Tory assumed it was a social call—perhaps Caro offering further work advice. Much as she’d liked her, Tory felt pursuing even the most tenuous relationship with her was inadvisable. But refusing to see her at all might prompt some suspicions in Caro’s mind.
Tory resolved to go down and do her best to act normally. She greeted Caro with a polite smile and hid her surprise at the other woman’s attire—an orange and black track suit over a running top.
‘It’s one of my gym nights,’ explained Caro, ‘but I decided at the last moment to come here…see how you were.’
‘Much better,’ Tory volunteered.
‘That’s good,’ Caro murmured back.
Silence followed these pleasantries until Tory felt almost obliged to add, ‘We could go for a drink in the lounge bar.’
Caro nodded even as she looked uncertain. ‘Perhaps there’s a dress code.’
Tory glanced towards a group of young men exiting the bar in question. They wore an array of scruffy denim jackets and tie-less shirts flapping loosely over jeans.
‘Not from the look of that lot, there isn’t,’ she remarked on their dress.
Caro followed her gaze. ‘Aren’t they some pop group or other?’
‘Possibly,’ agreed Tory, before leading the way through the glass doors.
They gravitated towards a booth at the back. Tory insisted on buying the drinks and escaped to the bar. It gave her some precious minutes to compose herself.
When she returned, Caro took a good swig of the gin and tonic she’d requested.
It was Dutch courage, as she resumed, ‘I’m not really sure what I want to say. I got myself riled up to come here but didn’t think much further than that.’
Tory felt her stomach drop. It didn’t take a genius to conclude from Caro’s words, ‘You know who I am, don’t you?’
Caro nodded slowly.
‘Lucas told you?’ added Tory, a note of accusation creeping into her voice.
‘When I asked him, he did,’ relayed Caro, ‘but not last night.’
Tory frowned, trying to sort out exactly what this meant.
Caro ran on, ‘I knew there was something wrong at dinner. Charlie was acting really oddly but I thought it had something to do with work. Then, while I was making coffee, Luc changed his mind about staying and Charlie got very agitated at the idea that Luc had gone off to spend the night with you.’
‘He didn’t.’ Tory could deny that at least.
‘No, I know,’ Caro stated. ‘Luc told me he stayed with Chuck, his stepfather.’
So that was where he’d gone. Tory imagined the two men together, discussing Luc’s latest acquisition—her! She just hoped she was being unduly paranoid.
‘Anyway, Charlie thought otherwise,’ Caro continued. ‘In fact, to be honest, so did I. I made some joke about it—something about Luc meeting his match—and Charlie went ballistic. He made out he was upset because of his sister’s memory, although he usually admired Luc for his success with women. It took me a while to figure out he minded for himself, not his sister…’ Caro tailed off and her face reflected the pain she felt.
Tory wanted to say something. She just wasn’t sure what. She was scared of making the situation worse.
Eventually she murmured, ‘Charlie told you who I was.’
Caro shook her head. ‘I guessed later, lying in bed, waiting for him to come up. I remembered your reaction to Charlie’s name—your sudden bout of illness. It was obvious then that you knew him. I was just too stupid to realise it.’
‘It’s me that was stupid—’ Tory sighed in response ‘—not realising who you were. I would never have gone to your house if I had.’
Caro’s eyes rested on her, testing her sincerity, before she said, ‘Well, it’s too late to change things. The question is where we go from here.’
‘I’m not sure I understand,’ Tory replied carefully.
‘Look, I know Charlie’s rung you,’ Caro informed her. ‘I overheard him this morning, asking to speak to Victoria Lloyd. That’s you, isn’t it?’
Tory looked genuinely blank. ‘I never received any calls.’
‘He must have missed you,’ Caro concluded, ‘but that hardly matters. The fact that he’s calling you at all is the issue.’
Tory could see that and ventured a possibility. ‘Maybe he was calling to apologise. He was somewhat rude to me last night.’
‘Rude?’ Caro echoed in surprise.
