An Affair to Forget (18 page)

He
paused for another satisfying kiss. “The other day when you stood in the snow on Teide in borrowed wellingtons and yelled at me like a fishwife, I realised that I couldn’t just walk away from you. And I never will. Tomorrow” – he flipped her back on to the bed, leaning over her – “on that plane home to Yorkshire, will be the first day of our new lives.”

“
But Sam…” Morrin put her hands on his chest, holding him back. “I can’t let Sam down.”

Gareth
sighed. “Only you, Morrin of the long hair, could lie in my bed…”

“
On your bed, not in it!”

“
Not quite in it,” he conceded, “not yet. As I was saying, only you could lie there looking very desirable in my robe… and think about another man. I doubt if Sam cares where you are right now.”

“
But I care about him. I have to. He went off in a terrible state, Gareth.”

“
And just a few minutes ago when I looked out of the window I saw him drawing the curtains in Vicki’s room. From now on,” Gareth said firmly, running a finger very slowly from the soft hollow of her throat to the vee where the lapels of his dressing-gown covered her breasts, “the only man you have to think about is me. And that’s going to be a full-time job.”

The
tip of his finger circled gently, setting up a glow where it touched, a glow that spread swiftly to every part of her body.

“
I have to go,” Morrin insisted without conviction. “I have to pack…”

“
Later,” Gareth murmured, easing the dressing-gown aside.

His
body moved softly against hers, his mouth and hands carrying her to the brink of ecstasy with frightening ease. All at once she stopped worrying about catching the plane; she knew, as his arms tightened about her, that in twenty-four hours they would be in England together, on their way to see Charlotte.

“
We have time, my love,” he said against her throat. “We have always and forever, you and I.”

“
Promise?”

“
I promise,” Gareth said.

If you enjoyed
An Affair to Forget
by Evelyn Hood, you might be interested in
Chasing Shadow
by Frankie McGowan, also published by Endeavour Press.

Extract from
Chasing Shadow
by Frankie McGowan

Prologue

She
knew there was going to be a row when she arrived at the triplex on Park Avenue.

Sleeping
with Howard had been a mistake. She still didn't quite know why she had. Her future wasn't in New York; it was at home, with or without Roland.

She
allowed herself a wry smile as she watched the indicator light silently slide past each floor, whisking her to the top of the building.

What
was the point of being one of the best PRs in the business, promoting other people's images, smoothing their path, making sure they were seen in the right company, featured in the right papers and protecting them against scandal, if your own life looked more and more like an exercise in how to self-destruct?

The
moment, almost eighteen months before, when Howard's interest in her had stopped being exclusively professional, and morphed into a more personal interest, was approximately ten minutes after she had accepted the job.

`One
thing, Judith, before we sign the deal,' he'd said, detaining her with a smile and holding out a drink to her.

`What's
that?' Judith had smiled as Howard clinked his glass against hers, holding her gaze.

`You
must promise me you won't sleep with any of my friends.’

Judith
regarded him thoughtfully. So that was the name of the game. When they said he was a womanizer, they didn't also mention crass.

`Mr
Dorfman,' Judith began, her tone pleasant, her expression puzzled as she set down her glass on a ledge behind her. She smiled right into his face. `Tell me; are your friends all like you?'

`Most
of them,' Howard smiled encouragingly back, his face about six inches from hers.

`Then
you have my word for it,' Judith said serenely. 'I wouldn't dream of it. And to be doubly sure,' she went on, picking up her bag and getting to her feet, 'I suggest you give the job to someone else.'

For
one split second Howard looked incredulous and then to her surprise he fell about laughing, not remotely offended. But then, oddly enough, neither was she.

`You're
going to be great for my image,' he'd chuckled. 'But lousy for my ego.' And the deal had been struck. Judith was to reinvent his image to the satisfaction of the shareholders and the relief of the board of Dorfman Industries.

She
liked Howard; she admired his business skill. But when, she reasoned, you're trying to put the pieces of your own life back together again, emotionally you're anaesthetized, immune to anyone. Then it had all changed.

