A Kept Woman (18 page)

The bustle of the early morning was increasing. I don’t want to be seen out like this, Diana thought. She tiptoed back into her room and dialled her chauffeur’s number. Luckily, Richard was right there and promised he’d be down to get her in twenty minutes.

She dressed and fixed herself a cup of coffee and tried to concentrate on more important things. What was she

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to have her shitty little job. It meant that she could bide from Ernie, Consuela and even Felicity. She could make her calls from the office, and maybe Felicity or Natasha would know of a suitable place where she could stay. Then Diana would have Consuela deliver her things, and hey presto, she could glide elegantly, temporarily, out of Ernie’s life. Until he came to his senses.

She clenched her fists as she stared out into SoHo. Where was her driver? Quietly, Diana picked up her bag and tiptoed out of Felicity’s place, gently shutting the heavy door behind her. The corridor in her friend’s building was grey and actually cold, not even heated. Diana shivered. The sooner she resolved this with Ernie, the better.’ She punched the elevator button; better to wait in the lobby for Richard, avoid any more questions Felicity might want to fire at her. It was too much to have to sit around in dirty clothes. She sighed; Felicity was kind, but she wanted to know everything. Of course, that was her way of being supportive, Diana guessed. But she didn’t want to dissect every tiny thing in her marriage. She wanted to fix it, and go on as they had before.

She sat down on the functional black leather bench in the lobby and watched the street outside. What would it take to win he back? Mira’s exile, a promise never to stray again, and a really substantial present. There was an emerald and diamond necklace with matching earrings at Cartier’s, a beautiful set that glittered like drops of the sea set round with stars, African emeralds that were pale green like the shallows of the ocean washing on to a Greek beach.

Diana jumped into the car when it pulled up, giving Richard the kind of frozen nod that told him not to ask any questions. She hadn’t worn last night’s clothes since she was a teenager. Richard moved the car smooth|y

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through the morning traffic and acted as though he didn’t even notice her.

She suddenly had the nasty feeling that he’d done this before. Probably lots of times. Dropping Ernie off, or picking Mira up? Or maybe even another girl?

He held the car door open for her as he pulled into the underground car park. Luckily, all the husbands in the building had already left for Wall Street and none of the wives were up yet. Diana summoned the elevator and managed to tilt up her head and ignore the attendant. How I’m dressed is my business, she thought resolutely.

She stepped off at her floor and went into the apartment. Consuela bustled her plump ass over to open the door and cooed at Diana’s exhausted look.

‘Meees Foxton, where you been? I was worried-…’

‘Staying with a girlfriend downtown. Nothing to worry about. Is Mr Foxton here?’

The maid shook her head. ‘Oh no, he is gone one hour.’

Diana breathed out with relief. At least there would be no fiaore embarrassing scenes this morning. ‘Consuela, I am going to visit with a friend of mine for a little while. I want you to pack up my summer clothes and my makeup and shoes and call Mrs Felicity Metson.’ She grabbed one of the Mont Blanc pens that Ernie kept piled by the phone and scribbled the number down for her. ‘My jewels, too.’

‘Yes, senora. You will be here to supervise?’

‘No.’ Diana checked her watch. ‘I’m jumping in the shower, then I have to go to work. If you could bring me some breakfast up to the bedroom?’

“Si, senora.’ Consuela looked as though Diana was in imminent danger of losing her mind, but she thought the Anglos were mad anyway, and did not argue.

Diana ran upstairs, flung her dress into the dry cleaning basket, and gratefully jumped in her shower. As

she scrubbed and rinsed, she ran her fingers across the embossed gold stars embedded in the metal. She’d niss this place. Hopefully, she wouldn’t be away for long. Just enough time to crack the whip on her errant husband.

The hanging clock on the wall outside told her it was seven thirty already. Diana towelled off roughly and blasted the hair dryer at maximum as she searched through her wardrobe. OK, there was a neat green Prada jacket she matched with an on-the-knee Joseph skirt of the same colour and Ralph Lauren black pumps, plus the lightest, sheerest Woolford hose. There was really no time to make up, so she buzzed Richard again and used nothing but coloured moisturiser’and neutral gloss.

