The O’Hara Affair (7 page)

‘Really? I think the lady doth protest too much.’ His voice in her ear contrived to sound both sceptical and amused. A finger skimmed the curve of her throat, pausing briefly to trace the scoop made by her collarbone, and then the stranger allowed his hand to travel further, sliding it beneath her bodice and cupping her breast. ‘Something tells me you don’t want me to stop. Something tells me you’re more trollop than sovereign, Rachel. Perhaps you should have thought about attending the ball as the whore Boleyn, rather than the virgin Queen.’

Rachel?
Rachel!
Oh, horror,
horror
! This was clearly an egregious case of mistaken identity. What to do? What to say? Fleur knew she should disabuse him at once, but the sensations being triggered in her by the touch of this man were so unexpectedly, so
wickedly
erotic that she didn’t want to come clean, didn’t want to explain that she wasn’t who he thought she was, didn’t want him to back off with an awkward apology. She heard her breath coming faster, felt her nipple rise under his fingers, and – as he thrust a knee between her legs – recognized the surge of lust that made her want to grind herself against him…Oh! She
was
shameless! She
wanted
to be a whore, a hussy, a harlot!

‘Slow down, sweetheart,’ he murmured, disengaging his hand, dislodging his knee, and leaving her weak as water. ‘Let me go check if there’s a room available.’

And the tall, dark stranger – who, before the night was out would be a stranger no longer – had bestowed a smile upon her before dropping a brusque kiss on her mouth and strolling back into the ballroom…

The strains of Edith Piaf’s
La Vie en Rose
interrupted Fleur’s sentimental journey. Corban’s name was displayed on the screen of her iPhone.

‘Hello! I was just thinking about you,’ she told him with a smile.

‘I’m glad to hear it. What were you thinking, exactly?’

‘I was thinking about the first time we met.’

‘Soppy girl.’

‘It would make a great short story.’

‘Or a Mills & Boon.’

‘Now there’s a thought! I read somewhere that sales of romantic fiction have gone through the roof recently. Everyone’s trying to escape into fantasy land.’

‘Might be too raunchy for Mills & Boon. You’d have to shut the door on the bedroom activity.’

‘
Au contraire
. They publish really sexy stuff these days.’ Fleur stretched languorously. ‘Let’s see – how would our story go? “‘I’m not who you think I am,’ confessed our heroine, as the masterful stranger took her hand. ‘I don’t care who you are, any more than you care who I am,’ he growled, leading her into the bedroom of the magnificent, luxury penthouse.”’

‘It wasn’t a penthouse,’ Corban corrected her.

‘In my Mills & Boon version it is. “She set her champagne flute down on the marble-topped bedside table and turned to him. His gaze was fierce. ‘I must have you,’ he told her. Her bosom heaving, she sank upon the fourposter, looking up at him through the slits of her golden mask. ‘Now?’ she breathed. ‘Now!’ he insisted. Without
further ado, he reached for his manhood. She gasped when she saw—”’

‘OK. Enough’s enough. Time to shut the door. Incidentally, did I really growl, and did you really gasp?’ asked Corban.

‘Of course. Gasping was mandatory. It was the raunchiest thing I’ve ever done. Until last night, that is. It’s a pity I’ll have to give Río back her gypsy costume.’

‘I’m sure we can think of some other suitably titillating attire. I rather fancy you as a schoolgirl.’

‘No! Schoolgirl’s too pervy, Corban. And I’m far too old. French maid is more my line, don’t you think?
Il y a quelque chose d’autre que je peux faire pour Monsieur?
’

‘Translate.’

‘Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?’

‘Well, yes, actually, there is. I scribbled a number on yesterday’s
Financial Times
, and forgot to enter it into my phone. Could you text it to me?’

‘Sure.’ Fleur swung her legs out of bed, and reached for her peignoir. ‘Whose phone number is it?’ she asked, as she padded downstairs.

‘Shane Byrne’s. I want to arrange lunch with him.’

‘Lucky you. Where are you taking him?’

‘There’s a new place that’s opened not far from where they’re shooting today. I thought I’d try that.’

