Love notes

by Exley Avis

  Chapter Ten

  Erika closed her eyes and listened to the tape for the last time, letting the final chorus wash over her. She grimaced.

  “We need to revise those vocals,” she said when the final notes faded away. “My throat sounded tense toward the end.”

  The producer laughed, but not unkindly. “You’re never satisfied, Erika. It’s perfect. Believe me. It’s by far the best work you’ve ever done.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t mind giving it one more go.”

  “Truly, it’s finished.” To reinforce his point, he switched off the recording equipment and handed Erika a CD of the newly-cut album. “It’s pure genius. You’ve come of age with these songs. You should be very proud.”

  Despite her doubts, Erika allowed herself a satisfied smile.

  She knew her new album was good – better than good – and so different from anything she’d ever done before. After five years of banging out candy floss hits in a sequined bikini, music had become her solace once more, and her most perfect form of expression. She knew she’d produced something extraordinary.

  Writing the album had been the final, vital step in a personal journey Erika had undertaken over the last year, during which time she’d separated herself from her old life and begun the blueprint for her future. She’d clarified her thoughts and arranged them in an order that finally made sense, shaking off her old insecurities and laying the past to rest.

  And what had emerged clearly, amongst the expressive lyrics and beautiful music, had been her love letter to Aiden.

  Sweet, eternal, powerful and true.

  A strong and passionate declaration of love that she prayed would persuade him to risk all on building a future with her.

  Over the past twelve months, Erika had worked her way through every emotion from loss to trust, and anger to forgiveness; rubbing salve into the scar tissues of her heart and feeling them begin to heal. She’d picked over the memories it held, finding herself able to shelve permanently the pain surrounding her first break-up from Aiden and focus entirely on the tenderness of their reunion.

  No matter where she’d been or what she’d been doing, the thought of Aiden had remained with her constantly – his smile, the way his chin dimpled when he tried not to laugh, the shadow of a birthmark on his shoulder when they made love – and the more she’d remembered, the more she’d missed him.

  For the first six months, she’d been a mess, barely scraping through each day, struggling to endure the stresses of the court case and all the while her heart had been breaking for everything she’d thrown away.

  When the judge had finally found in her favour, rescinding her contract and returning her copyrights, her mind had gradually cleared and her imagination had had space to stretch. She’d begun writing songs again, capturing the emotions she’d been through and setting them to music.

  She’d relived every moment of losing Aiden and questioned everything she’d ever felt for him, separating the truth from the fantasy and discovering that her love for him held solid and unwavering.

  The year after her split from Marty had seen profound changes in Erika. She was stronger, knew her own mind, fought her corner and was financially independent. She’d released the album of her early music – Songs of Love and Loss – earning her respect from music critics who’d previously dismissed her as a pop diva. Left free to choose her own work, she flourished musically, surprising herself with the new depths she found in writing her next album and pursing avenues Marty had prevented her from exploring.

  But even though her own reality and sense of self had shifted so completely, her love for Aiden had remained constant. She loved him – utterly, completely, selflessly and without end.

  Now all she had to do was convince him to take her back and let her spend the rest of her life proving it to him.

  Erika put the CD into her handbag and hugged her producer tightly. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said. “If you hadn’t persuaded the record company to let me change direction when I split from Marty…”

  He wafted away her thanks. “It’s been a pleasure. Just hurry up and write me some new music. I can’t wait to see where you’re going next.”

  Erika smiled at the last comment in the car going downtown to her lawyers’ office. She might not have a clue yet where she’d be going musically but she had a pretty good idea what real life held in store for her over the next two weeks.

  By the time she returned to Ben’s mansion later that afternoon, she had everything finalised and was feeling very pleased with herself. She found Ben lounging on the sofa after a day’s filming and helped herself to a beer before dropping down beside him and planting a kiss on his cheek.

  “You look like the cat that got the cream,” he said, eyeing her suspiciously over the neck of his beer bottle. “What have you been up to, madam?”

  “Seeing my lawyers. Tying up my investment accounts. Instructing them to sell my New York and Los Angeles properties. Transferring this to you and Richard.”

  She handed him the deeds to her beach house in the Hamptons but Ben held up his hand to push them away.

  “We can’t take it. It’s too much,” he said. “It’s worth a fortune.”

  “Please. Richard loves the place and Marty’s settlement is twice what we first thought it might be. You’ve both done so much for me over the last year – helped me through some really awful stuff – it’s the least I can do.” When he still hesitated, she added, “I’m making a new start and this house belonged to the old Erika Fenn. Please take it.”

  After five minutes more arguing he finally gave in and took the deeds in exchange for a hug. “Any more news on Marty?” he asked.

  “The Federal fraud charges against him have finally been dropped.”

  Ben gave a grunt of annoyance. “After all he’s put you through, I wouldn’t have intervened on his behalf.”

  “Maybe not, but I figured he’d been punished enough. I only wanted back what was mine, not to destroy him completely.”

  Instead, Marty had retired to Miami to live off his past glories and a hugely reduced pension fund, with threats to tell the real story in his autobiography.

  Erika could hardly wait.

