A Kept Woman (31 page)

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were returning now. As soon as the hubbub of the day died down, Diana felt her body start to betray her.

That’s OK, she told herself. I’ll get out of here rig[it away. Maybe go down to Bliss and get a massage, or pop up to Bergdorf’s for my eyebrows. Anything to get away from him. Hurriedly she packed her papers into her briefcase and turned to leave. Michael was blocking the doorway.

‘Can I help you with something?’ Diana asked. She was rather proud of herself. She sounded brisk and impersonally friendly. Why let him know he had upset her equilibrium?

‘Yes, you can.’

‘Of course. Just a second, I’ll boot the computer up again.’

‘That’s nt what I meant.’ He smiled at her confidently. ‘W4aat are you doing tonight?’

‘Well, I’m - I’m—’

Diana stammered and cursed herself. Why couldn’t she think of something? Her mind had gone blank.

‘Would you like to have dinner? I know a great place on Bleeker Street,’ he said.

Diana blushed. ‘Look, Michael. I think you should know that I don’t normally do this kind of thing.’ The instant she said it she felt more awkward than ever. I don’t normally do this kind of thing. I’m not that kind of girl. How many women had said that after panting in his arms?

His brows lifted. ‘You don’t normally eat dinner? You should. You’ve been looking a little skinny lately.’

‘You know what I mean. I think we should lay down some ground rules.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure you do.’ He gave her a wink. A wink! ‘We’ll do that, OK? At dinner.’

‘I can’t.’ Be firm, Diana told herself. ‘I need to go home and have a shower and change. I’m so sticky.’

‘Mmm, I know you are,’ Michael said, his gaze lingering on her skin. ‘So I’ll pick you up at eight.’

Diana flushed scarlet. ‘I don’t know … I think …’ ‘You think too much,’ he said, and walked out.

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‘Michael, I have a suggestion to make,’ Diana said.

She brushed her long, dark hair behind her shoulders and regarded him over the edge of her bone-china cup of English tea. Since they’d started dating, Diana had felt confident enough to go back to her natural colour. At first it was a shock, sitting in Oribe’s gilt-decorated salon, and watching the bright platinum soften and cool through red right down to a rich chestnut.

‘You hate eet, no?’ her colourist asked, dismayed. ‘No.’ Diana could hardly take her eyes from her reflection. ‘It’s natural, it suits my skin. I look five years younger.’

‘Well, eel you are happy.’ The woman sniffed. In her opinion everybody should be blonde. But Mrs Foxton had refused to be swayed. Didn’t she read the gossip columns? Conchita wasn’t discreet, but even she shrank from pointing out that Felicity Metson, the new lady in Ernest Foxton’s life, was standard-issue New York: younger, blonder and skinnier than Diana. Maybe she was depressed, now the divorce was finalised, and Felicity was flashing that six-carat rock in front of whatever camera happened to be pointed her way.

But that would not explain why, whenever her client came in for a treatment, she was glowing, her skin shining, her eyes bright. Whatever Diana had in the way of beauty treatments, they must be lmry expensive, Conchita mused, wondering about the size of the settlement.

If Conchita could have seen Diana’s beauty secret, sitting across from her in the cramped bistro, she would have been amazed.

Michael Cicero was gulping coffee and drinking in Diana at the same time. Even though she was with him every night and he reached for her in the morning, he couldn’t get enough of her. It was like trying to hold a bubble in a cage; he put up the bars of his expectations and she floated past them.

They were having breakfast together outside his apartment. He wore a black suit, tailor-made for him by Gieves & Hawkes in England. Since Imperial’s games had started selling, he could afford it. Cicero detested luxury for its own sake, but he liked looking professional. Think Sicilian, dress British. His shirts, shoes and suits were always pristine. A discreet pair of plain gold cuff links glinted in the morning light.

Michael never thought about his appearance, except to require that it be smart. Maybe that was one of the reasons he looked so damn good.

Diana was another matter altogether, though, and it worried him. As Imperial expanded, so had her job. She was his right-hand woman and he paid her commensurately.

Looking at her, he sometimes thought every cent must go on clothes.

Michael was no fashion guru, but he knew about cost. And Diana’s things cost plenty. Almost every day, as though to make up for months of relative poverty, she showed up at work in a brand-new outfit. Chanel suits. Prada handbags. Manolo Blahnik shoes. Maybe it was important for all the meetings he sent her to, as Imperial’s public face.

But Cicero didn’t know. There was still that touch of the pampered princess about Diana. Still, she worked hard, and it was her own money.

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Was that why they fought so much? He was doing good, but not that good. Michael regarded Diana. Was she going to turn round and ask him to keep her in the style to which Ernie had gotten her accustomed?

The odd nice suit did not a mogul make. Michael recalled Iris. When his bonus went out the door so did she. He hated gold-diggers with a passion.

But he could not hate Diana. She just wouldn’t let him. All his fighting to stay neutral and not hit on her, what had it meant? Just about nothing, when he thought he was faced with a lover of hers.

Michael’s groin had refused to be silenced that day. And it was a good thing. If he hadn’t kissed her and taken her home, he might never have known what it felt like to reallv master a woman; not just an easy lay, the latest of the long string of girls he didn’t know, or girls he quite liked, some woman he had selected from all the girls flinging themselves at him because he needed a piece of ass. Diana, he had dreamed of. Thought about. Been distracted by.

