by Susan Lewis
‘Which particular aspect of it?’ Penny asked.
He smiled and once again Penny felt herself blushing. ‘That’s easy,’ he said. ‘The sea. Do you know the sea, Penny?’
She frowned and smiled. ‘I don’t think I can say I do,’ she answered.
‘Then you must get him to introduce you,’ Esther laughed. ‘It’s his passion.’
Penny’s eyes moved back to his. His face was serious now as he looked at her. ‘Will you forgive me?’ he said. ‘There is a call I must make.’
When he had gone, Penny turned to Esther.
‘How are you feeling?’ Esther smiled.
Penny took a moment to think about her answer, wanting to find the right words. ‘To tell you the truth,’ she said finally, ‘I can’t seem to get a handle on what’s going on inside me at all. It all seems, well, so unreal.’
Esther chuckled. ‘Well, you make a very handsome pair,’ she said, swallowing the last of her champagne.
Penny smiled. ‘Who’s he calling?’ she asked.
Esther shrugged. ‘No idea. He’s always on the phone to someone. Business here, business there. He’s got to keep things running as best he can so he’ll have something to come out to – that is, if they don’t confiscate it all.’ She stooped to pick up her bag. ‘Well, I don’t think you need me any more. Say au revoir to him for me and I hope you have a splendid evening.’
It was a while before he came back by which time Penny was into her third glass of champagne. As he sat down she couldn’t help sizing up his body and wondering when was the last time he’d made love.
‘Esther asked me to say au revoir for her,’ she told him.
He nodded, picking up his glass. Then, after staring down at the floor for a moment, he lifted his eyes back to hers and said, ‘How do you feel about giving the ballet a miss?’
Penny swallowed hard as her heartbeat faltered. ‘That’s fine by me,’ she said softly.
Suddenly he screwed up his eyes and pressed his fingers into the sockets. Penny watched him, wishing she could think of something to say. In the end he looked at her again, searching her face with his eyes. ‘You understand everything about me?’ he said. ‘What has happened? The position I am in?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, I understand it.’
‘You realize that at any moment someone could come through that door and I will have to leave with them?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
He paused, his eyes still on hers. ‘It would give you quite a story, wouldn’t it?’
‘That’s not why I’m here,’ she said, holding his gaze.
Several seconds ticked by as he continued to look at her, the infinite depths of his eyes seeming to convey the thoughts that were in her own mind. ‘Did you know this was going to happen between us?’ he asked finally.
Penny’s heart felt as if it was turning inside out. ‘Yes, I think so,’ she whispered. ‘Did you?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I guess so, but I try not to think too much about these things.’
There was a craziness to this that must have reached him too, for they both started to laugh.
‘This is a hell of a time for you to come into my life,’ he said.
Penny’s lips compressed in a smile. ‘I was beginning to think I never would,’ she said, watching him closely.
Laughter sprang to his eyes and emptying his glass he put it back on the table. ‘I confess,’ he said, ‘to questioning your motives for wanting to meet me.’
‘Do you still?’
Again he laughed and rolling her eyes, Penny said, ‘OK, if you did, I wouldn’t be here. So what happened to convince you?’
He shrugged. ‘Call it instinct,’ he said. Then, with a wry smile, he added, ‘I guess we both know that something happened between us the night of the vernissage, which was why I called you afterwards. I hadn’t met you, but I’d seen you and, well, I guess I wanted to know more about you. Esther told me you were a journalist, but,’ he shrugged, ‘I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in now if I didn’t take risks. But things have changed a lot this last year or so, I have to be more careful, so I did a bit of research and everything I found out indicated I could probably trust you.’
‘So,’ Penny said, her eyes sparkling with mischief, ‘what took you so long?’
Grinning, he said, ‘Don’t take this badly, but I’m afraid, affected as I was by you, you weren’t at the top of my list of priorities.’
Feeling herself flush, Penny looked down at her glass. ‘Of course not,’ she said.
