Lovers and Liars Trilogy (131 page)

“Let me out of this room.” Gini rounded on him, her face white with anger and distress. “You think I’d work with you now? After what you said to me? Just get out of my way. I don’t want to work with you, I don’t want to be in the same
room
with you.”

“Maybe. But you’re going to hear me out.”

“The hell I am. I remember what you said. You damn near accused me of being a whore.”

“I never used that word.”

“Don’t lie. It’s what you meant.”

“Possibly. My phrasing was more tactful, I think.”

Gini smacked him hard across the face. She had to reach up to do it, but she hit him with her full strength. The blow left a mark across his cheek. Tears had sprung to her eyes. She drew back, shaking, fighting to control her voice.

“You think I work like that? You think I operate that way? Well, I don’t. I never have—never. I
despise
women who do that. I fought for
years
to get an assignment like that. I
care
about the stories I work on. I tried to cure myself of that in Bosnia because I thought I couldn’t do my work and care—but I’m
not
cured. And now I don’t want to be. I’m going to find Mina Landis—and I don’t need your help. I’m going to find her because—”

She broke off with an angry gesture of the hands. “… because I talked to Anneke’s mother, and… she wept. You wouldn’t understand. But I care, Rowland, I care very much about that.”

Her voice had risen, and the emotion she felt was so strong, she could scarcely speak. Furious that Rowland McGuire, of all people, should see her like this, she began to push past him.

“Just get out of my way, Rowland. I have nothing else to say to you. Let me out of this room.”

“No,” he said in a perfectly level voice. “I won’t do that. I’m not even sure I
could
do that.”

“What?” Gini said, and then she stopped. Suddenly she began to see Rowland McGuire, really see him. It was as if a camera changed focus, from long shot to close-up. One minute he was faceless, blurred, just a tall shape between her and the door; the next, she could see the man himself. He was wearing an overcoat, one of his usual old tweed suits, a white shirt with the top button undone, and a green tie with the knot loose. Earlier, manhandling her into the elevator, he had seemed dourly amused; he did not seem amused now, or angry, or resentful of the fact that she had just slapped his face.

She could see the mark her palm had left across his cheekbone, a red weal that emphasized his pallor and the set determination in his face. He was regarding her with absolute seriousness, his green eyes resting unwaveringly on her face. His hands were by his sides; he appeared simultaneously relaxed and intent. She glanced down, weighing her chances of pushing past him, then looked up, met that intent green stare—and sensed the danger at once.

They were standing very close to each other, their eyes locked. At that moment, when she was least expecting it, out of antagonism, haste, and furious anger, she felt something arc between them that was none of these things, a sexual message so sharp she gave an involuntary intake of breath.

She felt it pulse through her own mind, she saw it reflect the same instant in his face. She saw a deeper concentration come into his eyes, and then a surprise—as if he had expected this, foreseen this, as little as she had. In the same moment, again with unspoken accord, they each stepped back.

Gini looked at the door, which was shut but unlocked. Rowland McGuire had moved to one side, so to leave would have been simple. She took a step toward the door, then hesitated. Rowland put a hand on her arm, then instantly withdrew it. Gini realized her anger had gone. There was still noise, turmoil, in her head, but it was of a different kind.

“How did you know I was coming here?” she asked in a quieter voice.

“I called your hotel in Amsterdam. They told me you’d left for Paris. I called about fifteen minutes after you left.” His eyes never left her face. “I called from my car, on the way to the airport. I was already on my way here. Someone had to cover this. I had fired you. I was the only other person with the necessary background. I was going to apologize. Ask you to join me here. I wanted—” He hesitated. “The hotel told me you’d had difficulty obtaining a room in Paris. I guessed you’d have tried to contact Lindsay, so I called here. It wasn’t difficult to track you down. I knew which flight you’d taken. So, I got here. Found the room. Made some calls. Waited.”

“When did you hear about Maria Cazarès?”