‘I’d say so. Claimed I’d grown very hard, ‘ Tory could relay quite truthfully, ‘which is a bit of a cheek, coming from him. I mean, you know he dumped me, don’t you?’
‘Well, I…’ Caro looked confused. ‘I was never quite sure what had happened between you.’
‘Not ready to commit.’ Tory pulled a face. ‘That’s what he said. Rubbish, of course. I mean, he was ready enough when he met you a few months later, wasn’t he?’
‘I…um…yes, I suppose,’ Caro agreed in apologetic tones.
‘Well, you’re welcome to him.’ Tory gave a negligent shrug before reaching for her drink.
Over the rim she watched Caro’s changing expressions. Having come here to warn Tory off or perhaps plead with her, Caro had not anticipated this outcome. She looked as if she couldn’t quite believe things were going to be so easily resolved.
‘God, jealousy does make fools of people. I really thought that you and him…’ She trailed off and gave her a sheepish look. ‘I wish now I’d listened to Luc.’
‘Luc?’ Tory repeated more sharply. ‘What did he say?’
‘I…’ Caro hesitated, not wanting to commit another faux pas. ‘Just that he didn’t think you’d be interested in Charlie, that you had someone else.’
‘When did he say this?’
‘This morning when I phoned him on his mobile and started blubbering my suspicions.’
Tory’s eyes darkened. She was beginning to form some suspicions of her own. What Luc and she had done last night, she’d put down to sexual urges and momentary impulses. She hadn’t considered it a premeditated act on his part.
But what if it was? What if he’d slept with her entirely to discredit her in Charlie’s eyes?
‘He offered to tell Charlie as much—’ Caro seemed to confirm the idea ‘—although he was convinced that I had the wrong end of the stick, which, of course, it appears I had… I really do feel a Class A Idiot.’
‘That makes two of us.’ Tory spoke her thoughts aloud.
‘Two?’ Caro raised a brow.
But Tory shook her head. Caro was never going to believe what a rat Lucas Ryecart had been to her.
‘I’ve been making an idiot of myself all day,’ Tory confided instead.
Caro was suitably distracted. ‘The magazine, of course! How did it go?’
‘You do not want to know.’ Tory rolled her eyes, conveying disaster, and the two exchanged smiles.
It was a spontaneous reaction but the smiles soon faded. In other circumstances they could have been friends, but neither wished to risk it, Caro because her husband’s ex-fiancée was prettier, smarter and a whole lot nicer than anyone in the family had led her to believe, and Tory, because Caro was too much like family to Lucas Ryecart.
So they finished their drinks, shook hands and parted company in the lobby.
Tory then went to the desk and, asking if there were any messages, collected several slips of paper.
There were four, three from Charlie, the last asking her to call him on his mobile. The message would have been easy to ignore but seemed safer to answer, and sooner rather than later.
Back in her bedroom, she dialled the mobile number given, and, when Charlie said his name, didn’t give him much chance to say anything else. Spurred on by the sounds of children playing in the background, she told him straight. She didn’t know why he’d been calling her, didn’t want to know why unless it was to apologise for last night’s rudeness, didn’t want him to call again. If he did keep calling, then she would have to inform her rug
by-playing boyfriend who would happily re-convey her message in person.
Charlie just managed to bluster out the words, ‘Are you threatening me?’ before Tory replied with a resounding, ‘Yes,’ and replaced the receiver with a decisive click.
Till that point she hadn’t known she had such a ruthless streak. She rather liked it. In fact, it had felt positively liberating to say exactly what one thought.
She looked at the other message in her hand. She’d read it before her call to Charlie. It was brief enough:
‘CALL ME. IT’S IMPORTANT. LUCAS.’
In fact, it couldn’t be briefer. No one would have known they were lovers. Correction, had been lovers. Once. And that was one time too many.
Tory reached for the phone again and dialled an outside line, but that was as far as she got. Having vented her spleen on Charlie, she’d wasted precious reserves of anger and Lucas was nowhere near as easy to handle.
