by Cathy Kelly
He grinned at her, looking like the old Devlin. ‘Can’t argue with that,’ he shouted.
There were plenty of other people with the same idea, and the dance floor was soon full of people laughing and gyrating, letting their hair down after a few days of tough work.
Devlin seemed to be letting go too, but he was watching her at the same time, and Leila was aware of a heat between them that had nothing to do with the energetic dancing. No matter which way she moved, those dark eyes were on her. Admiring her, perhaps?
No, she had to let that idea go. Just because Devlin was handsome and sexy, and she was manless, was no reason to fantasise.
Dance, Leila, she told herself. Just dance.
Finally, feeling worn out, she peeked at her watch. Half eleven. Time to go. Long after time to go, in fact.
‘I’m going to go to bed,’ she said loudly.
‘Good idea,’ he said, and followed her off the dance floor.
Leila hadn’t expected that, but she collected her bag and they walked out the doors, along the labyrinth of corridors, past hidden niches and seating areas until they reached the lifts. It didn’t seem late at all; there were plenty of people milling about, muzak drifting through the lobby.
The lift came and they got in. Both of them reached for the same floor at the same time, their fingers touching.
‘Sorry.’ Leila pulled back as if she’d been burned.
‘Same floor, huh?’ said Devlin, and she realised he was slightly at a loss for words too.
It was just the two of them in the lift now, both warm and energised from dancing. Both aware of what had gone on earlier, some strange shift in their relationship where he’d been jealous and she’d cared.
Don’t go there, Leila, she warned herself. You were imagining him watching you on the dance floor. Just because a devastatingly attractive man dances with you, it doesn’t have to mean anything. Stop behaving like a woman who can only function if a man fancies her. Stop it!
‘I’ve a nine a.m. flight,’ she said, for want of something to say. ‘I’ve stayed up too late already.’
‘At least we won’t have hangovers, unlike some of them,’ Devlin remarked. ‘The wine was flowing freely, wasn’t it?’
He was trying to make conversation too.
The lift glided to a halt and the doors opened smoothly. He let her go first and she opened her handbag to find her room key, trying to figure out which way to go. The corridors were so confusing; whether you turned left or right when you emerged depended on which lift you had taken. She tried to orientate herself, staring at the signs pointing to rooms and suites in different directions.
‘What number are you?’ Devlin asked.
‘I’m in 403,’ she said.
‘That’s just down the hall from me – same direction. Come on, I’ll walk you. Don’t want you abducted by aliens, do we?’
‘Yes,’ she said drily. ‘I hear the risk of being abducted by aliens is quite high in this hotel.’
He laughed, and for a moment he sounded like the old Devlin.
‘You’re so smart, Leila Martin,’ he said.
They came to her room and he stopped. Stopped with intent. She’d been about to use her electronic key to get in, but the way Devlin stood there instead of carrying on down the corridor to his room startled her a little.
‘About earlier …’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have interfered with you and Georges. It’s your business what you do. But …’
He looked down at her, and this time she knew she hadn’t imagined him watching her earlier.
‘I felt jealous.’
Shocked, Leila gazed at him without speaking.
He stepped back suddenly. ‘Sorry, sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It was completely inappropriate and I apologise. I really shouldn’t have said—’
‘No,’ she interrupted him, holding up one hand in a gesture of understanding. Slowly, deliberately, Devlin moved closer, and that one hand was no longer in the air, it was on his chest, touching the soft cotton of his shirt, feeling his hot skin underneath.
She was shocked at this intimacy. They’d been close before, shaken hands, stood beside each other a million times, but they’d never touched like this.
Her breath caught in her throat. She knew Devlin had been jealous of Georges and that had made her angry, because he had no right. But she wanted him to be jealous. And she didn’t want this moment between them to stop.
Very slowly, one of Devlin’s hands moulded itself to the back of her dress, caressing the curve at the base of her spine where the silk clung to her skin.