“For certain? About five minutes after we spoke. I first heard the rumor about an hour before from a journalist friend here. He phoned back to confirm just after I hung up on you. Confirmation came through on the wires about five minutes after that.”

“So you’d heard a rumor she might be dead before we spoke?”

“Yes. I had. Plus I’d had two very difficult conversations with my source in Amsterdam. That was the timing. It isn’t an excuse.”

There was a silence. Gini could sense an emotion that was at variance with the calm precision of his speech. She hesitated.

“What made you want to apologize?”

“I realized how badly I’d behaved.”

He paused, his face suddenly troubled. Gini, who had known the instant she asked the question that it would have been safer unvoiced, prayed he would not answer it more fully. She was about to interrupt him, when he spoke.

“I want you to know,” he went on in a deliberate way, “I am ashamed of what I said. Not only because I was wrong—on two counts. Also, because I lost my temper and I said things there’s no reason you should forgive.” He hesitated, and she could sense his struggle. “Despite what people say about me, I very rarely lose control to that degree. I now see, of course, why I did.”

Gini admired him then. His gaze did not waver as he made this admission—and no woman could have misunderstood what he meant. His meaning was absolutely clear in his expression and tone. It might be an understated declaration, but a declaration it was. It was characteristic of him, she suspected, to phrase it in such a way, so she could ignore this revelation, or, with equal directness to his, respond.

She stared at him, unable to break his gaze. She knew that if he spoke again, if he tried to make his statement more explicit, she would be free. She could walk past him then, go out that door. She waited; he did not speak—but the silence in the room did.

She could feel the danger acutely now, the threat of the next, the threat of the unforeseen, the possibility just around the corner of her as-yet-unmade response. She could feel time picking up speed. The second or two it took her to make her reply was freight-train fast, freight-train loud. She had a brief and confused sensation that she, and he, were passengers here. One wrong word, one wrong gesture, and they’d both be getting on a train there was no getting off.

“It wasn’t true, what you said,” she said. “About the Antica. About Pascal…”

And she thought, for an instant, she was safe. She had bypassed his declaration, and she saw his mouth tighten as he registered that. She had used Pascal’s name, which should, under these circumstances, have made her entirely secure; instead, the use of his name had a very opposite effect. Rather than carrying a charmed strength, it was suddenly weak: with it came a tide of uncertainties and unhappiness, all those months of loneliness and misery, of waking alone, and sleeping alone, and walking alone through London streets. It was no protection at all from this acute and unexpected sexual awareness, an awareness that sent a charge through every nerve in her body so she could scarcely think for a need to be touched.

“Don’t,” she began, and she was still telling herself, as he moved, that she would be safe if he did not touch her. “Don’t. It’s all right. It’s my pride that’s hurt, that’s all.”

He did not argue with that lie; he said nothing at all. He took her hand and drew her against him gently. He looked down at the tears on her face, then held her still against him in a gentle embrace. After so many weeks of abstinence, the shock of a man’s body, and a man’s embrace, was intense. She let her face rest against the muscles of his chest; she listened to the beating of his heart. She felt a sense of protection, and then of need. The body could be starved of affection as much as the mind, and for a short while just to be held, and be held by a man, gave her relief. She felt as if she had been struggling so long, fighting herself for so long, and now—suddenly—she was released.

Then it began to steal upon her, the realization that this was not just any man, and not a neutral embrace. It was a particular man, strong, a little taller than Pascal, a man whose body, touch, manner of holding, were new to her. She realized that her breasts were pressed against his chest, that he was becoming aroused, that one of his hands rested in the small of her back, exerting no pressure as yet.

Behind her in this room which she had scarcely looked at when she entered it less than ten minutes before, a telephone had begun ringing. She had a confused sense that it might be for either of them, and that if it was for her, someone was trying to reach another woman, leading some previous life. She let it ring, and Rowland let it ring, five times, six.

