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‘Have you seen Helena recently?’ she asked him. ‘I really must get in touch with her.’
Olivia Carstairs and Helena had been at Roedean together. They had kept in touch over the years and it was through Helena that Bram knew Olivia.
‘We received an invitation to Plum’s eighteenth, but unfortunately Gerald is due to go to Russia the day before. It’s such a pity about Plum. I really feel for poor Helena. But then teenage girls can be so difficult.’
Her voice held the confidence of being the mother of four sons, Bram noticed wryly.
‘And of course, the problem is,’ Olivia continued, ‘by the time she does come to her senses, the poor girl will have gained such a dreadful reputation. I remember when I was at—’ She broke off, apologising. ‘Oh dear, I’d better go. Gerald looks as though he’s in trouble. The problem with these affairs is that one never has the time to talk to the people one really wishes to converse with. You will give Helena my love?’
‘I shall,’ Bram assured her.
Her comments about his goddaughter hadn’t been motivated by malice but, even so, they made him frown. In other circumstances he would have been tempted to talk to Plum himself, to try gently to help her understand that she could not and would not find the emotional security she was seeking by trying to purchase it with sex. However, he was acutely aware that Plum considered herself to be in love with him—how could he not be when she had earnestly and forthrightly told him so on more than one occasion?
Two years ago, when she was still not quite sixteen, he had let himself into his apartment one night to find her waiting in his bed for him. His fortieth-birthday present.
The combination of her too adult sexuality and her too youthful body and face had filled him with a mixture of despair and distaste. How could he explain to her that his love for her was that of an adult for a child, and that to him the thought of knowingly being sexually stirred by any fifteen-year-old girl was acutely repugnant. Her straight coltish limbs, her high small breasts, which she was displaying to him with such terrifying insouciance, were those of a child, not a woman.
In the end he had had to leave her in possession of his bed and spend the night in a hotel. Since then she might not have gone so far as invading his bed, but she certainly still insisted that she loved him.
On the other side of the room Anthony was talking to the aide of one of the charity’s royal patrons. Bram made his way over to join them.
‘Ah, Bram.’ Anthony welcomed him with a smile, introducing him to his companion. ‘I was just telling Charles here about you. I’m sorry I had to break our appointment this afternoon, by the way, but no doubt Taylor was able to help you.’
‘Very much so,’ Bram agreed, as the royal aide turned away to speak to someone else. ‘But…’
‘But?’ Anthony repeated, frowning as he picked up on the hesitation in Bram’s voice. ‘Was there a problem?’
‘Not with your archivist,’ Bram assured him. ‘Far from it. But I have to admit I just wasn’t prepared for the amount of material she gave me. I haven’t had time to look at it properly yet, but I doubt that I’m going to be able to extract the statistics I need without some very knowledgeable assistance.’
‘Well, that needn’t be a problem,’ his friend assured him. ‘In fact, the person in the best position to help you is Taylor herself. She’s been with the charity for a long time and the new information-collating system we put in last year was very much her baby.’
‘Well, if you’re sure she can spare the time,’ Bram responded reluctantly. ‘I must admit she would seem to be the ideal choice, especially if, as you say, she’s familiar with your own computer system.’
While Anthony was assuring him that some satisfactory arrangement could be reached, Bram was inwardly marvelling at his own hitherto unsuspected capacity for duplicity and manipulation. He had never before in his life imagined, or needed to imagine, employing the kind of deceitful sleight of hand he was using now. He had simply never had the need…or the desire.
He had a gut-deep feeling that working alongside Taylor was not going to be a good idea—either for his libido or his emotions. But the attractive proposition of another chance to get close to Taylor far outweighed any possible doubts.
‘I imagine she must have come to you straight from university,’ he heard himself saying to Anthony further compounding his deceit.
‘No. She did actually go to university, but she left without taking her degree. I’m not sure why.’ He started to frown. ‘She’s an extremely private person who doesn’t encourage personal questions, although I do know that she eventually obtained her degree via the Open University system. She’s got a first-rate brain. And a good sense of humour, too, when she allows it to surface. Sometimes, though, it’s almost as though she’s afraid of laughing, as though she’s afraid of…’
‘Living,’ Bram suggested quietly.
‘How high do you rate your chances of being able to come up with something for us?’ Anthony asked.
‘It’s hard to say,’ Bram responded honestly. ‘Especially since I need to break down all the reference material and collate it properly.
‘What I’m hoping to do is to establish some common ground between the different degrees of communication problems and to use that as the base for a general program which can then, hopefully, be adapted to meet the needs of the individual user. But as yet we’re a long, long way from that stage.’
‘Well, having Taylor seconded to you should help.’
