Never Leave Me (45 page)

‘You're lying,' he said smoothly. ‘The children are at school. I know, I spoke to Greg on the phone only five minutes ago.'

‘Oh …' She closed her eyes. He was her friend. Her best friend. And she wanted to see him more than anything in the world. She opened her eyes. She was not in love with him. She was not going to go to bed with him. She was panicking unncessarily.

‘It will take you about five hours to drive up here. I'll meet you outside the Presidio. And then we'll go for lunch.'

‘Good,' he rasped.
‘Tu m'as manqué.'
I missed you.

‘I missed you too,' she said, and as she put the receiver back on its rest, her hand was trembling.

The house was empty. The children were at school. It was her housekeeper's day off. She walked quickly up the wide sweep of the stairs, refusing to think any further than that she was getting ready to meet a friend for lunch. If Greg had been home no doubt they would have gone to meet Luke together. But Greg hadn't been home. And he wouldn't be home until late. He would be with Jacqueline Pleydall. She stepped into her bedroom, turning on the shower with a sharp twist of her hand. She mustn't think about it. To think about it would be to go mad. She undressed quickly, stepping beneath the steaming spray of water, turning her face upwards, closing her mind to everything but the feel of the water on her skin, the fragrance of the soap, refusing to acknowledge the abyss yawning wide at her feet.

She dressed as if she were going to meet Greg. A cream silk dress that she had bought in France. A long strand of pearls dipping to precisely the right length of the softly draped neckline, her stockings sheer, her ivory kid pumps high. She swept her hair off her neck, piercing the neat twist she created with long, tortoiseshell pins, spraying Je Reviens on her throat and wrists. She paused as she left the room, looking at herself in her full-length mirror. She looked very French. Very chic. Not at all American. It was how Greg liked her to look. A spasm of pain crossed her eyes. She picked up a small clutch bag that matched her dress, closing the door behind her, running lightly down the stairs. She mustn't think of Greg. To think of Greg was to think of Jacqueline Pleydall. Of Jacqueline Pleydall enjoying his kisses. His love-making.

She slid behind the wheel of her Lincoln Zephyr, turning on the ignition, forcing herself to think instead of where she would take Luke for lunch. She should have booked a table at the Atlantis. She accelerated, moving smoothly from first gear to second to third. Below her, in the Bay, a large freighter was slowly gliding beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, the sun dazzling on the line of foam in its wake. It would be pleasant to eat down by the water. Perhaps they could go to one of the Italian restaurants on the wharf or to Pier 39.

For three hours she browsed around the shops, buying a sweater for Lucy, a leather belt for Dominic, and then, refusing to acknowledge her rising tension, she drove towards the Presidio. She glanced at her watch, knowing that she was still early, that Luke would still be on the freeway. As she eased to a halt, the door of a blue Cadillac parked a little way ahead of her flew open and Luke catapulted out onto the sidewalk, sprinting towards her.

She was only halfway out of the car when he grabbed hold of her, his hand closing around her wrist, pulling her out of the driving seat and upright against him.

‘You must have driven like a bat out of hell,' she began, laughing, and then her laughter faded. His body was hard and strong against hers. She could hear his heart slamming. See the hunger in his eyes.

‘God, but I've missed you,' he said fiercely, and uncaring of the curious stares of passing pedestrians, his arms tightened around her and his mouth came down unhesitatingly on hers.

She knew then what she had known and refused to acknowledge ever since the moment she had agreed to meet him. She was no longer going to spurn his advances. He loved her and her body was desperate for love. With a low moan of capitulation, she pressed herself feverishly against him, her arms flying around his neck, her mouth parting willingly beneath his.

A tremor ran through him. She sensed his astonishment. His incredulity. He pushed her away from him, holding her savagely by the arms, his eyes burning questioningly into hers. At what he saw there he whipped open the Lincoln's passenger seat door, bundling her inside, striding round to the driver's seat and sliding swiftly behind the wheel.

‘Where to?' he asked tersely, gunning the car into life.

