‘I see,’ he drawled, leaning his broad shoulders against the wall and watching her lazily as she pulled the apron off and threw it over a chair. ‘Has one of your Latin lovers claimed you for the night? You know, Martha, there’s not a great deal of evidence of men splurging on you.’
‘There will be,’ she said flatly. ‘I just haven’t yet met the type who can afford to splurge. Barring you, of course. I don’t know why, but I’ve got the feeling you’re something of a miser, Mr Simon Macquarie. Either that or the world’s not drinking much cognac these days.’ She grimaced. ‘And don’t,’ she said curiously tautly as he moved his shoulders, ‘give me that old spiel about concentrating on my beautiful soul.’
‘No,’ he murmured. ‘I won’t. To be honest, I’m not sure what kind of a soul you have, Martha, but you do have an exquisite body: skin like smooth satin, lovely bone-structure beautiful eyes...Have you ever been in love?’
‘You’re joking,’ she said scornfully.
‘So you don’t believe in it?’
‘Right at this moment, no.’ She turned away with a toss of her hair. ‘But don’t let that keep you awake at nights!’
‘Martha.’
She stiffened as he spoke from right behind her, and said, ‘Why don’t you just go away?’
‘I will, when I’ve done this—no, don’t fight me. We both know now that you quite like it despite the lack of a commercial, paying aspect to it that’s obviously dear to your heart.’
She turned and said fiercely, ‘You’re so clever, aren’t you?’
‘Not always, no, otherwise I wouldn’t be here doing this,’ he drawled. ‘But since I am ...’
What prompted her to kiss him back with sudden tense, angry fervour was not entirely a mystery to her. What it led to was...
They’d turned no lights on but the moon he’d spoken of was enough to illuminate the old settee they sat on, the curve of her breasts where her button-through dress lay open and had slipped off her shoulders, her front-opening bra laid aside, her head on his shoulder.
Nor did it hide how she trembled as he drew his fingers down her skin and touched her nipples in turn, and how she mutely, at last, raised her mouth for his kiss in a gesture that told its own tale.
But although he did kiss her it was brief and strangely gentle, and then he moved her away and closed the edges of her dress for her, before standing up.
‘You don’t want to go any further?’ she said in a strained, husky voice that wasn’t much like her tart voice.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Then ...?’
‘I think we should resist it, Martha,’ he said abruptly. ‘And I probably don’t have to tell you why. I don’t make a practice of buying love.’
Martha closed her eyes then glanced down and started to do up her bra and her dress. He said nothing but watched her bent head.
‘OK,’ she said at last, and stood up herself.
‘Just ...OK?’ he queried drily.
‘What do you want me to say?’ Some of the colour that had drained from her cheeks was coming back—too much of it, she thought shakily but made an incredible effort. ‘Cheers, it’s been good to know you—that kind of thing? Why not?’
‘Martha——’
But she turned on him suddenly like a tigress. ‘Go away, mister. I know that you’re trying to tell me I’m not good enough for you—well, you don’t have to make a picnic of it! Just go away and stay away and see if I care!’
It was at that moment that her downstairs neighbour who lived with his invalid mother and, despite his dark hair and dark eyes, was a very sober, serious-minded twenty-three-year-old dentistry student, knocked on the door to ask for a couple of teabags, only to get the surprise of his life as Martha opened it.
‘Vinny, darling, come in,’ she said delightedly. ‘Simon’s just leaving. Couldn’t have worked it out better if I’d timed it with an egg-timer, could I?’
So that’s that, Martha said to herself several times over the next days. I’ll never see him again, for which I should be profoundly grateful.
But she couldn’t help but be shocked by the pain this brought to her heart.
In the event, she did see him again. Three days later, just as she was about to leave for work, he came with a bunch of daisies.
‘Oh, now look here,’ she began, but discovered her heart was beating erratically with, of all things, hope.
‘Could you just ask me in, Martha?’
She hesitated, then with an inward tremor thought, Have I got another chance? Could I tell him how this all happened, how it got out of hand?
‘Well, I have to go to work in ten minutes but I suppose so.’
‘Ten minutes is all it will take.’
‘I could make a quick cup of coffee,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady, trying for anything that would give her courage.
‘No. No, thank you. These are for you.’ He held out the daisies. ‘I’m going home this afternoon. I...’ he paused ‘...I felt I should come and say goodbye.’
‘Going home—to the UK?’ Her voice seemed to her to come from far off. ‘How long have you known that?’
He shrugged. ‘Weeks. Martha, there are some things——’
But she took the daisies and clenched her fist around the stems. ‘Well! You’re a fine one, aren’t you, mister? In fact I don’t think you’re any better than the dirty old men who pinch me on the bottom.’
‘That’s something I haven’t done, you must admit, Martha,’ he objected wryly.
‘No, you’ve gone a lot further, you must admit, Simon,’ she parodied angrily, ‘and all in the cause of amusing yourself at my expense. If you must know I think you’re a right bastard.’
‘Oh, come on, Martha,’ he said roughly, ‘what did you expect—a diamond bracelet? Or were you trying to hang out for a wedding-ring? Trying,’ he emphasised, ‘not terribly successfully a couple of nights ago.’
The sheer, soul-searing memory of his rejection that night fired her poor abused heart to fury. ‘I hate you,’ she gasped, and slapped his face with all the force she was capable of. ‘What’s more, if all you can afford are daisies——’ she tore some heads off the offending flowers, totally ignoring the fact that she rather liked daisies normally ‘—I’m much better off without you.’
‘I wonder,’ he murmured, and wrested the battered bunch from her grasp, pulled her into his arms and started to kiss her brutally.
‘Oh ...’ she whispered when it was over but could say no more and he didn’t release her.
He said instead, ‘I came here to try to talk some sense into you, Martha. To tell you to stop this dangerous game you’re playing with men, but I guess my earlier conviction was correct—once a tart always a tart.’ He smiled unpleasantly as she moved convulsively in his arms and added, ‘God help any man who does fall in love with you, my little Aussie tart; they’ll probably regret the day they were born.’
He released her then, picked up the remnants of his flowers, closed her hand round the tattered bunch and left.
‘Oh, Martha ...’
Martha