‘This is ridiculous.’ Luiz stood up and looked down at her vulnerable fair head. He cursed himself for having landed up in this situation but refused to ask himself if he would have walked away from it, had he had a crystal ball that first time he had met her. He shoved his hands in his pockets as the silence thickened around them, heavy with accusation.
‘Don’t bother to answer that,’ Holly muttered thickly. ‘I don’t think I want to know the answer.’
Luiz hesitated as pride warred with some other emotion he couldn’t quite identify but which he summed up as normal human decency. ‘Of course there were no other women,’ he imparted in a driven undertone. ‘When I am with a woman, I don’t stray.’
‘Except you make sure that none of them outstay their welcome. You wouldn’t want any of them to get ideas above their station!’
‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.’
‘I didn’t think I was being sarcastic. I thought I was being realistic. Because, realistically, you’ll never have a committed relationship with anyone you think might be after your money. Like me. Will you?’
‘This discussion is running out of steam,’ Luiz said coldly. ‘I apologise for having misled you but I do not apologise for now telling you the lie of the land.’
‘All that stuff you gave me…’ Holly fingered the ‘fake’ ruby.
‘None of the jewellery was paste.’ Luiz watched as it dawned on her how much money was stashed away in various parts of the cottage, because she didn’t own a jewellery box. ‘I make a generous lover. In this instance, it was a luxury I wasn’t allowed.’
‘Is that how you’ve always treated the women you’ve gone out with? You buy them stuff and then dump them before they can get too clingy?’ She laughed shortly. ‘I can understand why you must have enjoyed the novelty of sleeping with a woman who didn’t know who you really were.’
‘Who wasn’t aware of my real name or my position,’ Luiz corrected.
‘Whatever.’ In the space of a few hours, Holly felt as though she had aged ten years. Gone was the hopeful enthusiasm and the absolute certainty that she had met her soul mate and was destined to spend the rest of her life with him. She looked at him expressionlessly. ‘I think it’s time you left now.’
Drained of all emotion, she could only watch as he gave a slight nod. Nor did she get up as he gathered his things, pausing only to glance at her over his shoulder, one hand on the door, a man now ready to take his leave. She knew he must have telephoned a taxi and she also knew that he would be in the hall waiting for it to arrive. She was keeping it together but she knew that, when that front door clicked shut behind him, she would no longer be able to contain the anguish.
‘YOU’RE NOT FOOLING anyone, Hols. You smile a lot but, just between you and me, you’re letting yourself go…’ Andy, who still managed to look dapper in muddy, low-slung jeans and his close-fitted knitted jumper, was standing back and looking at her with a critical eye. ‘Frankly you’re putting on weight.’
‘I’ve been comfort eating… a little,’ Holly confessed defensively. ‘It’s getting colder, salads don’t work in October. Besides, what’s the point of growing all those vegetables if I don’t eat them? And I have to have something to eat with them.’ But it was a paltry excuse. She had put on weight in the nine weeks since Luiz had walked out of her house. She was shamelessly indulging her sweet tooth and finding it hard to care if she gained a pound or two.
It was just her luck that Andy was proudly gay and into anything and everything to do with fashion, despite the fact that he worked in a job that came with mud as part of the package. He never failed to let her know that his jaundiced eyes were noticing each creeping pound she put on.
Ever since Luiz had left, Andy had seen it as his mission to ‘get her out of herself.’ He delivered lectures on the importance of learning curves, arranged parties to which he invited single straight friends and watched beadily from the sidelines as she steadfastly failed to notice any of them.
‘You need to move on,’ he now said kindly. ‘That sexy hunk of yours won’t be back and it’s no good eating your way through the biscuit tin while you wait in vain.’
‘I’m not eating my way through the biscuit tin and I’m not waiting in vain, either…’ But she smiled reluctantly and nodded when he invited her yet again to another of his parties, this one a soiree where she would be able to meet a couple of really nice guys into music: very hip, very cool, although he could try for an accountant if asked nicely…
So far, he had introduced her to a doctor, a hairdresser, several artists and two farmers, both of whom she had gone to school with and neither of whom elicited anything other than polite enquiries about their parents. He was determined to stop her from brooding, and she was grateful, just as she was grateful to all her friends who had rallied round and were equally determined to make her forget the whole Luiz episode and treat it as though it had never happened.
Holly knew that they were right. She needed to move on. She hadn’t heard a word from Luiz since he had walked out of her life. Several times she had been tempted to call his mobile just to hear the sound of his rich drawl, and she had had to fight the urge with all her might.
Now, more than ever, she was alert to the reality that time was not standing still. While she succumbed to fudge cake and hearty pasta meals, Luiz had well and truly forgotten about her.
‘He’s found someone else,’ she blurted out as they closed the final gate on a donkey that had come to the sanctuary after the death of his owner, and began walking up to one of the outbuildings which had been converted into a comfortable changing room.
Her shoulders were hunched and she kept her eyes firmly on the ground. ‘I looked on the Internet… just a peep to see what was happening with him. I know I shouldn’t have. Curiosity killed the cat and all that.’
‘Well, I’m surprised it took him that long,’ Andy said acerbically. ‘The man has a reputation. I’ve done a bit of reading up on him myself. If you were over him, you wouldn’t be checking to see what he was up to,’ he belatedly admonished and Holly cast him a sheepish, sidelong glance.
‘You should see her.’ She hovered miserably by the door to the changing rooms, which was one of the upgrades covered by the so-called money that had been lying around in an account after the sale of the farm but which Holly now suspected had just been money donated by Luiz to cover the cost of sex with the woman he’d had no intention of settling down with. There were two shower cubicles, toilets and sinks on either side, one for the men and the other for the women; the black-and-white tiled floor, always scrupulously clean, was rescued from appearing too clinical by the addition of a couple of chairs and a small table. Leading off from the changing area, a comfortable room was big enough to cater for everyone at mealtimes when the weather was foul and they wanted to escape from the great outdoors.
‘Don’t think about that,’ Andy urged.
‘She’s beautiful. I mean really beautiful. Plus she’s Brazilian, from a very important, very rich family. And she’s skinny and tall. She’s the exact opposite of me. There’s loads of speculation that they’re going to be married.’
She could have elaborated on the slew of pictures she had pored over the evening before. Luiz and Cecelia Follone laughing as they stepped out of a limo for the premiere of a movie; snapped unawares leaving a restaurant; posing in front of the theatre. They had only been seeing each other for three weeks, yet he seemed as comfortable standing next to her as though they had been going out for centuries.