‘I don't know …' her voice was hoarse ‘Anywhere …'

He shot out into the main stream of traffic, heading south, and she knew that there would be no lunch. That it was not a restaurant he was searching for. She didn't even notice the name of the motel. It was as if all the pent-up sexual longings of years were screaming for fulfilment. She clung to his arm as he veered into the parking lot, slamming open her car door the instant he screamed to a halt, running with him across the tarmac to the reception desk. Luke made no pretence of decency. He didn't explain their lack of luggage. He didn't refer to her as his wife. He simply booked a double room, snatched the key from the bell-boy's hand, striding along thickly carpeted corridors towards it as if his life depended on the speed with which he reached it.

He didn't ask her anything; didn't speak to her. The door slammed shut behind him and he seized hold of her, crushing her against him, his mouth savaging hers.

She knew what she was doing. She knew that she wasn't in love with him. That she never would be in love with him. That what was taking place was an act of lust, not love. Her lips ground passionately beneath his. It was lust that she craved. She burned with the need to give vent to the sexuality she had suppressed for so long. Luke knew her. He knew things about her that no one but her father knew. He knew, and he didn't care. It was the only aphrodisiac she needed.

They fell together on the bed, tearing with animal-like ferocity at each other's clothes. His shirt was open to the waist, but he didn't remove it. To remove it would have meant releasing his hold on her, and now that his hands were at last on her naked flesh he wouldn't release his hold for a second. The exquisite French dress had been ripped from her shoulders, baring her breasts, the skirt pushed high, the silk laying in a tumbled swathe around her waist. Neither of them had consideration for the other. There was no gentleness. No tenderness. He spreadeagled her beneath him, unzipping his fly, crushing her breasts in both his hands as he plunged into her with the pent up longing of years.

Her nails gouged his shoulders. She bit him, tasting blood, arching her spine, her head back, eyes closed as spasm after spasm rocked through her. But it was not Luke's name she cried out as her body gave itself to the pleasure so long denied by guilt. It was Greg's.

He couldn't get enough of her. He was blind and deaf, lost in a world that held only Lisette. Lisette; crying out beneath him. Lisette; her mouth and tongue avid for his. Lisette; surrendering utterly, her legs around him, her nails scoring his flesh, as hungry for him as he had been, for years, for her. He felt himself spurt into her, heard himself shout with triumph, and then, his heart crashing against his ribs, he collapsed, spent, on top of her.

For a long time neither of them moved. Motes of dust danced in the slatted light of the blinds. In a distant room music played. The pillows were on the floor, the sheets rucked around them. He lifted himself up on his arms, staring down at her. ‘Why?' he asked, ‘after all these years, Lisette. Why now?'

Slowly she opened her eyes and he saw pain and defeat in their violet-dark depths. ‘Because you know me,' she said at last, her voice bleak. ‘Because you love me as I am.'

‘And Greg doesn't?'

She rolled away from him, standing and pulling her dress up on her shoulders, walking to the window. ‘No,' she said, gazing through the slatted blinds at a miniscule lawn and a scattering of trees. ‘Greg doesn't know me at all. I made myself a stranger to him when I allowed him to think that Dominic was his son. I thought that by that lie I would keep him. Instead, I lost him.'

‘And you still love him?'

She turned to face him. Between them there had never been any lies. ‘Yes,' she said, ‘but apart from the early days when we were in Paris, I have never been able to show him how much. And now he no longer cares.'

He lay on the bed, raised up on one elbow. It was pointless to ask if she loved him. He knew that she didn't. But now they had become lovers he knew that they would remain lovers. He said brusquely, ‘Unpin your hair.'

His body was less powerful than Greg's. Leaner and darker. The tight black curls on his chest grew low, skimming his taut belly, merging with the thick tangle of his pubic hair. His body wasn't the body she wanted. He wasn't the man she loved. But with him she experienced a sense of freedom that she knew she would experience with no one else. There were no secrets between them. No pretence.

Slowly she lifted her arms and eased the tortoiseshell pins free. The thick, glossy cloud of her hair tumbled to her shoulders, swinging forward at either side of her face. Luke's eyes gleamed. That was how he had first seen her. Not sleek and sophisticated but with her face flushed with exertion and danger, her eyes bright, her hair loose and free.

‘Come back to bed,' he said huskily. ‘The afternoon is only just beginning.'

