Escape for the Summer

by Ruth Saberton

  Andi’s cheeks grew warm recalling the night that had so recently dissolved into sunrise. The memories were as fresh as the salty Cornish morning and she could still feel the heat of Jonty’s mouth hard on hers, his kisses urgent and demanding as they clung to one another.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “But honestly, I’m more than happy to go back to the caravan. I’m not afraid of bumping into Tom. In fact, I think I’m more than ready to deal with him.”

  But Jonty shook his head. “No way. Not until I’ve—”

  “Until you’ve what?” Andi was suddenly worried. Just what exactly did he have in mind? She wasn’t a fan of her ex but the last thing she wanted was any trouble for Jonty.

  “I’ve got a couple of ideas but they’ll take time. Don’t look so worried. I’m not about to go and break his legs or anything. This is Rock, not Reservoir Dogs! Just trust me, Andi. It’s going to be fine.”

  He reached out to stroke the curve of her cheek and Andi’s fears melted like butter. She did trust him. There was no doubt in her mind that whatever Jonty planned to do it was for the best. Besides, how could she not trust him after the night they’d spent together?

  Where had that night gone? She had never known time fast forward like that. One moment they had been talking and the sky had been jet black; the next thing dawn was finger-painting the world with rose and gold. She and Jonty had lain in their nest of tangled duvet and sheets holding one another tightly, unable to believe the intensity of what they had shared, and talking endlessly. It was amazing, beyond amazing; it was incredible. Andi didn’t think she had ever felt like this.

  As the sun had scrambled up its climbing frame of trees and blushed the couple’s skin with rosy light, Andi hadn’t wanted the moment to end. She only wanted to stay cocooned in their own magical world, and asked for nothing more than to feel his skin against hers, his breath warm against her cheek. Everything else had melted into nothingness. Tom, Jax, and her finances – none of it mattered any more.

  Jonty had kissed her as the sun filled the room. “I knew it would be good with us, Andi, but I never imagined just how good.”

  “So you’ve been planning the big seduction?” she’d teased. “This hotel? Rescuing me? Was that copy of the FT a part of it too?”

  His lips twitched. “You’ve got me! I was playing a long game!” He reached in and kissed her again. “No, I guess that what I’m trying to say – and failing dreadfully – is that there’s something about you that’s always felt right. Talking to you, spending time with you, it’s just so easy. Does that make sense?”

  She’d nodded. It felt exactly like this to her too. Waking up with him, with her hair a wild riot of tangles and last night’s mascara probably plastering her cheeks as though she was channelling some kind of eighties rock band, Andi had felt none of the awkwardness of being with somebody new. Andi hadn’t been with many guys – she rarely slept with somebody without being in a relationship – but with Jonty it felt so natural to throw her inhibitions to the wind. To be honest she wasn’t sure she could have been any other way. There was no game playing or point scoring here, just honesty.

  They’d enjoyed a simple breakfast of toast and tea on the small terrace and talked quietly about all the events leading them to that point. Andi had told Jonty everything: about her finances being destroyed, about her boss’s antipathy and even about the day she caught Tom cheating.

  “And that,” she told him finally, “is it. You now know everything about me. I feel I know nothing about you in comparison.”

  “There’s nothing really to tell,” Jonty said with a shy smile. “I’m just a regular guy, a bit of a geek really, who likes to play computer games, fix boats and spend time with his family. Ask Mel. She’s sick of the Jonty-shaped dent in the sofa. I’m pretty boring.”

  Andi hadn’t pressed him further. There was more to Jonty, she knew there was, but he was also very private. His relationship with Jax, for example, filled her with curiosity. Had he been so hurt that he didn’t want to open up? This wasn’t the impression she got but you never knew. And what had drawn a woman like Jax, so status-symbol obsessed and driven by money, to a guy so down to earth and ordinary? Gorgeous yes, heaven in bed definitely, but a far cry from the millionaires that she could imagine the older woman associating with. Instinct told her there was more to it than Jonty had so far told her. He’d tell her in his own time, she knew he would.