‘Oh, it will,’ Bram told him truthfully. ‘It will.’
‘I’ll speak to her first thing in the morning. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem. She was complaining only the other week that since we’ve put in this new computer system, she’s finding she has time on her hands.
‘I was discussing this project with our patron this afternoon,’ Anthony continued. ‘He was very enthusiastic about it. It’s going to make one hell of a difference if you can pull it off. Commercially for you as well as for us.’
‘Potentially, yes.’ Bram agreed cautiously, aware that he was now voicing the same doubts which Jay had expressed earlier—but from a very different standpoint.
It was almost one o’clock when he eventually left the reception and made his way back home.
He did not, however, retire straight to bed. Instead, he went into his study, a square room to the rear of the house, with windows which overlooked a surprisingly large garden. With the heavy antique damask curtains closed, shutting out the sounds of the city, it was almost possible for him to imagine he was back on the fens.
Almost… A wry smile curled his mouth as he contrasted the expensive elegance of his present surroundings with the small, shabby cottage he had rented there. The two places, the two lifestyles, were worlds apart, but he was still the same man.
No, not the same, he acknowledged. He had changed the moment he had walked into Taylor’s office. She intrigued him, interested him, aroused his curiosity, his compassion—and his desire! And if he did desire her, was that so very wrong? Not wrong, perhaps, but certainly foolhardy—surely he had learned enough about life to realise the stupidity of wanting a woman who did not want him?
He picked up the file. He hadn’t lied when he told Anthony he was going to need help collating the information she had given him… Well, not totally, although he suspected she would take convincing of that fact.
And if she chose not to be convinced, if she refused to work with him? To work with him—was that all he wanted? Would he be able to stop at merely working with her? He was more than forty, he reminded himself, well capable of controlling whatever inappropriate physical or emotional desire Taylor aroused in him. As he had done the first time they met? His body tensed a little uncomfortably as he looked down and saw what he had doodled on the edge of the file. A small and extraordinarily feisty-looking little mouse.
Chapter 4
Down below, to the left of Jay’s bedroom window, Fifth Avenue lay under a haze of car exhaust fumes and heat. To the right the trees in Central Park were just beginning to lose the bright, fresh greenness of early spring. The temperature was rising, and with the approach of summer came an energetic and collective shedding of layers of clothing from women’s bodies, which should have rejoiced the heart of any red-blooded male, Jay acknowledged as his glance lingered briefly on the slim, golden limbs of a girl crossing the street below him.
Perhaps if he had been able to make his father see reason, bring him round to his point of view, he might have felt more inclined to join the general rush to welcome summer.
As it was… New Yorkers obviously had conveniently short memories, he decided cynically. In another six weeks’ time they would be moaning about the stifling heat of their city. In another six weeks…
On the surface his meeting with the Japanese had gone well enough; they had seemed to accept his careful noncommittal statement that he and his father both felt they needed more time before coming to a final decision about such a very important step. On the surface… Oh, they had been polite enough, but there had been that firm reminder that they would not wait for ever, that resources for investment were finite and there were other small companies in which they were interested. Like Jay they had other business in New York, and their comment had somehow sounded more like a warning than general conversation.
Another meeting had been set up for six weeks’ time. Six weeks—would that be long enough to bring his father around to his point of view? To make him see sense? To make him realise how very, very vulnerable they were, and how much they needed the kind of partnership the Japanese were offering?
Jay frowned impatiently as he continued to stare out of the window. What was his father doing—thinking—was he regretting not agreeing with him?
The familiar edginess and anger he always felt when he and his father were apart, when others were in a better position to influence him than he was himself, were beginning to make him wish he hadn’t committed to a two-week stay in New York. Damn. Jay silently cursed himself—and Plum. Still, it would be worth the wait just to see her face when he gave her her ‘present.’ Hers and everyone else’s, once they realised just what it was.
He was already regretting rearranging his dinner date with Nadia, but she had wanted to see him, or so she’d said.
Their affair had ended more than six years ago, and although he continued to hear, through mutual acquaintances, about her almost meteoric career progress, they had not kept in touch on a personal basis.
He glanced at the phone, wondering if it was too late to ring her and cancel their date for the second time, but then, if he did, he was grimly aware of the conclusions she was likely to draw.
‘If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a man who sulks,’ she had once told him pithily, after they had quarrelled.
‘I do not sulk,’ he had countered angrily, but she had raised her eyebrows and mocked.
‘Oh no? If you believe that, then you’re nowhere near as intelligent as you like to pretend to be, Jay. When it comes to handing out the silent withdrawal treatment you’re an expert. And they say that women are manipulative! The moment a situation comes along where you think you might not win, you don’t want to be involved. You back off and retreat into that cosy, safe little world of yours and you bar the door behind you.’
