Fast Friends (57 page)

But at this moment he realized as his
hand slid down her
back
and she gave a small moan of pleasure against his mouth,
he had never been happier in his entire life.

By shifting slightly on to his side he manoeuvred them
both into a more comfortable position. Without taking his lips from
hers he ran gentle fingers along the sleek curves
of her waist
and hips then lightly played along the slender line of her
thigh. He was so aroused that he knew she must be able to feel him against her
other leg, now stretched between his own. Slowly,
very slowly, taking care not to alarm her, he outlined her lips with his
tongue and allowed his hand to travel back up to her
waist. Beneath the
shell-pink cashmere sweater he encountered
the
irresistible silky warmth of her skin. God, she had lost
weight. But her
breasts were still as gorgeous as they had always
been. His mouth brushed her cheek, then her faintly scented
neck.
When it touched the sensitive hollow above her collarbone she sighed, her
fingernails raking his shoulder, her hips moving
imperceptibly against him and he thought he would explode
with
joy. Camilla wanted him, really wanted him.

And this time, he vowed silently, he wouldn’t let her
down. Then he felt the wetness of a teardrop on his temple.

‘Nico, we can’t,’ she whispered, her voice husky. ‘We
really can’t. It isn’t right.’

‘Of course it’s right.’ He was licking her salty cheeks
and dropping light butterfly kisses around her mouth. ‘I just want to make you
happy.’

Camilla managed a faint smile. ‘I thought I told you to
stop
being noble,’ she said with a feeble
attempt at humour.
His eyes glittered with answering amusement.

‘
Well, maybe I’d be making myself happy too.’

But his heart sank as, with infinite
regret, she stroked his
cheek. ‘We
still can’t.
I
can’t,’ she said softly, and it occurred to him all of a
sudden that she hadn’t slept with anyone at all for almost a year, since Matt
had died. She was probably afraid of
breaking
that link with him. It was a traumatic hurdle to
overcome.

‘
I understand, Cami. I
know how much you loved Matt,’ he
said with difficulty, ‘but he wouldn’t
want you to lock yourself away. Don’t think that you’d be betraying him . .

‘Oh Nico, I didn’t mean that.’ She was half laughing now,
through her tears, and squeezing his arm. He shifted slightly on
the settee, realizing that she was turning him
down and
wondering why a certain part of his anatomy still hadn’t got
the
message. ‘It’s not me, it’s
you.
We’ve
just spent half an hour
sorting out your marriage, thinking of ways to
save it. How is sleeping with me going to help that, you fool? You can’t be
unfaithful to Caroline.’

‘
If it’ll help you change your mind,’ he said,
unwilling to
give up this easily, ‘it wouldn’t be the first time.’ No
need to
mention the fact that the first time
had been with Roz. He
would spare her that unnecessary
detail.

‘Well, that has to stop,’ she told him firmly. ‘A bit of
fidelity might work wonders for the two of you.’

‘
OK. After tonight?’ he
suggested, making one last-ditch
attempt and giving her his most
beguiling smile.

‘
Don’t Nico.’ This time
she laughed aloud, in control of
herself again. ‘I would never sleep
with a married man. I know only too well how it feels to be the jilted wife,
remember. We
shouldn’t even have gone as far
as we did tonight, but you
caught me at a vulnerable moment. And I’d had
more wine than
I’m used to,’ she added,
glancing at the two empty bottles on
the
coffee table. ‘But thank you for the offer. It was very
generous of you.’

Generous, Christ! thought Nico
helplessly. How could she
not know that he was crazy about her? Since he couldn’t think
of anything else to do, he lit another cigarette and
watched the blue smoke spiral towards the ceiling.

Ah well, he decided ruefully, at least
he and Camilla could
still be friends which was, when you came to think of it, all he
had been expecting anyway when he had turned up here. For
a few glorious minutes he had believed that there would be more, but those
hopes had been smartly dashed.

He would be a good loser. He would not sulk. It was just
so very
unfair
though, he reflected with a wry sideways glance at
Camilla, that the only woman in the world he really wanted was
practically the only woman in the world who didn’t
want him
back.

‘
I know it was generous of
me,’ he said, teasing her as she
had teased him. ‘It’s because I’m such a wonderful
guy.’

‘
Nice,’
corrected Camilla shrewdly. ‘You’re basically a
nice
guy. Wonderful is stretching it a bit far. You’ll
be wonderful
when you stop cheating on your wife.’

‘
I’ve already stopped,’ he
reminded her with feeling. Then
he winked. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t notice?’

It wasn’t until several days later that Camilla realized
she had finally turned the corner. It came home to her as she was driving down
the M6 back to London, when she heard herself singing
along with a song on the radio. She was looking forward to
being
back in London. She was happy.

And thanks to Nico, she could even
contemplate the idea of
sex once
more.

It had been one of the things she had
badly missed after
Matt’s
death. Not that she had
wanted
to leap into bed with
anyone – there was no question of that
– but the fact that their
sex life
had been so wonderful made it all the more difficult to accept that it was over.