  “So, back to Rock,” he’d said, interrupting her thoughts by placing his cup onto the saucer with a rattle.

  “Can’t we just stay here?” Andi sighed. The thought of returning to their haven of a room and losing herself in Jonty’s blue-green eyes was far more welcome than that of going back and facing whatever music Tom had been busy composing.

  Jonty had reached across the table for her hand. “Tempting, but there are a few things I have to sort out this morning. No hiding. We’re going to sort this, OK?”

  She’d nodded and gulped back her unease. It sloshed about in her tummy with the toast and Earl Grey in a very unpleasant way.

  The nerves that had slipped away the night before had returned with all of their mates in tow from practically the moment the car had crossed the Tamar. With every mile that had brought her closer to Rock, Andi had felt less and less at ease. Not with Jonty, but with the idea of facing up to her demons. Now, outside the pool house, she felt quite sick with dread.

  “There you are, Jonty!” Mel called from the kitchen window as, hand in hand, they made their way to the pool house. “I was wondering where you’d been all night but judging by the looks on your faces I don’t need to ask!”

  Jonty rolled his eyes at Andi. “I’m in my thirties and my big sister is still checking up on me.”

  “Bloody right I am,” Mel agreed. She grinned at Andi. “Last time I let him out alone he ended up with that dreadful Jax! She’s been here looking for you, by the way, Jonty, and she didn’t look very happy either. In the words of Arnie, she said she’d be back.”

  Jonty sighed. He squeezed Andi’s fingers. “I’ll speak to her again. Make her understand that it really is over.”

  His sister looked delighted. “That would be a big relief. Her face was enough to curdle milk when I said you hadn’t come home last night.” She grinned. “It’s high time – I thought I’d die of old age before you two woke up and smelled the coffee. I knew you were made for each other.”

  “Ignore my sister,” Jonty said to Andi. “It’s very sad but I think she’s morphing into Cilla Black in her old age.”

  “You can mock all you like,” huffed Mel, “but I am never wrong. Just ask Simon.”

  Andi laughed at this. Si never dared disagree with his strong-willed wife. He might run one of the biggest media conglomerates in the UK, but Mel decided how many roast potatoes he was allowed and had banned the Xbox for the summer. In the house Mel was most definitely the CEO.

  Leaving Mel to gloat about always being right, Andi and Jonty made their way to the pool house. While he filled the kettle Andi curled up on the big squashy blue sofa. The pool house had to be one of her favourite places. A little version of the main house, it was painted white and contained a bed, the sofa, a kitchenette and piles of books. Jonty loved to read and his collection was eclectic; the unevenly stacked piles contained everything from Dan Brown to Ernest Hemingway to JK Rowling, and all were well thumbed and had clearly been read from cover to cover. Arty posters tacked to the wooden walls and scattered rag rugs were splashes of colour in an otherwise empty space. A wakeboard was propped against the wall and a pair of deck shoes had long dried out next to the wood burner. It was simple and comfortable, and Andi felt her eyes grow heavy.

  “Nap for a bit,” Jonty said, dropping a kiss onto her forehead. “I’ll be a few hours with Si.”

  She smiled up at him. “And then you’ll be back?”

  He grinned. “Try keeping me away!”

  Jonty placed a chunky mug on the table next to her. Steam spiralled heavenwa
rds. “Have some tea and then sleep if you can. OK?”

  Andi nodded. Sunlight streaming through the glass bathed her in gilded warmth and renderd her limbs heavy. Before Jonty had even shut the door, she was asleep.

  It was the click of the same door closing that woke her. For a moment Andi still drifted, cocooned in warm dreams and the honeyed sunlight, before awareness of a presence dragged her into consciousness. How long had she been sleeping? An hour? Two?

  Andi yawned and stretched. “You were quick, Jonty.”

  A shadow blocked the sunshine.

  “Afraid not,” said a voice that sounded horribly like Jax’s. “Just me.”

  Sleep fled from Andi faster than money through Tom’s fingers.

