A Jersey Kiss (Jersey Romance Series) (7 page)

“
What the hell is your problem, Shani?” Mel asked, dropping her phone back into her bag and pulling the strap up onto her shoulder. “Bea’s more than capable of watching out for herself.”

“
I am and I’m enjoying being single for a change. Maybe it’s a relief being with someone who says something and means it, rather than Simon who always said the right thing and was getting up to all sorts behind my back.” Bea was growing tired of their bickering. “If you must know, I’m seeing Tom this Friday.” She patted Shani’s hand. “This isn’t a great romance. We really are just friends. Relax, what can possibly go wrong?”

SIX

September - Digging for the Truth

Bea glanced out of the hall window to see if the taxi had arrived yet and spotted a note on the hallstand that Luke must have left earlier.
“Please leave back door open tomorrow morning. Will be bringing round paint samples for you to look at. L” She smiled. His untidy handwriting on the torn piece of paper was similar to others he’d left her over the previous few weeks. Like the writer, she mused, straight to the point and abrupt. Could this man really be involved with something underhand and illegal?

She heard the taxi’s tyres crunching on the gravel outside the front door and
, pushing further thoughts of Luke to the back of her mind, Bea gave Flea a kiss on his tatty head and grabbed her jacket and bag.

Bea paid the cab driver and walked into Sammy’s Bar. She glanced around the noisy room, but couldn’t see Tom, so bought herself a vodka and tonic and took a seat at a small table with a clear view of the entrance. Tapping the table with her newly painted fingernails, Bea surreptitiously glanced down at her watch for the fifth time. She was contemplating whether to order another drink, or leave, when the door opened and in strode Tom.

His eyes twinkled as he smiled at her. “Hi, gorgeous,” he said, striding across the room dressed in his trademark bespoke suit, his sandy hair combed to one side. “You look perfect, as usual.” Unable to help grinning back at him, Bea couldn’t help notice the admiring stares he was getting from other women in the bar.

He leant down and kissed her on both cheeks.
“Good to see you tonight,” he said settling down in the seat opposite her. “I’ll get us some drinks.”

“
Red wine for me, please.” She watched him go to the bar and when he turned to smile at her, she pointed to the Ladies. Tom nodded.

She washed her hands and touched up her lip-gloss. Hmm, she didn’t look too bad, considering she’d been painting for a couple of hours since getting home from work. Bea rubbed her thumb across her newly applied nail varnish. She missed having decent nails.

“I could do with the weather dropping a few degrees,” Tom said, undoing the button on his linen jacket. “September, and it still feels like mid-summer.”

Bea took a sip of her drink as he looked her up and down. She wanted to ask him about Luke’s involvement with the money laundering case, but could see he was about to say something.

Tom leant across to her, and taking her lightly by the wrist, pulled Bea towards him. She could feel his breath against her ear, and wondered if he was going to kiss her. “The label from your knickers is hanging out of the top of your trousers,” he whispered, trying unsuccessfully to stifle his laughter.

“
Oh,” muttered Bea, quickly tucking the offending label back inside her pants, while surreptitiously glancing around the bar to see if anyone else could have possibly noticed her faux pas.

“
Hey, don't look so embarrassed,” he said, “it looked sexy. I didn’t want to tell you, but thought you'd like to know.” He winked at her.

“
So,” she said, mustering as much dignity as possible. “How’re things going with your separation?”

He looked at his drink, a grimace passing across his previously happy face.
“Well, if you’re sure you want to know?” She nodded. He sat back in to the chair and turned his wine glass by the stem for a few seconds. “As I told you I found out she was seeing someone else, she actually had been for about eighteen months.”

“
That’s awful. How did you find out?” Bea winced at the unfeeling way her question had come out. “I meant who told you?”

“
I wasn’t told exactly. She was meeting up with a guy who I discovered was one of the beneficiaries of one of the bigger trusts I looked after. I’ve had bi-annual meetings with him over the past five years, and we've always got along well. So, last year, instead of meeting up at the office, he suggested we go out to lunch and discuss everything away from the office.”