‘What’s it called?’

‘Chez Jules.’

‘Oh! How brave of Jules to open when all around him restaurants are closing. I hope it works out for him.’

The
Financial Times
was on the breakfast bar, open at some arcane article on investments. A number was scrawled in the margin, with the initials S. B. beside it. How many people in the world had access to Shane Byrne’s private
phone number? Fleur wondered. Maybe she should auction it at the charity gig this afternoon, to raise more money for the hospice. Reaching for her mobile with her free hand, she started texting Corban. ‘Shall we eat out tonight?’ she asked, as she keyed the numbers in.

‘No. I’ll pick something up on the way back. Fillet or sirloin?’

Fleur’s heart sank a little. Corban adored red meat, while she favoured chicken or fish. However, since she didn’t have many opportunities to cook for her man, she might as well serve up what he was partial to. ‘Why not bring me some good quality braising steak, and I’ll do Carbonade de Boeuf?’

‘Excellent. I’ll get us a Bordeaux to go with it.’ There came a blip over the line. ‘Ah – incoming call. I gotta go, lover. Did you find that number?’

‘Yes.’ Fleur pressed ‘Send’. ‘It’s on its way to you now.
A plus tard, chéri
.’

Setting the phone down, Fleur tied the sash on her robe, broke off a hunk of baguette, spread it with butter and thick comb honey and moseyed out onto her deck. The first time she’d appeared on the deck in her peignoir, the village had been mildly scandalized; now, no one turned a hair.

It was a shame that she’d be breakfasting alone, she thought. It was a perfect morning for perusing the papers over
café au lait
and shooting the breeze with her lover. They managed so seldom to spend quality time together, as demands on Corban to spend precious weekends in his Dublin office were ever more pressing. Even though he had a boat moored in the marina,
Lolita
spent most of her life at anchor. There had only been one excursion so far this summer, and the curtains of Corban’s holiday apartment on the harbour were constantly drawn. No wonder really – any
time Corban O’Hara could afford to spend in Lissamore was spent
chez
Fleur.

‘Hey, gorgeous!’

Looking down, Fleur saw Seamus Moynihan unwinding the hawser of his boat from a bollard.

‘Hello, Seamus! Off to inspect your lobster pots?’

‘I am. But sure I don’t know why I’m bothering. There’s no demand for lobster since that outcry on the radio.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Some gobshite complained on a talk show about lobsters being killed inhumanely, and the politically-correct brigade have decided to boycott them.’

Fleur felt a pang of guilt. She should have talked Corban into going for lobster this evening, in O’Toole’s seafood bar, with Guinness instead of Bordeaux. It made sense to support the local community now that times were hard. She knew well that the only reason her shop was doing such brisk business was because word had got out on the street that Elena Sweetman, the star of
The O’Hara Affair
, had taken to dropping in to Fleurissima. Once the movie was wrapped she – and all the workers employed on the film – would be back to leaner times.

‘Maybe you’ll have luck tonight,’ she told Seamus. ‘There’ll be lots of people looking for restaurant tables now that the festival’s in full swing. And I’m sure they are not all politically correct.’

Seamus shrugged. ‘Even the festival’s down-sized this year. There’s no fun fair, and no ceilidh. And I heard that Río’s too busy on the film to do her fortune-telling gig.’

‘Oh – but she’s enlisted a replacement.’

‘Who might that be?’

Fleur bit her lip. ‘I don’t know,’ she lied. She didn’t want to confess that she would be ensconced in the fortune-telling
booth today. If word got around, people might not bother forking out money to see the local boutique owner do a bad imitation of Río, who always bluffed a blinder. ‘But I hear she’s very good,’ she added, lamely.

‘Maybe I should pay her a visit, so,’ remarked Seamus. ‘She might see something in my future to give me a glimmer of hope. Nets brimming with fish, for instance.’ Raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, he squinted at the horizon. ‘God be with the good old days when you actually caught something out there.’

Fleur gave him a sympathetic smile. ‘Well,
bonne chance
today!’

