The O’Hara Affair (49 page)

Fleur padded in her gel socks to the door. The security camera told her it wasn’t Bethany who’d rung the doorbell. It had been Jake Malone.
Jake?
And suddenly Fleur remembered the date they’d made last week – the drink she’d rashly invited him up for, about which she had completely forgotten.

Jake was looking into the security camera, smiling directly at her. And then he raised his hand to show that he was carrying a bottle. It was raining and he had no hood or umbrella. Shit. She couldn’t not let him in. She pressed the buzzer. She didn’t care that her face looked like an oil slick. She was, after all, now officially an old bag who had vowed that she would never again in her life have to worry about making herself look good for a man. She knew she’d have to make an effort at work, of course – it went without saying that Fleur of Fleurissima should look a million dollars – but here, in her own private space, she no longer gave a damn about how she looked. Oh! Except for the gel moisturizing socks. They were a hideous shade of pink, and they made a squelchy sound when she walked. She quickly whipped them off and stuffed them in the pocket of her bathrobe.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as Jake climbed the stairs. ‘I’d completely forgotten that I’d invited you around this evening.’

‘
I
hadn’t,’ he said, giving her a look of mock indignation. ‘I’ve been looking forward to this evening all day.’ He gave her a brief kiss first on one cheek, then the other.

Fleur remained vacillating in the doorway. ‘Um. I’ve just got out of the bath and there’s nothing to eat except store cupboard staples.’

‘Store cupboard staples? What are they?’

‘Oh – I forgot. You’re a boy. Store cupboard staples are – you know, like basics.’

‘Oh. They sound like some kind of snack.’

Fleur laughed. ‘I could do a macaroni cheese.’

‘Sounds good to me.’

‘Come on into the kitchen, then. Normally at this time of the evening I’d be sitting on the deck, but it is clear that our summer is over. Do you need a drier for your hair?’

Jake gave her a scornful look. ‘Do I look like a man who blow-dries his hair?’

Since the night of the showdown at Díseart, the weather had changed. They had had only one cloud-free day since, which had been the day of Daphne Vaughan’s funeral, when the sun had shone as brightly as the yellow lilies that bedecked her coffin. Christian’s daughter, Megan, had been the only inconsolable person at the event, and Dervla had told Fleur afterwards that the reason the girl had been so distraught was because she’d been expecting a legacy that had not materialized.

Fleur led the way into the kitchen, where Jake set his bottle on the counter. ‘I’m afraid Vaughan’s was clean out of pink fizz,’ he told her.

Why am I not surprised? thought Fleur.

‘Well, thank you. That’s a very acceptable Bordeaux,’ she said, reaching for the corkscrew and tossing it to him.

Jake caught it adroitly, then sniffed the air as Fleur wafted past him to fetch glasses. ‘Wow. You smell gorgeous, Ms O’Farrell.’

‘Thanks to L’Occitane,’ said Fleur. ‘I was having some “Me” time.’

‘That girly thing of reading a book in the bath with a glass of wine and the telephone?’

‘Got it in one.’

‘Nice.’

Fleur set wineglasses on the table, watching as Jake stripped the foil away from the neck of the bottle. Through the speakers, Dean Martin was crooning about
amore
, and Fleur found herself thinking that Jake actually bore a strong resemblance to the young Dean Martin – buff and Italianate.

‘I’ll cook, if you like,’ he said, as he poured wine into their glasses. ‘I do a mean macaroni cheese.’

Fleur raised an impressed eyebrow. Not once in their relationshp had Corban ever volunteered to cook for her. ‘I’ll take you up on that,’ she said, sitting down at the kitchen table.

Oh!
Cosmopolitan
was lying open on the surface. The photograph on display was of a half-naked, extremely nubile Lily Cole. Fleur wished she could close the magazine – it made her agonizingly aware of her own advanced age – but she knew that by closing it she would simply draw attention to the mag and make herself look like a prude. So Lily continued to gaze provocatively up at Fleur and Jake like the elephant in the room. Well, more like the vixen in the room.

‘
Santé
,’ said Jake, handing Fleur a glass.

‘Bottoms up,’ responded Fleur.
What?
What had she just said? Fleur couldn’t remember ever having said ‘bottoms up’ before in her life. She supposed it was because she couldn’t get the mental image of Lily Cole’s extremely pert bottom out of her head. She took a swift swig of wine to cover her embarrassment.

