The Pleasures of Autumn

by Evie Hunter

  With long steps, he reached the table and swooped down to kiss her. It felt like months since he had kissed her in the catacombs, not days.

  Her mouth was warm and welcoming and she clung to him tightly. He held her head in his hands, tilting it so he could kiss her more deeply. He had only meant it to be a quick, reassuring kiss, but when she was in his arms, passion took over. Kissing her was like coming home, warmth and passion all wrapped up in one splendid package.

  His tongue tangled with hers and he slid his hand into her hair. His world narrowed down to Sinead. Her unique scent filled his head, inflaming him.

  ‘Ahem!’ A fake cough recalled him to his surroundings. He hadn’t even noticed the prison guard standing there watching them. ‘If you will please sit down? Thank you.’ She indicated the plastic chairs.

  Reluctantly, he released his grip on Sinead and was surprised at how much it hurt. She belonged in his arms. And his bed. And his heart.

  Funny how thinking they were both going to die had made things so clear. Stupid stuff disappeared. All that mattered was that Sinead was his lady. His girl. His woman. The mother of his children.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked, conscious of the prison guard nearby.

  She folded her hands on the table, clearly trying to keep control of her emotions. ‘Not bad. This is a new prison, so I gather it’s fairly nice as prisons go.’

  ‘Are you lonely?’ Niall hadn’t realized how much he hated the idea of her being a helpless prisoner until now.

  She smiled. ‘No, I’m sharing the cell with a very chatty woman from London. She’s awaiting trial too, and is very funny about the Swiss.’

  He hated to think of Sinead being forced to mingle with criminals. ‘What did she do?’

  ‘Put her bins out on the wrong day.’

  He stared at her. ‘You’re kidding!’

  She shook her head, enjoying the story. ‘No. She put them out on the wrong day and got a charge for littering that she refused to pay. Then she was arrested for that, and she resisted and it escalated.’

  Niall took a moment to digest that. ‘Crap. Even if I manage to prove that Roisin stole the Fire, you could still be in trouble for all the other laws you broke.’

  ‘Yep.’ She attempted a smile that did not meet her eyes. ‘The Swiss police are nothing if not thorough at dotting i’s and crossing t’s.’

  He shuffled his chair a little closer and held her clasped hands. ‘I swear, I will find Roisin, and make her admit to her part in all this.’

  ‘Any luck with that?’

  He shoved his hand through his hair. Sinead’s fingers twitched as if she wanted to do it for him. ‘Nothing. If I hadn’t seen her with my own eyes, I’d wonder if she existed. She has disappeared into the ether.’

  ‘I only wish she’d told me more in the police van. All I know about my father is that he’s some kind of con artist who’s serving time for a computer scam. Roisin said that they moved around a lot. I don’t even know his surname. Let’s face it, we haven’t a prayer. Funny, isn’t it? I’m one of the best forgery detectors in the world and my sister is good at disappearing.’

  He loved the simple confidence in her voice when she told him she was good at her job. ‘So, I heard you’re going to see Arnheim soon about your plea? And you can’t remember any clue about where Roisin might have run to?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Who did she see Hall kill?’

  ‘I’m guessing it was Maurice. Remember the way that man reacted to you when we left his shop? It looks like Roisin was there that night. She must have needed someone to broker the ransom of the ruby.’

  Her eyes slid sideways, away from his. The prison warden leaned forwards, as if she was as anxious as Niall to hear what Sinead had to say. ‘What about the trial? If you can’t find Roisin, it’s not looking good.’

  ‘Fuck the trial. That has nothing to do with us.’ Niall gathered his courage. ‘Sinead, no matter what happens, I love you. I want to be the only man in your life.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Will you marry me?’

  Her eyes were impossibly blue as they stared into his. Tears formed, making them larger and more luminous. ‘Do you mean it?’

  ‘I don’t know why it took so long to realize how much you mean to me, how empty my life was before you came along. I need you, Sinead.’

  Sinead sat up straighter, putting on her museum curator air. ‘Niall, if the trial doesn’t go in my favour, I could be facing seven years in jail. That’s not exactly happily ever after.’