Diana wanted to be at her job early today. Ernie wouldn’t xpect her to show up, nor would Cicero. She’d be on time, and she’d show them both.

Consuela opened the door and nearly dropped her tray.

‘Meees Foxton! Are you all right?’

Diana had never got ready so fast in the entire time Consuela had known her. Was she visiting a baby? Was someone sick?

Diana nodded and swooped down on the mahogany tray. ‘I’m fine, Consuela.’ She lifted the crystal flute of orange juice, downed iy, and then took the croissant, still in its napkin, and marched out to the lift.

Consuela waited for her to come back, crazy lady. When she did not, the older woman sighed, plopped down on the bed, and started to eat Diana’s pain au chocolat. Packing was hungry work. There was no point in wasting it. And that coffee smelled too good for a mad Englishwoman to pour away.

Michael looked down at Iris’s sleeping form. Her skin was still mottled from the way he had left her earli6r,

gasping and bucking underneath him. She was responsive, sure, but then Michael thought all women were responsive - once they found the right man.

Thank God she had rolled away out of his arms in her sleep. He couldn’t stand to be crowded, but he hadn’t wanted to wake her up and tell her that. Sometimes he liked the warmth of her body, when she rubbed that curvy butt up against him and got him hard, and he would nudge up her leg and take her just there like that. Iris had nice breasts, too, surgically enhanced, maybe, but firm and nice. She was skinny, but she refused to eat, although she sure did love to luck. He remembered the night before, when she’d booked the restaurant and turned up in that short little purple number, the fr.inged dress, and underneath it, nothing but skin, nothing but her neatly trimmed little bush, already all slick and fired up for him …

He glanced over her sleeping form. Her tits stood up like hard melons when she lay on her back, but he didn’t knock her for that. The girl took care of herself. A good sign. That dress was slightly cheap, though it had turned him on … maybe he could get her some more suitable stuff to wear for eating out.

He swung his thick legs out of bed and walked over to his dressing area. Definitely the worst part about having a girlfriend was that he couldn’t bundle her out of the apartment in the mornings. Iris slept the sleep of the dead unless his cock was nudging at her. Maybe she was the perfect woman: she never got in the way.

He bent down and picked up a couple of forty-pound free weights and did a few sets of curls. The blood and lactic acid sang through his biceps and rushed around his skin. He felt the cobwebs lift from his head. Outside, TriBeCa was barely stirring yet. He thought he could shower, shave and get into the office for seven t.hirty

today. It was an importantweek for the company. He wanted to be able to think.

Ernie Foxton was an obnoxious little limey fck, Michael thought, then grunted and hefted his iron weights and told himself not to be biased. As long as the business was good, who cared? Let the Blakely’s guy muck about in his dandified suits and fake tan. He had provided Michael with an amazing distribution chain, and professional, cheap printing works. Their sales force was eager to go with new products, too. Cicero thought maybe they had the sleekest sales force in the business, possibly because Ernie had upped the quota and was firing the men who didn’t produce.

Jean Fellows was the Blakely’s head of Children’s fiction. Ste was a fat, hairy woman who didn’t seem bothered by the sprouting mole on her chin or the dark moustache nestling above her upper lip. Gossip in the publishing world about Jean wasn’t too good. Six secretaries had resigned in eight months. But again, she’s not my problem, Michael thought.

He had a mission for Green Eggs, and B!akely’s was going to help him get to it. Yeah, it was truly aggravating having to go up to the sixteenth floor every Monday morning and give an account of his plan, but what the hell, there was no getting anything for free. Michael was about to execute his first serious line of books. Seth had been working overtime on them and had drafted in a couple of friends, as well. Michael had a line on a guy with a new font that looked like easy-to-read handwriting, and an old woman from Quee/s, who specialised in intricate initial letters that reminded Michael of the ones he’d seen in medieval manuscripts. He’d investigated paperweights, covers, photographic processes and he’d investigated every aspect of producing a series of stories that would look like nothing kids had seen before - not unless they’d been born around the turn of the century.