That had been just one of the quarrels which had ultimately led to the collapse of their relationship. In personality they were poles apart. Nadia was the great-granddaughter of Russian immigrants who had fled to London at the time of the revolution; her nature was passionate and volatile, and when she believed in something, she believed in it utterly and completely—and expected those close to her to believe in it as well.
When Jay had refused to do so she had denounced him as being too cold, too clinical, too good at using logic to deny real feelings.
But Nadia had had a logic of her own, a logic which had ultimately led to her ending their relationship. She’d told Jay that, although sexually he was a very good lover, the cost of maintaining their relationship was an investment she was not prepared to make. ‘Think of our relationship as a bank,’ she had told him fiercely. ‘I am the one who does all the emotional paying in, Jay. You are the one who is always drawing out, who makes no contribution emotionally.
‘I have too much respect for myself, too many things I want to do with my life, to burden myself with that kind of debt. I am not like your father, endlessly prepared to fund your emotional poverty. I have a need to make withdrawals of my own…to require my own support. Fucking you is heaven, but loving you would be hell.’
No, he mused, theirs had not been the kind of relationship which would allow them now to sit down comfortably together and reminisce over their shared past.
Not that Nadia had ever been the type to waste time reminiscing about the past. She lived in the present and worked for the future. Even while at London University she had been very clear-minded about what she wanted, where she was going….
‘I am a citizen of the world,’ she had been fond of saying. ‘The fate which has denied me the right to a country of my own has also freed me to live without any hampering emotional attachments to any particular country. My great-grandparents might have settled here in Britain, but they were always treated as outsiders. I owe no more loyalty to Britain than I do to anywhere else.’
‘But it’s Britain, the British people, who have given you your security, your education…your freedom.’ Jay had challenged her.
‘No,’ Nadia had countered fiercely. ‘These are things I have taken for myself…worked for myself…. I do not owe anyone anything.’
She had never made any secret of her ambitions, and now, by all accounts, she was well on the way to fulfilling them.
Half an hour later as Jay stood under the shower letting the spray hammer his flesh, he found himself thinking about her again.
She had been his first really serious lover, challenging and mocking him in the days before she finally allowed him to catch her, and continuing to do so even afterwards.
He had never discovered just how or with whom she had learned the sexual expertise which had made her such a skilled lover. Now, with hindsight, he suspected it had been with an older man—or men. She had certainly been confident enough to tell him quite clearly and firmly when he didn’t please or satisfy her as she wanted.
She had been the first woman, the only woman, when he thought about it, who had made it clear that she considered the act of cunnilingus one that she not only had every right to expect from him as a regular part of their lovemaking, but also one by which she judged the manner of a man.
‘Only a man who is ignorant of the true pleasure of sex thinks that all he has to do to give a woman satisfaction is to penetrate her,’ Nadia had declared scornfully after listening to a fellow male undergraduate boasting about the number of times he had “fucked” his partner in one twenty-four-hour period.
‘For a woman, penetration is nothing. It is the way a man savours and relishes the scent and taste of her, the way he lingers over every tiny lick and suck. There is nothing…nothing more erotic than having a man beg to be allowed to go down on you. Nothing.’
Jay had learned since that she had been both right and wrong. There were women to whom cunnilingus was everything, the only orgasmic pleasure, and there were also women who did not feel sexually satisfied unless they had been physically penetrated—and there were women who filled the distance between the two by desiring and enjoying an infinite variety of intimacies.
In his experience sex was not so much a mutual pleasure as a mutual trade-off; it wasn’t just the New Age seriousness of the dawning of the nineties, trailing its ghoulish warnings about promiscuity and AIDS, which was making sex something that people felt more inclined to hang back from rather than rush into. It was a general feeling of cynicism about the motivations behind the act, a disinclination to believe that it was done, ultimately, for anything more than personally selfish motives.
‘Time was when a guy who stayed at home and gave himself a hand job was considered a maladjusted weirdo…pathetic,’ Jay had overheard one man telling another in the changing rooms at his gym. ‘Now a guy’s only got to say in public that he prefers to take responsibility for his own sexual release and he’s got every woman in the place convinced he’s Mr Sensitive New Man.’
He, personally, might not have taken things that far, Jay admitted, but his sex drive had certainly diminished over the past few years.
Beauty without brains had never appealed to him, even when he was younger, but now… When had he first begun to feel that there was something empty about his relationships, something lacking?
He moved uncomfortably across the room, irritated by his thoughts. He had Nadia to blame for this emotional introspection.