  “And I’ve also finished this,” she said, holding up the CD.

  “Satisfied with it?”

  “As much as I’ll ever be.”

  Ben had long ago worked out that Erika was a perfectionist when it came to her music and had witnessed her frustrations over the past year. He gave her the sensual smile that drove women wild. “So now what?”

  Now what, indeed?

  “I’m free at last. Marty’s paid up, the album’s finished and the past’s been hung out to dry. It’s been a long haul, but I finally know who I am, where I’m heading and what I want.”

  “What you want? Or who?”

  Ben glanced sidelong at her. Erika noticed he didn’t say Aiden’s name but it hung heavy in the air between them.

  “Both. It’s time for me to put my heart where my music is.”

  Ben nodded slowly, as if it made perfect sense. “What will you do? Send him the CD and see what happens?”

  It was the safer option but a year’s delay had made Erika impatient. She’d left it long enough already and instinct told her she needed to be more direct.

  It was time to find out if the biggest risk of her life had paid off and she wanted to be there to see for herself.

  “No. I’m going to England to deliver it in person.”

  “What? Just turn up?” Ben pushed himself upright on the sofa and regarded her in open-mouthed astonishment. “Are you crazy?”

  “I think it’s the best way.”

  “The best way to get your heart broken again!” Ben’s concern was written all over his handsome face. “You haven’t seen or spoken to Aiden in a year. What if he’s moved on?”

  This very real possibility made Erika sick with anxiety and she pushed it out of her mind. “That’s the risk I to
ok when I sent him away and I’m prepared for it.” The last was a lie. She couldn’t contemplate spending any more of her life without Aiden.

  “I still don’t understand why you did it,” Ben said, shaking his head uncomprehendingly. “It hurt so much to stand back and watch you destroy yourself.”

  “I was damaged goods back then,” Erika reminded Ben. “I had no idea who I was or what I wanted. I loved Aiden too much to saddle him with that. I needed time and space to get my head straight.”

  “So will you warn him you’re coming?”

  Imagining the wording of the advance email she might have sent made Erika giggled. “Hi Aiden. Not seen you for ages but I’d like to pop in and tell you I’m still in love with you,” she recited before raising her eyebrows and looking expectantly at Ben, who laughed.

  “There’s no need to warn Aiden, anyway,” she continued. “I’ve a hundred London paparazzi waiting to do that for me. He’ll know I’m back in England before I’ve even gone through passport control.”

  Ben couldn’t argue with this. Erika’s split from Marty and the continued pretence of their romance had kept her on the front pages. Attending premieres on Ben’s arm, shopping together on Rodeo Drive or holidaying on a private island in the Caribbean, had all cemented the gossip columnists’ view of Erika Fenn and Ben Ridley as Ben-Fenn, the golden couple.

  If only they knew.

  “How do you feel about seeing Aiden again?” Ben asked, watching her face carefully for the truth that might not come out in words. “Nervous?”

  “Seeing him isn’t the problem. I’m more worried he won’t like the new me.”

  Ben looked sideways at her as if to say, pppllllease! “Have you looked in the mirror lately. You’re gorgeous. If he had the hots for you back then, he’ll go crazy for you now. Just look at yourself.”

  Erika knew he was right. The curves Aiden loved so much had filled out even more, leaving her rounded and sexy with boobs that were little short of magnificent – even if she did say so herself. These days, when she wore a designer dress, she found people looking at her body, not the gown, and she had ten times the confidence she’d had when strutting semi-naked on stage for Marty.

  “Aiden did have the hots for me,” Erika confided cheekily, her eyes sparkling and her expression filling in every other sizzling detail. “But I wasn’t exactly cold toward him either.”

  Realisation hit Ben. “Does this mean you’re breaking up with me?” he asked, gripping his chest and pretending to be heartbroken.

  Erika laughed, playing along. “I have to. I just don’t think of you in that way any more.”

  “That’s a relief. Because I’ve never thought of you in that way either.” He faked a scowl. “Only don’t tell the paparazzi. If it ever got out, I’d be ruined.”

  He held out his arm to Erika and she snuggled into him, thinking how much she’d miss him and Richard once she was back in England. Living with them had been like sharing a student house again; staying up late into the night talking, lounging around in pyjamas at weekends and occasionally going their separate ways to do some work. She’d laughed until she thought her ribs would implode, swapped confidences she’d never shared and discovered that, once the layers of Erika Fenn were stripped away, she actually enjoyed being the person she found underneath.

  The only question now was, would Aiden like her too?

  “Here. You’d better have your expensive ring back,” Erika said, removing the fake diamond she’d worn since she’d last been in London and handing it to Ben before rubbing away the green mark it left around her finger.

  “Wonder how much I’d get for it on eBay,” he mused.

  Erika laughed at the thought of some buyer getting the worst bargain of the century. “Joking aside, my returning to England will have major consequences for you and Richard,” she said, serious again for a moment. “Would you like me to stay a while longer?”

  Ben kissed the top of her head. “Get outta here! I’m relieved you’ve finally come to your senses. You can’t let a hot man like that go completely off the boil.”

