Fast Friends (13 page)

‘
Too embarrassed,’ said
Camilla, feeling herself beginning
to
blush all over again.

‘What if I told you that I was a doctor, and that I see
naked women every day of my life?’

‘
Are you?’ she
whispered, a flickering note of hope audible
in her voice.

‘
No,’ confessed Nico, ‘but
what if I
told
you that I was?
Couldn’t we just pretend?’

‘Please go away,’ Camilla implored him. ‘I really
am
embarrassed,
you know.’

‘
I know,’ said Nico gently. ‘Are you still . .
. unclothed?’ After a long silence, he heard her say: ‘No.’

‘
Well, in that case,’ he
opened the door and entered the
room,
‘why don’t we just forget what’s happened and introduce ourselves. I’m Nico.’

Having begun to see the funny side of this utterly
ridiculous
situation a few minutes earlier
whilst she was buried beneath
her
duvet, Camilla now emerged from its snowy depths and
took Nico’s
solemnly proffered hand.

‘Delighted to meet you,’ she said, her eyes sparkling with
suppressed laughter. ‘Jane Smith.’

‘The truth,’ demanded Nico severely. ‘After all, you no
longer have anything to hide from me.’

Camilla nodded. When their first
initial encounter had been
that revealing, what
could
she have to hide? It just amazed
her that in the presence of such a stunning looking man —
presumably one of Loulou’s many boyfriends – she
could
actually retain her sense of
humour. Slowly, she pushed back
the duvet and emerged from the bed,
fully clothed.

‘
I have to say,’
murmured Nico conspiratorially, ‘that I
preferred you as you were
earlier, but either way you make a terrific spaghetti Bolognese.’

‘
You’re welcome to have some. I cooked it for
Loulou but there’s way too much for her to finish. Shall I heat it up now?’

‘What about
you?’

‘
Diet,’ said Camilla
firmly, patting her stomach. Nico pulled
a face. Having inherited more than his share of Italian
genes he
appreciated sensuous, beautifully
rounded figures like the one
this
mysterious female possessed. As far as he was concerned
most women these
days were far too thin.

‘
I’ll eat if you’ll eat,’ he told her, pulling
her to her feet. ‘And
we’ll save some for
Lou when she gets back. Agreed?’

‘
Agreed.’

Nico was totally captivated by Camilla’s
reluctant smile,
dragged
from her quite against her will. A man surrounded
wherever he went by women offering
him anything he desired,
he felt as
ridiculously triumphant now as if he had succeeded in single-handedly taming a
wild tiger cub. For this woman, quite obviously, had no idea at all who he was.

‘
Are you a friend of
Loulou’s?’ she was asking him now as
she padded barefoot into the
kitchen and filled a heavy saucepan with water. Then she pulled a wry face. ‘How
stupid of me. Of
course you’re a friend,
otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Have
you known her long?’

‘A few years,’ said Nico, salting the water whilst she
ripped
open a new packet of spaghetti.
Camilla watched him and smiled
again. How odd, she thought, that she
could chat so freely to this complete stranger and feel so completely at ease
with him.
And how very different it was from
her disastrous encounter
last week with Miles Cooper-Clarke. Tall, rangy
in his black
sweatshirt and drastically
faded Levis, with his streaky blond
hair
falling across his tanned forehead and his thickly lashed
green eyes narrowed with concentration, he was
stirring the
sauce like an expert.

‘Are you in the restaurant business as well?’ she asked
with
interest. He certainly didn’t look like
a chef, but then neither
did Robert, who worked for Lou.

‘
I was, years ago,’ said
Nico, who had once worked in
McDonald’s
for extra cash when he was still at school. She really didn’t have any idea who
he was, he thought, feeling
more
cheerful than he had for days. ‘Right. Spaghetti’s on,
sauce is simmering, so we have a few minutes to
ourselves.
What are all these?’

Turning away from the kitchen he was pointing towards the
pile of still unwrapped presents in the centre of
the floor.
‘Scrabble! I haven’t
played Scrabble since I was a kid. My
sisters used to hit me if I
spelled a word wrong.’

‘
I bought it for my son,
he’s eight,’ Camilla told him and
Nico thought: Married. Of course. He
almost said jokingly: ‘I should have guessed; wonderful child-bearing hips,’
but realized
in time that a woman who was
capable of blushing all over
probably wouldn’t appreciate the observation.
Not that it was intended as a criticism by any means; he thought well-rounded
hips were amazingly sexy. From what he had seen, this woman
had a superb body. Wisely, however, he forbore to
state his
opinion aloud, since she was
quite capable, he sensed, of
closeting herself in the bedroom once more.

