Resurgence (31 page)
“No, not at all. I’m not asking you to choose sides, only to take a few days off to . . . to check on things at home. You’ve been gone quite a while and, as I recall, you did leave home on very short notice. Isn’t it inevitable that
things
there have piled up, that certain
things
require your personal attention? And isn’t this the best time to take a break—while you’re between acts—with the concert success behind you and the tour not yet begun?”
“Okay, okay,
okay
, already. I’ll see what I can do.”
“As soon as possible. Concorde. On my dime.”
He’s encouraged that she doesn’t argue about the mode of transportation or who’s paying for it. But on the other hand, she’s not making any promises. She’s not making much sense either. Or so it seems until he figures out that she’s rattling on about meetings to be taken and reports to be distributed because she can be overheard at her end. No point, then, in adding anything to the urgent request. Or personalizing it if she’s unable to respond in kind.
On the cab ride to the legendary watering hole on Third Avenue, ambivalence settles over him again. Everything seems to have more than one answer. He should have told Amanda it was an emergency.
Colin forcibly breaks their lip-lock, producing a soft gasp from Laurel. He applies his mouth to her throat, then to the hollow between her collarbones, and on to the valley between her breasts. She emits a louder gasp that’s all the encouragement he needs to lavish attention on erect nipples and graze the gentle swell of her belly before picking up her scent and following its lead.
For him, the week since they were last able to manage anything out of the ordinary—anything beyond a muffled, abbreviated hump beneath the covers—has passed like a month in solitary with his hands tied behind his back.
He’s going at her now like it’s their first time and he’s afraid it’s their last; he could feel a bit sheepish about this level of desperation if her ardor didn’t match his, as demonstrated by her little yips of pleasure and madly inflaming twistings and turnings.
As their mutual temperature rises, she becomes more vocal and more powerful in her responses, crying out full voice and arching off the bed, hips lifting, fingers digging into his scalp as he feasts on her.
She’s all gasping greed when he comes up for air and she insists his length into her in one hard thrust. The strength of her grip on his arse—the hand-prints she’s leaving there—says there’s no holding back; the scrape of her teeth against his shoulder says he’ll be marked there as well; they both could be marked by the strenuous clash and bash that culminates in madly reverberating satisfaction.
They separate as abruptly as they coupled—he rolling onto his back, she onto her stomach, both breathing hard, eyeing each other warily, as though in disbelief.
“I love you,” she mouths.
“I love you, Laurel Grace Chandler,” he says just audibly and they drift on those pronouncements for a while.
Hidden away in a seldom used guestroom in the north wing, no one will come looking for them here. But he can wager all their usual haunts will be searched the minute Simon wakes from his lie-down and Anthony returns from an outing with Sam Earle. And he can be dead certain the phone will be ringing when they emerge from this stolen interlude.
David Sebastian’s London office chimes in a minimum of three times a day with a fresh dose of unfinished business, and that doesn’t include numerous calls from chief troubleshooter, Amanda. Of late, Bemus’s voice has joined the daily chorus of demands that go into mounting a full-scale musical invasion of the Continent.
Chris will have been here—or may still be here—with Jesse and Lane set to pop in at any moment. Celebrity stragglers from last week’s memorial concert may still be lurking about for one last hurrah. Household staff are necessarily in evidence; vendors and purveyors necessarily come and go with tiresome regularity. Dogs, cats, and even roosters are free to intrude and interrupt at will.
“I’m sorry,” Colin says without warning.
“Good lord,” Laurel says, turns on her side, goes up on one elbow. “What on earth for? You have nothing to be sorry about,
believe
me. That was . . . I hardly know what to say . . . that was off the scale.”
“Yeh, wasn’t it though, but I’m sorry we had to sneak off like this, that we’ve never been alone, actually.”
“We were alone the day that counted most and it’s not as though you sprang the children on me. I didn’t come here thinking—”
“It’s not just the lads. It’s the lot of it. It’s everything. You were hardly here a day when we lost Rayce, followed by all the commotion that went with that. Then there was the pressure chamber of gearing up for the Albert Hall gig, and now the getting ready for the bleedin’—”
She leans over and kisses him. Hard. Long enough that she’s got him thinking about encores. But before that proves possible, she breaks away, salvages her knickers from the floor and wriggles into them in a vastly entertaining way.
“You sound like you need a break as much as Amanda,” Laurel says as she positions her breasts in the bra she just put on—a sight almost as pleasing as watching them burst free when she undresses.
“I nearly forgot she’s on holiday.” He accepts that the party’s over and stabs a leg into his pants. “Where was she off to, did she say?”
“New York, and I wouldn’t call it a holiday, just a change of scenery. She said there was a huge backlog of personal things she’s ignored since she came to London on such short notice.”
He puts on his jeans, no longer distracted by Laurel’s motions. “Why am I only hearing about this now?”
“You’re not. She was very clear about her plans Saturday night, right after she took the call from her service—”
“When I was still laughing my arse off over what she was made to suffer at the oast house.” He zips up and pulls on a T-shirt. “This call from her service, what was it about?”
“How should I know? I didn’t take the call, your mother did. And even if I had answered, it wouldn’t have been my business to question—”
“Maybe you should have made it your business, maybe you should have questioned because now that you’ve alerted me, I very much doubt it was Amanda’s service that rang, and I further doubt she went to New York to pay the bills, feed the goldfish, and sort through back issues of those fan magazines she gets off on.”
“Don’t start.” Laurel shoots him a warning look. “Please,” she says without a trace of civility.
