‘Jesus!’ Jeff, who had been listening very sympathetically, exclaimed at this. ‘You must have been really shaken up!’
Deeley nodded so fervently she nearly spilled what was left of her drink; Jeff took it and put it on the table. Then, somehow, he was holding her hand, and she was holding his right back, more grateful than she could say for the reassurance of human contact.
‘Hey,’ Jeff said gently, leaning towards her a little.
Light gleamed on his smooth scalp, glossy red-brown, like a sculpture carved from cherrywood. Deeley found herself reaching her free hand up to touch it; his skin was incredibly soft, like oiled suede. Jeff closed his eyes as she stroked his head, her fingers reaching round his head, cupping it; he butted his scalp against her palm like a cat being caressed. She’d never been with a man with a shaved head before, and the sensation was new and delightful.
Her hand slid down to his neck as Jeff’s fingers closed tighter around hers, pulling her a little closer to him so that as his head lifted, he was near enough to her that his lips found hers. His mouth was wide and soft, like a ripe plum, and he kissed her as lightly as a man can kiss a woman; she felt his warm breath on her lips, the tip of his tongue, so lightly that it made her want more. Made her want him. She drew him fractionally towards her, her mouth opening under his, her eyes fluttering closed, relishing the physical sensations that were flooding through her as smoothly and easily as sliding into the warm bubbling water of the Jacuzzi in the hotel spa. Jeff’s hand was on her shoulder, stroking her skin, his fingers running up and down her neck, and she murmured her appreciation of what he was doing, how lovely it felt.
Kissing, Deeley thought dreamily, is one of my favourite things in the world. I could do this all night long . . .
Jeff’s lips, his tongue, tasted as sweet as the cocktail, of passion fruit and the raspberry Chambord. Deeley wasn’t used to drinking that much; LA was not a big drinking town. People there drove themselves to bars and clubs, and unless you were a drug-addled starlet, you didn’t want a DUI. Besides, everyone had early morning starts; 6 a.m. workout sessions were the norm. Nicky and Sean, who were very into clean-living, often trained even earlier.
One and a half glasses of champagne, laced heavily with liqueur, was making Deeley’s head swim deliciously. She licked the champagne traces off Jeff’s full lips with the tip of her tongue, as delicately as the cat she’d compared Jeff to, making him grip her more tightly as he kissed her harder, his arms wrapping around her, pulling her along the suede love seat, her bare thigh, below the hem of her dress, rubbing against the fabric of his trousers.
‘Jesus!’ he said against her mouth, taking a deep breath, raising a hand and stroking her hair back from her face. ‘What are you doing to me?’
Deeley could feel him smiling; he planted a kiss on her lips and pulled back a little, taking an even deeper breath, running both hands over his scalp. She opened her eyes and saw him shifting to sit with his legs slightly parted, adjusting his trousers; he caught her glance and raised his eyebrows at her, throwing his hands wide, flashing her a self-deprecating smile.
‘Just needed to – um, take a moment,’ he said, reaching for his drink and finishing it in one long swallow. ‘Wow.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘That was . . .’ He shook his head again. ‘Making out like teenagers in a bar on a Saturday night. Believe me, I haven’t done that in a long time.’
Deeley did believe him; he looked genuinely taken aback. But I have, she thought, embarrassed. I had quite a few times making out with near strangers in LA; sometimes going home with them, too. She couldn’t feel too guilty; she’d been in her early twenties, and banned, by her situation, from having anything resembling a real boyfriend. I was young, free and single; I had my fun;They were industry parties so no one would gossip; I wasn’t cheating on anyone or doing anything I shouldn’t.
But now it felt different. She glanced sideways at Jeff. He was a really nice guy. Sweet, handsome, and a great kisser. Definitely possible boyfriend material.
And as soon as he stopped kissing me, I started thinking about Matt again.
Oh God, I’m such a mess.
Jeff had got himself calmed down enough to look at Deeley again. To the long list of his assets, she could add an extra one: he wasn’t a fool. He could tell immediately that something was on her mind. He grimaced.
‘Look, feeling up a woman I’ve just met in a bar isn’t exactly how I like to think of myself behaving,’ he said. ‘So I was going to suggest that maybe we take a walk along the esplanade, under the stars. It’s stopped raining . . .’ He gestured out of the window. ‘But I can tell from your expression that maybe you’re not OK being alone with me.’
