Flawless (39 page)

“He says it was a pub fight,” said Minty, skeptically. “Bloody fishy if you ask me. And he won’t say where he stayed last night.”

“Trust me, Ma,” grinned Danny, “you probably don’t wanna know.”

“Know what?” asked Diana, looking up from her article at last and reaching her arm out to Danny, who squeezed her hand.

“Mind your own beeswax, Wallis Simpson,” snapped Rudy, referring to the American socialite whom King Edward had abdicated the throne to marry.

Diana blushed.

“For fuck’s sake, Dad, back off,” said Jake. He liked Diana. She didn’t deserve the abuse. At the end of the day, all she’d done wrong was fall in love with Danny.

“Don’t you tell me to fuck off!” roared Rudy. “This is my ruddy house!”

“I didn’t tell you to fuck off,” said Jake reasonably.

“Jacob, language!” chided Minty, peeling the backing off a Sesame Street Band-Aid that must have been in the medicine cupboard since the 1970s and pressing it painfully onto his cheek.

“All right, enough,” said Jake, his patience finally snapping. Next year he was having Christmas in Cabo bloody San Lucas on his own. Or, if he was lucky, with Scarlett. “I’m going upstairs to my room to make some calls.”

Up in the bedroom he’d shared with Danny as a kid, surrounded by reminders of his boyhood—Ossie Ardiles’ signed Tottenham shirt, the silver cup he’d won for coming second in some crummy cross-country tournament, treasured by Minty
because it was the only prize either of the twins had won in their long, less-than-illustrious school careers; even the Kim Basinger posters were still stuck to the wall—he thought about calling Scarlett, then decided against it. For one thing, she probably wouldn’t have reached Drumfernly yet. And for another, it never paid to look too eager. Last night had been amazing, magical in every way. He’d had to pinch himself several times this morning to confirm that it really was Scarlett lying warm and naked beside him, and that the whole thing hadn’t been some orgiastic, wish-fulfillment dream brought on by the alcohol, or the beating he’d taken, or both. But who knew where things would go from here? They were different, very different, and while opposites might attract, in his experience they rarely lasted as long-term couples.
Long-term couples
—listen to him! At almost forty years of age, he’d never had a long-term relationship in his life.

Then there was the business to consider: without the steady income stream Flawless had brought them, Solomon Stones would have collapsed completely this year. Jake couldn’t afford to fuck that up by making a mess of things with Scarlett romantically.

Not that he was prepared simply to walk away. He’d waited too long for her to do that, and the memory of her glorious, lithe body last night was in no danger of fading. Just thinking about it now was making his cock harden. But for once in his life, he decided to tread cautiously. Danny had already rushed in where wise men feared to tread, and look where that had gotten him.

No, he wouldn’t call. He’d let Scarlett make the first move.

Never had forty-eight hours dragged on for so long.

Two days! Two whole days before she deigned to pick up the phone! Used to women chasing him, Jake had no idea how to handle this sort of nonchalance. Was she already regretting
sleeping with him? Had Magnus called and spun some web of bullshit to win her back?

Going slowly out of his mind in London, he did his best to distract himself by partying up a storm, flitting from The Groucho Club to Soho House and the Electric like a deranged social butterfly—anything to avoid the depressing atmosphere at home and to block out the insistent voice in his head chanting, “You’ve lost her, you’ve lost her, you’ve lost her,” like a runaway train.

Scarlett, meanwhile, was tied up with problems of her own and had had precious little time to dwell on the fact that Jake hadn’t called her. The largest and most irksome of her problems was Cameron, who was convinced that he was on the point of being “whacked,” as he put it, by a Brogan O’Donnell–employed hit squad, and who demanded to know what Scarlett intended to do about it.

“This time last year, you were calling
me
far-fetched for thinking he was behind what happened at Bijoux,” she reminded him. “And now you think he’s trying to kill
you
? Because you saw the same car twice and your new Porsche broke down?”