Away
from home, careering back and forth to London every few weeks to check on her family, she suddenly yearned for the familiarity of being with one person, missed the closeness of knowing she was important to that person. Most odd, she reflected when Roland who had damaged her heart, had never offered her security on any level. Indeed, she reflected, how could he when the woman he had married twenty years before was very much still in the frame? And yet infatuation had delivered her safely to the land of hopeless hope. But here was Howard who could give her everything, and was indeed free to do so, who had for so long failed to ignite her interest on anything but a professional level, and she felt nothing. But tiredness was her enemy.

So
it was easy, when it came down to it, to have allowed her name to be added to Howard's conquests. So very easy.

The day had been long and fraught, starting at dawn, but by ten that evening Howard Dorfman had acquired a chain of companies that had seen his place on the Forbes list of America's wealthiest citizens shoot up a few more notches.

Howard
being congratulated and feted was a sight Judith had grown used to in her time as his PR, but not one that she wanted to participate in. Instead she waited patiently at the back of the room, unnoticed in the throng of suits from Wall Street packed into the room, for him to decide when to leave the hotel suite at the St Regis, hired as neutral ground for the negotiations, and head for his triplex on the Upper East Side.

`Hey,'
he said, as they rode in the back of his car through the dazzle of lights that lit up Manhattan. 'What is this?'

He
pulled her face round to his. 'Nothing, Howard,' Judith protested. 'Just a long day. It's been terrific. Well done. Can Nico drop me off?'

`You're
kidding,' he said. 'You're coming up and I'm going to pour you a drink and...'

`No,
really, Howard,' Judith insisted. 'You're flying to Dallas tomorrow and I would really rather get back... honestly, Howard...
How... ard...'

Ruthlessly
clutching her arm, Howard pulled Judith out of the back of the limo and steered her across the carpeted lobby into the lift and up to his apartment. Conchita, the housekeeper, was waiting for him.

`Where's
Jorge? I want champa...' He stopped and looked at Judith's weary face. 'No. I want tea. Good English tea. Me?
Jeezus,
no.' The horror in his voice at the mere suggestion from the dutiful Conchita made Judith laugh. 'No, not me... I'll make do with a Scotch.'

Just
for a brief second Judith was interested. Howard thinking of someone else? Tea? Sympathy? Not possible.

`Okay,
let's sit you right here,' Howard said, pushing her firmly onto one of the white sofas that made up three sides of a square and gave an uninterrupted view through glass doors over the skyline of New York. 'Then you can tell me what the face is about. After which I call up Oprah and say I have a case of executive abuse which needs a national airing...'

Judith
laughed and relaxed. Sipped her tea. She let him massage her feet, mostly because it seemed churlish to refuse, and the rest because she found it comforting.

Somehow
sitting there in the soft light of Howard's apartment she had, at his insistence, told him just enough to satisfy his concern at her low mood, but nowhere near enough to reveal anything of herself.

‘Christmas,’
I suppose she smiled. ‘Home for a while. Miss it. All those walks on the Yorkshire dales.’

Howard shuddered. ‘Walks? You English.’

‘So,’ she yawned, the effects of a warm apartment and snow outside having it’s inevitable effect. ‘I feel a bit restless. New Year always seems so flat.’

`Poor
baby,' Howard had said. 'No wonder you’re whacked. All that striding around in howling gales. Here,’ he rose and poured her a glass of wine removed the tea cup from her clasp and handed it to her. ‘Tea,’ he said sitting down much closer to her, ‘is not on the menu for the rest of the evening.’

Most of the time she was proof against the abrupt rudeness of New York taxi drivers and waiters. She could handle with her customary unflappable nature, the pushy intrusiveness of the most persistent Wall Street journalists who daily tried to breach the walls of Howard's financial empire. She was not, she discovered, immune to comfort. She smiled and stretched.

For
the first time in a long while, she felt needed. It was enough. Enough to find herself waking up the following morning in his bed.

Within days there had been a subtle shift in their relationship.

Howard
had called her from Dallas to arrange dinner and arrived an hour late, bringing one of his cronies whom she loathed. Judith had called a car and gone home.

With
Howard, business came first.

Their
explosive relationship became the talk of the town. Judith's two best friends in New York urged her to believe them when they told her that Howard was bad news.

‘I
mean,’ Jed told her. ‘He’s been with a list of women as long as your arm,’

‘I know,’ she said. She didn’t doubt him for minute. If Jed Bayley, who chronicled the activities of the great and not so good for the New York
Tribune,
didn’t know, who would?

