Fragile Crystal: Rubies and Rivalries (The Crystal Fragments Trilogy) (2 page)

Leaving the building, she paused and looked back up at it. This was one of the few in the street that had been renovated in recent years, although slow progress was being made on repairing the ancient, crumbling blocks that lined the narrow street in this part of Alfama. The walls were a deep yellow ochre, with blue sills and white shutters for when the sun became too much and to keep out the night. She had really wanted one of the old buildings that were covered with brightly painted tiles, but the chaos she had found inside the ones she considered had, in the end, been far too much to consider. Kris Avelar may have been inspired by the romance of the city but she was also far too much a pragmatist to do without properly functioning utilities.

That made her smile. For all his wealth, she thought that sometimes Daniel would have been better able to cope without running water and with dodgy electrical connections. Well, perhaps not Daniel Stone, but certainly Daniel Logan. She thought of Comrie, the hideaway in the Scottish highlands where sometimes he ran to escape, his haven where first she had met him. That half-built crofter’s cottage contrasted so greatly to the penthouse apartments and villas he owned elsewhere, and yet the thought of Comrie was itself almost enough to bring on an orgasm in Kris’s body. If the Khan Kubla had ever built a pleasure dome, she was sure that his own delights had been nothing compared to what she had experienced in that rustic building.

Her home in Alfama was, in some ways, a balance between the rough, almost brutal delights that she had discovered at Comrie and the urbane, super-civilised ones that lay in wait for her at Daniel’s other homes. Here was chaos and order combined.

She had him to thank for that, of course, but this was also slightly different. The apartment in Alfama was hers, and had been her decision. She had been shocked when he told her how much the sapphires he had given her were worth, though she had been utterly unsurprised when he also told her to keep them, that he would buy her the apartment
and
let her keep her jewels. But no.

Those sapphires
had
been hers. They were a gift, a beautiful gift, but she had no regrets about selling them. If she was careful, frugal, she would never have to work ever again. She had no intention of being
that
frugal. She wasn’t an idiot, and with a lover as rich as Daniel she realised also that she could ask for any pleasure and it would be hers.

At the same time, however, having something of her own, something that was her idea rather than Daniel’s, was important to her. A man so dominant as Daniel Stone—in height, in physical and sexual prowess, in financial and worldly muscle—could easily drown her. Sexually, yes: she wanted to submit to him, again and again and again. But that didn’t mean that she wanted to be his shadow in every way.

As she walked down the narrow cobbled street that led its often treacherous way down through Alfama, she smiled as she also considered that this wasn’t what Daniel wanted either. It was simplicity itself for Daniel Stone to buy whatever he wanted. He could buy her shadow a thousand times over and still barely dent his vast wealth. Daniel Logan, however, had never wanted to buy her at all. She had given herself to him—and in return, he had made himself a gift to her.

Pausing for a moment, she looked down towards the red steel bridge that spanned towards the large statue of
Cristo Rei
, Christ with his arms outstretched towards the waters of the Tagus in benediction and peace. Somewhere down there was the port where Chiado Shipping lay, one of the companies that worked with Stone Enterprises, and the ostensible reason for her visiting this city. In truth, it had been a pleasant deception, but that didn’t matter now. She was here and here she would remain.

There was no need to rush. That was, indeed, one of the things she loved about her new home. No one rushed. One of the sardine nations, Daniel sometimes disparagingly referred to Portugal, particularly when business was moving more slowly than he liked. The herring nations were hardworking, industrious, a little too cold perhaps, but that was why they were not in the same desperate straits as their poorer neighbours to the south. Kris never disagreed with him: instead, she would impishly observe that the north may have been where all the money was, but the south was where everyone wanted to live.

And so she did not rush but walked, sedately, pleasantly, past the
Se
and down the tumbling hills towards Rossio Square. The yellow trams trundled past her, not so full as they had been in the summer and filled now with regular inhabitants rather than hundreds of tourists—though, she had to admit, even with her darkening skin and her rapidly improving Portuguese, she still felt a bit of a visitor to the city.