He waited for her eyes to come back to his, then said, ‘Do you want to go somewhere to eat?’
She nodded, though whether she’d be able to swallow a morsel was another question altogether.
After settling the bill they left the hotel and strolled towards the Croisette. The November night was crisp and clear and as they drew closer to the sea they could hear the gentle sough of the waves and the rustle of wind in the palms. She told him about Nuance and he told her more about the world of oriental art. His English was so perfect she could almost believe he was American, but then a trace of an accent would break through and she would find herself responding to the warm, gutteral sound.
They chose a sparsely populated seafood restaurant between the Carlton and Martinez Hotels, where they were shown to a window seat and waited no more than a minute before champagne was brought to the table.
‘Did you order this?’ Penny laughed.
He nodded.
‘I didn’t hear you.’
‘Would you prefer something else?’
‘No, champagne is just fine.’
As the waiter poured, she watched her fingers idly playing with a fork. She desperately wanted to ask him more about the crimes he had committed, but knew that if she did he’d be sure to think she was trying for a story after all.
When they were left alone he picked up his glass and tilted it slightly towards her. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘ask away.’
Pursing her lips in a smile at having been so easily read, she touched her glass to his. Then, after taking a sip, she said, ‘This is genuine interest, you understand? I mean, I’ve never met anyone who’s . . . How shall I put it? . . . in your position before and I have to tell you that you’re nothing like how I imagined a drug baron would be.’ She grinned self-consciously as he laughed at her description of him. ‘Is it true,’ she said, ‘what I read about you? How you organized the whole thing, all those container ships and the decoys and the enormous quantities of marijuana that were taken into the States?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, it’s true.’
She looked at him, feeling, not for the first time, slightly in awe of his . . . was it genius? Certainly it required a brilliant mind to succeed as he had, when you considered the sheer scale of the operations he masterminded. As for the money he had made . . .
‘A hundred million dollars?’ she said.
He laughed. ‘An inflated figure by my estimation. But sure, it was a lot.’
She was tempted to ask where the money was now, but thought that perhaps that would be pushing too far. ‘How did you get into it all?’ she asked.
He took a breath and let it out slowly. ‘Well, I guess I’d been looking around for some time for something that presented a real challenge since that was lacking elsewhere in my life. I’d been dealing in art for years, I had plenty of people working for me who could run things perfectly well without me and what I really wanted was to get back to the sea. I knew a few guys who were into the smuggling game – it’s hard to avoid them in the East – but they were pretty small-time. So we got together and . . . well, the rest is history.’
‘Didn’t it ever concern you that you were likely to end up in prison?’
He shrugged. ‘Sure, but I guess that was half the fun, outsmarting the DEA and the straight Thai or Hong Kong cops, of which there aren’t many, I’m here to tell you. It’s a real battle of wits and when the adrenalin gets going, when you’ve got FB
I choppers buzzing the ship, or you’re flying a plane loaded with cash into the Caymans or wherever, and you don’t know what the hell might be waiting for you when you get there . . . well, it beats the hell out of a nine-to-five existence.’
Penny looked down at her glass, realizing that she felt horribly parochial in her role as the editor of a small-time magazine where the highs were so insignificant in comparison they couldn’t even be measured against those he was talking about. Not that she wanted to go out and commit a crime, but she could easily imagine the excitement of his life, the fear and the glamour and the sheer exhilaration of pulling it all together. For a moment she almost wished that she didn’t lack the nerve to get involved, for her cowardice made her feel so dull.
Bringing her eyes back to his, she said, ‘The newspaper cuttings I read about you all date back to two years or more ago. Was that when you came to Europe? Two years ago?’
‘Yeah, around that time.’
‘To the South of France?’
‘No, to Paris, actually. Paris and London. I don’t spend much time here on the Riviera. It’s a great place to visit, but it lacks energy. Most of the people are half asleep – they don’t appear to have a clue what’s going on in the world around them and I guess they don’t much care either.’ His eyes were dancing. ‘Of course, there are exceptions.’
