Four Temptations

James Grieve Press

© PJ Adams 2013

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The contents of this book were previously published as four separate ebooks.

I
never really saw Simon Darby in that way. I know others did – he was certainly never short of female company. Tall with floppy, strawberry blond hair, piercingly pale blue eyes and a slim, well-built body; the kind of physique good clothes just hang off as if they were made for him to wear. Charming, warm, funny, intelligent; yes, he was all of these.

But for me Simon had never been a man to dream about, far less fall for.

I had never paid attention to his easy good looks, or to the way he moved; I had never idly wondered about what he might be like beneath those perfect designer clothes, had never wondered how those pale blue eyes might open wide at the peak of intimacy and passion.

No, he was never a
what if...?
kind of a guy, for me.

He was just Simon. Friend of the family, someone you could always turn to for a favor. Someone you could trust with a secret, someone you could sound out for confidential advice.

He was Simon Darby.

An old acquaintance, a part of the backdrop to my life.

He was my husband’s best friend.

§

That was all he could ever be, of course. I knew that, even when things started to shift, even when I started to view him with fresh eyes.

Anything more than that would be messy, horribly complicated.

So when did things change? What was the tipping point, when the line had been crossed and this
thing
became harder to resist than to pursue?

§

It started with a lie.

“Of course he’s not having an affair!”

We were sharing a sofa in a dark corner of a Costa in the city, the kind of deep leather seat you sink into and wonder how you’ll ever escape. Simon had espresso doppio; I had latte in a tall, clear cup. It was mid-morning and the place was just starting to fill up.

“Either you’re a really good liar, or he’s keeping it even from you,” I said.

Simon and my husband, Porter, had always been close. They’d known each other since university; they’d shared apartments and gone on holidays together, they’d even set up the ad and promotions agency that had become Soft Target Communications. Partners in life and business; if anyone was Porter Swaine’s soul mate, Simon Darby probably had a better claim than me.

“Or I’m telling you the truth,” said Simon. “Porter’s a busy man. He has to travel a lot. He gets preoccupied with work. That’s all it is. You know how he can be.”

“You’re his business partner, but you don’t do all that.”

“That’s how we are. He’s the face of the company, I’m–”

“–the
conceptualist
.”

We laughed. It was an old joke, about the over-pretentious wording of his business card. Or, as he insisted, the just pretentious
enough
wording of his business card.

I sipped at my latte, then wiped away a milky mustache with my little finger. “He’s been so distant lately.”
Lately
. I’d lost track of when we’d started to drift, when we’d stopped being
us
and started to become ever more independent of each other. But recently... well, recently the shift had been quite noticeable.

“So he’s really in Paris with a client today?” I asked.

Simon shrugged. “I don’t keep tabs on his diary, Rebecca. If that’s where he says he is, then...”

“I just have to believe him. I get it.” And for a moment I felt horribly guilty for doubting Porter. What was our relationship if there was no trust? “And has she gone with him, or is she meeting him there?”

Simon opened his mouth, then stopped and gave a short laugh. “You’re trying to trap me,” he said. “But that’s like asking a man if he’s stopped beating his wife. Yes or no... there’s no right answer.”

“Other than ‘Don’t be stupid, woman’.”

“Well don’t,” he said, and laughed again.

Was that the moment? When he tipped his head back to laugh? His hair caught the light, and there was something so easy and natural about the way he moved and the way his eyes never left mine.

I looked away, suddenly flustered and not understanding why. I sipped at my latte, but it had gone cold. I never was a one for letting drinks cool: tea and coffee had to be scaldingly hot for me.

He was still watching me, as if he’d sensed something.

He put a hand out, and suddenly it was enclosing mine on the table top. His touch was gentle, and surprisingly cool. “It’s okay to worry,” he said. “It shows you care, doesn’t it?”

“I guess...” I shifted in my seat. How was it that a tension had suddenly come between us?

He released my hand and sat back, still smiling. “Maybe you need to start an affair with
him
,” he said. “Put the spark back, remind yourself of why you were with him in the first place. Flirt with him. Seduce him.”

