Flawless (35 page)

If Brogan could have seen what a shitty day Danny was having, a stone’s throw across the water from his office, it might have taken the edge off his anger.

Walking back from the subway, his clothes soaked and feet throbbing with pain and cold after another wasted day pounding the pavement, Danny was as close to despair as his naturally sunny nature allowed.

How had it come to this?

A year ago he’d been a partner in an established, respected diamond-dealing business with a good track record and a list of loyal, regular clients as long as his arm. OK, so he’d had a few squabbles with Jake over the simulants. And Tyler Brett had put a dent in their profits that had only recently begun to be repaired with Flawless. They hadn’t been making the kind of silly money they had been pulling in during the tech boom of the late nineties, when every nerd with a dot-com idea was out buying diamonds for women light-years out of their league. But they were doing all right. He’d been living in a gorgeous apartment, driving a flash car, and going out to five-star restaurants whenever the mood took him. Like an idiot, he’d imagined that all he needed to complete his happiness was Diana by his side. Little had he thought that winning Diana would mean losing everything—absolutely
everything
—else.

At first, the idea of battling it out with Brogan seemed almost romantic. He’d long ago resigned himself to the fact that Diana would probably walk away from her marriage with less than she brought into it. Brogan had all his money tied up in a maze of offshore accounts so interminably complicated that no judge would be able to get through it. There were no children, and, officially at least, Diana had taken the fall as being the guilty party in the breakup. What he
hadn’t
counted on was the degree to which his own wealth would be depleted. How he would have to watch fifteen years of work unraveling terrifyingly quickly and his assets and savings being sucked into the insatiable vortex of a divorce case that, no matter how little they asked for or how many outrageous concessions they agreed to, never seemed to end.

“Spare any change, man?” The wino on the corner accosted him with a beery-breathed stagger. Guiltily, Danny reached into the sodden pocket of his overcoat and pulled out a solitary dollar bill, pressing it into the man’s hand without stopping. Plenty of people are worse off than you, he told himself sternly as a cab splashed filthy water all down his right side. Plenty of people don’t
have
a home to go to tonight, never mind a gorgeous, patient, loving woman cooking them spaghetti on a shitty two-ring stove, a woman who had never once complained about what
she’d
lost by following him blindly on this great romantic adventure.

It had taken Diana a long time to emerge from the shadow of her guilt about leaving Brogan. But having gone through the soul-searching and the pain, she’d emerged completely committed to Danny and the new life she’d chosen. It was almost as if, having risked so much, she felt a duty, a burning need to be happy, no matter what arrows life hurled at her.

Ironically, Danny was the one who found things tougher. Try as he might to talk himself around, his day-to-day misery refused to listen to reason. He hated their new apartment. Hated the filthy stairwell leading up to it, hated the street below with all its depressing reminders of poverty: the
launderettes and pawnshops, prostitutes, drug dealers. He hated the crappy Ikea furniture, the plastic blinds, the heating that belched out broiled air like a furnace all night so they couldn’t sleep but shut off during the day, forcing Diana into the local Starbucks just for the warmth. Most of all, he hated himself, for having brought her to this godforsaken shit hole—and for constantly snapping at her, as if his inadequacy were somehow her fault.

Diana’s family had offered to help out until the divorce settlement came through, but grateful as they were, they’d both rejected that idea. Able-bodied, middle-aged adults didn’t take handouts from their parents. And besides, there was every chance that the settlement, if it ever came, would be too small to cover their legal costs, never mind provide excess funds to pay back the Framptons’ generosity.

Tonight, vowed Danny, stopping by the liquor store to pick up a cheap bottle of red and a packet of cigarettes—thanks to bloody Brogan he was back on the smokes, nearly a pack a day—they wouldn’t argue. He wouldn’t spend the entire night moaning about his day, about the miles he’d walked and tens of doors he’d knocked on without making a single sale. Jake had left him a voice mail from South Africa, on the last night of his long trip, excited about the new stones he was bringing back. But Danny wouldn’t bitch to Diana about how it didn’t matter, how he wouldn’t be able to shift them even if they were the most perfect, conflict-free diamonds on earth. He knew that if he didn’t stop taking his frustrations out on her, she’d leave him, whatever she might say to the contrary. And right now, he wouldn’t blame her. He’d leave himself if someone gave him the option.

After stabbing at the door three or four times, the key slipping around in his wet fingers like a live fish, he finally managed to let himself in and trudged slowly up the stairs to the apartment. As soon as he opened the door he was hit by a burst of warm air, packing a punch of delicious cooking smells—garlic,
onion, paprika. Moments later, Diana’s smiling, flushed face appeared around the kitchen door.

“It’ll be ready in ten,” she said, globules of homemade tomato sauce dripping from the wooden spoon in her hand onto the peeling linoleum floor. “I left you the hot water. Go take a shower, and then we’ll eat.”

Christ, she was beautiful. Even with her hair scraped back, a face full of steam, and that vile butcher’s apron on over her jeans and T-shirt, she looked a knockout, a princess as out of place in the apartment’s falling-down kitchen as Cinderella, sweeping her ugly stepsisters’ floor in rags. She deserved so much better.

“Smells good,” he said, forcing the cheer into his voice.

“I got it from that old recipe book of your mother’s. I’m sure it won’t be as good as her version,” said Diana, humbly. “But I figured I’d give it a shot.”