‘It’s not you,’ Deeley said immediately. Now she definitely felt guilty.
‘Really?’ Jeff pulled a face; his features were very mobile, Deeley thought. You’d never get bored watching him. ‘Because that’s how it’s feeling. I came on much too hot and heavy.’ He looked earnest. ‘You’re just so gorgeous. I don’t mean that to sound like I’m blaming you—’
‘Oh no, it was me, really! I touched you first!’ Deeley said, wriggling in embarrassment. ‘I mean, I stroked your head . . .’
‘Oh yeah, so you did.’ Jeff grinned at her, his teeth very white and even. ‘It is a very nice head, isn’t it?’ He stroked it complacently for comic effect, making her laugh. ‘I’m not surprised you couldn’t keep your hands off it.’
He had a really nice way of using humour to deflate a moment of tension. Deeley felt herself relaxing.
‘It’s the ex-boyfriend, isn’t it?’ Jeff said. ‘The one in LA you just broke up with.’
Deeley nodded. It was a lie, but in a way it was the truth; she was confused over a man, messed-up enough not to be able to let herself go with Jeff, see where the evening led them. Just because it wasn’t Nicky in LA, but Matt in London, the core was the same. There was another man in the picture. And Jeff was too nice for her to use him like a Band-Aid to plaster over the wound that her stupid behaviour with Matt had made.
She opened her mouth to try to explain this to him, or as much as she could, but he was ahead of her.
‘I get it,’ he said gently. ‘You came away to get over someone, and it’s way too early for you to think about someone else. Even if it’s just making out with some near stranger in a bar. Look.’ He raised a hand to summon the waitress. ‘I’m going to sign the bill and go for that walk myself – I need some cold air.’ He grinned. ‘You’re more than welcome to come with me if you feel the same. And all I’ll do is let you hold onto my arm, OK? I won’t touch you at all. Not even if you beg me. Not even if you stroke my head the whole time.’ The waitress arrived, and he signalled to her that he wanted the bill. ‘So.’ He looked back at Deeley. ‘Feel like joining me for a totally chaste, utterly kiss-free night-time stroll?’
Deeley was smiling now. Jeff was too funny; she couldn’t help it.
‘I’d love to,’ she said.
Devon
Devon met Gianni’s beautiful wife Laura the very next morning.
Devon had gone to bed early, after foraging in the enormous kitchen for a very basic dinner. The last thing she wanted to do was cook; frankly, she couldn’t imagine ever wanting to cook again. But Laura had left the huge fridge stocked with cheeses, salamis and prosciutto; there was a large bowl of ripe red tomatoes on the kitchen table, and a fresh loaf on the olive-wood breadboard. Devon had assembled a delicious sandwich, sunk most of a bottle of local red wine, and crashed. It was a tribute to the lack of additives in the wine that this morning she had woken at nine with a clear head.
Wrapping herself in a dressing gown, she had padded downstairs, made herself a big pot of espresso on the stove-top Bialetti, toasted some bread to eat with the chestnut honey she’d found in a cupboard, and wandered outside to have breakfast on the terrace. The kitchen’s big double French doors gave onto a sheltered stone patio, an outdoor staircase behind it thickly clustered with pots of her
bs and trailing geraniums; Rory had placed a wrought-iron table there, so that he and his guests could eat outside even in the heat of the day.
Devon sipped her coffee and stared out across the valley in front of her. The lawn glimmered with dew, the fountain in its centre playing lightly; a decorative stone wall hemmed the lawn, and below it the ground dropped away to a vineyard ten feet below, where she could just about see a squarish man in a battered old hat spraying something on the vines. In late spring, the foliage was at its most lush, the grass still green, the oaks and silver birches thick with leaves, the olive trees feathery and full, looking from a distance like pale green-grey puffballs. The last faint wisps of cloud were burning off in the haze of morning sun. It was going to be a warm day.
‘Signora? Buongiorno! Signora?’
Devon turned, startled, to the kitchen doors, hearing a woman’s voice call, and footsteps bustling across the terracotta floors. ‘Cotto,’ Devon remembered Gianni calling that tile yesterday. She thought she remembered every single word he had said to her. God, what a mess! And this was bound to be—
‘Sono Laura,’ the woman said, appearing on the terrace with a beaming smile. ‘I am Laura. Good morning! You sleep well, yes? Everything is good?’