‘Where will I find the pasta?’ asked Jake.

‘In a jar on the shelf.’ Fleur pointed. ‘You’ll find flour there too, and all the rest is in the fridge.’

She watched as Jake assembled the ingredients. He’d make a terrific television chef: lean and limber and oh! so easy
on the eye. She almost wished she hadn’t taken her vow of celibacy. Never again, she thought, would she feel the pressure of a man’s hand upon her breast, never again feel a finger slide inside her knowing the best was yet to come, never again feel that frantic flare of lust, that urgent surge, that rosy afterglow…

‘You’re looking very thoughtful, Fleur,’ said Jake. ‘Penny for them?’

‘Sorry?’

‘A penny for your thoughts.’

‘Oh – that must be one of your obscure English phrases. What does it mean?’

Jake explained, and as he explained, Fleur found her eyes going to his mouth. How mobile it was! How fluently his lips articulated the words! Fleur of course knew very well what ‘a penny for your thoughts’ meant, but she wasn’t about to divulge to Jake Malone that she’d been fantasizing about having sex with him.

As Jake stirred the saucepan, Fleur took the opportunity of leafing idly through the fashion pages of
Cosmopolitan
during the lulls in their small talk. Page after page of beautiful young creatures gazed up at her from between the covers, and she felt like reaching for a pen and scribbling them out. Page after page of anti-ageing and age-defying products screamed at her, and hey! – how did Evangeline Lilly
know
Fleur was worth it? She scowled at lovely Evangeline, and glowered at Penélope Cruz who was batting her L’Oréal eyelashes at her on the next page.

‘Now it’s cross you’re looking,’ observed Jake.

Fleur closed the magazine. ‘Oh – I just remembered that I forgot to do something,’ she improvised.

Attract Hot Guys Like Crazy!
the strapline exhorted her.

Foreplay Your Guy’s Way!

Thirty Things to Do with a Naked Man!

No,
no
! Why had she closed the damned mag? Lily Cole’s derrière was far less embarrassing than the cover copy. And then Fleur realized that Jake would think that she – a woman teetering on the brink of middle age – subscribed to
Cosmo
. It would be a bit like finding out that Gordon Brown read
Loaded
.

‘And now you look horrified,’ said Jake with a laugh. ‘You’re like the Irish weather – four seasons in one day.’

‘I just remembered that the thing I forgot to do was really urgent,’ said Fleur, jumping to her feet and leaving the kitchen with the offending magazine tucked under her arm. She sprinted upstairs and slung it through her bedroom door, then went into the bathroom and ran water into the basin for thirty seconds.

‘What was so urgent?’ asked Jake, when she came back into the kitchen.

‘I needed to water a plant on my balcony.’

Jake looked unconvinced. ‘It was
that
thirsty?’

‘Yes. It was a – a Narcisse Blanc. They need lots of water.’ Fleur looked away from him, towards the deck, where the rain was now teeming down.
Merde
. She couldn’t have invented a more implausible excuse. Jake probably thought that her real reason for leaving the room was because she needed the loo. And if she needed it that urgently, he would conclude that she had old-lady bladder control problems. And if she’d actually forgotten that she needed the loo urgently, that could only mean that she was suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s. He’d be wondering how he’d fetched up here, serving meals on wheels to a batty middle-aged French woman who read sex tips in
Cosmopolitan
. And then she saw that her hideous gel socks had fallen out of her pocket and were lying in the middle of the kitchen floor.
Merde
, and again
merde!
He’d never want to take her to bed now.

Hel
lo
, Fleur? Sorry? What did you just think? She had taken a vow of celibacy. She didn’t
want
Jake Malone to take her to bed. But actually she did,
she did
! She did, more than anything. Because she had a feeling it would be the last time in her life she would ever have sex.

Stupid Fleur! How could she have forgotten that Jake was due to call around this evening? Why hadn’t she made an effort, and slipped into something a little sexier than her towelling bath robe? Why hadn’t she applied a little
maquillage
, spritzed herself with scent, shopped for aphrodisiacs and champagne and had them ready to go in the fridge? There was
nothing
sexy about this evening’s scenario. Macaroni cheese had to be the most homely dish ever invented. Why hadn’t she suggested slurpy tagliatelle or spaghetti or fettuccine? Even Dean Martin’s mood music had come to an end, now.

