In his towering office in the city, Luiz had swivelled his chair away from his desk and was absently gazing out to a view of a city always on the move. In one hand he idly played with some of the bits of jewellery he had given to Holly over the time they had been lovers. She had returned the lot to him weeks ago and for some reason he had kept the stuff shoved at the back of his desk drawer.
It was grey and miserable outside, which meant that Cecelia would be complaining. She complained a lot, and she loathed the English weather, which she claimed to be depressing and responsible for her scrupulously maintained tan fading faster than normal. Right now, she would be complaining to Ana, her maid, who had travelled over with her.
Tonight he would be taking her to the opera. The thought of it induced a feeling of inertia which he knew was not in keeping with a man supposedly in the throes of a relationship. An extremely suitable relationship. He had met her through a friend of his mother’s and Cecelia’s aunt, who had looked him up on the spur of the moment with her niece in tow.
Privately Luiz thought that she had wanted to offload her high-maintenance niece and she had caught him just at the precise moment in time when he had been contemplating his recent loss of libido with vast annoyance, wondering whether he shouldn’t be thinking about settling down and forgoing a continuing lifestyle of interchangeable airheads.
As yet, Cecelia had still to fire his libido, but he was certain that the lack of sexual chemistry was a temporary drawback. He had been working ungodly hours since Holly had disappeared from his life and lack of sleep could do all sorts of things to a person’s body. The fact remained that Cecelia was perfect for him. Any union between them could only be to his advantage. Her family was on a par with his, from the point of view of wealth. Like most pampered women, she was far more interested in the business of building up and maintaining an enviable social circle than she was in spending quality time with him. She enjoyed being seen with the right people in the right places. She was not the type to start making demands about the amount of time he devoted to work. It was all to the good.
As he thought about her, he ran his fingers over the smooth stones on the bracelets and rings that had been returned to him without even the courtesy of a note.
Immediately, the image of a leggy, Brazilian brunette was overlaid by the image of a small, curvaceous blonde who probably didn’t know a manicure from a pedicure and had most likely never stepped foot in a spa to get any of the treatments that Cecelia did on a more or less daily basis.
Luiz’s lips thinned. He loathed it when he was distracted by the memory of Holly and it was a distraction that occurred far too frequently for his liking. Supposedly this was because, for the first time in his life, he had not been the one to terminate the relationship. Naturally the way it had ended would have left a sour taste in his mouth. Naturally, she would crop up in his thoughts more than he wanted. Obviously, this was an occurrence that would disappear soon enough, but in case it didn’t…
Luiz glanced down at his mobile phone and scrolled to the text message which he had received the evening before. It was brief: she wanted to meet him. He had no idea why and he had seriously been tempted to press the delete button without bothering to reply. But then he had been struck by the thought that seeing her might just put paid to her annoying and lingering presence at the back of his mind. He would be reminded that she had been little more than an unusual distraction. He would stop thinking about her and sex in the same breath and gain some much-needed perspective on a slice of his life that he was glad to be rid of.
He allowed himself the luxury of wondering what would be bringing her to London; naturally, he had informed her in a text as brief as hers had been that, whilst he would grant her an audience, he certainly wouldn’t be doing so up north. If she wanted to see him that badly, then she would have to do the unthinkable and travel south.
He couldn’t imagine what would possess her to get in touch with him after all this time. Had she begun to regret her hasty departure from his life? She had returned all the priceless jewellery. Maybe she had started thinking that that had been a wrong move, bearing in mind how much money she would have been able to get had she decided to sell them.
In the end, people were always motivated by money. It was a disappointing truth. He was in no doubt that, under the waffle she would have prepared, she would be on a begging mission. Maybe something had collapsed in the animal shelter, or the dodgy plumbing in the cottage needed replacing. Not to beat about the bush, one of a dozen things could have happened that required financial input and doubtless she had reached the conclusion that he was the best source of money she had.
It would definitely be satisfying to watch her squirm. Any lingering nostalgia he had would be wiped out the second she lowered her eyes, cleared her throat and asked if he could lend her just enough money to… do whatever she needed it to do. He would think with warmth and relief then of Cecelia and the fact that she would never need to ask him for money.
A cynical smile curved his sensuous mouth. He decided that this unexpected visit from Holly was just the thing. In fact, he couldn’t wait…
Dithering outside the most impressive office building she had ever seen, all smoked glass and metal, Holly chewed her lip and clutched her backpack in front of her like a talisman. People swerved around her, coming and going. They all wore dark business suits and carried briefcases or computer bags slung over their shoulders. These were people in a hurry and on a mission. When she had sent that text to Luiz, asking to meet up, she had expected him to suggest somewhere neutral, maybe a restaurant or a coffee bar. The fact that he couldn’t even be bothered to leave his office to see her was a stark reminder of how little she meant to him and how thoroughly she had been forgotten. He was quite literally prepared to ‘grant her an audience’ between emails.
She knew she should be neither hurt nor surprised by that. She had invested far more in their relationship than he had. He wasn’t going to be eager to see her and he wouldn’t be interested in catching up. In fact, she was slightly surprised that he had agreed to see her at all. She glumly thought that, by the time she was finished saying what she had to say, he would be heartily wishing that he had refused.
Taking a deep breath, she forged a way through the busy swarm of people, either leaving for or returning from lunch. In her shapeless, long-sleeved dress and her thin waterproof anorak, she felt as conspicuous as an elephant at a tea party. She knew, as she was propelled through the revolving doors and ejected like a sack of potatoes into the vast, opulent foyer of the building he had directed her to, that people were staring at her. Politely staring; wondering what on earth she was doing there. She knew that if she didn’t act purposefully right now that a security guard would materialise and offer to show her out of the building. There would be an implicit threat that the police would be involved if she didn’t go quietly.
How on earth had it come to this? It was the question she had been asking herself for the past week. She had made the appointment to see her doctor, as she had been feeling under the weather recently. A prescription and maybe a pep talk on the curative aspect of time had been the only things she’d expected…
Someone bumped into her from behind, a young girl in a snappy black suit carrying the obligatory briefcase and Holly mumbled an awkward apology and was rewarded with a gimlet stare and raised eyebrows.
Her frayed nerves were well and truly reduced to rubble at this timely reminder of how out of place she was here and how horrendous and awkward the next half an hour was going to be.
Indeed, her thoughts were in such a state of meltdown that she was barely aware of the next ten minutes or so, during which a friendly girl, one of four positioned behind a circular desk, pointed to where she should sit whilst one of Luiz’s secretaries came for her. Then, ten minutes later, she was herded off to a private lift and whooshed upwards so that her already sick and nervous stomach churned even more sickly and nervously.
She ceased noticing the curious stares as she was ushered into a huge space that smelled of money being made and deals being done. She paid absolutely no attention to the opulence of her surroundings. She no longer felt insignificant next to the thirty-something-year-old clones with their