Seduce Me Page 20

  Finally, I understand the confusion and vulnerability Lana had shown in her notes. I am afraid. Hold me, I want to say, but I don’t because I don’t want to taint my happiness. No, no, I won’t react now. I will think of it all tomorrow. I can unravel it then. Tomorrow is another day. Now I will just love this man with all my heart.

  Still, I must have looked mournful for he caresses my cheek, and says, ‘The only thing we can really do is live our life to its fullest. We may be among the last of the humans to live and die on this world.’

  I smile softly up at him, relieved that he is not Blake. He doesn’t have to constantly watch his back. Lana is braver than I. I don’t know if I have the strength to risk my man to machinations of sinister men like Monfort.

  In the car I call Lana. She sounds sleepy. ‘Don’t go swimming alone after you turn thirty,’ I tell her.

  For a moment there is silence. Then she gets it and there is bubble of laughter. ‘Oh! wonderful. I’m so pleased. Is he with you now?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘OK, tell me everything later, but we go out to dinner next week.’

  ‘That will be brilliant.’

  ‘Speak to you soon, babe.’

  ‘Lana?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I love you, you know.’

  ‘We were always meant to be sisters.’

  Lana Barrington

  Invictus

  (Unconquerable)

  It matters not how strait the gate,

  How charged with punishments the scroll,

  I am the master of my fate:

  I am the captain of my soul.

  I end the call and smile. Stretching deeply I roll over and bury my face in Blake’s pillow. Ah! The smell of my darling’s head. It’s Sunday. The chef has his day off and Blake makes breakfast, I cook lunch, and we order in, or go out for dinner. Early Sunday morning is Blake’s time with Sorab. I lift my head and hit the button for Kitchen on the baby monitor. Blake’s voice is tinny on the monitor. He has no idea that I often lie in bed listening to his monologs. Crazy guy, he is talking to his fifteen-month-old son about his business deals.

  I look at the time. It is still too early to call Billie.

  I am dying to hear what happened between her and Jaron Rose. He surprised me. Billie had described a man she found in a club where everyone was off their cakes on drugs, and given me to believe that he was a rough and ready lad, who had taken her to an unremarkable, badly furnished flat, but the Jaron Rose who came to the exhibition was dressed in expensive clothes, hand-made shoes and spoke in a posh voice. And when he spoke to me he had come across as highly educated and suave. In fact, he was so sophisticated, charming and mysterious, he reminded me of James Bond. As if he might have been a debonair spy or something.

  ‘So what do you do, Mr. Rose?’

  ‘Please, you must call me Jaron.’

  ‘Jaron.’

  ‘Property,’ he said with a knowing smile. ‘I buy and sell property.’

  ‘Is the market good at the moment?’

  ‘Dazzling.’

  He was so smooth and debonair that for the life of me I could not imagine a man such as him going to a club like Fridge and picking up girls with spider tattoos running up their necks. He was also with someone, a woman who draped herself possessively around his broad chest and looked daggers at Billie when she was introduced, but I saw him before Billie did, and the look in his face. He looked, as Billie would describe it, as if someone had pushed a cattle prod up his ass. And what of that fire of wild joy that briefly lit his eyes. He took Billie’s hand and held it for seconds longer than polite society required. Enough to pass on its own message.

  ‘It’s been a long time.’

  ‘Has it?’ Billie replied coolly.

  ‘Sometimes you win the lottery and lose the ticket.’

  ‘Faint heart never won fuck all,’ Billie retorted sweetly.

  ‘Introduce me, darling,’ the woman with him urged. Her voice was honeyed but there was a warning there, a deadly one. I am absolutely certain it said, ‘Behave.’

  A shadow passed over his eyes. For a second he looked like a damned soul. ‘Of course, darling. This is the inimitable Billie. Billie, meet my fiancée, Ebony.’

  ‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ Ebony said sweetly, but her eyes clearly said, this is my turf. Go away. Get your own.

