Gold Diggers (26 page)

Summer sat up suddenly, sending stars across her vision. ‘You’re kidding!’

‘No,’ said Adam gravely. ‘And it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard about Ricardo trying it on with that shit. People call his house “The Brothel”. He certainly seems to have one hell of a merry-go-round of women in that place.’

‘I feel such a bloody idiot,’ said Summer, nervously reaching up to smooth her hair, thinking she must look like a scarecrow.

‘We should go to the police,’ said Adam firmly. ‘If he’s drugged you they can arrest him.’

Summer felt a rush of panic. The last thing she wanted was to involve the police. After all, Ricardo was Molly’s friend and it was her who had set them up on a date.

‘I just want to forget about it,’ she replied.

‘Listen, if you’re worried, I can go with you …’

‘
Please
Adam. No. I really, really don’t want to.’

He nodded, not wanting to push it. ‘Well, are you hungry? My chef doesn’t arrive for an hour or so, but if you want to take your chances with my cooking I make a mean pancake.’

‘Urr, Adam, the way I feel …’ She glanced at his eager expression and laughed. ‘You’re not going to let me say no, are you?’

‘No,’ he smiled.

Feeling a little better now, she followed him through to the kitchen, an impressive open-plan oak and granite design filled with shiny chrome appliances. As he opened the fridge,
she could see, the firm muscles of his back through his thin white T-shirt and, blushing slightly, she forced herself to look away. Out of the window, the night sky was turning grey and gold and birds were beginning to sing in Hyde Park. She was glad dawn was breaking; it felt too intimate being in Adam’s apartment at night. He was too good looking, too damn sexy to feel comfortable with, remembering the last time they’d been together – alone at the beach party in Anguilla. She’d tried to deny the chemistry between them then. But here, alone, only yards from his bed …
Oh God, Summer, stop thinking that way
, she groaned to herself. She took a sip of water which was ice cold against her lips and looked out at the dawn sky again.

‘It’s going to be a gorgeous day,’ she said absently. ‘A heatwave, apparently. I really want to do something.’

Adam turned back from the stove. ‘What do you mean “do something”?’ he asked. There was a definite flirtation in his voice, and something filled the air between them.

‘Oh, you know, take advantage of the sunshine. Something where you can feel nature, like a paddle in the sea or flying a kite.’

Adam smiled again. ‘You make it sound good.’

‘The simple things often are.’

‘So, do you fancy doing something together?’ he asked.

She glanced away, feeling a flutter of illicit excitement and guilt. She thought of Karin, and tried to shake it away.

‘So?’ asked Adam, trying to catch her gaze.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said slowly.

He touched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘I think you need some fun after what you’ve just been through.’

She gave a little shrug. ‘I guess. So what did you have in mind?’

‘Wait and see,’ he smiled. ‘But we might have to drop by your flat for some jeans and sneakers.’

He’s only being friendly
, thought Summer,
he’s just looking after me. Nothing wrong with that, is there
? Nothing wrong at all.

‘Okay, I’m all yours,’ she said.

Erin was annoyed. It was her first morning off since she’d been at Midas and she’d wanted nothing more than to stay in bed with Julian, eating croissants and making love. But Julian had left her flat at 7 a.m. to get to Bath for a mid-morning business meeting and Erin had her own appointment; she’d been summoned to see Ed Davies, her agent, who she had not seen or heard from since Christmas. It was the last thing Erin wanted to do on a fine spring morning.

Davies and Partners occupied a small mews house in a leafy, blossom-filled street in Bloomsbury. The reception was full of shiny pristine books, all lined up in display cases; fat bestsellers next to slick political biographies and fiercely clever literary authors she recognized from the
Sunday Times
lists. For a moment, Erin felt a rush of excitement she had not experienced since the first time she walked into the Midas Corporation building. But, as she walked up the stairs to the agent’s office, it was quickly replaced by a feeling of guilt and frustration that she hadn’t had time to do anything on her book since she’d been in London.

