Love & Freedom (20 page)

‘British
GQ
, yes, for a company that sold hand-sewn shirts, and in a couple of editorials, but
GQ
uses a lot of top sportsmen and actors in their ads. I’ve been in
FHM
and
Esquire
and
In Town
, of course. But I’m in more women’s or general interest magazines. And on buses.’

She sorted through the subject in her mind. ‘Do you have to deal with clients?’

‘Not a lot. Ace, my agent, does that. I maintain my website and do Twitter and Facebook. The agency is keen on each of their models having an online presence.’

She wasn’t going to admit that she’d already Googled him. ‘And what comes after? Can you model for all of your life?’

‘People do. They shift their area of operations into
 
…’ He made a face. ‘… I don’t know, ads for vitamins and life insurance. But others become agents or managers or get work on fashion courses. A lot of models are actors or musicians, anyway, so they concentrate on that. But I don’t do that kind of performance.’ He hesitated. ‘I do some web design, which is what I was doing at uni. I look after the websites of several of the models at the agency. And the agency’s site, too.’

She studied him. ‘And you do that so that you have a career to move into?’

‘And I enjoy doing it, I suppose. I don’t get it when men say they do nothing but model. I like to exercise my brain. I do a couple of websites for charities, too, because I’ve got the time.’

He lapsed into silence, chin on his palm. He seemed to want to get something off his chest but he was having a hard time coughing it up.

‘Are you telling me some kind of secret?’

‘I suppose I am.’ His smile stretched slowly, ruefully across his face. ‘I don’t tell Clarissa.’

She laughed. ‘About the web design? But surely she knows?’

He shook his head.

Baffled, ‘Why not? It would seem to me that she’d get off your back, if she knew.’

‘That’s why I don’t tell her.’ He smiled at the waitress, who looked dazzled. ‘I suppose I have some ridiculous idea that she ought to accept me as I am.’

‘You know
 
… last night you were pretty hard on Clarissa.’

He glanced away. Sighed. ‘I’m afraid I’ve always had a highly developed talent for speaking in the heat of the moment and she has an equal talent for pushing my buttons. But, you’re right. I was hard on her. And it would have taken away all the sting if I’d just put my arm around her and said sorry, straight away, wouldn’t it? If I’m three parts lucky bastard then the other part is irritable and I do recognise it – but not normally until the next day. And then I’m sorry for how accurately I aimed hurtful words. And that’s when I apologise. When it’s hardest to do. But, don’t worry, I’ve already sent her a “let’s be friends” text.’ His eyes were rueful, even as he laughed at himself.

His phone began to ring, getting him out of the confession, and he answered with a brief, ‘Hi, Ace.’

He didn’t get up and seek privacy so Honor had no real choice but to listen to his side of the conversation, presumably with his agent, as Ace didn’t seem a common name. They talked about the shoot. And Martyn said, ‘No, I’m not home yet. I’m eating lunch with someone. No, not from the crew. Yes. Yes, she’s pretty.’ His eyes crinkled at Honor. ‘No, I haven’t
 
…’ He took the phone away from his ear. ‘My agent, Ace is coming for dinner tonight. He says he wants to meet you.’

The waitress stopped to clear the table and offer the dessert menu. Honor took it, not so much because she had room for dessert but to give her time to consider. ‘Why would he want to do that?’

Martyn shrugged. ‘Typical, flamboyant, expansive – slightly nosey – Ace.’ A voice buzzed thinly and he put the phone back to his ear, then added, ‘And now he’s heard your accent, he says he loves Americans.’

‘Oh. Well, I guess.’ Now that she’d seen a male model in action, it would probably be interesting to meet his ‘flamboyant and expansive’ agent, too. She imagined someone who wore satin and called everybody ‘darling’.

Ending the call, Martyn chose plain vanilla ice cream but Honor said, ‘I’ll pass. I’ve kind of lost my sweet tooth, working amongst Robina’s cakes all day.’

‘One thing that woman does well is make cakes.’

‘If she heard you say so, she’d be beating down your door to deliver lemon drizzle or rocky road.’