She returned the mouthpiece to its cradle. Silence was surely the best show of contempt. She limited herself to tearing the message into a hundred tiny pieces.
Tory realised, of course, that she couldn’t avoid Luc for ever, not if he wanted to talk to her, but she gave it her best shot.
When her mobile rang the next day, displaying a number she didn’t know, she switched it off rather than answer it, and when Lucas called the magazine’s number directly, she was ‘in conference’ in the morning and ‘out of the building’ in the afternoon, lies happily relayed by the switchboard operator, Liz. The said Liz was a self-professed hater of men—having been recently dumped by one herself—and didn’t need much persuasion to come up with varied excuses why Tory was perpetually unavailable.
Tory did, however, take a call from Alex.
He was ostensibly phoning to find out how she was doing, but, after some pretty token interest, launched into his own news. It seemed that Rita, his wife, had finally agreed to his coming up to Scotland to visit the children. Alex hoped to go that weekend, depending on whether he found a flat in the interim.
Tory saw where he was going and didn’t wait for him to get there. Yes, he could stay another week. But only on condition that he did go to Scotland.
Alex assured her he would. In fact, he confided his intention to try and win back his wife’s affections. Tory made encouraging noises although personally she felt he had more chance of winning the London marathon on crutches.
Then, almost as an afterthought, he said, ‘By the way, you have to phone Ryecart. There’s been some new developments you should know about. I offered to pass on a message but he doesn’t seem to trust me.’
‘Snap.’ He didn’t trust Tory either.
Alex laughed briefly before advising, ‘I’d do it soon,’ and signing off with a, ‘Good luck for the weekend.’
Tory was left wondering about the nature of these so-called new developments. Was it on the work front or the Wainwright business? If she could be sure it was the latter, then she’d ignore the royal command. But what if it were work—what if she were about to be exposed at Toi for the impostor she undoubtedly was?
She was still deliberating the matter at the end of the day and left the offices without calling him. She didn’t feel ready to talk to Lucas, whatever the reason. She went back to the hotel for another night and ordered room service.
She’d just finished her meal when the reception desk put through a call from an Alex Simpson.
‘Alex, what now?’ she asked with an impatient edge to her voice.
‘Is that the way you normally talk to your boss?’ a voice drawled back.
‘You!’ She almost spat the word down the line.
‘Yes, me,’ Lucas agreed and pre-empted her next move with, ‘Don’t hang up! Otherwise I’ll keep calling all night.’
‘I could ask Reception to block your calls,’ she countered.
‘My calls—or Alex’s?’ he threw back.
‘I…’ Tory asked herself why she was even having this conversation. ‘Calls from anyone with an American accent,’ she added at length.
‘I can do British,’ he replied and proceeded to prove the point with, ‘I say, old bean, could I speak to Miss Lloyd, room two three five?’
‘They’ll know you’re a fraud,’ she retaliated. ‘No one says “old bean” these days.’
‘Old chap?’ he supplanted.
Tory breathed heavily in response and, resigned, asked, ‘What do you want?’
‘Well, why don’t we start with an apology?’
‘An apology!’
‘From me to you.’
‘Oh.’
Tory waited.
‘I shouldn’t have sounded off about you and Charlie the other night.’
Tory waited another moment before saying, ‘Is that it?’
‘Pretty much,’ he confirmed.
Tory’s silence conveyed the fact that she was unimpressed.
‘Unless you want it written in blood,’ he suggested in a far from repentant tone.
‘That would be a start,’ she muttered back.
‘Look,’ he conceded, ‘I’d apologise for the rest, only it would be hypocrisy. I’m not sorry we made love. In fact, I’d like to do it again, maybe a bit slower next time.’
Tory was glad he was at the other end of a phone line, although she should be used to his directness by now. His casual attitude to sex was no surprise, either, but it hurt all the same.
‘And take pictures for Charlie, perhaps?’ she finally ground back.
‘What?’
‘That’s the idea, isn’t it? To discredit me?’
‘What?’ he echoed with total incredulity. ‘You think I slept with you so I could boast of the fact to Charlie?’
