When the Siren Calls (45 page)

“After I saw you in the Savoy; it was the reason I couldn’t stay over, even though I wanted to. I had promised to take her to a wedding and I couldn’t bring myself to let her down.”

“Where was this wedding?” said Isobel, her eyes narrowing.

“Here in Tuscany, Florence of all places, I’d promised to take her. It was all planned to fly out from Gatwick; then you called and I didn’t want to disappoint you either.” He was holding her hand again, running his fingers over her white knuckles, the tips of his fingers seeking out her slim wrist under her cuff. And she let him, her mind swimming in conflicting thoughts, her skin tingling to his touch, her body beginning to feel for him. “But it is all over now, and I am going to tell her this weekend and that’s a pledge I’ve made to myself, because of you.”

Isobel didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, to hug him or run. Jay took the decision away from her, moving around beside her and pulling her into him.

She tried to remain limp but she could not, and as he forced his mouth on hers, she returned his embrace, but, with a final effort of will, pushed him away.

“I’m sorry, Jay, this is just too much for me to cope with right now. I need time to think.”

He clasped her chin and looked into her eyes and she saw he was smiling, his old self-assurance radiating from him. “Take all the time you need, I will go and get us two more brandies.”

She went to the bathroom while he was gone and sat in the narrow cubicle, letting the tears flood out, pulling sheet after sheet from the roll and wiping her tears away. When the tears stopped she went to the mirror, white specks of tissue were stuck to her wet makeup. She washed her face in cold water. The dispenser was out of paper so she lifted the hem of the dress to dry her face, and reapplied her make-up, a battle raging within her. She ran her fingers along the necklace as she admired its beauty, then took it off and returned it to its box; she would slip it into his pocket.

Isobel checked her phone, but found no message or missed call. Peter’s lack of concern worried her, though perhaps he was too busy with Rachel to think of her. She felt pangs of guilt for mistrusting Peter, yet she could not push the thought fully from her consciousness.

Jay was waiting with the drinks, but she did not want to sit down again. “I’m sorry, I need to go. Peter is due to call any minute. And I really can’t handle my emotions right now.” He followed her to the door; his apartment was to the left, her car to the right. She was glad of the rapidly descending darkness and the emptiness of the street. She stretched up to kiss him goodbye, her hand searching for his jacket pocket, but he sensed her intent and seized her wrist, pulling her body violently into his, and, in one swivel of his large frame, they disappeared into a doorway, his back to the street. She struggled against him, but he held her to him effortlessly. She tossed her head from side to side to avoid his lips, but he took her face in his free hand and held it forcefully as he pressed his mouth to hers, and soon she gave up her efforts to stop her lips being forced apart. In one swift movement he swept his hand under her dress and forced it between the tops of her thighs, his mouth still locked on hers. Again she resisted, clamping her legs to restrain him, but he would not be stopped, and took hold of her panties and tore them from her. And as the skimpy material floated to the ground, she felt her resistance go with it. She knew he sensed it too, perhaps it was the quiver in her thighs that gave her away; he eased his vice-like hold on her, his other hand grasped her shaven mound and began exploring her, her knees weakening as he did so. Isobel knew she needed him with the same intensity as the first time. She reached out her hand and felt the same urgency in him, unchanged from their tryst in the woods. Finally, she pulled her mouth from his. “Please Jay, not here, not in the street.” But she held his body close to hers as she spoke, her nails digging into his back. Jay eased away from her, and she bent to one knee before him to pick up her torn panties and the fallen jewellery box; he gazed into her eyes before she dropped her head in submission, and silently took the hand that he offered.Fifty-one

They reached the door to Jay’s apartment without saying a word, her trailing a step behind him, her hand stretched out to his, like a wayward child brought to heel. He opened the door before turning to her, whisking her up in his arms and carrying her over the threshold.

Standing next to the bed they both began to undress, she slowly undoing the buttons on the front of her long black dress, not to rouse him, for she knew it was not necessary, but deep in thought as she sought to push the returning feelings of guilt from her mind.

“Is your phone off?” he asked, finally breaking the silence, and she nodded, saying nothing. They stood a foot apart, facing each other, naked, she struggling to hold his gaze. Jay reached behind her to the dresser, and she felt their bodies touch as he did so, and he gave her a smile, but she did not reach for him as she often did. He stepped back, the box in his hand and she watched transfixed as he opened it. He put the golden chain to her neck and she pushed her hair back to help him, and able to bear it no more she pulled him to her. Jay leant behind her again and Isobel saw the torn panties in his hand and he gently wiped himself with them and finally she giggled, but nervously, before putting her hand to the panties and finishing the task.

He laid her on the bed, and neither spoke. He did not explore her in his usual way but simply put himself above her and she opened her body up for him because she knew he was ready, and that she was ready, and he made love to her slowly and gently, and she took him slowly and gently, and when it was over he fell beside her, and still he had not spoken. And after a while he spoke. “I love you, Isobel.” And it was the first time he had said it, or anything near to it, and she was pleased that he had waited, that he had not said it in the throes of his own passion, or as she had cried out his name in her own fulfillment, and she thought that she believed him. But she knew that with Jay she would never be sure, totally sure, in the way that she was with Peter. She stayed silent and said nothing, much as she knew he wanted to hear her say she loved him.

When he fell asleep she rose from the bed and went to the bathroom to phone Peter. Her call went unanswered, yet somehow she did not mind. If he was with Rachel she knew she could not blame him because, perhaps, he knew or suspected she had someone, even if he did not suspect it was Jay. She was sure he had known ever since they had driven into Cobham and he had asked, “what made you have a full wax?” and she blushed scarlet because they had not made love and he had not seen her naked, and she knew he must have touched her, when she was sleeping. He had bided his time, she was sure, to see how she would explain herself. And she had stammered out some explanation in reply, knowing that he saw the lie, even though he said nothing.

