‘Lobster not to your satisfaction?’
She prodded at the pink flesh with her fork and forced a smile. ‘The lobster’s lovely.’
‘Is that why you’re not eating any of it? Or is it because you’re upset about what I told you yesterday?’
‘I’m not upset. I’m grateful you felt you could be so honest with me. I’m just feeling a bit...’
He put his glass down. ‘A bit what?’
She shrugged. ‘Nothing.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Overwhelmed, I guess.’ Her gaze shot around at the tables, which all seemed to contain at least one female who looked as if she’d be at home on a catwalk. ‘All the women here look amazing. As if they’ve spent the entire morning getting ready to have lunch in a chic restaurant, while I—’
‘Look like someone who has spent the morning being ravished by a man who can’t seem to keep his hands off her? Who is growing hard just by looking at her.’
‘Luis,’ she said faintly, her breath catching in her throat, because when he looked at her that way she just wanted to lean across the table and kiss him.
‘Don’t you think that any of them would prefer to be in your shoes?’ His gaze dropped to floor level and the hint of a smile curved his lips. ‘Or flip-flops, in this case.’
‘Which were never bought with the intention of being worn in some ultra-smart restaurant on the Côte d’Azur.’
He glanced up. ‘But you don’t dress to be seen, do you, Carly? Or to be looked at. You dress to be invisible and to blend into the background. I thought that was the whole point.’
She could hear the white umbrella above them flapping in the light breeze which was coming off the sea. ‘And I told you why.’
‘But the reason no longer applies, surely? If I’ve set you free from your hang-ups about sex, then doesn’t it follow that you might be a little more experimental about what you wear?’
‘You think I look awful,’ she said, in a wooden voice.
‘I think those pale shades you like don’t do you any favours. Your colouring is so fair that you need something more dramatic to set that off. If you don’t like your appearance, then change it, but don’t keep doing nothing and then complaining about it, because it’s boring.’ He leaned back in his chair and subjected her to a cool look. ‘And there’s no need to look at me quite so reproachfully. You did ask.’
‘And you certainly didn’t p-pull any punches in telling me,’ she said.
‘What would be the point of that? We’re back to the whole question of honesty again.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s time you stopped hiding some of your more spectacular assets and tried something new. So grab your bag.’ He lifted his hand and signalled to the waiter for the check. ‘I’m taking you shopping.’
‘I don’t like shopping.’
‘You will. Like eating avocado—it’s a taste which can easily be acquired.’ His black eyes gleamed. ‘So come quietly, querida, because I am still not fit enough to put you over my shoulder and carry you.’
Carly bit back a smile. When he looked at her that way, she felt powerless to do anything but agree. She didn’t feel like herself any more; she had become one of those women starring in a rom-com, their lives transformed by a gorgeous man with a big wallet and a lot of attitude.
Clamping her hands down over her hair, they sped along the Croisette in Cannes in his open-top car before coming to a halt outside a screamingly smart boutique, where a burly man in uniform took Luis’s car keys and went off to park for him.
But Carly’s mood evaporated when she peered through the plate-glass windows at the glamorous sales assistants who were grouped around inside.
‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t go in there.’
‘I thought we’d decided to dispense with the self-deprecation?’ he drawled. ‘You can do anything you want. Starting right now.’ He laced his fingers in hers. ‘Come.’
Carly felt faint. He was holding her hand in public! He was walking inside as if he owned the place and telling one of the sales assistant that he wanted to see her in ‘hot’ colours.
‘Scarlet,’ he said. ‘And definitely flame. And I think we might try yellow, too.’
Slipping into seamless French, he spoke animatedly to the woman, using his hands to draw curving shapes of a voluptuous body in the air. They were taken to a private area at the back of the store, where he showed no embarrassment about running his fingertips along a line of frothy lace bras, or deliberating between the virtues of the thong versus the camiknicker.
Carly’s throat had grown dry with nerves. She felt big and ungainly, like a giant in a land of tiny people. She wanted to tell him she’d changed her mind, until she remembered that it hadn’t actually been her who had made it up in the first place. It had been Luis who had taken command of the afternoon, overriding all her objections and deciding what needed to be done. And judging by his relaxed attitude as he sat on one of the velvet sofas, sipping a tiny cup of espresso, this wasn’t the first time he’d adopted this particular role. Maybe it was just a rite of passage for all the women who shared his bed. Though surely the usual rangy supermodel would do more justice to one of the delicate pieces of underwear which had been brought to the cubicle for her to try?
But to Carly’s surprise, the wispy bra was deceptively supportive and the camiknickers transformed her rounded hips into an area of her body which suddenly looked glossy, and...inviting.
When she pulled on a yellow and white polka-dot dress, with its full skirt and shiny patent belt, she barely recognised the reflection which gazed back from the mirror, but even the sales assistant gave her a wide beam of approval.
‘Mais, elle est jolie,’ she said, on a note of surprise.
Luis gave a slow smile as Carly stood in front of him. ‘Very pretty,’ he agreed, picking up a straw sun hat with a yellow ribbon on—his black eyes piercing into her as he placed it carefully on her head. ‘Now are you going to start believing in yourself?’