Did she think that? Tory wasn’t sure any more. But she wasn’t about to backtrack.
‘I haven’t said one word to Charlie,’ he resumed through gritted teeth. ‘It isn’t me he’s been calling.’
Tory didn’t have to go looking for the accusing note in his voice.
‘That’s hardly my fault,’ she retorted, ‘and, for your information, I have told Charlie exactly how things stand. Check if you don’t believe me. I have also reassured Caro that I have no designs on her husband.’
‘You called Caro?’
‘Correction, she called on me. Here at the hotel.’
‘I told her not to do that.’ He sighed heavily. ‘What did you say to her?’
‘Why don’t you ask her?’ suggested Tory.
‘I will,’ he countered.
He clearly didn’t trust her. He still saw her as home-wrecker material. Forget the fact she was good enough for him to sleep with. Or perhaps bad enough was nearer the mark?
‘So, if that’s all—’ Tory assumed they had no more to say to each other.
‘I have a full diary the rest of the week,’ he continued regardless, ‘but we should meet up on Friday.’
‘You and Caro?’
‘No, you and I.’
Tory considered the prospect, before reminding them both, ‘I’m off to the Derbyshire Dales doing outdoor activities.’
‘I know,’ he claimed.
It left Tory a little mystified. If he knew, then why…?
‘How’s it going at Toi, by the way?’ he added, distracting her.
She’d thought he’d never ask. ‘Easier than expected and more interesting.’
‘Not considering defection, are we?’
‘I wasn’t, but now you mention it…’
He laughed. ‘Are you sure—all those bitchy women?’
‘You imagine they’re any worse than Simon and Alex?’ she countered without thinking.
The trouble was she kept forgetting Lucas Ryecart had two personae—careless, skirt-chasing ex-journalist and serious media boss who happened to own Eastwich.
‘I didn’t mean that,’ she added quickly.
‘Yes, you did,’ he drawled back, ‘but I’ll forget you said it. I’ll form my own opinion of those two in time, anyway.’
> Tory assumed he already had.
‘Meanwhile,’ he continued, ‘I thought you should know that I won’t be broadcasting what happened between us the other night, in case that’s of concern to you.’
It was, of course. Tory didn’t want a reputation for sleeping with her boss, a reputation which might follow her round the industry.
‘Thank you,’ she said simply.
‘Our business,’ he replied with a quiet sincerity.
It was another trait of the man. As direct as he could be, he was also discreet.
‘Quite,’ she murmured back.
Both fell silent for a moment, aware of a rare accord. Tory half expected him to follow it up with another request for a date. She was debating her answer when he spoke again.
‘In fact, next time we meet,’ he suggested, ‘let’s pretend we don’t know each other.’
‘I…’ Taken aback, Tory took moments to recover before she bristled with offence. ‘Good idea!’
‘Believe me, it will be,’ he replied, tone cryptic.
It was as if he were up to something. But what?
Tory didn’t get the chance to probe further as he signed off with the words, ‘I’ll be thinking about you till then.’
Tory was left holding a dead line. She stared at it, confused by the mixed messages he was sending. He wanted to forget about her and think about her. It didn’t make sense.
Or maybe it did. She, too, wanted to forget what had happened between them. She didn’t want to lie in bed, night after night, reliving his kiss, his touch, their coming together. But she did.
It was like having a film running continuously in her head. Each time she saw it, remarkably it seemed more real, more beautiful. Each time it left her shot with physical longing.
She felt like a voyeur, not recognising herself in the girl who twined her body with Lucas’s and licked the sweat of his skin and spread her legs wide and drew him into her and moaned in pleasure as he penetrated her.
She wanted to destroy the film yet she kept viewing it. She tried to edit it, to have the girl reluctant, to make the man weak, inept, but she couldn’t sublimate the truth, couldn’t wipe out the image of Lucas as lover, strong and powerful, encountering no resistance as she accommodated his flesh and moved for him and rose to him and welcomed each thrust of pleasure until he finally took her, groaning her name as he staked his claim.
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