‘
Would your son mind, do you think, if we were
to have
just one game before you wrapped it
up for him?’ he said
longingly.

’You really are the most appalling cheat,’ exclaimed
Camilla,
trying not to laugh. Since Loulou
didn’t possess a dictionary
she could
only listen in disbelief to Nico’s long, involved
explanations of words
which he insisted were real, half of which sounded suspiciously Italian anyway.

‘
I swear on my life!’ declared Nico, his green
eyes innocent. zuka is a wonderful vegetable, rather like an aubergine, but
slightly smaller and more rounded.’

‘
And fitting perfectly
on to a triple-word score,’ she observed.
‘Incredible.’

‘
You don’t believe me?’
he protested, clutching his heart.
‘Shall
I phone my dear old mother so that you can ask her
yourself? Why, at this very moment she is probably
sitting at
her kitchen table peeling delicious zuka in preparation for
the evening meal . .

‘
We’ll phone her,’ intercepted
Camilla firmly, calling his
bluff and reaching for the phone. ‘Where is
she?’

‘
At home, in northern Italy.’

He grinned as she dropped the phone back on to the floor. ‘Why,
how good of you, deciding to believe me after all. That’s another fifty-four
points to me, I think.’

When Loulou returned home at almost five o’clock, Nico
and Camilla
were still sprawled on the living-room floor, so engrossed in their game that
they didn’t even notice her arrival.
Loulou
gazed in astonishment at the cosy scene, registering
the empty wine bottle and glasses beside them, the
totally
relaxed atmosphere and the laughter in Camilla’s eyes as she accused
Nico of stealing her Q. She guessed instantly that
Camilla had no idea whom she was lying next to; if
she had
known that Nico Coletto was one of Britain’s most successful
rock stars and a huge
sex-symbol to boot, she would be
paralysed
with shyness. And if she knew that he was another of Roz’s lovers Loulou
doubted whether she would even remain in the same room as him.

Her heart softened and she felt a
small surge of personal
triumph as she realized how lovely Camilla was looking. The
other night, when she had dragged her down into Vampires
and
placed her at the mercy of Miles
Cooper-Clarke, all the make
up and finery in the world had been unable to
disguise her inner
anxieties. But now,
bathed in the intimate glow of the twin
brass lamps on either side of the sofa, her exquisite new hair
style
endearingly tousled, and her lipstick scarcely visible, she exuded confidence
and joy.

With Miles, an ordinary man, she had been cripplingly ill
at
ease, Loulou recalled wryly, yet here with
Nico – who was by
any standards extraordinary – she was at peace.

From her position in the doorway,
Loulou smiled. There
couldn’t be
that many people in Britain who wouldn’t recognize Nico when they saw him.
Trust Camilla to be one of that tiny minority.

‘
Zuka!’ she exclaimed,
having crept up behind them, and
Camilla jumped. Nico, who could detect
the click of a photo
grapher’s camera at fifty
paces and who had known all along
that Loulou had returned, reached out
and grabbed her slender ankle, pulling her down in an untidy heap beside him.

‘
Rinti?’ howled Loulou,
transfixed by the outrageous words
he had been allowed to get away with.
Camilla, she knew instinctively, would never cheat like that.

‘
Keribel!’

‘
Sshh, Lou,’ Nico chastised her, pulling a lock of her
rippling blonde hair for emphasis, ‘you know perfectly well that a keribel
is a child’s rocking-chair. Look, I’m winning by
seventy-two
points. Isn’t that incredible?’

‘
It’s a miracle of modern cheating,’ she
observed drily.

‘
Oh, come on. Jane knows
I’m not cheating. Merely because
I
have a more extensive knowledge of the English language . .

‘Jane doesn’t know you aren’t cheating,’ interjected
Camilla,
‘she just doesn’t have a dictionary
to prove that you are, that’s
all.’

Loulou stared at them, wondering
exactly how much they
had had to
drink. ‘And who the bloody hell,’ she demanded of Camilla, ‘is Jane?’

Grinning broadly, Nico said: ‘Jane is the woman who
greeted me, stark naked, when I arrived here a couple of hours ago. But
you don’t want to hear about that, it really wouldn’t
interest
you. Your go, Jane.’

‘
Tell me, tell me, tell
me!’ yelled Loulou in a fever of
anticipation. ‘It’s my
business
to
know all the gossip and scandal that’s going around. I
have
to know, for
the good of my health.’

‘
Gossip and scandal?’
said Nico, pretending to concentrate
on
the letters Camilla was putting down. ‘OK, I’ll give you
gossip. ‘I’m
doing an interview for
Cosmopolitan
tomorrow morning.’