  Her eyes sprung open and, sure enough, there was Jax silhouetted in front of the window. Dressed from head to toe in designer gear, with her hair beautifully blow-dried and make-up that looked practically airbrushed, she couldn’t have looked more out of place in the simple room. Car keys on a Montblanc fob dangled from her manicured fingers and she stared at Andi disdainfully. She was wearing a purple Diane von Furstenberg dress and towering purple Louboutins. Andi wondered for a hopeful minute if she was actually having a dream about a giant, walking, talking Quality Street.

  In terms of unpleasant ways to wake up, this one was right up there with having a bucket of ice-cold water thrown in your face. “Jonty isn’t here,” she said, sitting up as fast as she could and hoping that she hadn’t been snoring or, even worse, dribbling. “He’s with Simon.”

  Jax swung the key ring backwards and forwards as though trying to hypnotise them both. Her eyes never left Andi’s. “I’m not looking for Jonty. I was looking for you.”

  She was? For a moment Andi wondered if she really was still asleep and having a very bizarre dream. What on earth could Jax want her for? Some emergency waitressing? A last-minute extra pair of hands to pass around the hors d’oeuvres?

  “You see,” Jax continued, the key fob swinging in time with her words, “I think it’s about time you and I had a little chat, woman to woman.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything we need to talk about,” Andi said firmly. Whatever Jax’s problem might be, whatever the history between her and Jonty was, she didn’t need to be involved.

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Jax said. There was a pitying tone in her voice, which made Andi bristle. “I think it’s high time you and I had a heart to heart.”

  Jax had a heart? This was news.

  “Whatever you want to talk about, it can wait until Jonty’s back,” Andi told her. “Your relationship with him really isn’t any of my business.”

  Jax laughed. It was a brittle sound, more of a bark than an expression of mirth. “Believe me, there’s nothing I’d like more than to have him here too. Besides, my relationship with him is business and pleasure, believe me, and in more ways than you could ever imagine. Do you really think you’re the only one? When he could have any woman he wants?”

  Andi and Jax stared at one another. She saw that Jax already knew, with that primitive female intuition, exactly what was going on between herself and Jonty. She was jealous and had come to make trouble, that much was obvious.

  “You need to speak to Jonty,” she said again. “This is between you and him.”

  Jax smiled. “I think we both know that isn’t true anymore. Besides, where is he now when we need him to explain himself? Nowhere to be seen, as always. Good old Jon Benjamin Teague doesn’t like to stick around when things get uncomfortable, I should know that. Why do you think he’s hidden away here for the summer?”

  Andi stared at her. The room seemed to shrink like something out of Alice in Wonderland.

  “What did you just call Jonty?”

  “Jon Benjamin Teague?” Jax raised a perfect eyebrow. “What’s so odd about that? It’s his name, after all. Benjamin Jonathan Teague. Jon T to his friends. He hates Ben.”

  Andi’s mouth fell open.

  “To the rest of the world, of course, he’s Mr Safe T Net, the Internet security mogul,” Jax continued airily. “Come on, Andi. You read the FT, don’t you? You’re supposed to be smart? Surely you’d figured it out by now? Jon T? The guy whose company went public and made him one of the richest men on the planet?”

  It was just as well Andi was still sitting down because her legs had turned to rubber and the room was starting to whirl around like some kind of horrible fairground ride. Suddenly all the pieces of the puzzle, a puzzle that she hadn’t even realised she’d been trying to figure out, fell into place.

  Jonty was the guy in the sharp suit with the Aston Martin that Cally had been drooling over.

  Jonty was a multimillionaire.

  Jonty was PMB. Project Manager Ben. No wonder she had felt as though she knew him. But this was all an illusion. He’d been playing her for weeks.

  Jonty was a stranger.

  Grief clawed her throat. It was worse than him being a stranger. Jonty was a liar. A liar just like Tom. A liar just like her father.

  Jax widened her eyes in fake surprise. “Oh dear! Did you really have no idea? And you such a clever girl too by all accounts? I would have thought seeing how close you two are he would have trusted you enough to tell you the truth? Clearly not.”