She shrugged at the thought. What did it matter? For the first time in too many years she had no cares and she was creating again. Deep down inside her she knew that this was home.

In Rossio she went to one of the cafés with canopied tables outside. These were far from the best places to eat, and Daniel had been a little irritated when she brought him here for more than a coffee, but the truth was that this was an easy half hour walk from her home and she could sit here and drink wine, enjoying the evening. On three sides of the square were the neoclassical porticos and buildings, both stern and easygoing with the large arch leading to the old city, their solid proportions facing the baroque fountain on top of which was the equestrian statue of Dom Pedro IV. On the fourth side was the open, free space of the river.

And so, as the sun began to descend further to the west and the sky turned a darker blue, she sipped at her red wine and watched people coming and going. She did not feel an outsider—as she suspected Daniel sometimes felt. No. She was content to be a quiet observer, looking at the handsome locals as they went arm in arm. The economy might be fucked, she thought to herself, all that money swimming north to the shoals of herring, but they did not, in the end, care too much. There was always more to life than money. That was one of the gifts, she suspected, she could give to Daniel.

As she sat there, her phone on the table before her, its screen flashed. She read the message from Daniel and smiled before replying.

Tomorrow. He would be here tomorrow. Simply that thought made her wet again.

Chapter Two

It was not Filipe who came to collect her the next morning, though that didn’t particularly surprise her. He would be at the airport to meet Daniel. Since his accident a decade or so before, the one that had killed his wife, Karen, he had never driven again and there were very few people that he trusted behind a wheel. Filipe was one of them.

Her driver was someone Kris hadn’t seen before, an older man with curly grey hair and a pleasant face, chubby and smiling. “You’re English?” he asked, his voice heavily accented but his enunciation clear.

“Yes,” she replied. “Well, part-Portuguese, on my father’s side.”

He nodded. “I’d heard that.” Despite the hint, he continued to speak in English and soon she realised why. “So, you’ve decided to return to Lisbon. I don’t blame you. I was in England for nearly ten years. I don’t think I ever saw a week without rain.”

“And that’s where you met Mister Stone?” she asked. At this, the driver laughed.

“No, I’ve never met him. But I knew Filipe’s father, and when I said I wanted to return home he found this job for me.” They were driving west, passing Madragoa and following the coastal road towards Belem. “Thank God. With things how they are, I’ve no idea what I would do otherwise.”

During the half hour drive, Kris discovered that the driver, Jorge, had been in the merchant navy for a while, travelling the world before settling in London. After one brief exchange in Portuguese (more to test her assertion as to her parentage than anything else, she suspected), for the rest of the journey they spoke in English. Or, rather, Jorge mainly spoke and she mainly listened. He asked a few questions as to her relationship with Daniel: her reserve on that matter made her hesitant to reply, but it largely didn’t matter as he filled in what he thought were most of the necessary details.

Kris felt a little more exhausted than she had expected when they finally arrived at the villa on the edges of Cascais. She could not help but feel trepidation mixed with her excitement at seeing Daniel after a week apart as they drove into the white-walled perimeter of his home from home when he was in Portugal. This, after all, had been a site of emotional humiliation (not on Daniel’s part, admittedly) as well as a variety of pleasures.

She had returned since, of course. Ironically, for all that she loved the shambling, easygoing chaos of the old part of Lisbon, Daniel preferred the wealthier calm of the small Atlantic resort. The villa itself was large though not overtly ostentatious and by no means the most expensive place that Daniel Stone could afford. He had originally purchased the building as somewhere to stay when he came to this part of the world to play on his yacht, and its pleasant, discrete comfort was in some ways little more than standard fare for the rich who stayed for their allotted time on the coast.

Entering the large hallway, Jorge placed her bag on the cool, marble floor. She had brought little with her—much of what she needed was already here, and in any case she understood that before long they would return to London or perhaps to New York. Anna, Daniel’s longest-serving maid in the residence, came up to greet her.