‘Erin. So good to see you again,’ said Ed Davies warmly,
getting up from behind his big mahogany desk. The room was stuffed with books and manuscripts, reminding Erin of her tutor’s study at university. She shook his hand and took a seat opposite him.

‘I would have suggested lunch, but I know how busy you are with your new job and so on,’ he said with a knowing look.

‘Guilty as charged,’ smiled Erin.

‘Now, then,’ said Ed distractedly, turning round to his coffee machine. ‘Let’s talk about the book.’

Erin had a sudden flashback to school, feeling as if the headmaster was about to tell her off for something she had not done.

‘I assume you haven’t got any more for me to have a look at today?’ he said, taking a sip of espresso.

‘I don’t suppose you want to hear about how busy I’ve been?’ she said weakly. ‘I’ve just been snowed under.’

She felt herself blush: it was a half-truth. She
had
been busy with her crazy, ninety-hour working weeks, but she’d certainly found time for Julian; plenty of time. Since their first date in Dulwich Park they’d been out for dinner twice, to a late-night cinema preview, and rowing in Hyde Park. Plus writing a book seemed so much less urgent and important now she had bought Belvedere Road.

Ed nodded as if he’d heard it all before. ‘Erin, about fifty per cent of my authors also have full-time jobs,’ he said flatly, steepling his fingers in front of his face. ‘And I don’t hear excuses from them because, do you know what? There
are
no excuses. Nobody is forcing you write a book. You do it, even if it means juggling another career, family, friends, because you really, really want to. You don’t write books for the money because, believe me, for every John Grisham or JK Rowling there are thousands of really brilliant, talented authors out there writing books for less than ten thousand pounds a time.’

Erin winced. ‘If this is a motivational speech, it isn’t working,’ she said sulkily.

‘You write books, Erin, because you have a story burning inside you that you want to share,’ continued Ed, his voice soft and assured. ‘It doesn’t matter whether it’s still around in a hundred years, lauded as a classic, or whether it brought pleasure to just one person, the idea is to write a book and see it printed and bound and think, “I did that”.’

Ed smiled kindly. ‘And I know that’s how you feel. Or rather how you
did
feel, because I saw it in your face and I read it in your words when you sent me your manuscript almost a year ago.’

Erin nodded weakly, knowing he was right, but also knowing that, if there had ever been a burning desire to write a story, it had now been dulled by a nice salary, a lovely flat, a wardrobe of beautiful clothes and a gorgeous house that was going to make her fortune.

As if he were reading her mind, Ed put down his cup and looked at her. ‘In life, Erin, some people do things for love and some people do things for money. Take it from an old man, the people who do things for love tend to be the ones who end up happiest,’ he said with a crinkled smile. ‘Did I tell you that thirty years ago I worked for an investment bank? It seemed to be the thing to do when you were fresh out of Cambridge.’

Erin was amazed. Sitting here surrounded by books and paper, she couldn’t imagine Ed having ever been anywhere or anything else.

‘So what happened?’ she asked.

‘An epiphany.’

‘And do you regret it?’

Ed shook his head vigorously. ‘Friends I worked with then are now partners in the big banks, buying second and third homes in Tuscany with their very large bonuses. They’re
rich, and stressed, and for the most part unhappy, because there is always someone richer than them, more successful than them, and it doesn’t make them feel good.’

‘But you’re successful anyway,’ said Erin swiftly, knowing that with a roster of big-name authors on the books, Ed Davies was hardly on the breadline.

‘The difference is, I would do what I do for free.’

Ed leaned forward on his desk and patted the top of a large pile of manuscripts. ‘There are fifty wannabe authors here, all desperate for me to read their scripts, take them on my list, help them live their dream. But I can’t, because I already have too many authors who are taking up too much of my time, and that is why I only take on one or two very exceptional writers a year.’

Erin had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. ‘Are you saying that you don’t want to represent me any more?’ she stammered.

‘I’m saying I want to see something from you by the end of the summer. Because if you can’t find it inside yourself to find the time, I want to find another young writer who can.’