‘Then please don’t tell her. I can run off most things I eat but have never dared let myself get addicted to Robina’s cakes. And they’re positively dangerous if they arrive attached to Robina.’

No trace of Martyn Mayfair the Model remained. He was completely his Eastingdean self, now, leaning into the crook of the wall, his hair drying and tousled as if he’d just come in from walking in the rain. She felt comfortable with this Martyn. The kind of comfortable that had a lasting feel to it. A comfortable she might never tire of
 
… uh-oh.

There was this feeling. As if he was reaching his hand into her chest and stroking her heart. And her heart liked it.

She sat straighter, her breathing quickening like an animal sensing approaching danger.

And the danger was from within herself. A self that already knew that falling for Martyn
 
… wow. Way to improve her emotional stability! She’d have to be a special kind of swivel-eyed loon to make a fool of herself over a pin-up.

Just like Robina.

Chapter Seventeen

She’d come to England to get away from the storms in her life, not to brew up new ones. ‘She says she really loves you,’ she reminded him.

His gaze sharpened, as if he were trying to read her thoughts. ‘I thought we’d covered this – she’s just infatuated, which is uncomfortable for us both. Anyway, there’s no chance–’ he paused, deliberately, –‘
no chance
that I’ll return her feelings.’

‘But I feel bad for her–’

‘Why?’ He pulled himself up from his slouch and planted his elbows on the wobbly little table, bringing his face close, eyes intense.

She halted, unwilling to formulate an explanation. One would be:
You know what? I’m looking for obstacles to put between me and something that’s going to hurt because I was just zapped by this enormous bolt of desire.
For you. And it was scary.
Instead, she said, ‘She doesn’t believe it’s infatuation. She thinks it’s genuine, hopeless love.’

‘It’s not, but why should you feel bad for her? You’ve only known her a few days.’

She paused. ‘Do you have to know someone a long time before you get to care?’

He thought about it. ‘I suppose not. Not in my experience.’

His smile went crooked and the hand around her heart began to squeeze. What was hanging from the edges of his words? She tried to think about Stef. Stef, who’d once been her best friend and protector and, for many years, had been her husband.

You’re fighting mad with Stef
, Sensible Honor reminded her.
Falling for some guy – even if it’s a hunky male model with a cute English accent and buns of steel – is stupid. Did your commonsense crumble with every click of the camera? Did you get a CRUSH for goshsakes? Like some pitiful teenager? Don’t embarrass yourself.
You’ve just taken a pounding and if you hand your heart on a plate to Martyn, with his uncompromising only-single-will-do lifestyle, it’ll end up as hamburger meat.

The waitress arrived with a tall glass filled with scoops of ice cream as white as snowballs and Martyn released her from his gaze as he picked up a long spoon from the saucer and took a mouthful. ‘Mm. Good.’

Honor seized the opportunity to redirect the conversation. ‘What’s the nuddy?’

He almost choked, covering his mouth with his napkin while his eyes sparkled. ‘The nuddy?’

Her stomach crept with embarrassment. She must’ve said something idiotic. ‘What? Lily said it. She asked if you’d been sunbathing in the nuddy.’

He swallowed and cleared his throat with a swig of water. ‘The nude. She was asking if I’d sunbathed nude.’

‘Oh!’ Her face fired up as hot as the day Martyn had first found her, getting sunstroke, and she made herself busy studying the coffee column of the menu.

He turned back to his ice cream. Just when she felt her temperature returning to normal, he drawled, ‘I do sunbathe in the nude.’

Involuntarily, her eyes flew to his.

‘But not on the beach,’ he added.

Her voice strangled, but she had to ask. ‘So
 
… where?’

His eyes were dancing again. ‘Come tonight, and I’ll show you. Where I do it, I mean. Not me doing it.’

By the time she’d bought a book about Arundel to add to her collection and they had followed one of the walks that it suggested, up and down the steep little lanes, over cobbles and flags and elevated sidewalks, in and out of quaint shops, it was early evening before they began to make their way back to Eastingdean.