  “So what will you do?”

  Reassuringly, Ben had a ready answer. “Richard and I have more than enough to retire on,” he confided. “So I’ll finish filming, spend six months walking around looking broken hearted, drown my sorrows in a couple of sexy actresses and, before you know it, my present movie will be edited, released and dropping lots of lovely dollars into my bank account.”

  “How will you handle your relationship with Richard?” she asked, unable to bear the thought of Ben being ostracised by an industry and a public who’d previously idolised him.

  “People can work it out for themselves.” Ben had obviously put a great deal of thought into his future. “A major TV network’s planning a series featuring a tough, gay cop but they haven’t found anyone willing to play the lead. Most Hollywood big hitters are scared it’ll ruin their reputations but my agent put me forward and they’re seriously interested. We could be looking at another NCIS or The Wire.” He gave a self-satisfied smile. “A year from now, I’ll be the gay icon, not you.”

  Erika snuggled back into Ben. “We should release a press statement. If I simply walk out the paparazzi will be camped outside again.”

  “Good idea. We’ll say you’re homesick and want to be more hands on in the music schools you’re setting up in the UK.” Ben figured it was the truth, if not all of it. “And you miss the rain,” he added with a grin

  “It’s not the rain I miss.”

  Ben slapped her leg in mock annoyance. “I know. But it won’t do my image much good to tell the world you’re running away to someone else’s bed.”

  Ben was right – Erika was homesick, but she’d been missing England for so long she’d become inured to the feeling.

  She hadn’t realised how ingrained the sensation had become until her plane touched down at Heathrow and the unacknowledged tension left her body. Rather than submit to the publicity fanfare Marty had always insisted upon – scheduled flights, limousines, tipping off the press and prestige hotels – Erika chose to slip back into London quietly through the Windsor Suite again and took a cab to a discreet, boutique hotel in Mayfair.

  The temptation to pick up the phone and call Aiden the moment she landed was strong but Erika resisted, even though she couldn’t get him out of her head for more than a few minutes at a time.

  Instead, she took a week to acclimatise herself; getting used to being back on home soil and learning how to pass unnoticed around London again. Her lawyer had recommended a cosy, furnished flat in Clerkenwell belonging to a colleague; far enough away from the high profile locations in London where the paparazzi might look for her and yet close to the City where her advisors were based.

  As Aiden had once told her, fans expected to see her on a red carpet wearing a designer gown, not window shopping in Seven Dials or sipping coffee in the park, so she was able to walk to meetings largely unrecognised. Over the next few days she covered dozens of miles on foot, learning the streets and alleyways around her new home and getting to know the local landmarks.

  On her way to meet Catherine Walker one day she made an unconscious detour to the other side of the business district and found herself outside Thirstan Holdings’ head office. Terrified she might bump into Aiden, she hung back in an alleyway on the opposite side of the road and stared up at the building he’d designed himself; a spectacular steel and glass structure that seemed too fragile to support its own weight.

  “Amazingly beautiful but with incredible inner strength,” Aiden had once said when he’d once shown her a photograph of it. “The way I think of you.”

  She wondered how much he’d revised that opinion over the last year.

  A thousand windows looked down upon her, making her feel conspicuous. Aiden could be watching from behind any one of them and the thought of being so close to him made her want to act on impulse. It would be so easy to cross the street, walk into reception and ask to see him
. But she could never catch him that unprepared – particularly when she wasn’t exactly ready herself.

  But then, when would she ever be?

  Erika pondered the point further over lunch with Catherine and took the bold step of confiding in her. “Aiden and I were involved a long time ago,” she explained, “but it ended before I got mixed up with Marty.”

  “Did you keep in touch?”

  “No.” This one word managed to convey how painful a break up it had been. “When Aiden found me in Yorkshire I hadn’t seen him for five years. But it didn’t take either of us very long to work out there was still something between us.”

  “I guessed he was more than an old family friend.” The lawyer smiled to herself. “Although you were engaged to Ben by that time.”

  “Yes. And no matter what I felt for Aiden, I couldn’t walk out on Ben.” Some secrets were just too big to share, even under cover of lawyer/client privilege and Erika trotted out the agreed response. “But we’ve now decided to split. All very amicable. Ben and I are two people clinging together in Hollywood’s shark tank. We love each other, but it’s a relationship born out of necessity, not…”

  She scrambled to finish the sentence but it was impossible to find one word that described everything she felt for Aiden, and she gave up.

  “So Aiden’s your real reason for coming back?” Catherine guessed, topping up their wine glasses but watching Erika out of the corner of her eye.

  Erika could have lied about missing England too much, or talked about her newly-founded music schools in deprived areas, but she felt it was time she started owning the truth.

  “I want to know if he’ll have me back. Trouble is, I can’t quite pluck up the courage to go and ask him.”

  “Well don’t leave it too long,” Catherine advised. “He flies to Zurich after the weekend to finalise some huge project he’s starting over there. He’ll be gone around two months.”

  “Two months!” Erika repeated, horrified that she’d come so far only to have Aiden swept away from her. “Is he seeing anyone?”