“I don’t think you’re taking this seriously,” Cameron spluttered. Standing in the kitchen at Drumfernly in old-fashioned tweed golf trousers like an overweight Gomer Pyle, it was certainly difficult to take him seriously. But Scarlett tried, as he was obviously in a highly agitated state. “With my connections in international high finance, I’m a far more valuable, important target to these thugs than you are,” he blustered, puffing out his cheeks like a blowfish. “It’d be big news in the city if anything were to happen to me.”

“But nothing
has
happened to you,” said Scarlett reasonably. “Don’t you think that if Brogan wanted to scare you—or use you to scare me, which is what you seem to be implying—he’d do something a bit more drastic than photograph you eating pizza? I mean, I got threatening letters, poisonings, and arson. And I’ve
got about as many connections in international high finance as a Teletubbie.”

“Pucci Pizza was one incident,” said Cameron. “There have been others.”

Watching him pace back and forth in front of the fridge like Sherlock Holmes, Scarlett had to bite her tongue to stop herself from laughing. All he needed was a checked cape and a pipe.

“I saw the same car lurking in the shadows in Vauxhall the other night. It was late, very late. Maybe three in the morning.”

Scarlett’s ears pricked up. Vauxhall was famous for its swinging gay scene. She asked the obvious question.

“What on earth were you doing in Vauxhall at three in the morning?”

“I was…clubbing,” said Cameron. He looked even more agitated now. “But look, that’s not the point. The point is they were after me. They were looking for something.”

Indeed
, thought Scarlett.
But what?

Her brother might be self-important and prone to suffering from delusions of grandeur. But he wasn’t a complete fool. If he’d seen this car on four separate occasions, as he claimed, then chances were it
was
following him. Could it be Brogan? And if so, why? What was he hoping to discover from Cameron? And how could it help him in his battle against her, Trade Fair, or the Meyers?

All of a sudden a deeply troubling thought gripped her.

“You weren’t…you weren’t at a gay club, were you, Cameron?” There wasn’t much else going on in Vauxhall at three in the morning.

“A gay club?” Cameron arranged his flabby features into an appropriately flabbergasted expression. “A
gay club
? What on earth would possess you to ask such a ridiculous question?”

“So that’s a no, then?” she pressed him.

“Of course it’s a no,” he snapped. “And stop trying to wriggle off the subject. My question is, are you going to drop this dangerous, ill-conceived campaign of yours or not?”

“Well, of course I’m not,” said Scarlett, getting irritated. “Why should I?”

This last remark sparked a shouting match so loud that the entire castle echoed with it. Before long, inevitably, Caroline arrived, demanding to know what all the fuss was about, and weighing in as usual firmly on Cameron’s side.

“But darling”—she turned to Scarlett—“surely you can see that family safety must come before the needs of a group of complete strangers?”

“It’s not that simple, Mummy,” Scarlett sighed.

“Bloody well is,” fumed Cameron.

“These Siberian miners have no one to speak up for them. There’s a mountain of evidence linking their cancers to Brogan O’Donnell’s mines, but he won’t lift a finger to help,” Scarlett explained.

“I daresay. But your brother’s life could be at risk!” Enjoying the drama of it all, Caroline’s voice was veering toward the hysterical.

“Cameron’s life is not at risk,” said Scarlett calmly. “And nor is mine. Brogan’s a bully, and he’s capable of some pretty below-the-belt tactics to get what he wants. But he isn’t a killer. If he was going to take out a contract on anyone, it’d be Danny, not us.”

“And who, may I ask, is
Danny
?” asked Caroline, turning the name over on her tongue as though it were a revolting pill she was being forced to swallow.

“She means Danny Meyer,” said Cameron. “He’s the ghastly little North London Jew who ran off with O’Donnell’s wife.”

“How awful,” shuddered Caroline, apparently forgetting that Brogan O’Donnell was the man responsible for terrorizing both her children. “No wonder the poor man’s upset.”