Bea was surprised Tom appeared so happy to tell her everything, and wondered if maybe it was because she'd asked him after he'd had a drink. She waited for him to continue.

“Well, you know how it is,” he said. “Do business, have lunch, knock back a couple of glasses of wine. Him that is, not me,” he explained, raising an eyebrow. “He started to relax and began telling me about this woman he was seeing.”

“
How horrible,” Bea murmured, wishing she had ignored Shani, and not been quite so nosy after all.

“
Not at first,” he continued quietly. “He didn’t know he was describing my wife. We chatted like old friends and he told me how great she was and although she had a husband the marriage was all but over. How it was only a bit of harmless fun for both of them.” He shrugged at the memory. “I agreed with him on that point, too. It never occurred to me for one second the poor fool we were discussing was me.”

Bea winced, bloody Shani, now she felt truly intrusive.
“When did you realise?”

“
It was at the following lunch, six months later. I asked him how everything was going and he happily told me, although this time mentioning her first name, and describing her titian hair. At first I felt a little unsettled, but shrugged off the notion.” He made a loser sign with his thumb and forefinger. “I thought I was being paranoid. Up until that point, it had never occurred to me Vanessa could ever be unfaithful. Then, when he said how he looked out for her drop-head silver Audi, the penny dropped. I mean, let’s face it, Jersey is a small enough place and there aren’t that many of the same car, especially ones driven by redheads.”

“
What did you do?” Bea remembered exactly how sick she felt when her aunt had sat her down and told her that she’d caught Simon making out with someone in his car.

“
Nothing,” he replied, his face expressionless for a moment.

“
Nothing? What, nothing at all?” It didn’t sound like the Tom she had known all those years ago.

“
You married in your early twenties too; didn’t your family and friends warn you that you were rushing things?

Bea nodded.
“My stepmother must have told me dozens of times that it would end badly with Simon.”

“
Anyway, what’s the point? It wasn’t as if he knew who I was. I mean think about it, he was a good client of mine, until then we'd had an excellent business relationship.”

“
But he was sleeping with your wife,” she said.

“
Exactly, my wife. She was the one being unfaithful. And let’s be honest, if you have to get divorced, and to me there is no other option when there’s no trust left, I was going to need all the money I could get for legal fees. I didn’t need to lose a good client. Well, not just then anyway.”

Bea couldn't think what to say to such a revelation.
“That sounds so calculated,” she said, shocked at his callous admission.

“
It does when you say it out loud.”

She put her hand over his.
“How horrible. So what’s happening now?”

“
Everything's in the hands of the solicitors. We’ve gone for a year’s legal separation, like I explained to you the other week. She still doesn’t know he’s my client.”

“
Really?”

“
He knows. I told him when I left the company and moved to where I am now.” Tom smiled triumphantly. “It was one hell of a shock to him, too. I can still picture his face. He didn’t know what to do with himself.” He squeezed Bea’s hand. “Can we change the subject now?”

“
Of course. Sorry.”

Tom looked at the clock above the bar.
“I’ve booked a table for us at Giuseppe’s, if that’s ok?”

“
Perfect.”

Bea was relieved to get out into the warm evening air. She couldn’t remember being out to dinner with someone other than Simon.
“When we were dating we never went to restaurants together.” She laughed.

“
No money, which is why I’m enjoying taking you tonight.”

The
y entered the dimly lit restaurant. Bea looked forward to seeing Giuseppe. “I used to come her quite a lot with Simon.”

Tom frowned.
“You should have said, I could have booked for us to go somewhere else.”

“
Don’t be silly, this is great. You can’t beat the food.”