Nadia paused in the act of smoothing the fine black wool crêpe of her dress over her thirty-three-inch hips, frowning as she moved a little closer to the mirror to study her reflection critically.
There came a point when a woman was approaching her thirtieth birthday where being enviably slim could suddenly change to being unenviably thin—scraggy, in fact, with brittle chicken-stick bones and skin that, without the healthy satin gleam of youth, could appear far less appealing to male eyes than the plumper flesh of more rounded women. Treading the fine line between slender suppleness and that ageing, desiccated thinness was an art. So far she had more than mastered it. The warm silken flesh of her bare arms contrasted perfectly with the fabric and colour of her dress. Her legs, clad in the sheerest of sheer stockings, were exactly the same colour as her discreetly tanned arms—just enough to give a healthy glow rather than a winter pallor, but never, ever enough to mimic the overtanned look of an older generation, who had learned too late of the damaging effects of the sun, which they had embraced with such passionate adoration.
Her dress was simple but elegant, and it fitted perfectly, emphasising the narrowness of her waist and the slenderness of her hips, the delicate swell of her breasts—and if a man was discerning enough, and Jay would be—the fact that beneath it her breasts were bare, small enough and firm enough to allow them to be so.
All that would change if she married Alaric.
He would want children and soon and, of course, there would be pressure on her to conform to the stereotype of WASP wife and motherhood.
If she married him. Was there really any doubt? He would be the perfect husband for her in every way. She couldn’t put off her decision much longer. Her frown deepened.
Had Jay appeared in the Big Apple at just the right moment?
It was often said that a woman never forgot her first lover, and while Jay had not been that, he had certainly been the first man to touch her emotions, the first man she had loved.
It was six years since they had last met…since they had parted. What would Jay see tonight when he looked at her? A desirable woman? An older version of the ex-lover he had walked away from without any apparent regrets? A successful career woman who had made a name for herself in one of the toughest career arenas in the world? Life was tough enough on Wall Street when you were a man; when you were a woman…
It was seven-thirty, time for her to leave. She picked up her wrap.
Nadia saw Jay before he saw her. She had purposefully arrived at the restaurant early and gone straight to the table he’d booked.
She could see him now, pausing to survey the occupants of the dimly lit room, standing a good six inches above the maître d’ and drawing every pair of female eyes in the place to him, Nadia observed wryly.
And no wonder. While to her his features had been instantly recognisable—they were, after all, carved on her memory, her senses for all time—her femininity marvelled at the subtlety with which nature had transformed a young man—a very good-looking young man—into an adult male, a predator, a hunter at the full height of his power. His young male frame with its long rangy bones had become subtly more muscular, harder, sexier, all the soft flesh of youth stripped away, replaced by a much harder and far more masculine covering that revealed the true magnificence of his bone structure.
Given the chance, the entire female population of the restaurant would have gladly given voice to a long, verbal orgasm just watching him, Nadia reflected cynically, and didn’t he just know it.
He had seen her now, the green eyes meeting hers briefly before disengaging as he strode purposefully towards her.
‘Nadia…’
Even his voice had become more masculine, deeper, more positive, sending a small electric frisson of sensual awareness zigzagging down her spine.
Very impressive, Nadia acknowledged, as he sat down opposite her. But she was determined not to let him know what she was thinking, to make sure that she was the one who kept control of the situation.
‘Drink?’ she asked him, adding gently, ‘I hear things didn’t go too well with the Japanese….’
Jay’s eyebrows rose, his eyes calm, slightly surprised. ‘Oh?’ He gave a small dismissive shrug. ‘I thought they went rather well, but then I suppose it all depends on your point of view.’
‘You weren’t able to give them any real commitment,’ Nadia told him.
‘I didn’t want to give them any firm commitment,’ Jay corrected her. ‘Their offer is only one of several options we’re considering at the moment.’
‘We?’ Nadia pounced. ‘Ah…of course…your father. His is the final decision, isn’t it?’
‘Why exactly did you want to have dinner with me, Nadia? Not to talk business, surely.’
She had rattled him, even though he was fighting hard not to show it, Nadia exulted. She wondered what he would say if he knew that she also had dealings with his Japanese contacts, and that for the first time in her professional life she had broken one of her golden rules. She had kept back from her clients a piece of important information by not telling them that no matter what Jay might say to them, it was his father and not he whose decision would be final. What she was even more reluctant to dwell on was why she had kept that information to herself.
‘No…not just to talk business,’ she agreed with a smile. ‘We’re old friends,’ she went on. ‘It’s a long time since we last met….’
‘Old friends?’ Jay queried. ‘You and I were never friends, Nadia. Lovers…yes…friends, no.
‘I understand you’re getting married.’