‘This could be Roland all over again,’ warned Ellie.

‘Not
this time,’ Judith assured her. Any doubt she had that she was heading down the same path as the tortuous one she had wandered with their former boss in London were tossed aside when Howard phoned and made her laugh. Laughing for Judith who hadn't laughed with anyone in a long time was good news. And for a few days they would once again be charmed with each other. It was what they had in common, charm.

But
not a harmonious meeting of minds. She slammed the phone down when he interrupted the same meeting twice and he sulked if she rang to say she would be late. She gave away tickets to a Pavarotti Concert to two students standing in line at Carnegie Hall as the first act was about to start and left him hammering on her door at midnight when he found she wasn't waiting for him at his apartment when he finally showed up.

His
attempts to get his way with her were inexhaustible. He was seen dining out at the Café Carlyle flirting outrageously with a redhead who clearly would have been more at home scouting for business in the lobbies of the big hotels on Sixth, simply because he knew it would irritate Judith who had refused to cancel dinner there with a financial editor to have dinner with him instead.

‘I’m
more angry,’ she told Ellie over lunch the next day. ’That he was about to undo all the good work I’ve done. You know? Making people on Wall Street take him seriously.’

‘And you don’t care about – whatever she’s called?’

‘A bit,’ she conceded. ‘Pride dented. That’s all. But then we’ve never said we were a couple in that sense; we’ve never defined this relationship.’

‘Now why doesn’t that surprise me?’ Ellie sighed. She glanced at her watch. ‘Got to run. Finally got the vice president to come on.’

‘Clever,’
Judith said admiringly. Not many television producers on news programmes could lure such big names, but Ellie took no prisoners. ‘And, er…why aren’t you surprised?’

Ellie
leaned over the table and kissed her cheek. ‘Because I think anyone - including you - trying to define what goes on in the lovely Howard’s brain is a mug’s game. And you’re no mug. Sunday? Hampton’s? I’ll drive.’

Judith
watched her go. For a while she sipped her coffee and stared into the distance. It was time. She’d always known that. She began to plan.

Back
in the office she checked out the state of Premier PR in London, made a few phone calls to make sure she was reading the market correctly and left the office early. No rush. Judith rarely left anything to chance.

Only
Howard's threat that he was going to storm her apartment made her agree to go over and talk to him the night after she had heard from a chance remark dropped by his PA, Connie Mayerson, that on the night he was meant to be having dinner with Judith, far from being locked in a meeting he had claimed he was, he had instead been in a club noted less for its culinary expertise than for its ability to cater to any manner of wide ranging and exotic tastes.

Annoyed
that she had been phoned by Howard at three in the morning instructing her to cancel all his meetings for the next day, Connie had snarled his whereabouts to Judith as she met her in the corridor and swept on, leaving Judith struggling with a mixture of anger and surprise. Anger that Howard should have chosen a sleazy nightclub to punish her for spending the weekend in the Hamptons with Ellie rather than in Rhode Island with him fought with surprise that his usually discreet-to-the-point-of-secretive secretary had blurted out the truth.

When
they had first met, Judith had found Connie's carefully mounted guard over Howard rather admirable, but as weeks ran into months and her friendly overtures had been snubbed, she agreed with the rest of the staff that Connie took her job just a shade too seriously. Great for Howard, but frustrating for the smooth running of their jobs.

If
Howard thought she was going to be just another Connie but with sex thrown in, Judith knew it was time to disabuse him of that notion.

`I’m
not a toy, Howard,' she said, calmly ignoring his wrathful face. 'I have a life and I’m not sitting around waiting for you to make up your mind whether we have a dinner date or not.'

‘But
you don’t mind blowing me out when you want to have dinner with Ellie-’

‘If you referring to me persuading her to get you that interview on
Nightline,
then no. She saved your bacon. Who else would have given you five solid minutes to argue that you were the best person to take over Forest industries when you’d been found lolling around in some tawdry club instead of at a board meeting? Exactly.’

He glared at her. ‘Well, how about you putting Jed fucking Bayley before me and he earns enough money from writing trash about my social life to start his own goldmine.’

‘Jed does not write trash,’ she said coldly. ’He’s a social commentator-’

‘
Oh spare me,’ he jeered. ‘Fancy name for a gossip columnist.’