He rested his hand against her throat, then lifted her face to his. She met his steady, green, intelligent gaze: a man who could indeed be impetuous, a man who was more than prepared, when he judged it necessary, to take risks. She felt him stir against her, and a tremor of response ran through her own body. Even then, when she knew they could both sense consequences, repercussions, when the noise of them was so loud in her head that she could scarcely think, even then he was scrupulous, and he gave her a choice.

“This story is breaking,” he said, “and that call might be urgent. Do you want to answer it?”

Gini looked up at this semi-stranger. Want for him surged up through her body with an astonishing force.

“No, I don’t,” she said.

“Neither do I,” he replied, and with that acknowledgment past, he did not hesitate. With the noise of the ringing telephone blindingly loud, and his composure suddenly gone, he pulled her against him. He kissed her hair, then her eyes, then her mouth. It was urgent, and very swift: Gini opened her mouth to his; she cried out as his hands touched her breasts. At some point the telephone stopped ringing; at some point Rowland locked the door, but afterward neither of them could have said when, or at which point.

A while later Gini rose from the bed and went into the bathroom. She felt blind; blinded by its darkness, still blind when she switched on the light. It had the predictable luxury of such hotels. It was lined with marble. Rowland’s belongings—a brush, a comb, a shaving kit—had been thrown down carelessly on a shelf. Above the basin was one mirror, behind her on the opposite wall was another. Gini looked at a room that would not stay still, in which reflections doubled back and the veins of the marble seemed to pulse. She made herself focus; she looked into the mirror; she looked at herself.

Sex was like pain, she thought. If you were without it for a time, you forgot how all-powerful it was. It was sex she could see in this mirror now: its imprint could be seen on her mouth, which was swollen; on her skin, which was flushed; and on her body, where his hands had touched and gripped. She ached with the pleasure of being fucked; her thighs were wet; she smelled of sex, leaked sex, and she could still feel the little aftershocks of sex, the residual tremors of sexual delight that came to her as she remembered how he had done first this, and then that.

This, then, was what she was. These specifics measured out her betrayal. For all her certainties, all her past vows, she had still arrived here, in a situation she had never envisaged, and would have claimed was beyond the bounds of possibility. She had made the choice, and to compound her own faithlessness, the sexual pleasure had been intense.

Why had she had that fixed, stupid, adolescent certainty that only Pascal could give her this? Why had she convinced herself that love altered the very nature of this act and gave it a resonance and intensity it otherwise lacked? What a very female mistake, she thought: what a woman’s error; how many men would claim that? That belief was unfounded; she could read its untruth in her reflected face, and feel its untruth in her womb. In betraying her lover, she had learned a most bitter and unwelcome truth about herself.

She ran some water in the basin and washed herself. She returned to the bedroom. Faint light came through the closed curtains. Rowland McGuire was lying on his back, his head cradled in his hands. He turned as she entered; Gini crossed, and knelt down beside him. Naked, he was very beautiful. The hard lines of his body still gleamed with sweat. She rested her face against his shoulder and pressed her mouth against his skin, which tasted of salt. He placed his arm around her quietly and drew her closer, his hand resting against the jut of her hip.

The intimacy and peace were also unexpected. Neither spoke for a while. Gini felt the remembrance of his kisses and embraces wash through her body. She was the first to speak.

“Once, Rowland,” she said. “It has to be that way. It was just this one time. Nothing happened before it, and nothing must happen after it. It was accident, chance.”

“A mistake?”

“No.” She met his eyes steadily. “No, I would never say that. But it’s something neither of us meant to happen, or even wanted to happen. And then it did happen. If we never think of it again, never speak of it…”

“Treat it as a momentary aberration?” He was watching her intently.

“No. I’m not sure…” Gini flinched. “Maybe. How would you define that word—exactly define it?”

“I can give you a dictionary definition. It’s a straying from the path, a deviation from type.”

“That, then,” she said, grasping at the word. “A straying. Something neither of us would have thought of, or allowed, or planned in normal circumstances.”

“Were these circumstances so abnormal?” He removed his hand and sat up.

“Yes. I think they were.”

“A room. A man and a woman? An unexpected choice? Is that so abnormal?”