‘Then, a couple of years later, I went away on a business trip. She didn’t come – someone had to be there to manage the bar, so she stayed with my mother at the Castle. When I came back, everything was different. It was as if she’d changed overnight. She was still a party girl, but she’d totally lost control. She flirted with every guy in sight, and seemed to hate me. I don’t think she did, not really, but that was how it seemed, at the time.’
‘Why?’ I said, not quite following. ‘What made her change like that?’
He shrugged. ‘She said she didn’t want to be with me anymore. It was hard – I still loved her and I was sure she still loved me, too, but she just went into a spiral of self-destruction. I was sure she was sleeping around, which cut me to the quick. I couldn’t bear the thought of her in some other guy’s arms. Well – you’ll know how that feels.’
I could only nod again, a lump forming in my throat. I knew exactly how it felt.
‘Then, one night,’ he took a deep breath, as if continuing was almost too painful to bear. ‘I came late to the F Bar – I’d been in a meeting with the old man – and she was chatting to this group of guys in the corner. Older men – I’d never seen them in there before. At first, I almost thought she was fighting with them and was about to go over and intervene, but then they walked out and she went with them. Willingly. I didn’t stop her. I didn’t even try to – I was so heartsick, by then.’
‘And?’ It was as if everyone else in the park had faded away, so spellbound was I by his words. I realised, suddenly, that I was holding my breath.
‘And I never saw her again.’ He let out his breath in a long sigh. ‘Neither did anyone else. It broke my mother – took away what little reason she had. She’s never been the same since.’
I didn’t speak for a moment, as everything finally slotted into place. No wonder he’d tried to protect me. No wonder he ran the organisation he did. He wasn’t seedy – he was a heart still bleeding for the loss of its lover.
I moved closer to him – put my hand to his cheek, expecting to find tears there. He looked up at me.
‘I shed all my tears, long ago,’ he said. ‘I was a wreck for the longest time. If it hadn’t been for Ronnie…’ He took a sip of champagne. ‘Ronnie’d been through it, too, in her own way. Her son died, of meningitis, a few years before Aimee disappeared. She was the only one who had any sympathy for me. My mother was too caught up in her own grief. Father…mine was just an irritation to him. Ronnie was…there for me. We comforted each other.’
‘But it didn’t last?’
‘How could it?’ He shrugged again. ‘She was submissive, when we got together, but then she changed. She’d been an overseer at the club for a few years, by that time, and had experimented with switching.’
‘Switching?’ I shook my head – I had no clue what it meant.
‘Trying out the other side of the coin.’ He sat up. ‘I think she’d had enough of submitting, by that time. When she became a Domme, everything about her changed. We still cared about each other, but we just weren’t compatible.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. It sounded so inadequate, but I had no idea what else to say.
‘Don’t be.’ He smiled, briefly. ‘She’s far happier and I don’t think it would’ve lasted, long term, anyway. I think we both knew that, from the start. We were both hiding from ourselves, wrapped up one inside the other and, when that finally subsided, there was really only friendship holding us together. It still holds us together.’ He smiled again, more warmly this time. ‘I can’t see that changing.’
‘I’m glad,’ I said. I meant it. He’d had one hell of a life, for someone who’d seemed so sure of himself when I’d met him. It made him more human, somehow – more approachable – and I was glad he’d told me, even though it was hard to hear him talking with such affection about his past loves.
‘Thank you.’ He smiled again, and this time it was meant for me. He ran his hand down my arm and looked up into my eyes. ‘I’m glad, too. Glad that I met you. My life’s been such a crock of shit, recently. I don’t know how I’d have got through it if I hadn’t had you to focus on.’
I felt tears welling up in my eyes at his candour and I turned away. ‘Thank you,’ I said, fighting to keep them from spilling down my cheeks. ‘I’m glad I met you, too. I don’t know what would’ve happened to me, if I hadn’t.’
He didn’t reply for a moment. When he did, it was to take me by surprise yet again.
‘You’d have been fine,’ he said, sitting up and moving in behind me. He lifted up the brim of my hat and nuzzled into my neck, his breath warm and slightly damp against my skin. ‘I had your back, even before you knew it. You’re not the only psycho stalker in town, you know.’
Twenty Four
Her
It wasn’t until we were in the Aston, on the way back to the Dominion hotel, that I remembered he’d said it. He’d kissed me so passionately, afterwards, that everything else had flown from my mind. The taste of his hot, strawberry-sweetened breath, the feeling of his tongue swirling and mingling with mine, the sensation of safety that came from being wrapped in his arms; these things had taken away all thought, all reason, and replaced it with an almost primal desire to be one with him, to have nothing separating us but our naked skin.
‘Let’s go back to mine,’ he murmured, between kisses. ‘I can’t keep my hands off you a moment longer.’
I’d nodded, unable to speak for the emotions running through me, and we’d gathered up the picnic and headed along the south bank of the Serpentine, its waters still glittering with evening sunlight, towards Park Lane and Stephens.
In the air-conditioned cool of the Aston, his words came back to me.
‘What did you mean?’ I asked. ‘When you said you had my back before I ever knew it?’
‘Just what I said.’ He took his sunglasses off and turned to look at me. His eyes were bluer than ever, and slightly creased at the corners, from where he’d been looking into the sun. It made him look tired, but no less handsome for it. ‘I’d had my eye on you ever since that morning in Max’s office.’
‘But…why?’ I didn’t understand. To say I’d been stand-offish was an understatement. What had made him take an interest in me from so early on?
‘Because I saw you on the news that lunchtime – when you came out of the bank. You’d just been royally shafted and, I suppose, I knew what you were going through, to some extent, having just taken it up the ass myself. Not literally,’ he added, as if he thought it likely I might think so.
‘How?’ I said, digesting this new factoid. His life just seemed to get more and more complicated. ‘What happened?’
‘It was the night before, as a matter of fact.’ His face hardened. ‘It was Charlotte…’
I went to speak, but he cut me off.
‘Yes – that Charlotte. She was with me the night before. She’d set me up. I was waiting to deal with her when I saw you on the news.’
I was waiting to deal with her… The words sent an involuntary shiver down my back. ‘And did you? Deal with her?’
He nodded. ‘Yes. I put an end to her little game, although much good it did me.’ He stared out the window moodily. ‘The story they got from it in the end was far worse.’
I remembered the headline. It had sat above mine on the front page. Fforbes the Filth Monger.
‘But you didn’t kill her,’ I said, hardly daring to breathe. ‘You didn’t, did you?’
He gave a shrug. ‘No, but I don’t suppose I helped matters, if I’m honest.’
It was hardly the reassuring response I’d been looking for. I sat for a moment, before broaching the subject again. ‘But you didn’t do it,’ I said.
He didn’t look at me. ‘Look, Grace. I’m not a saint. I mean, earlier today, I saw a man killed.’
‘Murdered?’
‘Yes, murdered.’
‘Were you involved?’
‘No, but I was partly the cause.’
‘Did you know him, then?’
‘He was an old friend.’