I raised one eyebrow. “That’s the best you can do?” I asked.

“Good food and a blow job,” he said. “Works every time.”

§

Warm pigeon breast and bacon salad, with a pan juice vinaigrette. Veal Milanese. Lemon panna cotta with honey madeleines. Porter’s favorite Chianti. Music. Candles. Shoes by Karen Millen: high, needle-thin stilettos in patent black leather. A new Aubade black lace plunge bra and French lace briefs, with sheer black hold-ups, all beneath a simple little black dress that clung and parted in all the right places.

“Hey, Porter.”

He paused in the doorway, tall and, as always, well-presented in a slim blue suit and tie. “Hey, Rebecca,” he said. “How’s things?”

“Good, good. Dinner in five?” I went to him as I spoke, put my hands to his lapels, and fitted myself into the shape of his body. Even with my heels he was several inches taller than me.

When he glanced down at me, I wasn’t sure what kind of look it was in his eyes. Surprise, I thought at first. I didn’t normally greet him like this, after all, even when he’d just come back from Paris or Rome or wherever it was that he had been.

I’d always liked the square line of his jaw, the way his features were so clearly defined. I kissed him on that jaw, my lips lingering on the light fuzz of stubble, leaving a crimson smudge there when I pulled away.

For a moment – just a moment – with my eyes closed and his scent filling my lungs, I was taken right back. Dinner by the Seine, the apartment in Manhattan, that trip on the Orient Express.

Just for a moment.

Then I realized that, while my body had fit to his, there had been no response. Now, with my kiss, his frame tensed. It was almost imperceptible, but it was there, definitely.

The moment was gone.

“How was Rome?” I asked, stepping back from him, suddenly feeling foolish. Who wore shoes like these in her own home?

Absent-mindedly, he rubbed the heel of his hand along the jaw where I’d kissed him.

“Paris. I hardly saw the place,” he said. “Didn’t see much more than the inside of an office and a hotel room.”

Was there something behind those words? A double meaning? Telling me he’d been away and hardly left his hotel room... Or was I just being paranoid, refusing to let go of that thread of doubt now that it had snagged me?

He went through to the dining room and poured himself a glass of Chianti. I waited a few seconds for him to come back, but realized that was it, the conversation over, as he stood there by the table, glass in one hand, thumbing a message into his iPhone with the other.

I went through, brushing past him to get to the kitchen. He didn’t even look up.

I wondered then what I’d have to do to get his attention. Would he notice if I stripped to that gorgeous Aubade underwear in the kitchen? I doubted it, then.

Moments later I became aware of him, standing in the doorway, just watching me.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting... this. I’ve already eaten.” And a vicious part of my mind completed that thought: from his lack of response earlier, what else had he already had this evening?

I looked at him. He didn’t look guilty. He barely even looked apologetic.

“How did we get like this?” I asked, but he had turned, and was walking away already.

§

I ate well that evening, on principle. The pigeon breasts, fried off for only three or four minutes in a hot pan with some bacon, were beautifully tender and pink; the veal, finished with a squeeze of lemon juice, was spot on; the panna cotta and madeleines gave a light and easy finish. Porter had taken the Chianti upstairs with him, so I opened another bottle for myself, and by the time I was halfway down it I was feeling a little light-headed.

Me, a bottle of red, a cell phone and a not-quite row with the man my husband had become was not, I realized later, such a good combination.

Simon replied to my text message inside a minute.

I paused, then replied:

He replied quickly again.

I called him.

“Hey there,” he said. “You okay? What’s happening?”

“Absolutely nothing,” I said.

“Erm... okay. That’s a bad thing, right?”

“I did what you said. Stilettos to die for, tiny French designer lingerie, gorgeous food...”

“I’m picturing it. I probably shouldn’t.” He paused, as if gathering himself, then continued, “And that didn’t work?”

There was something about the way he said those words that stopped me in my tracks. Sure, I’d never seen him as a sexual being, but was this the point where he suddenly saw
me
in that light?