  I get out of bed, brush my teeth quickly and go down the stairs. Every time I come down these fantastically grand stairs I almost cannot believe that I live here. That this is my house. That it is actually in my name. I cross the marble floor and make for the kitchen.

  Sorab is sitting in his high chair and watching his father with big eyes. Blake is beating eggs. They both turn to look at me at the same time and my heart swells with pride. My beautiful boys.

  First I kiss my son. ‘Good morning, darling,’ I say, then I go up to Blake and kiss him. ‘I love you so much.’

  ‘Show me how much?’

  ‘I’m not dislocating my arms this early in the morning.’

  He laughs.

  ‘Lana.’

  We both turn towards Sorab and then look at each other with astonished faces.

  ‘Did he just say “Lana”?’ Blake asks.

  I laugh excitedly. ‘I can’t believe it. Other children start with babbling and my son calls me by my name.’

  I go to Sorab and put my face level with his. ‘Mummy,’ I say.

  ‘Lana,’ he repeats loudly.

  ‘Stubborn little thing, aren’t you?’ I pick him up, all warm and sweet-smelling and nuzzle him. He smells of milk. One day this smell will be gone. I dread that day. ‘Julie called. Good news. Vann and she seem to have ironed out their differences.’

  Blake cuts a bit of butter and puts it into the pan on the stove. ‘You think it’s a good match, don’t you?’

  ‘Made in heaven. What are we doing today?’

  ‘Feel like doing a bit of sunbathing?’

  I put Sorab back into his high chair. ‘What?’

  ‘We are going to the Île de Groix for the weekend.’

  ‘Since when? I’m not prepared.’

  ‘All you need is a bikini and some toiletries. Gerry will meet us in the plane in two hours. Tom will be here in an hour.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I never kid about important things.’

  I shake my head in wonder.

  ‘Come on. It’ll be fun.’

  ‘Do you ever wonder what life would have been like for you if Rupert had not taken me to that restaurant that night?’

  He shudders. ‘Don’t even go there.’

  I walk up to him and push my body up against his. His reaction is instant.

  ‘You’re hard!’

  ‘And you’re wet!’

  ‘What’re you going to do about it, then?’

  ‘You’ll see, after I’ve charmed you with langoustines and champagne and when you’re on your back on the sand, the sun beating down on your naked body, and the waves lapping against your legs.’

  ‘Mnnnn… I can smell the butter starting to burn.’

  He doesn’t move away, simply grins and snatches the pan away from the fire ring.

  I stand on my tiptoes and kiss the tip of his nose. ‘Why don’t you go out into the garden with Sorab and I’ll make breakfast?’

  He strokes my throat, his eyes passionate and fierce. ‘Until I met you I never knew anybody who was…pure. You will never understand what would have happened to me, what I would have become if we had not met that night, because you are too good…too pure to understand. And even if I try to tell you, you will not believe me.’

  ‘But we did meet,’ I tell him with a smile.

  Outside the sun is shining brightly.

  “Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”

  Vernor Vinge, Technological Singularity.

  Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in per
petual balance with nature

  —Georgia Guidestones,

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones

  Bonus Material

  POV

  Blake Law Barrington

  I knew something was wrong. I knew the way you know someone behind you is staring at you. A prickling. I began to sprint towards the marquee, faster and faster. Even before I got to the entrance I heard Victoria’s voice: she was screaming hysterically. Some slow moving part of my brain—but she’s not invited. Through the crowd, I saw Lana, standing with her hands held loosely by the sides of her ruined dress. And her face… Oh God, her face: white, slack about the mouth, beaten.

  Utterly devastated.

  I felt like a man who was coming out of a thirty-year coma. Disassociated from my frozen body, but aware of the crash of my heart, the roar of my blood in my ears, and the demon sucking at my belly.

  I had only been gone for a few minutes. It was breathtaking how effectively and easily all my careful planning had been laid to waste. Lana’s disgrace could not have been more complete. How happy she had been only a few minutes ago.