She stood, framed by the light seeping through the shutters and then slowly she slipped her dress from her shoulders, easing it down over her hips, stepping free of it. As she moved towards the bed she was overcome by a feeling of inevitability. This was the moment they had both been travelling towards for so long. The moment Luke had always known they would reach. She knelt on the bed, the slatted sunlight falling in golden bars on her nakedness. ‘I don't love you,' she said as he cupped her breasts in his olive-toned hands. ‘Whatever happens between us, there can be no lies, Luke.' She shivered as his fingers brushed her nipples, as he drew her close against him. ‘I'm so very weary of lies.' she whispered, and then he slid her beneath him, his mouth covering hers, and the only sound to fill the room was the urgent, hoarse cries of their love-making.

It was dusk by the time they walked back across the motel's car-park to her car. ‘I fly back to London in two days'time,' he said as he opened her door for her. ‘I won't be able to see you again before I leave, but I'll be back soon. Within the month.' He slid behind the wheel and eased the Lincoln out and onto the freeway. ‘And no more motel rooms. The ex-creative director of Johnson and Matthie's Los Angeles office is in London for a year. He's offered me his beach house at Carmel any time that I'm over here long enough to make use of it. And from now on, I'm going to be here quite a lot.'

‘And Annabel?' she asked, a shadow touching her eyes. ‘Won't she want to come with you?'

‘No,' he said unequivocally. ‘We don't have that kind of marriage, Annabel hates to leave London. Her friends are there. Her social life continues quite happily whether I'm at her side or not. Coffee with women friends at Fortnum's. Afternoons at the Royal Academy. First nights at Covent Garden. Our affair will take nothing away from Annabel. She has my respect. She'll always have that, but she's never had my love.'

Lisette looked across at his hawk-like silhouette. ‘Not ever?' she asked, suddenly chilled. He turned his head towards her, amused. ‘No,' he said. ‘How could she? All the love that I'm capable of has been yours and you know it.'

‘Poor Annabel.'

‘Annabel is perfectly happy. She has a beautiful home in Knightsbridge, a delightful daughter, a husband who rarely refuses any of her requests. If you need to feel sorry for anyone, feel sorry for me. How the hell am I going to survive with the width of America and the Atlantic between us?'

‘You'll find a way,' she replied, knowing that she must not think of Annabel.

He grinned, swerving out of the mainstream of traffic, drawing to a halt behind the dark blue Cadillac that he had driven from Los Angeles. ‘I'll telephone you,' he said, switching off the ignition, turning towards her, his face fierce. ‘And when I do I'll give you the address of the cottage in Carmel.' He pulled her close, his hand sliding up into her hair, holding her fast as his mouth bruised hers. Seconds later he was gone, slamming the Lincoln's door behind him, striding switfly towards his hired Cadillac.

She slid across into the Lincoln's driving seat, watching as he gunned the Cadillac into life, deftly easing it out into the busy stream of traffic heading south. She waited until she could no longer see him and then she turned the key in the Lincoln's ignition, knowing that Greg would already be home, that he would ask her courteously how she had spent her afternoon, that once again she would be caught up in the familiar pattern of deceit.

‘Did Lisette leave a message as to where she was going?' Greg asked Simonette as she supervised the children's supper.

Simonette shook her head. ‘No, Mr Dering. I had a dental appointment this morning and when I got back after lunch, her car had gone but there was no message.'

‘Perhaps Mummy has gone to Auntie Chrissie's,' Lucy suggested helpfully. ‘Did you know that Auntie Chrissie is going to get married and that I'm going to be a bridesmaid? I'm to have a pink satin dress with rosebuds on the sleeves and all around the hem, and …'

Dominic snorted derisively and Lucy glared at him. ‘Dominic is jealous because he thinks he'll look silly if he's a pageboy and so he isn't going to be anything at all.'

‘Thank goodness,' Dominic said with heart-felt relief. ‘Aunt Chrissie wanted me to wear a white satin shirt and white satin trousers.' He grinned at his father. ‘I told her I was too old to be dressed like that, that I'd just look stupid, and she's asked her boyfriend's nephew to be a pageboy instead.'