Perhaps the wine had relaxed me too much, because the next thing I said was, “Like you said, good food and a blow job always does the trick.”

Another pause, then: “And...?”

“He didn’t even get the first course.”

“Ah.”

“Am I really that unattractive? Have I lost it? Whatever
it
is. Or was. Or... you know.”

“It’s not you,” he said.

“That should be his line: ‘It’s not you, darling, it’s me’.”

“You think it’s that bad?”

“He’s having an affair, isn’t he?”

“He’s still in love with  you.”

“He’s told you that, has he?”

“No, we don’t... well, we don’t talk as much as we used to.”

I couldn’t help it: I burst into a fit of giggles then. So much so that the tears streamed down my cheeks. I must have looked a picture then: snotty nose, mascara smudges and red eyes.

“What?” he said. “What’s so funny?”

“Sorry. It’s just... it sounds like he’s splitting up with you as well as me. ‘We don’t talk any more.’”

And that was it. Out in the open. Spoken aloud.

Splitting up
.

I hadn’t rationally thought it through. If anything, I’d been suppressing the thoughts, bottling everything up.

But if your husband is avoiding you, if he can’t even bring himself to give you a quick duty fuck when you’re waiting for him in designer lingerie and he has a bottle of Chianti to get drunk with first, then what is there that’s left to salvage?

§

I didn’t really start to believe it until the next morning, though.

I fell asleep in the front room, the TV babbling in the background, the empty wine bottle and glass both toppled over on the rug by the sofa where I slumped.

I woke and I hurt. My back, my neck, my legs. The kind of aches that feel worse when you move but there’s no way you can stay still, and you have to move if they’re going to ease.

He was there again, in the doorway. I don’t know how long he’d been standing there, like an entomologist looking at a sorry specimen.

I flinched, as if he’d hit me, and then I flinched again at the pains shooting through my body. I didn’t want to think how I must look, but I could see it clearly in his eyes as they tracked up my body. One shoe on, the other discarded on the rug; dress hitched up to reveal hold-ups, one of them down around my knee; the smudged mascara, the bird’s nest hair; the eyes slitted against the morning light.

“I can’t do this any more,” he said, in a measured voice.

This.
Us
.

I turned and sat, pulling my legs up and hugging them defensively.

I didn’t have the words. I couldn’t find a thing to say.

Which probably says it all.

How can the end of something so big just sneak up on you like that? Sneak up so that even as it takes you by surprise there’s so much inevitability about it that you realize you must have known for the longest time.

Is there anything much sadder than a woman in yesterday’s make-up and exotic underwear being told she’s not wanted?

§

“Who is she?”

We were in Costa again, a few days later, me with a tall latte and Simon with another  espresso doppio.

He shook his head. “If there’s a
she
, I don’t know about her,” he said, and perhaps that was even worse.

§

It was never meant to happen with Simon.

I knew it was a stupid thing to do. I knew my head wasn’t right, that I was incapable of thinking straight just then.

He insisted on driving me home, and we chatted about anything but me and Porter. The traffic, the weather, movies and books. He’d always been easy to chat to. A good listener: he knew just when to prompt and when to stay silent.

“So you haven’t seen him since then?” he finally said, just as we drew up in front of the house.

Stupidly, I still expected to see Porter’s little Audi parked there, but no, just the house, far too big for a single woman.

“No. Nothing but a solicitor’s letter.”

He came round to open my door, and I took his hand to pull myself up.

It wasn’t deliberate on my part, and I don’t think it was on his, but the act of pulling me out of the car drew me up against him, and it seemed natural for his arms to go round me, steadying me, holding me.

I didn’t know what to do, or how to respond to the firm pressure of his hands on my back, his hard body against mine. I dipped my head, resting my cheek briefly against his chest, and I could hear his heart pounding rapidly.

He kissed the crown of my head, and even then I didn’t know how to respond: it could just have been friendly affection, nothing more. Or was I just fooling myself?