  My immediate and instinctive reaction was to run to her and spirit her away from the mess that was our wedding, away from the eyes of all those mean-eyed, cut-glass accented parasites gathered around her, all whom I know were secretly happy to see her humiliated.

  I hated them ferociously, then.

  But the cold part of me, the one my father had ruthlessly nurtured, told me that that was not the Barrington way. Here, in the scene after the bullet had struck, and the deer had sprinted its last stumbling yard and collapsed with the final hush of all things, I had to put my hand into the hat, and pull out, not the crows that took flight at the sound of the gunshot, but the deer before it jumped, froze with terror, and ran, while mortally wounded. I had to restore my love to her earlier brilliance.

  I took a deep breath and walked into the situation. I willed my legs not to, but they quickened anyway. I couldn’t stop them striding to get to her faster. I saw Quinn put a protective arm around her shoulder. She did not respond to his touch.

  She was looking with wide, unseeing eyes into the crowd. She was looking for me! Tears came into my eyes. Because of me she has been hurt her again. My head felt like it was underwater, but I was breathing fire. I bit down on my guilt.

  I’ll make it right again, I promised.

  Finally, I stood before her.

  Quinn took his hand away, and the gawking horde of self-satisfied simpers dissolved into inconsequential shadows. She raised her shocked gaze up to me. We locked eyes. She was mortally wounded, but still breathing—still breathing. I saw clearly her shame, her desire to slink away and hide. She was begging me to hurry her away from her disgrace. But there would be no running and no hiding for us. My wife would stand taller than them.

  ‘She’ll never stop, will she?’ she gasped. Her eyes were huge, like those of a child who’s been slapped when it has done no wrong—wounded, confused and frightened by the world around it.

  ‘No harm can befall a single hair on your head while I am alive.’ My voice did not come out choked with the anger and horror I felt. It was a show of power and impregnability. That encouraged me. I took her hands in mine and metaphysically let the strength inside me flow into her.

  Tears filled her eyes and shimmered precariously at the rims. ‘My dress—’ she whispered hoarsely.

  ‘Can be recreated to the last stitch. Remember…’ I reminded tenderly. Then I simply gazed deeply into her eyes with all the love I felt for her. You’re my heart, my life and my whole world, my eyes said. Can’t you see that all of this is nothing? None of it matters. There is only you and me and our love. I’m besotted with you. All these people could disappear tomorrow and we would still be happy. Who cares what they think?

  She stared at me. Did the layers of impressions press through? Maybe. The color was coming back to her face. She blinked, and the tears that were brimming in her eyes, spilled over. With one finger I gently wiped first one cheek and then the other.

  ‘Thank God for waterproof mascara,’ I said.

  She sniffed and offered up a ghost of a smile.

  ‘That’s my baby,’ I said, and raised my hand. It was the cue the organizers understood. Instantly, all the lights cut out except for the twinkling lights in the black ceiling. Two spotlights come on, and, searching the room, found us.

  She looked surprised. The dance was not due till later, but now was the perfect time. I smiled at her.

  Into the darkness came the disembodied voice of Barry White, ‘We got it together, didn’t we?’ At the sound of his low smooth guffaw, Lana smiled at me. Her beautiful forgiving eyes twinkled. And suddenly I was exhilarated. I loved her so much I felt my chest expand.

  ‘Love you,’ she mouthed.

  When the vibrating haunting sound came, she moved her feet into position. The keys of a piano tinkled and Rihanna’s unmistakable, silky voice cut through the dark, ‘Shine bright like a diamond.’

  Inside the spotlights, I curled one hand around her delicate little one while my other went to rest lightly on the small of her back. Then I was whirling her away and we were dancing our first dance. Our movements were so perfectly matched that the place became still. Not one person moved.