Penny smiled, but she was thinking that, not so long ago she had held the same view of the Riviera and now, listening to him, she realized she’d been too busy to notice that he was right. There wasn’t much stimulation to be got down here and it felt suddenly as if the rest of the world was moving on without her.
‘You know, there is something that intrigues me,’ she said.
His eyebrows were raised as he waited for her to go on.
‘Well, how on earth did you come to choose people like Esther and Wally Delaney to look after things for you when they seem the least likely people on earth to become involved in . . .’ She started to smile as she belatedly realized how dense she was being. ‘Which is, of course, precisely why you chose them,’ she said, answering her own question.
His eyes were simmering with laughter. ‘To tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘they don’t do that much for me. Esther is just one of many who courier things back and forth to the States for me from time to time, or drive me between cities here in Europe. And the guys who organize false identities and passports for me occasionally deliver them to Wally. But don’t tell him I told you that, because he likes to think he’s running the show.’
Penny nodded, thinking that he was far more tolerant of Wally than she would ever be. ‘He’s very protective of you,’ she remarked.
Christian grimaced. ‘He’s protective of an income he needs badly,’ he responded.
Penny’s eyes slanted towards the window for a moment as she thought about what she wanted to ask next and considered how to phrase it. In the end she said, ‘The night of the launch party, the party to which you almost came,’ she added, looking at him teasingly, ‘Esther mentioned that there was another boss, someone whose name she didn’t know . . .’
He nodded and his smile was wry as he said, ‘Most of the guys are in jail now, but there are still a few of us this side of Gomorrah. The others are mainly in South America or the Far East. We meet up occasionally, either there or here and Esther wouldn’t know the name of the guy who was here at the time of your launch, because it’s safer for her not to know. And the reason she’d think of him as a boss is that Wally told him about you and he came on pretty heavy with me about how crazy I was to be even considering putting myself at risk by meeting you. I didn’t argue, because he had a point. You see, it’s only a matter of time for all of us now.’
Penny looked at him, wondering what it must be like to have something like that hanging over your head and feeling slightly dazed by how casually he seemed to accept it. ‘Are you really considering giving yourself up?’ she asked, feeling her heart trip on the dread of his answer.
‘Considering, yes,’ he said. ‘But there are things I still need to straighten out before I go.’
‘You mean the deal with the DA?’
He nodded. ‘That, yes. Other things too.’ His smile was self-mocking. ‘You see, when the boss gives himself up, the pressure will be off the rest.’
‘Meaning they might keep their freedom if you give up yours?’
‘They might.’
‘Which is why the pressure is so great for you?’
As he looked at her she could see that he was wondering if she really understood. ‘It’s hard,’ he said in the end, ‘but it’s life. It was all just an adventure when it began. I don’t think any of us ever dreamt we’d make so much money or get the kind of thrill we did doing it. It got so we couldn’t stop.’
‘But you’ve stopped now?’
He laughed. ‘Yes, we’ve stopped.’
‘Do you have any regrets?’
His eyes seemed to cloud as he looked searchingly into hers. ‘Sure, I have regrets,’ he said softly. ‘More now I’ve met you, which is another reason I resisted you for so long. I was kind of afraid this might happen.’
Penny swallowed hard and, taking a breath, she said, ‘Earlier, when I arrived at the hotel, I was trying to think of something I read the other day and now I know what it was.’
His eyes were dancing as he waited for her to go on.
‘It was by Henry Miller,’ she said. ‘He wrote: “Nobody can feel better than the man who is completely taken in. To be intelligent may be a boon, but to be completely trusting, gullible to the point of idiocy, to surrender without reservation, is one of the supreme joys of life.” ’
Christian gave a shout of laughter. ‘And do you consider yourself to be so gullible?’ he said.