“You are looking very well, Miss Avelar.”

“Thank you. Is Daniel here yet?” she asked in Portuguese, eager to see him.

“No, not yet,” the maid replied. As with most of Daniel’s employees, Kris’s sometimes stilted Portuguese made them accept her more easily than, she gathered, the other visitors he had occasionally brought here. She was more than a passing whim, and more than once it had occurred to her that she could live very easily without a care in the world in such luxury. Nonetheless, she had Alfama.

“The plane was delayed—or he missed it and needs to catch a later one. I forget which.” Anna waved her hands in front of her lined face. “So much to do, so thank heavens we have a few more hours. Make yourself at home, Senhora Avelar. I’ll send through Joana with a drink for you.”

Thanking Jorge, Kris let Anna take her bag up to the room and wandered across the tiled floor, staring at the whitewashed walls of the rooms to her left and right. Beyond she could see the wooded area, with its cypresses and maritime pines, as well as the swimming pool which was one of her favourite parts of the house.

Kris had to admit that she was feeling a little frustrated. It did not take a great deal of imagination to work out why: although Jorge had warned her that Daniel had not been at the villa when he left to collect her, her fantasies about Daniel, his large body, his large... She wanted him. Dammit. She wanted to be fucked. And to see him, of course, but she wanted to be taken, to throw herself at him, and he to lift her up in his arms and penetrate her deeply.

The thought of him made her somewhat flushed, and she unconsciously fanned herself to cool her ardour a little. Pausing in one of the reception rooms, she stopped to look at the large, chromatic painting hanging on the wall. The abstract blues, whites and reds, merging in blurred shadows, appealed to her. She remembered him buying this one—indeed, in contrast to many of the other paintings and sculptures in the villa, the work by Irazabal was one of the few that felt it had been bought more for reasons of taste rather than investment. It wasn’t quite his Leda and the Swan, but whenever she looked at it she thought of that large, acrylic canvas and could not help but smile.

Joana brought her a fresh lemonade and Kris sat down on the white sofa facing the Irazabal. Though the painting attracted her eye, she could not settle and it took a few moments for her to realise what was causing her discomfort.

She had never been here without Daniel. With his presence, the villa could—just—feel like home. It would never be as appealing to her as her own apartment, but at least with him there she had a sense of someone living in the place. Without him, it was more like a museum, a show home that was elegant, tasteful, incredibly expensive, but also somehow empty and cold. It was something she had often thought about his penthouse in Chelsea where she had often stayed: that also was tasteful and rich but equally sterile. Daniel allowed no chaos into his life, and that thought made her frown a little.

Though she had not yet visited the house he owned in the Algarve, nor his other properties elsewhere in Europe or New York, she had a sense that this sense of elegant alienation would be a feature of them all. The few times thus far she had travelled with Daniel they had always stayed in the very best hotels, and she suspected that as far as luxury was concerned it was all pretty much of a muchness to the founder of Stone Enterprises. Cleanliness. Tastefulness. Elegance. Emptiness.

There was one exception, of course. They had never returned to Comrie where those first, fateful days had been sealed, but that rough cottage was very different to anything else of Daniel’s that she had seen. Indeed, it was so unlike him that he had asked her never to speak of it—though the threat was unspoken, she was sure that to reveal Comrie in the western part of Scotland would be a betrayal that he could never really forgive. Comrie had his mark, literally in that he was rebuilding and renovating it all by himself. Or, more accurately, it had the mark of Daniel Logan—irascible, difficult, misanthropic even. Daniel Logan was a much more awkward man to live with than Daniel Stone, but Kris had to admit that she missed him from time to time. She often wondered who was the real man.

She shook her head. Such thoughts made her want to drink something stronger than the lemonade, but she knew that her lover would not approve. She generally tried not to drink alcohol around him—another legacy of the crash that had taken his wife. It was not something that he forbade, not at all, and he was as generous in that regard as he was with anything, but she knew it was something that could bring back dangerous memories. Not that she needed him for that. There was the example of her own father, after all.