Wishful Thinking (19 page)

Ten minutes later they were leaving The Roosevelt and climbing into the limo that would take them the short journey up the hill to Amber’s hotel. Christian felt her lolling against his arm like a deflating doll.

“You will stay with me, won’t you, my darling?” she murmured drunkenly.

That was the problem with Amber. Once minute she appeared sober and rational and the next she was completely uncoordinated and slurring her words.

“Until I know you are safely in bed and asleep, yes,” he replied firmly.

She snuggled up against him. “Mmm…you’re going to tuck me up in bed, are you…daddy?”

Christian shuddered involuntarily, then shook his head and looked down at her slender body slumped against him. He wanted to be annoyed with her but, as usual, compassion prevailed over anger. She hadn’t deserved most of the horrors that life had hurled in her face from an early age. She especially hadn’t deserved what he had done to her. But he had spent too many years feeling that pity. It was, if not exactly destructive, certainly unproductive and he needed to move on from it. He glanced at his watch – something he barely seemed to have stopped doing since arriving in the U.S. – and did his usual calculation. With a bit of luck, he might catch Jess on one number or another before she started her daily routine and became inaccessible to him.

As the limo drew up outside Amber’s hotel, she roused herself and irritably slapped his right hand as it was busy texting. “Put your phone away! Surely you’re not texting your little ghost-writer friend are you?” she mumbled drowsily.

Amber ignored him as they climbed out of the car and made their way into the hotel. The bell boy ushered them to the lifts in a proprietorial manner, pressing the discrete button to summon the VIP elevator. Christian held his mounting agitation until they were inside Amber’s suite.

“Have you talked to Jess?” he demanded as soon as the door closed behind them.

“Oh Jess! That’s her name, of course. I forgot. Oh, just look at that bed. Did ever a bed look more temptingly sybaritic?” She moved towards it as if hypnotised and dropped her full length onto its voluminous coverings. Her slight body hardly made a dent.

“When did you see her? Tell me what happened.”

“Mm…it was…I can’t remember. We did lunch one day. You know, she was interviewing me for your book. Is this autobiography idea wise, Christian? And also – shouldn’t you be writing it yourself? At the very least you should have a male ghost-writer.”

Christian sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at Amber’s body which wriggled on the satin coverlet as if burrowing into a downy den for a night of utter sensuality. He was completely unmoved by her suggestive writhing but realised he needed to try a different tack.

“I didn’t have to. What are those buzzwords these writers are always going on about – showing not telling? Well, I
showed
her.” Amber giggled then released a great yawn and curled up onto her side.

“What do you mean, Amber? What did you
show
her?”

“Mm…” was all the response he received before Amber began to breathe deeply and evenly.

He sighed, pulled the downy duvet over her inert body and left the room.

When he reached his own hotel room, Christian decided to stay on the phone ringing every number until he spoke to someone, preferably Jess. To his amazement, she answered on the second ring. She sounded surprised and rather sleepy.

“Jess? Dammit, it’s so good to hear your voice. I’ve been trying to talk to you all week.”

“I know – I received your texts and emails. Thanks. Is everything going well over there?”

“Yes, well, you know…look, it’s almost the weekend. I know it’s short notice but how about you and Ben fly out here? You’ve read Tom’s report and you know it’s absolutely safe.”

“What? To Los Angeles – it would take all weekend to get there and back. It’s impossible.”

“Not if I meet you in New York. It’s only seven hours. I can fly up there tomorrow, meet you off the plane and we’ll spend the weekend there.”

Jess laughed incredulously. “No! It’s out of the question – at least in my world. People like me don’t do things like that, remember?”

“Why not? I’ll get your tickets emailed – all you need to do is throw some overnight clothes into a bag. In fact, don’t even bother doing that – we can shop when you get here. Just grab your passports. George will take you to the airport.”

“Why, Christian? Is something wrong?”

“Yes! I miss you. I thought I’d be speaking to you twenty times a day, but I can never find you. Fly out tomorrow for the weekend so we can spend some time together and talk.”

“No! It’s a nice idea, but impossible. And I have to get Ben ready for school now or we’ll be late. Talk to you later.”

“Don’t hang up! Don’t go, Jess. I need to talk to you. I know you saw Amber. I don’t know what she told you, but whatever she said, please don’t believe it. Promise me not to believe anything she said?”

He could almost feel her hesitation powering down the line and closed his eyes tightly for a moment in total frustration. How could he put things right when he didn’t even know what he was up against? All he knew was that somehow Jess had to believe him and not Amber.

“Jess – I’m not going to hang up until you promise.”

She sighed. “That’s up to you, Christian. I, however, must hang up and get Ben ready for school. And if you really don’t know what Amber has said, why don’t you ask her yourself? You’re far more likely to see her before I do.”

****

Jess wondered all morning about Christian’s offer and contemplated what it might be like to hop on a plane to New York for the weekend. It was a novel thought, but an idle fantasy. She had already begun the difficult process of expunging Christian from her heart and re-erecting the barriers to protect herself from further pain. However, if she had weakened during the morning, she redoubled the reinforcements in the afternoon when she saw the photo in the evening paper of Christian and Amber taken as they left his hotel together the night before.