Devon’s jaw dropped. She stared at Laura with what in England would have been utter and total rudeness. Because Gianni’s wife was not at all what she would have expected.
After Gianni’s comments to her yesterday about women looking like women, she’d assumed that his wife would be voluptuous, with cascading dark hair and heaving bosoms. Instead, Laura was more Jamie Lee Curtis than Sophia Loren. Skinny, wearing a tight white stretch shirt tucked into equally snug jeans, her cropped hair was dyed a frightening shade of orange streaked with blonde, and big gold hoop earrings dangled almost to her bony shoulders. She wore absolutely no make-up at all, and could not have been a day under fifty.
‘Benvenuta, signora!’ she said happily, rushing forward to kiss Devon on either cheek, smelling strongly of perfume. ‘Welcome to Chianti! We take good care of you here, I promise.’
‘You’re Laura?’ Devon could only say, still utterly taken aback by the sight of Gianni’s wife.
‘Ma si, certamente! I am Laura! I look after you. I cook, clean, what you need I do. So!’ Laura clapped her hands, smiling. ‘I go to Greve now, to shop. Do you want to come? I show you our town.’
‘Oh, no, no thanks,’ Devon said distractedly; she was by no means ready to face the outside world, let alone a bustling, gossipy Italian village in the company of a woman with the energy of someone who had just sunk three Red Bulls back to back. ‘Um, I met your husband yesterday. He seemed very nice.’
She felt the colour rising to her cheeks, and she hadn’t even said Gianni’s name. This is awful, she thought grimly. I have the worst schoolgirl crush on him.
‘Si?’ It was Laura’s turn to look surprised now. ‘You meet Gianni?’
‘Yes,’ Devon frowned. ‘He picked me up from the airport. In Rory’s car.’
‘Oh!’ Laura simultaneously clapped her hands and cackled with laughter; it was quite a trick. ‘Ma senti che buffo! You think ’e is Gianni?’ She cackled again. ‘Ma quello e veramente divertente!’
‘I don’t speak Italian,’ Devon said through gritted teeth, sitting up on the edge of her chair. ‘What are you saying?’
Laura didn’t seem to mind her rudeness at all: still laughing, she pointed into the field below the lawn.
‘Quello e Gianni!’ she said happily, indicating the stout man in the ancient hat. ‘That is my ’usband! Yesterday, you meet Cesare. Il nostro principe. He says Signor Rory has telephoned to him, to say that you come to visit, and he takes the car to meet you. ’E is a friend of Signor Rory. Molto simpatico.’
Devon’s heart almost exploded from her chest with relief. It was like a blow in the ribs, but from inside, a physical sensation so strong it paralyzed her for a moment. Laura was still cackling away, however, and didn’t seem to notice that Devon had collapsed back into her chair, reaching for her coffee cup.
‘’E is very funny, Cesare. Molto buffo,’ Laura was saying cheerfully
Devon didn’t drink the coffee; she just needed something to do with her hands. Cradling the cup, she said as casually as she could manage, ‘Oh! Does he, um, live near here?’
Laura’s plucked eyebrows shot up and she stared in amazement at Devon.
‘Ma si!’ She pointed across the valley, beyond the stand of oak trees at the bottom of the vineyard, to a pale pink villa on the hill beyond, surrounded by cypresses. ‘Di la! Vignamurlo – the villa, is very famous, many tourists go to see it. ’E is principe. Prince. Very old Tuscan family. Come i Gucciardini-Strozzi,’ Laura added incomprehensibly. ‘Well, OK! I go to Greve now. I buy you milk, eggs, bread. You want other things?’
‘Um, maybe some fruit?’ Devon said, on autopilot now.
‘Benissimo!’ Laura said, bustling away. ‘A presto!’ She shot a quick look at Devon, remembered the latter’s lack of Italian, and added kindly, ‘See you soon!’
Devon sat there, unable to move, listening to Laura’s car start up, somewhere beyond the house; a minute later she saw a flash of white winding its way down the drive, half-hidden by the cypresses that lined it.