She could feel the silk next to her skin and the crispness of the petticoat beneath the fifties-style dress and, almost shyly, she nodded.
He smiled, his gaze alighting on a stick-like mannequin clutching a plastic bucket and spade at the far end of the store. ‘I think we’ll take a look at some bikinis while we’re here.’
Soon they were laden down with glossy carrier bags, tied with bright pink ribbons, and Carly was persuaded to keep on the yellow dress and the matching espadrilles.
‘You’ve bought me far too much,’ she whispered, her heart pounding as Luis cupped her face in his hands, causing the sun hat to wobble precariously.
‘That’s for me to do and for you to accept. And now I’m going to take you home and show you something which is vital to the repertoire of any lover,’ he said, brushing his lips over hers in a grazing kiss.
Carly was back on that same dangerous high as they sped along the mountain road. She kept trying to tell herself that none of this had any real substance, no matter how wonderful it felt. But her heart was stubbornly refusing to listen to what her head was telling her. She had told him she wasn’t looking for the things which most women wanted—that her desire for love and marriage had been eclipsed by her ambition to be a doctor. But suddenly she was discovering that falling in love with Luis would be as easy as falling off a chair.
He took her straight to his bedroom when they got back, but she barely had time to register that this was the first time she’d ever been in his room because he was closing the door and walking towards her, with a look of fierce intent on his face.
His eyes were glittering as he began to peel off her yellow dress before carefully draping it over the back of a chair. Beneath it she was wearing some of the new lingerie he’d chosen and she saw his eyes narrow as he ran his gaze over her.
‘Perfecta,’ he said softly.
‘I’m not perfect,’ she said, until she saw the expression on his face. ‘Th-thank you.’
‘
That’s better.’ He gave a small nod of approval as he cupped the embroidered swell of her breast. ‘Because right now, you are completely perfect to me.’
Carly would have defied a marble statue not to have responded to that statement. She tried to play down its significance as he pushed her onto the silken rug and took off her new camiknickers, before putting his head between her thighs. She stiffened at the shock of the sudden warm intimacy of his tongue licking against her moist flesh. Her fingers started tugging at the wayward waves of his hair so that he lifted his head, his dark eyes gleaming as they surveyed her.
‘Luis?’ she said uncertainly.
‘You just have to relax,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’
Wasn’t he? She closed her eyes. She suspected he was going to do exactly that. Because there were different kinds of hurt, weren’t there? She’d learnt in biology that the human heart was vulnerable in so many ways.
But her mind emptied as his tongue began to explore her. She clung to him as he whispered soft incitements in Spanish. And after she had sobbed out a powerful orgasm which left her dazed and shaking, she wondered how she was going to live without this kind of pleasure.
Or live without him.
She could taste the unfamiliar flavour of sex on his mouth as he slid up to kiss her.
‘Unzip me,’ he said.
She swallowed. ‘Are you going to corrupt me even more?’
‘I’m going to try.’
He taught her how to suck him. He showed her how to pleasure herself, while he watched. He took her to Monaco and Antibes and Saint-Paul-de-Vence, where they ate lunch in a famous restaurant, where paintings by Picasso and Miro hung on the walls. They ate plateau de fruits de mer in Nice and drank champagne in a little place called Plan-du-Var, high up in the mountains. Back at his luxury villa he would strip off her clothes with hungry hands and their sex would have a hot, hard urgency. And when she had gasped out yet another orgasm, he would stroke her skin and murmur that her body was everything a woman’s body should be. By the end of that week, Carly was reeling—her senses so exquisitely stimulated that she could barely eat or sleep.
And all she could think about was Luis.
It was as if he had entered her bloodstream like a powerful drug. Suddenly, she began to understand something about the nature of addiction. You tried something which you knew was bad for you, and suddenly you were hooked. Hooked on a feeling which even a novice could recognise as love.
But none of this was real. That was what she kept bringing it back to. It was a brief fairy tale which was bound to end. Her feelings weren’t real and neither was this situation. Seduced by his skill as a lover, she had found it easy to forget she was also Luis’s employee. But she was. Nothing had really changed and now she was wondering what was going to happen when they left here.
‘You’ve been very quiet,’ he observed late one afternoon as they lay beside the pool and she tried, unsuccessfully, to read.
‘I’m just sleepy.’
‘Don’t be evasive, Carly,’ he said softly. ‘I thought we had agreed to be honest with each other.’
She laid the book down on her stomach, her heart clenching as she looked at him. The growing ache inside her was making her realise she couldn’t carry on like this. She couldn’t keep burying her head in the sand and pretending the future wasn’t out there. She couldn’t keep pretending that she didn’t care for him, because she did. ‘I’ve been thinking.’
‘About what?’
‘Well, a couple of things really.’ For a moment the world seemed to hold its breath and everything around her seemed to be green and blue and beautiful. The flickering gleam of sunlight danced on the pool and the sky was as blue as those rain-smashed delphiniums she’d seen in the garden back in England. She didn’t ever want to leave here, but some day soon she was going to have to. Because they were living in a protected bubble and sooner or later the bubble was going to burst. ‘About what’s going to happen when we go back to England.’