That must have been straight after he phoned me. She must have been there with him! Don’t believe Amber he had said, but what about believing him?
She stared for some time at the damning evidence in the newspaper, aching with disappointment. How could he talk his way out of this? He hadn’t even mentioned that Amber was there in Los Angeles with him! I won’t answer the phone to Christian again, she decided. And I won’t go down to Weybridge again. I’ll just finish the outline here and take my proposal in to Melissa next week. If she doesn’t like it, I’ll ask her to assign the project to someone else. In the meantime, I’m going to spend some quality time with Ben and put life back to how it was before we met Christian. Nice and normal.

But Ben sulked when he discovered he wasn’t spending the weekend at Christian’s house. Stan, the gardener had promised to make him a tree swing, show him how to plant garlic, onions and peas in the greenhouse and, if the weather held, was even going to take him and Jacqui badger-watching. Ben blamed his mother bitterly for spoiling all this and insisted that if Christian phoned, he would tell him what a horrible person she was.

However it wasn’t Christian, but Adam who saved the day. He too had seen the photo in the newspaper and surmised that she would be upset, as he undoubtedly must have been himself.

“Look, if you haven’t seen it – please don’t shoot the messenger, but…”

“I saw it.”

“You know it’s probably just one of Amber’s crazy stunts.” He sounded weary and Jess pitied him. He didn’t deserve Christian and Amber’s treatment of him any more than she did.

“Do what? Sure thing, Jess - you really don’t know Amber, do you? No one prevents Amber from doing what she wants. You should wait to hear Chris’s side of the story, just in case. Anyway, I also wanted to thank you for that delicious lunch. I wondered if I could take you to lunch this weekend to repay you…if you’re not too busy. You said you still had a lot more questions…”

Jess sighed. “That’s very kind of you, and yes I do. But I’m in the middle of a family feud at the moment. I have some bridges to build with my son.” She went on to outline Ben’s disappointment at his ruined weekend thanks to her selfishness.

“Well if a swing, some vegetables and a few badgers is all it will take, why not come down to my place in Hampshire tomorrow? We have badgers galore and they’re not as fussy about the weather as their Surrey neighbours. We even have a family of otters at the bottom of our garden.”

Jess started to demur but he cut her short.

“Encroach? You do like your fancy words, don’t you, Jess? I might write that one down too,” he teased. “No seriously, my brother and his wife take care of the place for me and they’ll be absolutely delighted. They have kids too, so Ben will have some company around the farm.”

The offer was too tempting to refuse and Jess accepted gratefully, partly out of curiosity, partly to satisfy Ben and partly to keep herself busy and out of Christian’s reach.

****

Christian was furious. He had woken up to find the photo of him and Amber leaving the hotel together featured large in a dozen newspapers and it took very little imagination to realise that it could well be splashed across all the English tabloids by Saturday morning. He called Tom and told him to cancel or reschedule his bookings for the next few days and to get him on an early flight back to England. Tom argued, but soon acknowledged he was fighting a losing battle.

“You can always offer them Amber instead. She’s messed up my life enough already this year and it’s barely even started – she owes me.”

When Amber called him, Christian gave her short shrift. Everything that had gone wrong between him and Jess had been Amber’s fault and he was determined to stop her before she ruined things completely.

“You need to understand this, Amber and get it into your head once and for all: as much as I love you and care about you, I’m not
in
love with you. And while we’re on the subject: I’m
not
the father of your baby and I’m
not
going to marry you. Do you understand what I’m saying? Now I’m flying back to England today and I suggest you do the same – only preferably
not
on my flight. Go back to Adam. That’s where you belong.”

A couple of hours later, he sat in the hotel limo on the way to Los Angeles International Airport. He checked his watch – the now habitual precursor to calling Jess. By now she should be at the Weybridge house for the weekend, but he called her phone first. As usual it went straight to voicemail, meaning either she was talking to someone else, or she’d switched off her phone. He called the Surrey house but the staff there knew nothing of her whereabouts and claimed not to be expecting her. Evidently she had called to let them know she had changed her plans.

It would be late at night in England already. He liked the thought of flying out to her while she was sleeping. He hoped to arrive in time to catch her before her day began; to surprise her with a morning kiss; in time to explain the news photo before she saw it. But a glance at the departures board told him such thoughts might be too optimistic. The ‘flight delayed’ message clicked onto one after another international service. He went to the desk to enquire of the reason.

“We’re waiting on an update ourselves, sir. We think it’s down to weather conditions. There’ll be an announcement just as soon as we know.”

Christian had no choice but to sit and wait it out. On checking his phone, he saw he had two missed calls from Amber. He ignored them and stared at the departures board, willing for it to switch its ‘flight delayed’ message to ‘now boarding’, but with no success.

16

Jess sat in the car for a moment gazing at the farmhouse, completely entranced. It was a long, eighteenth century thatched building that looked as if at one stage it had comprised several different dwellings, possibly built at different times, as it appeared to have at least three front entrances. It was a perfect chocolate-box picture and Ben was as enchanted by it as she was.