  He knew it, and refused to let it put him off. ‘You’ll get time off for good behaviour.’

  She snorted. ‘Oh yeah, that’s great. Five years instead of seven.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I’ll wait for you.’

  ‘For seven years?’

  ‘Five with good behaviour,’ he reminded her. ‘But yes, of course I’ll wait. I love you. Say you feel the same way.’

  She examined his face without saying anything. He wondered what she was thinking. Then she dropped her eyes to her hands, still silent.

  Finally, Sinead lifted her head and met his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Niall. I don’t think it would work.’

  An invisible fist punched him in the gut. ‘What?’

  Sinead shrugged. ‘I can’t make plans while I’m facing seven years in jail.’

  She looked out the window, where grey clouds veiled the mountains in the distance. ‘I’m not the marrying type anyway. But thank you for the offer. It was sweet.’

  Niall wanted to howl. He had no idea how much this would hurt. He had laid his heart at her feet, and she thought it was sweet?

  ‘You mean a lot to me.’

  The voice of doom. The brush off. She went on. ‘I love you, Niall, but I don’t think it would work.’

  ‘We could make it work.’ He didn’t care if he was begging. Damn it, it had taken him years to find her, and now he wasn’t going to let her go without a fight. ‘We can build on what we have. And I love you.’

  She held his eyes. ‘You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about my life. I’m not what you think.’

  Niall sat back in his chair. Every instinct told him that something bad was coming. What was it? Was she worried about her dad being a jailbird or her sister working as a paid dominatrix? Hell, he could deal with that. It meant nothing to him. ‘If this is about your family –’

  She gave a little sniff, the kind that usually signalled tears and he dug into his pockets for a tissue. Sinead blew her nose and tucked the tissue up her sleeve for later. That wasn’t a good sign. She cleared her throat and fixed him with a blue-eyed stare.

  ‘It’s not about my family. It’s because I’m Lottie LeBlanc.’

  Like fragments of glass from a shattered mirror, a thousand images exploded inside his brain. His incendiary attraction to her from the very first night at her apartment. How she moved and danced. The way she had teased him with her exhibitionist display in the restaurant that night in Paris. Even the way he had dressed her. The clothes he had chosen for his very own pin-up girl.

  His libido had known all along. The truth had been staring him in the face from the very start. He wanted to bang his head against the wall.

  A whole team of investigators on her and not one of them had made the connection to Lottie. Bertrand was her best friend. Sinead had known him for years, been his lover. He had pictures on his wall of Lottie. Of course he had – he was Lottie’s lead dancer. The truth had been staring him in the face the whole time and he had been too dense to see it.

  Sinead O’Sullivan was his dream girl and his fantasy girl.

  Sinead O’Sullivan was also a liar and a chameleon.

  And Sinead O’Sullivan had played him. Right to the end. A wave of jealousy washed over him when he thought of Lottie’s legion of lovers and admirers – the actors, princes and other showbiz types. He wanted to kill each and every one of them.

  ‘Jesus fucking wept.’ He thumped his fist on the table.

  The
prison officer stepped forwards. ‘Sir, if you do that again I will –’

  Sinead reached for his hand. ‘Don’t. Please don’t.’

  Niall jerked his hand away as if her touch burnt him. ‘What the fuck did you expect? Do you have an honest bone in your body? I told you that you could trust me. I asked you to tell me the truth. But you were lying to me all along.’ He pushed the chair back, not caring that they were attracting the attention of the guard or that Sinead’s eyes were welling up with tears.

  Niall did what he always did when life fucked him over. He compartmentalized. With immediate effect. He shoved the pain into a deep hole where he would deal with it later, and he became the impersonal investigator again. He waved to the prison officer signalling that he wanted to go.

  Before leaving, Niall leaned over the table, caught Sinead’s face between his hands and kissed her hard. ‘Remember this. Remember what we could have had.’

  He left without looking back.