Leila breathed again, a long, shuddering breath. This felt so right.
‘I understand,’ she whispered. ‘At least, I think I understand. You were jealous.’ She looked up at him, face flushed. ‘I like what that means. You being jealous.’
‘I couldn’t help it,’ he murmured.
He was so close to her; she could feel the heat, the scent of cologne rising off his skin, the maleness of him.
This was right … but it was wrong too. He was her boss. Yet she couldn’t pull herself away.
‘I never imagined you thought of me that way, Devlin. You always have women running around you, too many to count – and you’d been flirting with that damn woman at the lost luggage office.’
A hint of a grin lifted the corner of his mouth, making him look more piratical than ever.
‘I could tell that annoyed you,’ he said.
‘Then why did you do it?’ she demanded.
‘She was flirting with me,’ he protested. ‘It was nothing to do with me.’
‘You were enjoying it.’
‘OK, I was sort of enjoying it. I’m a man, it’s hard not to. But it was wrong. It was wrong … in front of you. There.’
It was out in the open.
They both stared at each other, Leila in her highest heels looking up into the dark face with those unreadable eyes.
‘I should regret this,’ he said, ‘but I’m not going to because I’ve been promising myself that one day I’d kiss you. Properly …’ and then he leaned forward and cradled her face in his big hands.
It was the opposite of what she’d expected, this gentle kiss as his mouth covered hers. Then her hands were on his shoulders, sliding inside his jacket, pulling him closer.
Devlin – how could she ever have seen anyone else? How had she spent so long with him and yet never seen this incredible man, seen him properly?
He was pulling her closer to him now and their bodies were pressed against each other, Leila melting into him in her molten dress, their tongues intertwining as they kissed more passionately. The gentleness was over; he was fierce as he kissed her and she matched him in ferocity.
It had never been like this with Tynan, she thought suddenly. Not this white-hot heat. This sense of rightness.
Don’t let it end, she wished. Come in with me now. Into my bed, please … It’s crazy and we might regret it in the morning, but what the hell …
The words were in her mind and almost on her lips – and then he pulled away, breathing heavily, something in his eyes she didn’t recognise.
‘I’m sorry, Leila. I’m really sorry, I’ve no excuse. You work for me. That was wrong.’
Leila stood, face flushed, strap pushed off one heated shoulder, mouth open from his kisses.
‘Sorry,’ he said, and he strode down the corridor and was gone, leaving her alone outside her room, clutching her key card and her handbag, with her pulse racing.
Shakily she slid the key card into the slot and went inside.
In the mirror in the hallway she could see herself: hair tousled, eyes dark from all the mascara and eyeliner, her lips flushed a dark pink from his kisses. She touched her neck and head again the way he had touched her and wished she’d said the words, that she’d made him come in.
Who cared about what happened next? Nobody said they couldn’t be together. Was that a company rule? She was sure it wasn’
t. Right now she wanted him in her room, in her bed, tenderly holding her and telling her how crazy he was for her, because she’d seen it in his eyes. And now, finally, Leila felt the same way. But something had chased him off.
Early the next morning, Leila pulled her new suitcase towards the door. Her hair was slicked back in a ponytail; she wore her suit and a stern expression. The siren of the night before had gone. No amount of Clinique could hide the dark shadows under her eyes and she might as well have sat up all night with the party animals for all the sleep she’d got. On the floor just inside the door was an envelope addressed to her in Devlin’s distinctive scrawl.
Leila,
About last night – I apologise formally for what happened.
I’m flying to London today. I’ll see you in the office during the week.
Regards,
Devlin
Regards? She read the note with mounting shock, which moved swiftly into anger.
Had she been mistaken in what had happened? Had he merely used her? Had he been desperate and she’d been the only available woman?
By the time she reached the airport, Leila had rewritten the script entirely. They weren’t two people who’d finally realised what they felt for each other. No. She might have felt that way, but Devlin obviously hadn’t.