‘I think I could be,’ she said, her eyes dancing.
‘And do you think that I’m trying to take you in?’
‘No. But if you are, then I surrender without reservation.’
Instead of laughing, as she’d expected him to, he simply looked at her as though trying to fathom her. ‘Tell me about you,’ he said softly. ‘Have you ever been married?’
‘No,’ she answered. ‘But I know that you have.’
He was quiet for some time; then, looking down at his glass, he said, ‘It’s in the past. Let’s leave it there, shall we?’
He’s still hurting, Penny was thinking as she looked at the shadows on his face.
At last he brought his eyes back to hers and as she gazed into them he reached across the table and took her hand in his. The touch was very gentle, yet Penny’s eyes and heart fluttered as she felt the incredible force of him flowing into her. Then, as his fingers curled around hers and he willed her to look at him again, she experienced such a heightening of emotion that the panic she had felt earlier at the power of what was happening between them swept through her again.
‘Can we go?’ she whispered.
‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘I think we should.’
They made love all that night and into the next morning. For Penny there were moments when it was hard to make herself believe it wasn’t all a dream. But harder still was making herself accept that it wasn’t going to last. Her hunger for his embraces, his passion, his extraordinary gift for knowing what she needed and then showing her more was something she couldn’t bear to think of coming to an end. He was blinding her. All she could see was him, all she could feel was the incredible force of the sensations racing through her body. Once he accused her of being alone, of taking her pleasure and shutting him out. But when he discovered how long it had been since she’d made love he made her lie back on the pillows and allow him to bring her back to life.
What he did to her was indescribable as he took her from one spectacular release to another, and another. He made love to her in every possible position, throwing her across the bed and driving himself into her until she could take no more. And then he was tender, stroking her, caressing her, kissing her and telling her to look into
his eyes.
‘You’re not with me,’ he whispered. ‘I can see you’re not with me.’
‘How can you say that,’ she groaned, ‘when I’ve never been more with anyone in my life?’
He smiled and kissed her softly on the mouth. ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘the fear of losing you has already become too great.’
‘Don’t let’s talk about that,’ she said, tightening her arms around him. ‘Don’t let’s even think about it, not now.’
Rolling on to his back, he took her with him and looked up at her in the dawn light. ‘Make love to me now,’ he whispered. ‘Make love to me and tell me you love me.’
‘I love you, Christian,’ she whispered, tears starting in her eyes. ‘I don’t understand it, but I do.’
‘Shh,’ he said softly, wiping away her tears. ‘I love you too.’
Pulling himself up he put his mouth to her breast and sucked gently on the tender nipple. She looked down at him, running her fingers through his hair then pulling his face up she held it between her hands.
‘Look at me,’ she pleaded. ‘Look at me and tell me what’s happening between us. I don’t understand it, I don’t know how to deal with it. I . . . I feel so afraid.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I can sense it. But don’t be afraid – we’ll deal with this together, take our days as they come, be grateful for what we have while we have it.’
‘But I don’t want to lose you. I just can’t bear to think about it.’
‘Shh,’ he soothed. ‘I thought we weren’t going to talk about it now.’
‘You’re right,’ she sighed.
‘Why don’t we sleep for a while?’ he said, easing her down and drawing her head to his shoulder.
‘I would if I wasn’t so afraid that when I wake up you’ll be gone.’
But he wasn’t. He was still there, holding her as he breathed slowly and rhythmically in his own sleep.
Gazing at him, the dark line of his brows, the tiny scar beneath his eye that she hadn’t noticed before, the sharp bones of his cheeks, the inky-black stubble around his jaw, the pale redness of his mouth, she thought how terribly vulnerable he looked. It made her think of David and the moment of vulnerability he had shown the day before. She found herself wondering what it would be like to lie there looking at him this way, feeling the firmness of his body against hers, the gentle whisper of his breath on her cheek. Then all thoughts of David were gone as Christian’s eyes opened and he started to smile.