  34

  The dark blue suit had been delivered by the female prison officer after breakfast. It was accompanied by a pale fitted blouse and a pair of black heels. The tissue-lined box that arrived with the clothes had already been opened and searched. She fingered the silk contents and her heart leapt. There was only one person who could have sent them. Niall.

  Stop it. Don’t think about him now. She had barely held herself together since she last saw him. She’d had to battle tears every night. She’d lost weight, too; abject misery was better than any diet.

  Niall. Niall. Niall. She couldn’t get him out of her thoughts for a moment. His smile, his look, his touch. There were nights when she woke up sweating, imagining that he had been there with her. She craved his caress like a drug. She didn’t care if he tied her up in a thousand different ways. The endless, wanting hours until dawn were unbearable.

  Her Niall. Her lover. She still called him that even though their time together had been so brief. She had explored with him, shared with him, but he had shared much more. While she was with him everything had been about her, in a way that she had never imagined. She didn’t want to put a label on it, hadn’t understood until now that, in its own way, Niall’s code of sexual dominance had always been focused on her happiness and her pleasure.

  Her grandmother often said that it was folly to be wise, but hindsight was also a curse. She had fallen for her fantasy man, forgetting that underneath he was just a man and in the end, she had hurt him badly.

  She had spent her life hiding. Behind Lottie, behind her job, behind the frumpy clothes she wore. She had never expected to find someone who would accept all of her. But Niall had broken the law for her. He had risked his life and his livelihood. He was that type of guy. And yet, what had she risked for him?

  She had always held something back from every relationship. She was worse than a liar – she was a coward. And she couldn’t blame that on a fucked-up childhood. She had managed to destroy her future all by herself.

  Niall hadn’t been to visit her since he found out about Lottie. She told herself it was better this way, that he would find someone else, someone who loved him. Someone who would have his children, do all the things she had fantasized about while she was lying awake in her prison bunk.

  She had lied to herself that she would be okay with that. But she was still lying.

  The thought of him touching another woman, kissing her and making love to her made Sinead’s heart ache. Blinking away the threatening tears, she shook out the blouse and draped it over the edge of her bunk. There was no question of borrowing an iron, but she would wear the suit for him.

  A sharp rap came on the cell door and the guard shouted, ‘You have thirty minutes before your transport arrives.’

  Sinead nodded. She dressed quickly, pulling on the stockings and smoothing the fabric of the skirt over her hips. There was no mirror in the cell, and the deceptively plain suit was a little big, but she felt more like her glamorous alter ego than the plain Jane museum curator she had hidden behind for years.

  The prosecution would probably drag Lottie into the trial. There was nothing she could do about that now. As long as she wasn’t sent to prison, she could learn to live with it.

  A small parcel at the bottom of the clothes bag caught her attention. The leather of the clutch bag was butter soft and inside was a pair of sunglasses and a tube of red lipstick, still in its cellophane wrapper. Niall had thought of everything. Sinead painted her lips, using the cover of the lipstick as a mirror. She needed all the help she could get to face the hostile court hearing ahead of her. She would have to do.

  This would go down in Swiss history as one of the fastest trials ever. Why not, since there was so much evidence against her?

  The entrance to the courtroom was thronged with reporters. It looked like Oscar night rather than a trial, as teams of international news crews gathered to cover the story. The prison van halted at the gates and she put on her glasses to shield her eyes from the flashing cameras.

  It was showtime.

  After the opening statements, Sinead was summoned to the witness box. She scanned the courtroom, eager for a sight of a familiar face, but there was no sign of Niall or Andy. A pale hand waved frantically from the back of the courtroom and she craned her neck to see who it was.

  It was her cousin Summer, and if she wasn’t mistaken, Summer’s fiancé, Flynn Grant, was sitting beside her. He looked suave and tanned in a dark suit. Despite the police presence, his eyes moved constantly around the courtroom, ever watchful. A bodyguard was always on duty. Sinead felt a pang of jealousy. The gruff Scot was crazy about her cousin.

  The clerk called the court to order and she stood up. ‘Mlle O’Sullivan. You are charged with the following …’

  The clerk’s voice droned on; theft, leaving the country while on bail, the list seemed endless. It was a wonder that they hadn’t charged her with jaywalking too. Sinead was sure they must be making some of it up.