Oh! What was she thinking? Jake was not hers for the taking – even if he wanted to be taken. Jake belonged to Bethany – or at least, Fleur hoped that he might one day belong to Bethany. But he wasn’t Bethany’s…yet. And in the meantime, maybe Bethany wouldn’t mind if Fleur – poor, ageing, loveless Fleur – had just a tiny teeny taste of him?

Fleur suddenly
yearned
for sex, as one might yearn for an object shrouded in nostalgia. Because – let’s face it – for Fleur, an object shrouded in nostalgia was what the sexual act would soon become. Oh! How wonderful to go out with a bang! How glorious to have one last flesh fest with a fit young man and not worry about how she looked, or whether the outfit she was wearing was sexy enough. How sad that the last time in her life she had made love she’d been wearing a tacky peep-hole bra with matching crotchless panties and suspenders and a pair of killer heels because Corban had indicated that that was his preference
du jour
. He’d wanted a whore that evening – he hadn’t wanted Fleur.

‘You’re looking sad, now,’ observed Jake. ‘That’s because I am sad. I – I’m thinking of my little dog that died.’
Please, please forgive me for the fib, Babette
, she prayed inwardly.
But I could scarcely tell him the truth…

And then visions of Babette rose before Fleur’s mind’s eye: Babette sitting on the sea wall, squinting into the sunset; Babette flirting with the local dogs before tossing her head and prancing coquettishly away; Babette looking up at her mistress after the vet had given her the lethal injection, eyes full of love as Fleur rocked her into her final sleep, apologizing for wetting her doggie’s fur with the copious tears that had come spilling from her own eyes…

And then Fleur was sobbing, sobbing uncontrollably with her hands clutched over her head and her elbows on the table, and Jake was hunkered down beside her, saying, ‘there, there,’ and ‘hush, hush,’ and his soothing only served to make Fleur cry harder. And then Jake pulled her head against his shoulder, and she smelled citrus top notes, aromatic middle notes, and woody base notes. Oh! she thought.
Acqua di Parma
! The sexiest aftershave in the world. And then she remembered how Babette had used to smell of La Pooch cologne after she’d been to the canine beauty parlour, and she sobbed even harder. And then Jake was stroking her hair and wiping the tears from her eyes with his thumbs, and then a thumb accidentally brushed her mouth and she found herself inviting it between her lips, and she was tasting her own tears, and they actually tasted really nice, so she curled her tongue around the thumb and sucked a little. And then she felt a finger trace the curve of her ear, and caress the lobe and explore the dip beneath before travelling further along her throat to the scoop of her collarbone, where it lingered, waiting for permission.

Fleur bit down gently on Jake’s thumb. He slid it from
between her lips and rubbed her mouth, and she was glad that she was wearing no lipstick.

‘Yes,’ she said, granting the permission he sought, feeling like royalty. And when he parted the folds of her robe with reverent hands she didn’t feel like royalty any more: she felt like a goddess. Not Hecate the crone goddess; not Aphrodite, the goddess of youth and love and beauty. She felt like Persephone, delivered from the underworld. She felt alive and succulent and worthy of worship as she loosened the sash on her robe and allowed Jake access. And then they were on the floor and he was between her legs telling her how beautiful she was, how gorgeous, how divine – just like a goddess! And, thought Fleur, she really was a goddess, because here she was in heaven, soaring through a galaxy of stars, outshining the Pleiades and consorting with Adonis.

‘Uh-oh. I’m afraid the saucepan’s ruined.’ Jake turned the ring off underneath the pan, from which drifted a smell of burned butter.

‘You were worth it,’ said Fleur, with a catlike smile, sliding her arms back into her robe. As she eased herself into a stretch, some words of her favourite French writer, Collette, came to mind.
I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I’ve had, and I’m not sad because I no longer have it…

Did Fleur no longer have it? If Jake’s performance had been anything to go by, she clearly still had
something
– a certain
je ne sais quoi
. There was life in the old girl yet, and she felt rather proud of herself.

‘Shall I start again?’ Jake asked.

‘So
soon
?’

‘I meant the sauce.’ He crossed the room, took her in his arms, and kissed her. ‘I’ve wanted to do that since the day
I came into your shop. You have the loveliest, most kissable, Frenchest mouth I’ve ever seen.’