with silicone these days.’
‘It has nothing to do with the way you look. It’s the way people respond to you. Your natural empathy,’ he said. ‘Which is why I did you the courtesy of assuming you wouldn’t make the same mistake about her.’
It took a moment for Belle, momentarily floundering, to backtrack. ‘Oh, I don’t underestimate her. I just think she’ll scare the pants off the man.’
He looked up. Ivo was a man so contained that she sometimes thought she must have imagined the passionate midnight lover who came to her bed, who haunted her dreams. But here, in her tiny kitchen, unshaven, his hair, his collar, rumpled, the suspicion of a smile creasing the skin around his eyes, she caught a glimpse of the man who had laid siege to her, who had refused to take no for an answer and had flown her away to his paradise island for a sunset wedding for two at the edge of the sea.
‘And your problem with that is?’ he asked.
She shook her head and, ambushed by the need to respond with a smile of her own, ducked her head. ‘No. You’ve got me.’
He took her chin in his hand, lifted her face and backed her up against the kitchen island, there was no escape. ‘Have I?’ he asked.
His fingers were cool against her skin. She shivered and somewhere deep in her throat a sound struggled to escape. She didn’t know what it was. Yes or no, it would be wrong and she swallowed it down, shook her head, keeping her lashes lowered so that he should not see her eyes, read there what she could not disguise.
If he saw them, he’d know, as he’d known before when, across a room packed with people, he’d somehow forced her to turn and look at him.
Then his weapons had been flowers, tiny treasures, glimpses into his world.
But a man did not reach his heights without being intelligent, adaptable.
He’d seemed to accept her decision, but she should have known he would not, could not let her go that easily. This was now about much more than an unquenchable passion; his pride demanded that he win her back, restore his life to its ordered routine. Tempt her back in the gilded cage she’d stepped into so willingly. And he was prepared to go to any lengths to make that happen. Even using the infinitely more precious gift of his time, if that was what it took.
Even as she held her breath, there was a touch to her mouth so light that she thought she might have imagined it, that her lips, of their own volition, sought to confirm.
They met nothing but air and her eyes flew open but Ivo had already turned away to retrieve the muffin from the bag. He broke it in two, offered her half. Eve’s apple, she thought. Persephone’s pomegranate seeds. Like the touch of his lips, irresistibly sweet temptation…
‘No…’ Then, ‘Thank you. I need to get dressed. I have to call the studio, make my apologies. Call my PR people.’ She pulled a face. ‘Heaven alone knows what the redtops will make of my rather sudden exit…’
‘I’m sure Jace fed them some plausible story that will hold them off for the time being.’
‘No doubt. It’s what they’ll do with it that bothers me.’ Then, ‘You asked Miranda to call the studio last night? What did she tell them?’
‘That you had a family crisis. Jace and I both thought it would be better coming from her.’
‘Of course. Who would dare question Miranda?’ Before he could answer, she said, ‘My life is about to get very messy, Ivo. You should step back.’
‘On the contrary. You should come home so that you’ll get some peace.’ Then, with a frown, ‘Is that what this is all about?’ He made a circular gesture with half a muffin, taking in the apartment. ‘Protecting me from tabloid splatter?’
‘No.’
‘You said that too quickly.’
‘It wasn’t something I had to think about.’ If they’d had a real marriage there would have been no secrets and they could have taken ‘messy’ in their stride. ‘You signed up for “perfect”, Ivo.’ For as long as perfect lasted. ‘This was never going to be for ever.’
‘No?’
She managed to pick up her coffee-it was a good thing that it was only half a mug or she’d have been in trouble-and tried to think of something to say. Nothing came and she had a momentary flash of sympathy with Ivo when, faced with her bald announcement that she was leaving him, he’d been monosyllabic.
Like him, she discovered, she didn’t have the vocabulary to cover this situation, so she said, ‘Help yourself to the shower in the guest room,’ before retreating to the bathroom.
Ivo, left alone in the tiny kitchen, looked at the muffin he’d torn in half. It was in much the same state as his marriage. He fitted the two pieces back together, but there were bits missing and the join wasn’t perfect; it jarred the eye.
But perfection was an illusion. Life had to be lived as it came with all its flaws and risks. Without the grit, there could be no pearl.
Belle was right. This marriage-this perfect marriage-was over. It was time to stop trying to fix it back together. What he had to do was work on rebuilding it from the foundations up.
Belle briefly recoiled from her puffy-eyed, bird’s-nest-hair reflection, but had no time to worry about it. She certainly didn’t waste time blow-drying her hair into her new style, just fingered it into place and left it to look after itself.
Her evening bag was on her bed where she’d thrown it last night when she’d stripped off her dress. She dug out her BlackBerry and switched it on, scrolling swiftly through a load of texts, all of them congratulations on her award. There were voice mails too. And a couple of emails.
Nothing from Daisy.
Well, what had she expected?
She opened the next best thing, an email from Claire. They’d had a lively exchange of text messages at the weekend; Claire had been putting off the moment when she faced her own demons and Belle had applied the cyber equivalent of a boot to her backside. She was hoping this would be good news.
It wasn’t.
It was an email to Simone, copied to her:
I can’t say I’m happy that my dirty laundry will soon be hanging out to dry in public…
What?
She flipped to Simone’s email and she let slip a word she hadn�
��t used in years. The lost diary had been picked up by a Sydney-based journalist who’d had no trouble in identifying all of them and had called Simone, inviting her to meet him. No chance that he hadn’t read it, then. Every word.
She sat down, quickly thumbed in:
Simone, I’ve just picked up your email and can scarcely comprehend how difficult this must be for you. I’m with Claire-you can tell Mr Tanner from me that Belle Davenport thinks he’s lower than a worm’s belly-as if he’d care! As for me, Ivo knows pretty much everything so, as far as I’m concerned, you can tell him to publish and be damned. Not so easy for you…
She thought about mentioning Daisy. Decided against it.
Then she returned the call from her agent. She owed him for taking the trouble to leave the celebrations to deliver her bag to Belgravia.
‘Babe!’ He was mellow. ‘Anything for my favourite client. I had a couple of calls from the diarists, but they bought the family crisis. One of the benefits of being a good-living girl. If anyone else had pulled a stunt like that, the press would be staking out The Priory even as we speak. You might want to think up something credible for public consumption, though. The press being what they are.’
‘I’ve got credible. Whether you’ll like it is something else.’
‘Well, that depends. If it’s something really shocking, I could squeeze the publishers for another one hundred advance on your biography,’ he offered hopefully, ‘and the papers would be fighting for serial rights.’
‘My financial adviser said I should keep that as the pension plan,’ she said.
‘What about my pension? Thirty years from now I’ll probably be pushing up daisies. And celebrity biographies might not be big business then. In fact, thirty years from now, if you don’t make a decision on some of these offers I’ve got lined up-or, better still, sign that lovely new contract for your breakfast show-no one will remember your name.’
‘That’s a risk I’m prepared to take. Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later to fix up a meeting-’
‘Come over now and we’ll have lunch at The Ivy. Celebrate the award. Better still, bring your financial adviser. He can pay.’