“It all makes sense. Bemus said Nate left for New York on Friday, and all of a sudden Amanda developed this need to straighten out her personal affairs. Like the rotter didn’t summon her there to see to
his
personal affairs and further work his wiles on her like some fucking Rasputin.”
“Colin!”
“Yeh, don’t I know you’re firmly embedded in the Nate camp and never more so than during that bit of embarrassment—shit, that was humiliation—backstage at the concert for Rayce.”
“
What
humiliation?” Laurel says. Fully dressed now, she rounds to his side of the bed, gets right in his face. “Are you suggesting
I
humiliated you in some way? If you’re referring to the incident when Nate came backstage and made obvious his romantic interest in Amanda, you did a superb job of humiliating yourself. You didn’t need my help.”
“The hell you say.”
“The hell
you
say! You’re the one who flaunted your ridiculous suspicions and invited negative comment from both Amanda and me. I, for one, continue to be disappointed that you think so little of Amanda you’re willing to believe she’d allow herself to be manipulated, and that you think so little of Nate—and so much of yourself—you’re willing to believe he’s attempting to control you from behind the scenes.”
“You done?”
“No, and I won’t be until you view Amanda’s ethics as unshakeable and recognize that Nate doesn’t want you back under
any
circumstances.” She unlocks and opens the door to the hall. “Take care of the sheets, will you? I think I hear Simon.”
He turns his back on her rather than display a defeated expression like the one that overwhelmed him backstage at Albert Hall—the expression Nate had to have witnessed and correctly interpreted.
He could spew a few choice curse words for all the good it would do, or go ranting after her, and that wouldn’t do any good either. He could drill his mom about the origin of the call Amanda received Saturday night, but that risks another rebuke and he’s got a better idea, actually.
Once the bed linen is bundled together and left in the hall to mildew for all he cares, he ducks into Laurel’s nearby office where he helps himself to her Rolodex and Amanda’s home phone number. At half after nine a.m. New York time, Amanda can be imagined enjoying a leisurely breakfast or engaging in an early-morning romp. But not at this address and phone number. He nevertheless rings her home number, prepared to smirk when it goes unanswered. When it is answered—answered by Amanda—he’s smirkless. Speechless as well, because he’s unable to imagine Nate Isaacs shacked up in a low-rent Brooklyn flat.
“Hel-
lo
?” Amanda says for maybe the third or fourth time, cueing him to either respond or ring off. She settles that emergency debate by herself ringing off, but not before he hears her mutter, “asshole.”
Must be the company she keeps, he explains away her uncharacteristic profanity whilst confirming Nate’s home number in Laurel’s directory.
Shit, he very nearly says aloud when Nate picks up on the second ring. Colin breaks the connection without hearing how Nate deals with heavy breathers, and gets the bloody hell out of Laurel’s office before he’s seized with another juvenile impulse.
In his own office, he needn’t worry about continuing to play the juvenile—not when he sees the cover of a magazine someone’s left on his desk.
Celebrity Sleuth
, an unfamiliar publication from the States; the sort he’d be inclined to pick up by one corner and sail across the room if the banner headline superimposed across his picture didn’t hold such morbid fascination.
“The Mature Colin Elliot,” the banner reads, along with a page number to turn to. “Mature”—not the best word to use when describing a rock musician, and not the sort of word that endears the writer to the subject. The effect it produces is akin to the shiver of mortality supposedly felt when one’s unopened grave is walked upon. The curiosity it produces is irresistible.
He sits down, mutes the phone, and opens the magazine to the designated page, where he sees a center spread of himself in the before and after—numerous stock photos from the early days juxtaposed with recent shots from the Concert for Rayce. The contrast is obvious. Stunningly so. It’s not as though he went bald and portly in the interval; it’s not as though he’s stooped or gimped in any way, but even in these still photos, it’s evident that he doesn’t reign over the stage as he once did—in great leaps and bounds, antic whirls with mike stands, frantic glissades to the lip of the stage, and perilous flirtations off the edge of the stage.
His eyes stray to the caption—“Less dominant, more in command.” Not words he expected to see. Not at all. Not words he’ll forget anytime soon, at least not till he decides what they mean.
He flips to the next page and a picture lifted from television footage of him backing Laurel at the media session on the steps of The Plaza. This caption reads “Sterling choice,” whatever the hell that’s supposed to indicate, and resigns him to delving into the accompanying body of text for clarification.
The resurrected Colin Elliot and his reassembled band, Verge, were the indisputable headliners in the field of headliners lighting up London’s Royal Albert Hall at the recent memorial concert for the late Rayce Vaughn
.
Elliot applied a steady hand and seasoned authority to the artistic production of the show and brought grounded confidence and finely honed musicianship to his and his band’s contributions
.
The instant standard that closed the show, “Angle of Repose,” written by Elliot for Vaughn and recorded with Vaughn only days before the senior rocker’s untimely death, embodies a depth and maturity not previously heard in Elliot’s compositions and hints of new strengths acquired during Elliot’s prolonged convalescence from injuries suffered . . .
Colin skims through a rehash of what’s known of the accident and zeroes in when the subject matter shifts back to the present and includes Laurel.
. . .
Chandler of the prominent Manhattan law firm, Clark, Sebastian & Associates, was enlisted to write a long-awaited Elliot biography. That project may have been scrapped when Ms. Chandler and Elliot announced wedding plans after a whirlwind courtship. Informed sources say Elliot could not have made a more sterling or reasoned choice in Ms. Chandler, again attesting to a maturity that wasn’t always his
.
Elliot’s interim management team, headed by David Sebastian of the aforementioned Manhattan law firm, describe Elliot as a coolheaded individual, very handson, very involved in decision-making at all levels, and cooperative short of allowing full media access
.