‘Can you believe he said that?’ said Erin grumpily, biting into a club sandwich. She had arranged to meet Chris for lunch in Green Park and was giving him a blow-by-blow account of her meeting with Ed. ‘And I thought you might show a bit more concern for my predicament.’

Chris was lying on the grass with a newspaper over his face to protect him from the sun. ‘Well, what do you expect?’ said Chris in a muffled voice. ‘He’s right, isn’t he? You haven’t done a thing and you’re holding back real talents like myself.’

She threw a crust at him, but it just bounced off the paper. She sighed and looked around the bustling park. Cabbage White butterflies danced in the air, children were running around with ice-cream cones. It was like high
summer in Cornwall, she thought, immediately trying to blot the notion out. She hadn’t been home in months, and that seemed like just another thing to feel guilty about.

‘Anyway, I want to start afresh with a new idea, but I can’t think of anything.’

‘Worse excuse in the world,’ said Chris, lifting an edge of the paper and squinting at her. ‘You’ll be telling me you’re too busy next.’

‘Oh, stop nagging me,’ she frowned. ‘I have my reasons.’

‘Oh yes?’ he said, sitting up to look at her properly. ‘And what secrets are we keeping, Miss Devereux?’

She avoided his gaze. She didn’t want to tell Chris about either Julian or her fledgling property development quite yet. Julian felt too good to be real and she was scared that if she said his name out loud he would cease to exist. And she didn’t even want to think about the Belvedere Road site, let alone talk about it. Everything seemed to be taking so long. She hadn’t even made the planning permission submission yet and already one mortgage payment had left her bank account. Worried that she had bitten off more than she could chew, she didn’t want to mention it to anyone until she knew the project was going to succeed.

‘No secrets,’ she said, blushing. ‘But I am busy.’

‘In that case I have a proposition,’ he said, reaching across and swiping Erin’s orange juice.

‘Oh yeah,’ smiled Erin. ‘Going to ask me on a date now? I didn’t think you’d got that far down your list.’

‘Not yet, sweetheart,’ he said with a smile. ‘But seriously, I have a week off work in about a month and I’ve booked a cottage in the grounds of the Cliveden estate in Berkshire to write my book. I’ve been there to write before; it’s National Trust land, really beautiful, really inspiring, right by the river. I always gets loads done. If you fancy it, there’s a spare bedroom …’

‘It sounds good,’ said Erin cautiously. It
did
sound good, but then who could predict what might happen in a month’s time? Maybe Julian would want to go on a mini-break or something, and Midas being an American company, she only had two weeks’ annual leave.

‘But?’ asked Chris, his blue eyes meeting hers.

‘A week is a long time.’

‘Well, how about a long weekend? It’ll be fun. You get ducks coming right up to the door to ask for bread.’

She looked at him and smiled. She knew it would be fun. But spending a week with Chris Scanlan writing a novel wasn’t really where her heart lay and they both knew it.

‘I’ll think about it, okay?’

‘No skin off my nose, sweetheart,’ said Chris, putting the paper back over his face. ‘But hurry up before Cameron Diaz jumps in. I’ve heard she loves ducks.’

She laughed and threw another crust at him. ‘I’ll think about it.’

By lunchtime, Summer and Adam were sailing out of Poole Harbour, the sail of their forty-foot yacht billowing in the strong breeze as they passed Brownsea Island, heading towards the Solent. Adam was barefoot on a walnut deck warm from the sun, his mouth set in a line of concentration as he piloted the boat single-handedly.

‘Do you want to take the helm while I put a tack in?’ he called, taking Summer’s hand.

‘Me?’ she shouted over the cracking flap of the sail. ‘You don’t want me in charge of this thing, do you?’

‘I take full responsibility,’ said Adam, moving behind her and placing her hands on the big wheel.

Summer shut her eyes, enjoying Adam’s strong arms around her, not quite believing that only twelve hours earlier she had been trapped in a nightclub with Ricardo. But, if she had felt dreadful when she had got up that morning at Adam’s, the salty wind whistling through her ears seemed to have blown anything toxic out of her body.