He clearly had more notches on his bedpost than a carved medieval four-poster. Obviously he’d briefly thought of making her another of his conquests but had stopped himself just in time because bonking underlings was a mistake and Eamonn Devlin didn’t make mistakes.
She’d been taken in because she was vulnerable, that was all. She would never be vulnerable again. No man would ever breach her defences; she’d set up a force field around her that repelled men as effectively as a ‘Danger’ sign.
She stomped through da Vinci, ignoring all the lovely duty-free shops with their delicious scents and silken scarves. Men – she had had enough of them for a lifetime. No, for several lifetimes.
A male flight attendant welcomed her on to the Aer Lingus flight with a smile.
‘How are you today, Ms Martin?’ he said after a quick glance at her ticket.
‘Fine.’ She glared at him.
Not fair on the poor man, she knew, but she didn’t care. All men had better watch out from now on.
Fourteen
Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit. KHALIL GIBRAN
Tynan’s flat in Islington was a far cry from the lovely place he’d lived in with Leila. He thought this every morning when he woke up lying on his left side and found himself staring at the old second-floor sash windows, which must have boasted at least ten layers of white paint with a few insects and a generous helping of dust painted in for good measure. Black damp was ingrained in the corners, a spreading fungal-looking thing that was ugly to look at and certainly detracted from the cool man-about-town image he liked the flat to project.
It didn’t matter how many Eames chairs, rare vinyl covers or Lichtenstein knock-offs you could boast; clean mattered.
He must ask Greta to scrub it off next time she came. Or leave a note or something. He wasn’t sure she could read English, though. She always ignored his notes and cleaned the same things she always did. Plus she’d boil-washed his new cashmere sweater till it was the size of a large sock, but when he’d pointed it out to her, she’d just shrugged and hadn’t even said I sorry.
Leila had been brilliant with laundry. She did actual hand-washing once a week and hung the fresh-smelling clothes on a dinky little hanging thing which she left in the spare bedroom till it all dried. He’d never needed a Greta when he lived with Leila.
He shared Greta with the guy in the flat opposite. She came in every week and moved the dust around, ironed anything that needed ironing – not a big job – and half cleaned the bathroom and kitchen.
There wasn’t much to do in the kitchen – Tynan felt like that fashion-mad woman in the series Leila had liked watching, Sex and the City, the one who kept her sweaters in the oven. He could have kept anything in the oven and it would have been safe. The only bit of the kitchen he used was the microwave, and the gas hob to light cigarettes if he’d lost his lighter. He ate out so much, drank out so much too. It was all part of the job: going to venues to see new bands, travelling around the country to the middle of nowhere to hear someone who’d sent in a demo or put a song up on YouTube. He was so desperate to find someone fabulous, he’d go to any lengths.
Tynan had been whisked off to London by MegaRec because he’d discovered Lizard, the hottest band to come out of Ireland in years, but an A&R man was only as good as his last signing. Lizard were terrific, but they weren’t selling any records. That was what counted – not how many drooling reviews they were getting in the serious music press. The money men ran MegaRec, and if Tynan wasn’t bringing in bands who made money, then he’d be out just as quickly as he’d been hired.
It was half eight and he had to be in the office by ten. He sat up and lit a cigarette. He’d stopped while he was with Leila. She hated smoking, said it was a deal-breaker.
‘It’s me or the fags, Tynan,’ she’d told him, looking all stern the way she did at press conferences with troublesome stars. He’d have said yes to anything to get her to marry him.
Once they were married, he sneaked fags when he was out without her, figuring that if he didn’t smoke in front of her, there was nothing she could do about it.
They’d been at a wedding – a musician friend’s – when he’d proposed. It had been an unconventional affair, in a field with tents for the guests to party in and several bands lined up to play on the small stage that evening.