  I knew we looked good together, but under the spotlights perhaps we looked special. I looked into Lana’s eyes and got into the spirit of the dance, and the rest of the world dissolved. This is you and me, girl. Just us. She twisted her hips quickly from side to side, once, twice, thrice, then allowed her body to fall towards me.

  I caught her and raising her high into the air held her aloft. Our eyes locked. The moment became magic. The notes held, shimmered. I returned her to the ground and we executed the large graceful circles we had practiced under the tutelage of Plazaola. I held her hand high above her head and twirled her fast as if she was a long corkscrew. While she was still spinning I caught her and wrapping my arms around her kissed her. It was long and deep and full of something that had never been there before. Then the music was over, and as if released, the spectators came alive and broke into applause. Even they could not deny the beauty of the moment.

  She turned startled eyes towards them, and my eyes scanned the faces for Billie. I found her at the edge. She stood unsmiling, her hands resolutely clasped in front of her. I nodded at her. She understood immediately and started walking towards us. Three spotlights simultaneously hit the stage and found Rhianna. She was clapping. True to form the celebrity mad crowd gasped with pleasure and surprise.

  ‘Yeah, it’s me,’ the star said and laughed. She held her arm out in our direction. ‘I dropped in to congratulate the new couple. Give a hand, everybody, to Mr. and Mrs. Blake Law Barrington.’

  I smiled politely and swung my eyes down to Lana. She had her hand clasped over her mouth with delight. This was a surprise for her too. Everybody clapped and cheered. I curled my arm around her waist and looked at her indulgently, proudly. Let them all see: there is nothing, nothing they can do to hurt us. She is my responsibility. My property.

  ‘Thank you,’ Rihanna shouted into the mic. ‘Shall we get this party on the road?’

  ‘Yeah,’ the guests replied.

  ‘I don’t think I heard that.’

  ‘Yeah,’ came the louder, more definite reply back.

  Dancers surrounded her and began gyrating. She started her next number, Don’t Stop The Music.

  Billie was standing beside us. I let go of Lana, and she looked up at me and smiled gratefully. Billie linked the fingers of her right hand through Lana’s, and, gently kissing her cheek, led her away.

  One of the security guys came up to me while I was watching the girls leave. I inclined my head slightly and listened while he explained that Victoria had used the invitation card meant for Lady Phelim. The anger returned to my limbs. When Lana was swallowed by the throng, I took my mobile out and called Brian. They were in the music room of the west wing.

/>   I went across the lawn to the house. A man in a bouncer’s suit and a Bluetooth in his ear stood at the door. When he saw me approach he held open the door. Brian and another man were standing on either side of a sofa, and Victoria was sitting down on it calmly waiting for me. One leg was curled under her and the other was swinging slightly. When she saw me she smiled insolently.

  ‘You refused to invite me. So I invited myself.’

  I looked at the table. Brian had laid the four blades on it. I looked at her hand. There were some remnants of sticking tape left on it. She had been intending to slash Lana. The surge of anger in my body is frightening. It is like the shrill screaming of a peacock. It startles and electrifies me. But my eyes return to her, genteel. I never give my enemies the satisfaction of rousing any emotion in me. And I wasn’t going to start with her.

  ‘I wanted to give her a present,’ she explained pleasantly.

  I tore my eyes away from the gleaming blades. I was so angry I wanted to strangle her with my bare hands. ‘You’re going to prison,’ I said harshly.

  She giggled. ‘No, I’m not.’

  I looked at her, perplexed, hunting for clues. Was she pretending to be crazy?

  ‘Let’s make a run for it. Is the car ready?’

  ‘Are you fucking mad?’ I growled.

  ‘Help me, Blake. Don’t let them take me away from you. They want to shrink my heart,’ she whispered suddenly, her expression oddly vacant and yet her voice was bordering on hysteria.

  I had seen that expression before. The unsightly memory of when I had last set eyes on her came back. Just for an instant that look had flashed across her face, but I had not wanted to believe it.