Fresh air and exercise and the passing Sussex scenery had almost rocked her to sleep by the time he drew up in the small lot behind the shops of Starboard Walk. Although she had only tentatively accepted his dinner invitation, somehow she slipped into following him up the metal stairs. Yeah, ‘somehow’. Right.

Inside his apartment, Honor again kicked off her shoes in deference to the blond carpet, which felt like velvet on her feet as she prowled around and Martyn took trays from his stainless steel refrigerator and posted them into his stainless steel oven. The sofas, black suede, were angled towards a huge TV on the wall. Cream slatted blinds shielded the French doors that led out on to a curved black metal balcony. She pressed her nose against the glass and saw Marine Drive rumbling by, right below. No nude sunbathing on the balcony, then
 
…

The open-plan design meant windows all around, overlooking not just Marine Drive and the backs of the houses that ran along the road, and The Butts, but also any cars parked behind the flat. If not for the dips and folds of the land, she might have been able to see the back of the bungalow.

Between the sofas stood a piece of leather-topped furniture that, she guessed, doubled as both table and footstool. A large black laptop computer, the kind that was only portable if you were a weight lifter, lay folded shut, on top. Beside one of the sofas, papers and magazines were piled haphazardly on the floor with untidily kicked-off blue canvas shoes and a khaki jacket that had landed like a parachute.

‘Red, white or rosé?’ Martyn called.

‘Rosé, please.’ There was no point asking what they were eating because she could never remember what to drink with what. Rosé meant she didn’t have to bother.

Then he was strolling across the acre of carpet, a glass in each hand. The sun, slanting through the rear window, threw shadows across his face. He gave her one of the glasses. ‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers,’ she echoed, suddenly aware that she was alone with him in his apartment.

‘Let me show you the rest of the flat.’ He led her back to the entrance hall, where the wooden floor was suddenly chill to her toes. He opened a door, ‘Downstairs loo.’ Mainly white, but for a cobalt-blue-tiled floor.

The next door: ‘Office.’

A desk, a printer, a fax machine, some filing cabinets, trays piled high, a roll of tape in a dispenser, a spilling holdall. ‘It looks like an explosion happened in here.’ She liked the untidiness, liked that he was only perfect when captured by the camera.

‘It looks better when I remember to shut some drawers.’ He shoved shut one filing-cabinet and four desk drawers, improving the situation only slightly but at least allowing Honor to squeeze into the small square space. Over the desk was a glossy image of a younger Martyn, hair shorter and spiked, staring down at a pouty, tousled female model, gazing up at him. He was easing a strap from Pouty’s perfect shoulder with such an expression of hunger that it seemed the shutter must have clicked only an instant before he ate her right up. Honor swallowed. He’d looked at her like that, too, as if she were on the menu. But, in her case, not on his diet sheet – like Robina’s cakes.

He shifted self-consciously. ‘That was the first ad that got into
FHM
. It’s a bit narcissistic to frame it but nobody usually comes in here. It was a career landmark.’ He bustled her out as if he wasn’t much more at ease with Martyn Mayfair the Model than she was. He steered her towards the staircase that spiralled up from the centre of the floor. ‘The other rooms are in the roof, so the upstairs is a touch smaller.’

The stairs were steep, each one a wedge of polished wood on the black metal frame, opening up on to a landing and three doors. The first stood open. ‘Spare room. That’s where Ace will sleep tonight.’

‘He’s staying over?’ She glanced in at the white-and-cool-green room.

‘He’s a friend, not just my agent.’ Another door. ‘Bathroom.’ The floor and wall tiles were palest blue and a bathtub in size XXL took up a quarter of the space. The final door he opened and walked through. She followed into a huge bedroom with windows set in the sloping walls, and a super-king-sized-this-is-the-biggest-I’ve-ever-seen bed. She looked away. Beside the bed, another pair of French doors was set into a dormer. He threw them wide, exhibiting a few square feet of balcony and a great view over the gardens and rooftops of the houses on Marine Drive. ‘It’s nice to look out but looking down isn’t so hot – at the car park and the outbuildings belonging to the shops.’