Dumping his clothes in the laundry hamper, he noticed that Diana had emptied it since this morning; unlike him she seemed to positively revel in the novelty of poverty and the hitherto unknown demands of domestic life. He stepped into the shower and let the steaming jets of water work their magic. He wished Diana hadn’t brought up the subject of his mother. That was another thing he felt guilty about. Both Minty and the usually neutral Rudy had formed an immediate, lasting dislike of Diana—Diana whom they’d never met and who had no idea of the forces of Meyer family hostility ranged against her. The truth was his parents would probably have had a problem with any girl he planned to marry, especially if she wasn’t Jewish. But Diana had compounded this sin by being American, already married to someone else, and (as Minty saw it) the root cause of all Danny’s financial troubles. In less than a month, the two women would meet for the first time when they flew back to London for Christmas, an event Danny was looking forward to about as much as root canal surgery without anesthesia.

Ten minutes later, feeling marginally better in some dry clothes, he came back into the living room. His heart melted when he saw the table. Diana had lit candles, the cheap tea lights you could buy in packs of two hundred from Costco, and spread the Formica fold-out table with a bedsheet, doubled over to make a tablecloth. A bunch of pale-pink tulips sat jauntily in a plain glass jug, which she’d dressed up with a single piece of dark-blue ribbon, and the white Ikea plates gleamed like moons between the stainless steel knives and forks guarding them like sentries. His wine was open, the burgundy glass bottle looking particularly warm and welcoming in the candlelight, and a steaming, aromatic clay pot of spaghetti and sauce bubbled merrily in the center of the table. It was tough to make the apartment’s single, worn reception room look inviting. But Diana, driven by love and a desperate desire to cheer and comfort him, had managed it. Sitting down, it was all Danny could do not to weep with guilt.

“How’d it go today?” Diana asked, ladling a hefty spoonful of pasta onto his plate. She’d removed the apron and changed from the jeans and T-shirt into a clinging navy jersey dress that caressed her waist and high, round apple breasts, sexy without being slutty.

“Good,” he lied, not wanting to ruin the positive atmosphere she’d gone to such trouble creating. “Better.”

Helping herself to a portion half the size of his, she shook her head when he offered her wine.

“Not for me,” she said, beaming. He’d been so blown away by the
Little House on the Prairie
welcome, he hadn’t stopped to notice the way she was staring at him. But he noticed it now: her entire face seemed aglow, as if she were willing him to give her some sort of sign, the answer to a question that she hadn’t actually asked.

“What?”

He laughed nervously.

“What happened? Do I have spinach in my teeth?”

She shook her head, still beaming.

“Did Brogan sign the papers?” Danny heard himself asking, appalled by the desperate hope in his voice.

“No,” she said calmly. “Not that.” Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, she burst into tears. “I’m pregnant!” she sobbed, laughing and crying at the same time. “Oh, Danny, please be happy. Please, please tell me you’re happy?”

“I’m happy,” he said automatically, pulling her into his arms, partly because it seemed to be expected of him, and partly so that she wouldn’t see the panic written largely across his face. They were barely keeping their heads above water as it was. How the hell could they afford a child? “I’m a bit shocked,” he admitted, “but of course I’m happy. That’s amazing.”

“It’s more than amazing.” She pulled out of his embrace so he could see her face, tearstained but at the same time awash with relief that he shared her joy. “It’s a miracle. Brogan and I have been trying for almost ten years. We’ve tried everything: IVF, snake oil, hypnosis…and then you come along and bam! that’s it. Maybe this was God’s plan all along? Maybe it wasn’t right for me to have kids with Brogan, in that atmosphere? Maybe I was supposed to wait for you.”

“Maybe,” said Danny, staring at the rapidly congealing spaghetti in his bowl and wishing he could block out the sound of prison doors clanging shut. For some irrational reason, he remembered a documentary he’d seen about 9/11, where one of the firemen inside the building had described the steady “thud…thud…thud” of the floors above him collapsing on top of one another, certain that when he heard the last thud, he’d be crushed to death, and praying that that death would be quick. He loved Diana. He really did. But recently his life had started sounding like one long series of thuds. And the baby was the loudest of all.

“I saw my gynecologist today, and he confirmed I’m in the early stages; can you believe it?” she said excitedly. “Officially we shouldn’t tell people until we’re past twelve weeks. But I really
want to tell my mom and yours. I can’t keep a secret like that all through Christmas. Hey!” Her eyes lit up. “If it’s a girl, we could call her Araminta! After your mom.”

Danny closed his eyes and tried to find his happy place.

“One step at a time, eh?” he said gently, kissing her. “One step at a time.”

S
CARLETT GAZED OUT
of the 747’s grimy plastic porthole window and tried to shake the depression creeping over her, mirroring the brooding gray storm clouds outside.

“Thank you for your patience, ladies and gents.” The captain’s voice rang out over the speaker system, full of false joviality. “I’m afraid air traffic control has just told us we’ve got to keep circling for about another ten minutes. Another plane has taken our slot, apparently, but we should be on the ground by half past three, so do bear with us.”

A collective groan rose from the passenger cabin. After eleven hours in an overcrowded plane full of young families returning home for Christmas, the mothers with sick in their hair and kids in various stages of meltdown, nobody was in a particularly patient mood. Scarlett, although in no particular hurry to deal with Heathrow’s baggage claim hall, also wanted to get off the plane, which had begun to feel stiflingly claustrophobic.