Then she had lost the baby and the
frustrations had subsided
as if in
sympathy with her double grief. Since she couldn’t have Matt, she would have
no-one. Her hormones seemed to put
themselves
on indefinite hold. She didn’t need them. Sex was
no longer a part of
her life.

But Nico had reawakened those feelings
and their intensity
had stunned, almost
alarmed her. At the time she had panicked slightly, concealing her alarm with
humour and, luckily, a damn good excuse.

But she knew now that she had wanted
him to make love to
her.
She had wanted to make love to him. If he hadn’t been
married she would have done so.

What she
couldn’t work out was whether, if he hadn’t been
married and she had gone to bed with
him, she would have been doing the right thing.

Camilla came to the conclusion that
maybe it was just as
well they
hadn’t. For now, it was enough to know that her body was returning to normal.
Welcome back, she thought, breaking
into a
smile and turning up the volume on the radio. It had been
a good week
and it deserved to be celebrated. Once more she broke into song.

Thoughts of Nico, however, continued to occupy her mind.
On arriving home she had infected Toby and Charlotte with her newfound
happiness, whisking them off to the fair which had
materialized since her departure on Hampstead Heath and
treating them to dinner at McDonald’s afterwards,
since that
was their particular idea of heaven.

Back at the house in Belgravia, when
the children were
asleep in bed, she
poured herself a small glass of Cointreau, put
on a much-loved Roxy Music album and curled up at one end
of her
favourite settee.

Nico had been such good company, she reflected lazily, her
mind drifting. There had been no awkwardness
after their
potentially very awkward
encounter. When she had reminded
him that he was miles from anywhere and
over the limit to drive he had said, "That’s what I was counting on’, but
had cheerfully slept in the spare room, yelling at her the following morning to
get her ass in gear and come downstairs this minute because he had cooked
breakfast. They had explored the beach with Rocky after that, then driven into
Drumlachan where he caused quite a
stir.
The townspeople who normally exchanged pleasantries with
the quiet English girl staying at Squirrel’s Gate
were struck
dumb when the grey Lamborghini roared into the market place
and she emerged with the singer whose face adorned
a good
many of their daughters’ bedroom walls.

Later that afternoon Nico had left to
return to London. She
had urged
him to remember what she’d told him about Caroline
and with great decorum he had kissed her goodbye on both
cheeks,
European style.

‘I will. Who needs an Italian mother when they have you
around?’

‘
I’m serious,’ she’d
protested, laughing, and he had given her
a quick hug.

‘So’s my Italian mother. You should meet her. Nice
earrings,’
he had added, touching one of them
with his index finger.
‘Real?’

‘Real,’ she’d replied, smiling. And he had jumped into his
car and left.

Putting down her liqueur glass she touched the diamonds in
her earlobes, a rapid, habitual gesture to check that they were still there.
That was another small triumph, she reflected. It had been on the morning of
Matt’s funeral, whilst she was wandering in a
completely
dazed state around their bedroom, that she had
opened the smallest
drawer of an ornately carved Victorian oak chest bought by Matt from one of his
beloved antique fairs and
found the tiny red
box from Cartier. Her surprise semi-
anniversary present.

The brilliance and perfect simplicity of the twin diamond studs, each
weighing almost two carats, had seared her very
soul.
She had teased him so often about his terrible taste –
he
couldn’t help it, he adored intricate detail on clothes,
jewellery . . . everything. The flashier the better, as far as Matt
was
concerned.

But he had obviously listened to her
good-humoured criti
cism. Realizing that
she did not share his own exquisite eye, he had taken care to choose a gift
which he knew
she
would love. And he had chosen the unadorned, oval
diamonds realizing that she would adore their uncluttered elegance.

It was this thought which had made them so very precious
to
her, proving beyond all else the depth of
his love. She had
slipped the
glittering diamond studs into her pierced ears and
worn them ever since,
day and night, removing them for only a few minutes every week in order to
clean them.

And when Nico had remarked upon them,
for the first time
in almost a year she
had not developed a lump in her throat in memory of the morning of their
discovery.

That sign, more than anything else,
had made her realize
that she
was finally on the road to recovery.

Chapter 42

When Loulou arrived on her doorstep a fortnight later,
Camilla
knew at once that something was very
wrong. A huge, puffy
bruise was
beginning to form along one cheekbone, a trace of
blood was visible
beneath the froth of silvery hair at her temple
and her black T-shirt was torn at the neckline. She was trembling,
her
enormous grey eyes opaque with terror.

‘Come inside.’ Reaching for Loulou, she pulled her into
the house. ‘Do you need a doctor?’

‘I need a lawyer,’ wailed Loulou, stumbling into the
sitting room. "That bastard – I think I’ve murdered him!’

While Camilla sponged the blood from
her hair, applied
an
ice-pack to her cheek and plied her with cognac, the
story came out. Simon, it appeared,
had celebrated the closure
of a particularly lucrative business deal with far too
much champagne. Summonsing Loulou to his flat in
Kensington
so that they could continue
celebrating, he had started picking
on
her almost immediately. She looked like a tart. She was
sleeping around.
She was wearing stockings – that proved it.