“He’s also the twin brother of Scarlett’s so-called business partner,” said Cameron nastily, “a crook called Jake Meyer who fancies himself as a bit of a Casanova. He’s notorious in London.”

“Jake is not a crook,” said Scarlett hotly. “He may have been a little shady in the past, I grant you—”

“A little shady?” Cameron laughed. “You’ve changed your tune. Last Christmas you told me he was the diamond industry’s answer to Butch Cassidy!”

“Yes, well. He’s changed.” She blushed. Any fantasy she’d had about floating the concept of Jake as a serious boyfriend to her family melted faster than an ice cube on a hot plate.

“I do hope you’re not getting mixed up in anything criminal, poppet.” Hugo, who’d arrived in time to catch the tail end of the conversation, looked concerned.

“Of course not, Daddy,” Scarlett reassured him. “Brogan O’Donnell’s the criminal here, not Jake. But brave Sir Robin,” she nodded scathingly at Cameron, “would rather see me give up Trade Fair, and see Jake and Danny lose their business, than stand up and fight for what’s right.”

That was the first of the many circular, pointless arguments that were to ruin whatever faint hope Scarlett had nurtured of a restful family Christmas. As well as battling Cameron, she’d had the usual mother/daughter conflicts to deal with, the tedious round of local social calls to be endured, and, on top of it all, the surprisingly unpleasant task of calling Magnus to put an official end to their relationship.

His first response had been to deny everything.

“Don’t be silly, darling,” he said, dismissing Jake’s claims in that supremely confident way of his, which in the early days she’d found so masculine and powerful. Now it just seemed patronizing. “I don’t know what he thought he saw. But Carole and I are married in name only.”

“Really?” said Scarlett. “And what about Taylor? Is he your son in name only too?”

Even when faced with irrefutable evidence of a child whose existence he’d hidden from her completely, Magnus managed to try and paint himself as the injured party.

“Jake’s always had it in for me,” he complained. “He only told you all this because he wants to get into your pants himself. That’s why he came up here, spying on me.”

“Forget Jake,” said Scarlett. “You have a son, Magnus. A
son
!”

“I know I have a son,” he snapped. “And of course I was going to tell you about him when the time was right. That’s the irony of all this, you know. I was going to propose to you on New Year’s, as soon as my partnership’s announced. I would have told you all about Taylor then. But oh no, you have to go listening to Jake Meyer’s trash talk. I can’t believe you’re seriously intending to throw away everything we have together over
this
. After all the love, all the support I’ve given you.”

Scarlett racked her brains trying to think what “support” he might be referring to, before the ridiculousness of the situation dawned on her—why was she even talking to him? The guy had a secret family, for Christ’s sake. He was a congenital liar, and yet here she was, attempting to defend
her
actions to
him
.

“Look Magnus, it’s over, OK? Let’s face it, we haven’t exactly been happy together in a long time.”

“Are you sleeping with Jake?”

“What? I…that’s none of your business,” stammered Scarlett, taken aback.

“Oh my God, you are. Do you even realize what a cliché that is?”

By the end of the conversation, she almost felt guilty. Arguing with Magnus was the verbal equivalent of going ten rounds with Mike Tyson. No wonder his law firm was making him a partner.

Afterward, drained of every last ounce of mental energy, she called Jake.

“How are you?” she asked wearily, pulling a blanket up over her knees. “How’s London?”

She was sitting on the window seat of the library in Drumfernly, looking out over the snowy parkland, dotted with deer and Christmas-card perfect in the twilight. But after the battering she’d just had on the phone she didn’t feel remotely peaceful.

“Awful and awful,” came back Jake’s miserable response. His plan to play things cool had gone out of the window the moment he heard her voice. “I miss you like mad. I’ve been waiting for you to call for days. I thought you’d gone off me.”

“Not yet,” smiled Scarlett. She told him about Magnus’s reaction to being caught in the act and how grueling their conversation had been.

“Dickhead,” said Jake with feeling. “Well, at least it’s over now. You never have to talk to him again.”