‘
Bonne chance
?’

‘It means “good luck”, darling!’

‘I’ll need it.’ Seamus pulled at the throttle of his outboard and chugged away from his mooring. ‘If I do have
bonne chance
,’ he threw back over his shoulder, ‘I’ll drop a couple of mackerel in to you later.’

‘Thank you, Seamus!
Salut
!’

Resting her forearms on the railing, Fleur watched as the boat made its way out of the marina, foam churning in its wake. Gulls looped the loop lazily in the sky blue above, and a tern plummeted headlong into the marine blue below, breaking the surface with barely a splash. She could see the submerged shape of a seal over by the breakwater; and a couple of beat-up-looking cats on the sea wall were laughing at Seamus’s lurcher, who was lolloping along the pier in pursuit of the post mistress’s Airedale.

There was a shrine to Fleur’s little doggie, Babette, on the deck. It comprised a photograph of Babette that Daisy had taken, and had framed as a present for Fleur. Fleur had surrounded the photograph with flowers and candles and some of Babette’s toys. She had buried her best friend six
months ago, on the beach at Díseart, where the dog had loved to romp. Fleur still missed the Bichon Frisé with the laughing eyes and the perma-smile.

From the hill above, the church bell chimed nine. Fleur had promised Río that she’d be in the fortune-telling booth ready to go at midday. For the past week, she had practised her crystal ball skills every evening, using Daisy’s password to gain entry to her Facebook page for research purposes. Some of the comments on Daisy’s wall had expressed a genuine interest in going to see Madame Tiresia. ‘If she got your future sorted, Daisy-Belle, then I’m deffo gonna go!’ one girl had written. ‘She might make me lucky 2

Fleur had felt a twinge of guilt when she’d read that one. She guessed that some people really
did
believe in tarot and horoscopes and all that jazz: you just had to look at the number of fortune-tellers advertising in the back pages of gossip magazines, who charged rip-off rates for their services. But then, Fleur wasn’t ripping anybody off. All the money she took today was going to charity – and then some. Corban had been true to his word. After she’d donned her gypsy outfit for him last night, he’d made out a cheque to the Irish Hospice Foundation, signed it, and left the amount blank.

‘You’ve just quadrupled your donation,’ he told her. And then he’d taken her by the hand and led her upstairs to her bedroom.

It was funny, Fleur thought, that dressing up for Corban didn’t embarrass her. If any of her former lovers had suggested that she dress up to have sex, she’d have told them where to get off. But then, in all her previous relationships, Fleur had been the more experienced partner: her lovers had deferred to her. In her current relationship, Corban called
the shots; and it hadn’t taken long for Fleur to find what a relief – and what a turn-on! – it was to be told what to do rather than doing the telling.

The mini Mills & Boon scenario she’d dreamed up earlier had rehashed much of what had actually happened on the night she and Corban had first met. Having gone off to book a hotel room, her tall dark stranger had returned to find Fleur sitting on the edge of the fountain in an attitude of bewilderment. ‘What’s wrong?’ he’d asked. ‘I’m not who you think I am,’ she’d told him. And his response – as per the stupefying response of her Mills & Boon hero – had been: ‘I don’t care who you are, any more than you care who I am.’ And then Corban had escorted her upstairs to the room and – with a passion that compensated for the deficiency of ceremony – had
baisé
’d her.

Smiling, Fleur leaned her chin on her forearms. Why was there no equivalent word for the sex act in English? ‘Fuck’ was too rough. ‘Shag’ too casual. ‘Making love’ was far too fey. The only verb that accurately conveyed the deliciousness, the pleasure, the sheer
je ne sais quoi
of coitus was the French one:
baiser
.

She remembered how, afterwards, he’d unmasked her and laughed and said: ‘You’re Fleur O’Farrell!’

He’d seen her in Lissamore, he’d told her, going about her business, and thought how quintessentially French she was, and how very lovely. He’d Googled her and viewed her website, but he had never found an opportunity to woo her. And now that he had her in his bed, he told her, he didn’t intend to let her go.