Giuseppe welcomed them with open-arms
“Cara, I’m so sorry about you and Mr Porter splitting up,” he whispered as he gave her a brief hug. “He says though that you’re very happy now and have both moved on.” Gio looked across to where Tom was waiting for her by their table. “And I can see he was telling the truth. I am pleased. He is a handsome man, no?”

Bea nodded.
“He is, Gio.” Gio pulled back a chair for her and Bea sat down.

Tom smiled.
“Do you remember we were thrown out of that pub the first summer we were seeing each other when we got drunk with the drummer from that band?”

Bea chewed her lip.
“You mean you got drunk. I had to get you home afterwards and my aunt panicked when I was late home.”

“
I remember, you wanted to take over the world,” he teased her. “You insisted you'd be a millionaire by the time you were twenty-five. What happened?”

Bea sighed.
“Life got in the way. Anyway, what about you? You were supposed to be running your own multi-national business by now.”

He shook his head.
“I know. Disappointing, aren’t we?”

“
Never mind,” said Bea holding her stomach to ease the pain caused by so much giggling. “We only didn't succeed because our priorities changed. And we’ve still got loads of time to achieve stuff.”

“
True,” he said quietly. “What do you want to do most?”

“
When Aunt Annabel first died, I thought I wanted to continue with her gardening designs and carry on with the one she was taking to the Chelsea Flower Show this year.” She pictured Annabel with her designs in her shed. “But although I grew up with her teaching me stuff about gardens, I’ve got my own garden to keep going and need to find a way to buy out Simon. I don’t have a sponsor for the show and to be honest I don’t have the expertise to see it through.”

Tom smiled at her.
“You’re still grieving over her, Bea. Most of my memories were of your aunt chatting to us while we lay in the sun, or her bullying me to mow her lawn or something. She was a big character and brilliant at her designs. You’re doing well enough just trying to keep her home together for her. That’s enough for anyone to deal with on their own.”

“
Thanks, Tom. It’s good to hear you say that.” Bea swallowed the lump in her throat and pushed away a memory of passing bulbs to her aunt as she planted them. She’d always been happiest in her garden. “I sometimes don’t know how I’ll manage it. I try and remember the fun bits of my aunt, but I miss her too much to be able to do that very often.”

“
You’re doing very well. Just hang in there and focus on fighting that shit of an ex of yours.” He looked up and Bea blew her nose on a tissue from her bag. “Ah this looks delicious,” he said as Gio put a plate down in front of each of them.

“Er, Tom,” she said, suddenly noticing Giuseppe was cashing up and the waiter was watching them with a tired expression on his face. She waved her hand in front of Tom to get his attention. “I think we’ve outstayed our welcome.” She motioned to the empty room. “We’re the last people here.”

“
When did that happen?” Tom asked, before quickly finishing his drink, and nodding at Giuseppe for the bill. That paid, he stood up. “Come on then, let’s make a move.”

Taking her by the hand, they said their goodbyes to Giuseppe and his staff and Tom led her outside where he immediately flagged down a passing taxi.

He shouted Bea’s address into the cab’s window, and helped her into the back. “Bea,” he murmured huskily, sitting down heavily next to her. “I’ve had a wonderful time with you again tonight. It’s been fun catching up about us and not having to concentrate on work issues.”

“
Tom, I was wondering, while we’re not at work, if you’d be able to tell me more about this Luke business. You know,” she mouthed the words ‘money laundering’ so that the taxi driver couldn’t hear her. “I just can’t quite believe he could be involved, as you seem to think.” There, she thought, she’d voiced her doubts to him.

Tom took her hand, all humour vanishing from his expression.
“I understand how difficult this must be for you, but I can assure you he is involved, or I suspect he is.” He thought for a moment. “I know I shouldn’t, but come to my office on Monday and I’ll show you the irrefutable proof that I’m not lying to you about this.”

Bea grimaced. She’d ruined their evening by bringing this matter up.
“I wasn’t insinuating that you’d lied, Tom, but it seems so unlikely.”

“
You know him that well, to believe him incapable of something like this then?”