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He laid down the weights, stretched for a second and jumped in the shower. Five minutes later he was washed and shaved. His suit and notes for the bookseller presentation were lying on the chair. Michael dressed, and debated whether he should stop for a pot of coffee. He thought not, on the whole. The warm scent of it might wake Iris, and he couldn’t wait this morning, not even for the wet sensation of her lips sliding up and down his cock. Stop that, Michael. He grinned at his reflection and ran a hand across the newly smooth surface of his chin. It would be stubbly again by mid-afternoon, but now he was dapper and ready to go.

He felt the adrenaline in the pit of his stomach. He left the apartment quietly and walked across the street to the subway, hardly seeing all the other commuters-as he shoved his way onto the crowded train.

He could no longer think of these books in the way that he’d dreamed them up with Seth, crammed in Seth’s tiny walkup studio in Alphabet City, eating pizza and attempting to ignore the roaches, deciding if Cinderella was” the way to go or whether to choose more out of the way stories, like the Billy Goats Gruff, getting blasted on German beer and trying to remember what it was like being a kid.

‘People think kids are stupid, is what it is.’ Seth was cramming pizza into his mouth and gazing lovingly at a picture of his recently departed boyfriend, which used to freak Cicero out, but he’d got .used to it. Seth was unapologetic, and you had to respect that. As long as he didn’t kiss any guys in front of Michael. He didn’t take tolerance that far. Fuck that.

‘Yeah. They do. Kids will pretty much perform as well as you set their expectations.’

‘The Lion King.’ Seth made a face. ‘Can’t we do any better than that? Barney? Is that what it is?’ ‘Did you hear,’ Michael said seriously, taking the time

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to pronounce his letters because the beer wasn’t going to affect him, dammit, ‘about that school down in Alabama? This new teacher got her classes mixed up, nd she thought the remedial string was the advanced string. She ditched all her stuff and started hitting them with Shakespeare.’

‘What happened?’

‘They all started making As.’

‘See? We give kids the early texts. Smart stories. Actual adjectives. Multisyllabic words.’

‘What are you, the writer? You just draw the pictures.’ ‘Scary pictures. Dark forests.’

‘Looming mountains. Give me some pizza, you greedy jerk. Monsters. With teeth. Height. Tall castles that look like castles.’

‘Not Mickey’s Magic Kingdom.’

‘We’re’going to make a fortune.’ Michael had grinned. Now he Wasn’t thinking about the kids any more. Maybe it made him a bad person, just another greedy suit, but today it was all about the sales. Getting the line out to the booksellers was just the first step. Covers had to be presented, reviewers courted, press obtained, and then there was space. What good did it do him if Barnes & Noble stocked the line if they didn’t rack it out front? Getting the thing in the front of the stores where the casually shopping mom would buy it - that was vital.

A new line had a shot, it always had a shot. But if the books didn’t make it in the first month, they’d be shoved aside, replaced with the latest cheap horror story for teenagers or Sweet Valley High kids soap opera. And his little company would never get another chance; at least, not for years.

He had an opportunity here, Michael thought, and it made his blood pound as he stepped off the” train. Midtown was still mostly empty. He could get into his office and practise his presentation. First the Blakely’s

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people needed convincing, then the booksellers and then the public. Life for him was nothing but meetings. His presentation today would really determine Green Eggs’ future.

Harry was on reception today. Michael wished him good morning and asked for his keys, but he told him the lady already had them. That was a surprise; Susan was enthusiastic, but he didn’t expect her in at this hour.

Michael stepped off the elevator and shoved open the doors to his offices, and stopped dead in his tracks. The shapeliest ass he’d ever seen, swathed in tight, demure, amazingly sexy dark-green cotton, was pointing at him, bent over from a waspish waist. He breathed in sharply and felt an unwelcome tightness in his groin. He knew he

should say something, but he was rooted to the spot. She lifted herself and turned around. ‘You’re staring at me,’ Diana Foxton said.

Felicity flipped open the note from Diana and read the few brief, gracious lines. Yes, she had definitely gone. She was going to check in at the Paramount tonight, and would find a furnished apartment from there.

Felicity tapped the crisp paper, against her bronzed skin. Excitement zipped through her veins. Humming a little tune, to herself, she sauntered into her master bathroom and started to prepare herself for the day ahead. °