Her phone vibrated to interrupt her thoughts and she saw it was the house phone. This time Isobel did not ask why he had not answered and he did not ask her where she was or what she was doing, only if she was ok. She was pleased that his voice was normal, with no hint of suspicion, and a brief wave of calm washed over her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I left your note with the accountants and they promised to do their best. But I couldn’t get hold of Brooke until much later, and he was too busy to meet this afternoon so we agreed to have dinner. I hope that’s ok?”

“Maybe even better. He’s more likely to drink and that will loosen his tongue for you.”

If you only knew how loose that tongue already is for me, thought Isobel with another rush of guilt. “Everything ok your end? Rachel get back ok?”

He said that she did and she said she’d call in the morning, hoping he would not suggest they speak again later.

Jay came to the bathroom and asked if everything was ok, and she said that it was. He relieved himself in front of her, as Peter never would, and she watched him, unsure of everything again.

She did not want to go back to bed and suggested they go out to eat, but he just shook his head and left the room, returning with a tray of strawberries and ice cream and a silver bucket with ice and champagne. He had found a wilted yellow flower and put it on the tray, saying, “I’m fresh out of roses,” as he poured two glasses and looped his arm through hers so they were coupled as they sipped it. She laughed, and he took a spoon and began to feed her the ice cream and strawberries, putting a scoop on her nipple before licking it off, laughing as she shivered.

Isobel stayed silent through it all, sensing he wanted to speak, and fearing the intensity in his eyes.

“I don’t think I’ll have much more need to come out to Tuscany,” he began, his face deadly serious, “except to see you. Andy’s going to be taking over things here. What happens in Italy now is up to him.”

“So you’ll be spending more time in London, on the music project?”

He had already told her pieces of it, and now he told her the rest.

“One way or another, I will hear the decision next week. Win or lose, I’ve hired a boat on the Thames and I’m going to be thanking the team for all their work and, hopefully, celebrating. I was thinking you might join me…but if you think it’s too public, I’ll understand.”

“But won’t Rusty be there?”

“She’s in Texas, looking at schools for the boys. She’s probably going to go back in October.”

“But your work’s here, in London, I mean.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I told you I was waiting to be served the papers, remember? We’ll probably sell up in Cheshire and I will get a place in London.”

“Even if…things don’t work out on the music project?”

“London is where the action is. And I’m nothing if not a survivor. If the music deal doesn’t happen then something else will. I’ll just make it happen, and I will bounce back.” Isobel knew that he would. He was that type, the sort that you couldn’t keep down with a sledgehammer. “So will you come on the boat?” he asked tentatively, almost pleading.

“I’ll check Peter’s schedule. I think he’s going to Brussels, so maybe I could just stay in the background.”

She fed him a spoon of ice cream. “The owners’ meeting in Capadelli. I was there.”

“Yes, I know.”

She was startled that after all her subterfuge, he knew, like sometimes he seemed to know everything, and to be able to see into her soul. She thought about the hapless Barkers, who had closed by swearing the assembly to secrecy, and she fought tears from her eyes at their vulnerability, lambs among lions.

“There were a lot of distressed people in that—”

“Listen, Isobel, I do what I have to. That’s how I survive. No one has ever looked out for me, until now.” He leant over and kissed her, pushing a dollop of ice cream from his mouth to hers as he did so. “Everyone in that room got what they paid for, a holiday home in Tuscany at a price they were happy with when they bought it. Did Eamon spin things a bit? Well sure, he’s paid to sell. But as for a dream under the Tuscan sun, dreams are what you make them. They need to stop feeling sorry for themselves. They need to start living their dream, and stop looking to others to make it for them. Because everyone else is too busy with their own dream.”

His words fell into her heart like stones, all the dreams it held now brittle as glass.

“I don’t know, Jay, that seems a harsh way to see the world.”

“If I’d had someone alongside me like you these past years, someone who looks to what they can give, not what they can take, maybe I’d think differently. So there’s hope for me yet.” He refilled her glass and she was starting to feel lightheaded, having eaten nothing all day except the strawberries and ice cream.

“And the new Jay starts this weekend, when you have your heart to heart with Lucy?”

“I don’t want to hurt Lucy. She’s done me no wrong, and she’s just a girl who’s trying to pull herself up in life by her bra-straps. But it’s not going to be easy to tell her, or else I would have done it a long time ago.”

“But we all get hurt in relationships, women at least, if not you, you heartless sod. What else has stopped you?”

“Lucy’s been getting really unpredictable. I do fear for what she’s capable of.”

“You mean hurting herself?”

“I don’t know about that, she’s got a lot of fight that girl. But the way she’s been talking she might do anything. She turned up at our school sports day a few weeks back, damn near brought the event to a standstill the way she was dressed; she got an inch away from clawing Rusty’s eyes out, even went up to the boys, just to make sure I knew what the stakes were.”

To Isobel, this sounded like Jay looking to his own survival rather than protecting Lucy from hurt, but maybe that was how life was after all, at least in Jay’s world. “So how are you going to tell her?”

“This Saturday. She’s coming to Tuscany.”

“So one final romantic weekend?”

“That’s what I’m determined to avoid. We are going out, but I’ve invited Eamon and Gina along. At the end of the evening I will tell her.”

“Gina? So does Gina love you too?”

Jay let out a long laugh. “She’s working for Mancini. Just someone else trying to stitch me up.” Isobel looked away, guilt rushing back into her. “Gina is being used. But she’s playing way out of her league; I saw through it pretty much the first hand she dealt me, but I went along with it because it suited me to.”

“But you can’t be sure, that’s just your instincts.”