Leila had loved everything about the wedding, especially its originality and quirky charm. Votive candles sat in old jam jars with wild flowers in mismatched vases on gingham tablecloths. There was a keg of beer and snipes of champagne with straws. And because he loved her, and loved her enthusiasm and childlike delight, he’d imagined how wonderful it would be if they were the ones getting hitched. On the spur of the moment he’d asked her.
‘She’s got you hook, line and sinker, Ty,’ his father had said, poking him in the ribs in a jokey way when Tynan had announced he was getting married. ‘I never thought anyone’d catch you, kid,’ he’d added. ‘Your ma and I didn’t think you were the marrying kind.’
Tynan hadn’t thought he was the marrying kind either, but somehow Leila Martin had bewitched him.
They should never have been attracted, let alone married. Neither was the other one’s type – hell, her rich girlfriend Katy had told him so upfront. ‘You’re not her type, but for some reason she can’t see that. I can, though, and I’m warning you now: if you hurt her, I’ll kill you,’ Katy had said, with a menace in her voice that totally shocked him.
You had to hand it to Katy: for all the money and being Daddy’s little princess, she could be tough when she wanted. He suspected it wasn’t just talk either: it was entirely possible she would kill for Leila. Or get that giant of a boyfriend to kill him for her.
‘Hey, it’s cool, I love her,’ Tynan had said. ‘I love her with all my heart. I want to marry her, right? I just asked her.’
‘I know,’ Katy answered. ‘I still don’t trust you.’
‘OK, but seeing as you’re her best friend and I’m going to be her husband, we better get along,’ Tynan said.
And he had loved Leila. She was passionate, loyal, beautiful – once you got her out of those corporate suits – and good.
Incredibly, that quality of goodness was the thing that had finally felled man-about-town Tynan. Nobody in his life had ever been as good to him or as concerned about his welfare. She had a huge generous heart and it was all his. She made him chicken soup when he had colds and washed his clothes instead of demanding, ‘Do I look like a laundress?’ which was what his mother used to say.
When he left Leila for Diane, he found Diane couldn’t cook and had no plans to learn how to do so.
‘Cooking’s for
losers,’ she’d said scornfully one day. ‘My future is not in the kitchen. I make reservations for dinner.’
She’d heard that line somewhere, Tynan knew. Diane might be young and beautiful but she didn’t have the money for reservations – she veered from eating almost nothing to gorging on takeaways or curry chips, which was strange, given her etiolated limbs and non-existent belly.
But the flat they’d shared in Shoreditch saw less and less of Diane until, eventually, she just moved her stuff out.
‘See ya,’ she’d said blithely when she took the final box.
‘See ya,’ he’d replied cheerfully.
London was full of Dianes.
But it wasn’t full of Leilas. As time went on, he found he missed Leila far more than he’d thought he would: her sense of fun, her passion, the way she was so grateful for the coffee he made her in the morning. And her love. He missed that. Being adored was addictive, it turned out.
He’d had that and he’d thrown it away.
He wondered what she was doing now and if she’d like to do it in London. Leila would love it here. And he’d love to have her back in his life.
He’d never meant to break her heart. He’d been bored, found marriage somewhat stultifying – ‘You’re married?’ people would say to him in astonishment.
Plus, monogamy was a bitch.
He’d do better the second time round. He’d been stupid. Now he understood how good Leila had been for him, how much she meant to him. He looked again at her number on his mobile, thinking …
Julia had kept putting it off: the talk about the wedding, where she’d sit, whether she should she discuss outfits with Grace. Whether she would actually be going, because Stephen hadn’t actually mentioned that at all and she was far too proud and too hurt to ask.
These days she felt more and more like an interloper in the Rhattigan family fairy tale.
Then, last night, entirely out of the blue, Stephen had told her he was going to Bridgeport next weekend to pick out his suit with Michael because the bridesmaids were all choosing their gowns. Katy, her mother and her best friend Leila had planned a day’s shopping of their own for Katy’s wedding dress, but the groomsmen and bridesmaids event was apparently a major one in the bridal calendar.