Master Of Seduction. Sarah Holland
face flamed scarlet. ‘No, I do not, and what is this anyway? Twenty questions? My private life is none of your damned business! Get off my back or I’ll leave this yacht immediately!’
‘OK.’ He shrugged coolly, astonishing her while she stood there, bristling, poised for further fury, staring at him, a string of insults on the tip of her tongue—only to be completely outmanoeuvred because he strode mildly past them all, saying over one enormous bare, hard-muscled shoulder, ‘I’m going into town for an hour or so. I’ll see you all tonight. Seven-thirty on deck for cocktails…’
Speechless, furious, Emma stared after him as he picked up a nearby shirt, pulled it on lazily as he strode down the gangplank, and disappeared into the glamorous mêlée of people on the quai of St Tropez.
‘That was Patrick doing the Spanish Inquisition, wasn’t it?’ Liz said as she too stared after Patrick. ‘I wonder why?’
‘He was probably just bored,’ Emma said tersely, loathing him even more, and feeling shaken by the conversation. She decided she detested Patrick Kinsella, and would avoid him like the plague from now on. She turned to Liz, saying, ‘I think I’d like to go down to my cabin now—take a shower, unpack, settle in. Would that be all right?’
‘Yes, of course!’ Liz put her drink down. ‘See you later, Natasha.’
Natasha smiled acidly, said something spiteful, and refilled her glass while Liz led Emma along the hot wooden deck towards the white door which opened on to a long narrow staircase.
As they went down the stairs, Emma said tautly, ‘Sorry about that row with your brother. I felt pinned down by all those questions, and the conversation was getting much too personal.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about it.’ Liz waved an airy hand. ‘He was obviously just intrigued to find a woman as cynical as he is.’
‘Yes,’ she said, eyes narrowing, ‘I noticed his mad, bad and dangerous sex appeal before Natasha pointed it out. No doubt he’s used to women falling at his feet in a romantic daydream.’
‘Precisely,’ Liz agreed. ‘He stopped believing in love so long ago that I can’t really remember a time when he wasn’t a cynical swine.’ She laughed, leading the way along a luxurious corridor. ‘Not like me, of course, always rattling on about hearts and flowers.’
Emma smiled, following her past a series of doors. She liked Liz’s preoccupation with romance, found it rather sweet, especially in the way it was expressed in her books—all that passion, faith in love, a belief in the goodness of people, not the bad.
It was a shame she had never married, but then she had had a ten-year blazing love-affair with a man who was married to an insane woman and felt unable to divorce her. ‘All very Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester,’ Liz often remarked with a sigh, but it had ended in tragedy when the man had died in a plane crash, leaving Liz alone in a world with no love but the romance in her beloved novels.
Liz opened the door of Emma’s cabin, and smiled as she heard Emma’s rapid intake of breath.
‘My God, it’s beautiful…!’
‘Yes, my brother’s very stylish in everything he does.’
Emma hated Patrick for being very stylish, but couldn’t deny that he was, because this room was ravishing. It was vast, sunlight pouring in through two long windows, illuminating the sprawling silk-covered double bed, the deep-pile sea-green carpet, the expensive sofas and armchairs, the long low polished mahogany coffee-table, the antique writing-desk, and the exquisite paintings hanging on the silk-wallpapered walls.
‘I’ll leave you to get on with it, then,’ said Liz with a cheery smile. ‘See you at seven-thirty on deck for predinner cocktails.’
As soon as the door was closed, Emma started to unpack, hanging all her clothes in the wardrobe, piling lingerie, T-shirts and jeans into the chest of drawers, and arranging her various shoes neatly.
Then she laid out her cosmetics, perfume and hairstyling appliances on the beautiful dressing-table, enjoying the reflection of that stylish bottle of Ralph Lauren’s Safari in the three-tiered mirror.
Going into the bathroom with her toiletries, she gasped anew at the beauty, luxury and understated style of the room.
Patrick Kinsella really did have exceptional taste.
Taste meant a lot to Emma. Her late husband had had appalling taste, and living with it for the two years of their brief marriage had been very unpleasant. Another symptom of artifice and role-playing: Emma had let Simon indoctrinate her in everything he liked, as though she simply ‘became’ him, and pretended to like all his friends, his hobbies, his bad taste, his selfishness…
She had also, along the way, pretended to forgive him his brutality, violence, infidelity, deceit and vicious spite. All those qualities had only surfaced after the wedding— but then that was what you got, thought Emma, for pretending instead of telling the truth.
She wasn’t bitter about the past, or about her bad marriage, or about the fact that she had been forced to role-play for so many years. She had dealt with it all long ago, accepting it and moving forward to a new life and a new way of dealing with the world.
What was there to do but forgive and, in doing so, forgive herself for the part she had played in her own unhappiness? Her parents had not loved her properly— but they had loved her, and she had loved them. It hadn’t been their fault that they were so incapable of seeing her as she really was, it had simply been a product of their own unhappy childhoods, when their parents had not loved them properly.
As for Simon—well, he fell into the same category. Treated badly as a boy, he had grown up thinking that love meant treating other people badly, and his violence had been a product of long-buried rage.
Horrors.
What a minefield relationships were.
Now she was free of it all, content with her life, and looking back on the past was like looking back on another person. It would have been romantic of her to use the word ‘rebirth’ to describe her new life and, although she detested romance, she rather liked the word ‘rebirth’.
Stripping her clothes off, she stepped into the luxurious shower, and proceeded to luxuriate under the warm needles of water, washing the grime of her long journey from her slender body.
To think she had left her London home at six o’clock this morning! God, that delay at London Heathrow had been a nightmare!
When she had dried herself, styled her hair, and pulled on a pair of pale blue jeans, she slipped a white silk top on, then decided it would be a shame to waste St Tropez if they were sailing out tonight, so she went up on deck with her sunglasses and handbag, and pootled down the gangplank into town.
Hot sunlight assailed her from all angles. Artists stood on the quai in front of their easels, palettes in hand as they stroked hot oil paints on to the canvases, and seagulls cried sharply among the bobbing boats, the glittering blue waters, the freedom-filled glamour of the town.
Emma walked lazily up bleached, winding, ancient streets, until she came to the main square, where old French men played boules among the trees and the dust, watched by glamorous tourists in pretty canopied cafés.
Sitting on a canvas chair, Emma watched the men, and ordered a coffee. Then suddenly, across the square, she saw a pair of blazing blue eyes watching her.
Dazzling blue, she thought again as she stared unsmilingly straight at Patrick Kinsella.
He just stood still, watching her, staring directly at her, and even though he was a long way away she felt the power of that stare, felt it very deeply, like a mirror turned in sudden blazing recognition.
She did not smile either. Nor make any attempt to wave or signal that she had seen him. Flicking her gaze expressionlessly from his, she glanced at the tree beside her as the warm breeze ruffled through its green leaves, and thought, Who the hell does he think he is?