Luis tipped his sun hat forward, so that the shadow of the brim fell over his eyes, because somehow it was easier to know that his face was in darkness. He thought about her question and how he was going to answer it. She was only saying what had been on his mind for days, and he knew he couldn’t keep ignoring his commitments elsewhere. He had a doctor’s appointment in London next week and a growing stack of engagements, which he couldn’t put off any longer. He had meetings in Dublin and Buenos Aires and was due to make a visit to Uruguay, to oversee the second stage of his beachside development.
But this wasn’t just about the logistics of his life; it was about how he was going to deal with a situation he had created. How he was going to extricate himself from it, with as little angst as possible.
He sighed. He liked Carly. He liked her a lot, but the longer this went on, the greater the likelihood that she would get hurt, because that was what he did to women. That was his process. And he didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want tears or recriminations. He didn’t want her to degrade herself by trying to hold onto what they could never have. He wanted her to go away and be the fantastic doctor he knew she could be.
‘I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,’ he said.
‘Maybe not. But we still have to face facts, don’t we, Luis? There’s no point pretending that nothing’s happened, is there?’
Beneath the shadowed brim of his hat, Luis frowned. What did she think had happened? They’d had sex. She had been unfulfilled and uptight and crying out for some kind of affection. And he had given it to her. He had set her free. His mouth hardened. That had been the deal.
He looked at her, at the zingy new orange and cerise bikini which moulded itself to her magnificent curves. She’d left her hair loose, the way he liked it, and her skin had now turned a deep, caramel colour. He’d done her a favour. And he would do her an even bigger one by setting her free.
‘I don’t think it will be a problem,’ he said coolly. ‘In fact, I’m planning on leaving almost as soon as we get back to England. I have a number of global projects which will keep me occupied for most of the winter. We’ll hardly see one another, probably not until the spring.’
‘Oh. Oh, right.’
There was no disguising her shock or her disappointment. He could see she was doing her best to smile, but he knew enough about women to realise that behind her dark glasses those iced-tea eyes would be blinking away the first prick of tears. Because he made women cry, didn’t he? That was something else he was good at. He made them long for something he was incapable of giving them. He felt a twist of something which felt like regret, but it was gone in an instant.
‘And you’ll soon be going off to med school, won’t you? You’re going to be a doctor. The best doctor in the world.’
Carly was about to tell him that it would be at least a year before she could afford to do that. Because even with the bonus he was paying her, she still needed to pay her rent and feed herself through six long years of study. For someone who hadn’t done any formal education for such a long time, she wanted to give one hundred per cent of herself to her course and not distract herself with part-time jobs.
Until she realised the implications of what he was saying, and all the practical considerations about her future slipped from her mind. She realised what was happening and suddenly she felt sick. Luis was ending it. Now. As clinically as he was able to remove her clothes, he was now taking a scalpel to their relationship. He intended going off round the world and when he returned, they would act as if nothing had happened.
Because nothing had.
They’d had sex, that was all. All it was ever intended to be. Only a fool would imagine that the act of making love would make someone fall in love.
And she was that fool, wasn’t she? That fool who had started looking at him with a warm glow in her heart and stupid little fantasies building in her mind.
She swallowed.
She was only that fool if she let
herself be.
Quietly, she closed the pages of her book. ‘That’s right,’ she said, hoping her face didn’t betray the pain in her heart. ‘I will. The best doctor in the world,’ she repeated.
He glanced over at her. ‘And what was the second thing?’
She stared at him. ‘The second thing?’
‘You said you had a couple of things you wanted to talk to me about.’
Had she? Carly blinked and then remembered. In the parallel universe of a few minutes ago when there had still been hope in her heart, she had been about to tackle a few home truths. She had wanted to tell him something she thought he needed to hear, but now she thanked heaven that his words had stopped her in time.
Dimly, she registered the sound of an approaching car in the distance, then the slamming of a door and the clatter of heels. But the momentary intrusion was dwarfed by the cold and tearing pain inside her. There was no going back—or going forward. She and Luis were finished. It was over.
She stared into his face. ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ she said, just as Simone began to walk out from the back of the villa, closely followed by someone with long blonde hair and a tiny denim skirt. Someone who looked oddly familiar but who really shouldn’t be here.
Carly blinked. It was weird. Like seeing a double-decker bus in the middle of the desert. They were both things you recognised, just that one of them was in the wrong place.
Simone’s face was expressionless as she looked at Carly. ‘Your sister has arrived.’
‘My sister?’ said Carly in confusion, as the blonde in the miniskirt came clattering towards them.
CHAPTER TEN
CARLY SAT BOLT UPRIGHT. ‘Bella?’ she said, her voice rising in surprise. ‘What...what on earth are you doing here?’ But deep down, she knew. The reason was fairly obvious and lying sprawled on a sunbed which her sister was now standing beside as she slanted him the widest smile in her repertoire.
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