‘Hard to starboard,’ said Adam, moving to the side, pulling hard on the rope for the headsail.

‘Argh! What do I do? What do I do?’ squealed Summer, as the boom swung towards them.

‘Don’t worry, you’re doing fine,’ smiled Adam, moving back behind her.

‘So is this boat yours then?’ she asked when they were back on a straight course. ‘You must be a pretty good sailor.’

‘She belongs to a friend of mine who lives on the Sandbanks over there,’ he said pointing to a spit of land behind them. Summer had heard of Sandbanks, of course. Her mother was constantly talking about all of the most exclusive places in the country to live.

‘But I do sail a lot. I have a house in Maine so I take a boat out whenever I’m there.’

‘You’re going to think I’m an idiot, but you can’t do all this tacking thing on that boat we were on in Monaco, can you?’ asked Summer. For some reason, she felt okay asking Adam questions like this; she felt safe with him.

Adam smiled and shook his head, reaching into an icebox for a cola.

‘No,
The Pledge
is a motor yacht, it doesn’t have a sail. It’s used more for corporate entertaining than actual sailing. I have a small yacht like this in Dark Harbour, but I’m having a sailing yacht built as we speak in a shipyard in Holland.’

‘What’s it like?’

Adam’s eyes glinted with passion and pleasure. ‘She’s not even half built, but already she takes my breath away. She’s twenty-five metres, a sloop-rigged sailing yacht based on the eighteenth-century French cutters, which just slide through the water, but with the best technology and material that we’ve got today. An aluminium hull, carbon-fibre mast and boom.’

Summer laughed. ‘She sounds beautiful.’

He nodded absent-mindedly out to sea. ‘I’d love to race her in the America’s Cup.’

‘So why don’t you?’

‘It’s the world’s most expensive hobby,’ he shrugged. ‘Your yacht is just the start of it. There’s management, crew, transporting the boat all over the world; it’s a serious business. You’re looking at around twenty million pounds a year to compete seriously.’

‘Wow!’

Summer wondered how rich you had to be before you didn’t even have to think about your limitations. She was sure it wasn’t a good place to be. As Adam said, you had to have your dreams.

After an hour at sea, they sailed into Studland Bay. It was more sheltered and, without the wind of the open sea, the sun burnt down on their bodies.

Adam dropped the anchor as they bobbed a few hundred metres from shore. ‘Do you want to go on land? There’s a mooring close by.’

‘No, I like it here,’ she said softly.

She sounded calm, but her heart was racing. She knew she shouldn’t have come, but she wanted to be here more than anywhere else in the world. She still felt sick when she imagined Karin watching them, angry and betrayed, but they were having too much of a good time. Adam’s fingers felt too good on her skin when he touched her. He had saved her from Ricardo, and swept her away and made her feel alive and safe, sexy and interesting. And a hundred miles away from London, it was just the two of them on the boat, unable to escape from one other.
Not wanting to
, she thought, looking at him squinting in the sun.

He walked towards her and took her face in his hands. ‘I don’t want to go home yet, either,’ he whispered, pulling her in closer. And then they were kissing, pulling at each other’s clothes.

They stumbled down the stairs to the cabin, and Summer
bumped her head on the low beam, giggling. He pulled off his T-shirt and then hers. There was a light scrub of dark hair on his tanned chest which tickled her breasts as he held her close. She licked his neck, his skin tasting of salt.

‘You are so beautiful,’ he whispered, pushing her up onto the bed. He cupped his hand around her breasts, and circled her nipple, round and round until she gasped. Not thinking about anything except the need to feel and taste every inch of each other, they scrambled out of their clothes, his thick cock sliding through her wetness until they were locked together, their bodies coming together with a passion as strong and powerful as the sea. And when she came, the sweetest pulse rippling round her trembling body, she cried out, tears streaming down her cheeks, as she finally understood what the fuss of hot, passionate sex was all about.