On the plus side, he isn’t Rory’s caretaker, she thought. And he isn’t married – well, not to Laura, anyway. And on the negative, I tipped him ten euros. And he took it! Oh God, how embarrassing!
She took a deep sip of coffee, the bitter strong liquid coursing through her. Not that she needed it to wake her up; every nerve ending in her body was pinging with sensation.
He said ‘presto’ to me before he went. Which means ‘soon’. ‘See you soon’. So he must be planning to come back and see me, mustn’t he?
Soon?
She wasn’t going to ring Cesare. Wouldn’t, couldn’t, wasn’t going to. Devon had avoided Laura on her return from Greve, because she knew all too well that she would be unable to resist pumping the housekeeper for information about Cesare; did he live here full time? Did he have a girlfriend? Was he married? He probably has both, she thought gloomily. A wife and a girlfriend. He’s so bloody flirty, he probably has a string of women all over Tuscany.
Devon’s own husband was like a thorn in her side to her; whenever she thought about Matt, she flinched. She knew perfectly well that she had treated him appallingly, that he had been nothing but wonderful to her. She didn’t deserve Matt, and she knew it. She was hiding out here in Chianti, putting off the awful moment when she would have to be honest about the state of her marriage. The last thing she had expected was to be this attracted to another man. And, she realized with dawning surprise, I don’t think about being fat at all when I’m with Cesare. At least, I didn’t yesterday. How weird. With Matt – with anyone else – it’s all I’m aware of . . .
Devon was determined to eat healthily here. No pasta, no cake, no fatty foods. She made a salad for lunch from artichokes and sundried tomatoes, rocket and mozzarella, and then, bravely, went upstairs to put on her swimsuit. She couldn’t sunbathe – as the palest of the McKenna girls, her skin couldn’t take the sun – but she loved to swim, and she knew Rory had a pool. Snagging a couple of thrillers from the shelf in her room, she took a beach towel from the pile in the laundry room – Laura’s sheet- and towel-folding was a work of art – and, in a cover-up and flip-flops, headed out to find the pool.
Villa Clara was built against the side of a hill, for shelter in the winter and for protection from the sun in the summer. A series of ornamental gardens were cut like terraces into the soft slope of the hill, each one a few steps up from the next, and the pool was above them all, perfectly placed for the best views of the gardens and the villa, its stone border surrounded by loungers with parasols. Devon found the striped padded cushions for one of the loungers, adjusted the sunshade, and curled up there, distracting herself from thoughts of Cesare by immersing herself in a Lee Child. After an hour or so, feeling r
estless, she stepped into the still cool water of the swimming pool and ploughed up and down its length in a steady breaststroke.
She had lost count of how many lengths she’d done, her arms pulling at the water, her legs scissoring together, her inner thigh muscles working harder than they had for years; the exercise took her over. She didn’t hear the swing of the little iron gate that led up to the pool, the footsteps on the stone. She didn’t even notice his leather-shod feet standing on the edge of the pool surround. He had to squat down and wave his hand in front of her face as she swam up to the shallow end to get her attention.
Thank God it’s the shallow end, Devon thought fervently, coughing up the water she had swallowed in shock. She got her feet under her and stood up, slicking back her hair with both hands. Cesare’s eyes immediately dropped, appreciatively, to her breasts, which were raised and amplified by the gesture.
‘Do you always swim in sunglasses?’ he inquired.
‘I don’t like getting water in my eyes,’ Devon said, more grateful than she could say that she was wearing them; it gave her some protection, some defence against him. Stopped him reading, instantly, how happy she was to see him.
‘I came to see if you were having a nice time,’ he said, strolling over to a lounger and sitting on its edge. ‘You are a guest in Chianti. We want our guests to have a nice time.’
‘I am, thank you,’ she said, walking over to the edge of the pool and resting her arms on it, propping her head on them; she was incredibly self-conscious, suddenly, about the fact that she was almost naked, whereas Cesare, in white jeans and a denim shirt, was fully clothed. Some lucky star had warned her to wear her Miracle Medium-Control swimsuit, with its ruching that sucked in her stomach and love handles, its concealed bra that flattered her breasts, its aubergine colour that set off her white skin and dark hair so well; but no matter how miracle a swimsuit was, it couldn’t hide your cellulite.
Bad Sisters Page 28