  Andi didn’t reply. She couldn’t. Grief and shock had stolen her powers of speech.

  “I can’t blame him, mind you,” Jax confided. “Jonty has a lot to lose if the wrong kind of woman made a play for him. Can you imagine the gold-diggers he dates? Why tell his holiday fling the truth? That would totally spoil the fun and ruin his Marie Antoinette style escape from reality. And that’s all you are to him, Andi, a bit of fun while he kicks back from the pressures of the business world. Don’t kid yourself that any of this is real. Rock is just a playground for the summer to Jonty, somewhere he can play at being a regular guy and sleep with regular girls. In a week he’ll be back in London, where he belongs, and back with me. You see, Andi, unlike you I know the real Jonty. I understand him better than anyone else and he can be himself with me.”

  Jax might have been in the room, pouring poison into Andi’s ear like a Shakespearean villain on speed, but Andi was miles and weeks away. Jonty’s overreaction to Angel’s pursuit of Laurence, his hasty departure when he’d seen her reading the article about Ben Teague’s donation to charity, his accidental slip when he’d revealed Alan’s name... No wonder he seemed to be so sympathetic and understanding of her. He’d known for ages who she really was! Their online conversations had revealed everything he needed to know about her. He’d played her like a fool for weeks.

  And what had he told her in return?

  Nothing.

  They’d just spent the night together, the most incredible night of her life. She thought they’d been close, that this was the start of something really special, and she’d laid her soul bare. Jonty had taken down, brick by brick, all the careful walls she’d built around herself since Tom had betrayed her, taken them down so carefully and quietly that she’d not even realised. Neither had she noticed that while her defences were breached, Jonty’s were firmly in place with the drawbridge up and the portcullis slammed down. Right now he was probably boiling the oil and arming the cannons.

  “Somebody needed to tell you the truth,” said Jax, who, bombshell dropped, was prepared to be sickly with faux sympathy. “You’re making a fool of yourself and it’s embarrassing. I would have thought Mel or Simon would have said something but, then again, they’re having a free holiday in Jonty’s house, aren’t they? Why jeopardise that to save the hired help from looking like a lovesick teenager?”

  Ocean View belonged to Jonty?

  Everything was back to front. It was like looking in one of those distorted funfair mirrors. The house, the boat, the flash cars… These weren’t Simon’s, as he’d led her to believe, but Jonty’s. So why was he wasting his time living in the pool house and pretending to be a gardener? And what was he doing tinkering about with Ursula when he c
ould have had millions of pounds’ worth of powerboat moored in the estuary? None of it made sense. It was the most elaborate and cruel deception she could have imagined.

  The Jonty she knew and loved, the man who had held her against his heart all night and promised that everything was going to be all right, had vanished like the remnants of a dream. He had never even existed. The whole summer had been nothing but a pack of beautiful lies.

  At this moment it felt as though somebody was dragging barbed wire through her heart, but there was no way Andi was prepared to let Jax know all her hopes and dreams had splintered into a million painful pieces. Her pride was all she had left; there was no way she was letting it go.

  “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Jax said, looking nothing of the sort. The expression on her perfect face was closer to triumphant. “But as one woman to another, you should stay away from a man who’s got so much money and power he can do what he like. Women are disposable to men like Jonty. I should know because I’ve seen enough of them come and go. But do you know something, Andi? It will always be me he’ll come back to in the end. Me, because I understand him: we share the same world and without me he would never have made it in the first place. I’m his equal and he knows that. You? You’re just some shag. A casual screw. He didn’t even trust you enough to tell you who he really is.”

  Andi felt sick. Had she just been a casual thing to him? It hadn’t felt like that at all but then what did she know? She was clearly a crap judge of character. Tom and Jonty both proved that.

  “Stick around by all means if you want to be another plaything for him, but bear in mind the summer’s nearly over. It’ll soon be time to return to London.” Jax threw the keys into the air and caught them neatly. “Still, it’s your call. I just thought that it was time one of us told you the truth and stopped you making a total idiot of yourself.”