  ‘And how do you wish to plead?’

  She shot a questioning glance to her lawyer. Surely there must be some news about Roisin? He shook his head. She wasn’t giving up without a fight. All she could do was play for time and hope that Niall and Andy could find her sister.

  ‘Not guilty,’ she said firmly.

  An excited buzz filled the courtroom. Following some preliminary questioning by the judge, the defence presented their case.

  By late morning, her new shoes were pinching. The defence strategy was not going well. She had watched the expressions on the faces of the observers varying between disbelief and scorn. At the prosecution table, they passed notes back and forth to each other, but they didn’t bother to interrupt Arnheim’s presentation. They didn’t need to. He was doing their job for them. Her heart dropped, she didn’t have a prayer.

  Sensing that things were not going well, Arnheim signalled to the judge. ‘If I might have a brief consultation with my client?’

  ‘You may.’

  Sinead was ushered into a side chamber. Her guards remained on duty outside.

  ‘Will you have something to eat?’ Arnheim asked.

  She couldn’t have managed food if her life depended on it. ‘Nothing, thank you. But perhaps some water?’

  He nodded to his associate, who returned with a frosty glass of water. Sinead downed it in two gulps. ‘Has there been any word?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but there has been no news from them.’

  ‘Oh.’ Despite the water, her throat was suddenly dry. Maybe Niall wasn’t coming after all.

  Arnheim pressed on. ‘I have tried to seek some concession from the prosecutor. You left the country to recover the stone and it has been returned to its rightful owner. But –’ he gave her a tight-lipped smile ‘– we have little to bargain with and he has nothing to lose.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Do you wish to change your plea? The judge may look kindly on you, even at this late stage.’

  Sinead shook her head. ‘I didn’t steal th
e jewel.’

  ‘Very well. In the meantime, my associates will begin preparing your appeal.’

  Appeal? That didn’t sound very hopeful. Her spirits plummeted even further. She wished she had never seen the damned ruby. The Fire of Autumn had brought her nothing but trouble since she set foot in Geneva. She wondered if the stories were right. Maybe the stone was cursed.

  Following a miserable lunch break, Sinead was escorted back to the courtroom. With typical Swiss efficiency the prosecutor got straight down to the business of demolishing her character. ‘How long have you been a stripper, Mlle O’Sullivan?’

  ‘Objection!’ Arnheim stood up.

  Sinead glanced at her lawyer for guidance. He pressed his lips together in a tight line. She knew that he had been hoping that Lottie wouldn’t emerge at the trial but it was too late now.

  Arnheim shrugged. The ball was in her court. There was nothing for it. She would have to tell the truth. ‘Seven years,’ she replied, trying to keep the quiver out of her voice.

  ‘Seven years,’ the prosecutor’s voice boomed out, in case everyone in Geneva hadn’t heard it.

  ‘So you’ve been stripping since you were a twenty-year-old college student.’

  Two elderly observers near the front of the courtroom exchanged glances. One of them, a dragon with iron-grey curls, reminded her of Granny O’Sullivan. Uncle Tim had sent a message to say that he was closing another deal and would be here soon. She was just grateful he wasn’t bringing her grandmother.

  Sinead sat up straight. Let them stare. ‘That’s correct,’ she replied.

  Lottie wasn’t on trial, but she might as well have been – the stripper who passed herself off as a curator to steal from her employer. ‘And when you’re not dancing naked on stage, you work at the Rheinbach museum.’

  What a horrible, piggy little man. Her palm itched to slap him. Stripping wasn’t illegal – even in stuffy Switzerland.

  ‘No. I have never …’

  She hated that her voice shook. She remembered the hundreds of hours of rehearsal, the aching legs and bleeding feet and the smile she had forced onto her face for her audience when she was bone-tired from studying for her college exams. She had worked her butt off to become one of the best burlesque performers in the business. She didn’t owe anyone an apology and certainly not this horrible little man. Sinead cleared her throat. ‘That’s not true. I’ve never performed in Switzerland.’