She fascinated him. And he admired the way she had adapted to working for a living.

But, Cicero told himself, it was nothing more than that.

How could he fall for an uptown girl like Diana? She sat opposite him, in a delicate pink shift dress worked with tiny yellow daisie embroidered over the hem, a sharp matching jacket that cut under her full breasts and made the whole thing just about work friendly. He had no idea who the designer was. Some logo was emblazoned over the tiny buttons. D&G, Dolce & Gabanna. It was another outfit that looked sensational and must have cost.., well, best not to guess about that.

He reminded himself she had never asked him for anything. But was that because she thought of him as her boss, rather than her boyfriend?

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Their relationship had never been defined. They worked together and fucked like rabbits. Every time he promised himself he would scale it down, his resolve evaporated when he touched her, or saw her, or spoke to her. Maybe she’d be screaming at some delivery company that was late with a package, and Cicero would suddenly look at her mouth and imagine it sliding over his skin. Or maybe she would be bending over her desk, studying cover copy, and that glorious ass would be sticking out in his face, round and firm, flaring out from her tiny waist. The effect was the same. His heart started to race, his groin stirred, he looked at her and had to have her. Sure, he liked Diana and she liked him, but they were too

different. They were just friends who had sex. Michael told himself this daily.

‘I’m listening to any suggestions you have,’ he said easily. ‘I always do. You’re pretty bright, for a foreigner.’

Diana raised one neatly plucked brow. ‘That’s a laugh. In England, you need a satchel and a lunch box to go to school. In America they issue bullet-proof vests at the door.’

‘I know you’re big on gun control, but that’s not the constitution. Anyway, I’m sure you didn’t drag me out here to have a political discussion,’ he said, dryly.

‘No.’ She looked down and blushed, and he remembered the flushing of her skin under him this morning, the red patches over her breasts, the long red lines where he had slowly raked his nails across her belly. Diana writhed and gasped more than any other woman he had ever known. They were hot together. Yet when she left his

bed, she was more reserved than ever.

She’s fascinating. She’s infuriating.

‘I wanted to suggest that we should be careful. We leave the office together too often. We shouldn’t arrive in the same car.’

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Michael swallowed a sip of the black, thick espresso and masked his disquiet. Diana didn’t want to be seen with him.

‘You think people will talk?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ she said, nodding. Her brown hair he had told her he wanted her to go natural - suited those sharp cheekbones, those full, pouting lips. Her creamy skin looked warmer, her eyes sparkled. ‘It’s not businesslike. You don’t want people thinking you gave me my job just because …’

She let the sentence hang in the air.

‘Just because we sleep together,’ Michael said. ‘That’s a good idea.’

Diana smiled at him and lifted her glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. She had to draw on all her reserves with Michael to keep from losing her soul. She admired him, and she wanted him and sometimes, when she looked across at him while he was sleeping, she caught herself having deeper feelings. But she ignored them, because he didn’t let her get to him.

Diana had been rejected once before. She wasn’t going to take any chances now. Michael refused to open up to her. She wanted to end it, but she couldn’t. He aroused her like she had never known.

Sex was no longer frustrating and enervating. This time, when she was turned on, she was satisfied. If that was the word for it … squirming and whimpering, clutching at Michael as he pounded into her, the thickness of his cock driving all caution away. It was hard to make barriers when she kept remembering the way his thumbs rubbed gently back and forth across her nipples, his palms slipped down to cradle her ass and caress her pussy, softly, until she was twisting in his hands, begging him to fuck her again. And Michael Cicero was not a pretty boy, With the shirt and suit off, the bull-like chest was fully revealed, the thickness of his

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biceps, the dark, wiry hair that covered his chest and his arms. The face that stared down at her, kissing her hard as his hands pinned her arms over her head, teasing her, keeping her motionless, was a man’s face, broken-nosed, dark-eyed, thick black lashes, close-cropped black hair. Ernie’s skinny frame seemed even more unattractive and .. Diana flinched in distaste at the thought of his cock.

Maybe it was true that size didn’t matter.., but she

didn’t think so.

It wasn’t about length, it was about thickness. How

long Michael was she really didn’t know … about average, maybe. What had her biting her lips to stop from crying out was the solid thickness of him, that stubby, wide, sweet plunging, relentless flesh that was so merciless in seeking out her pleasure. Cicero was a master. Outside the bedroom, Diana thought she could handle him, but inside the bedroom, his word was law. Michael wasn’t a sensitive lover. He didn’t go for poetry and long candlelit, soul-baring dinners. They rarely got to .dessert before his hand was rising up her knee and he was shoving her into a cab, touching her breast under her jacket, firing her blood and making her breath come out in ragged gasps. He pinned her down across the bed, a table, his knees. He held her locked in place with his body, one hand holding down both her arms with utter ease as the other roamed across her body, tormenting her. And when he finally agreed to fuck her, Michael knew how to pace it, driving he, forcing her up to the brink, tilting her body so his cock pressed against that soft, melting spot on her inner walls that forced her to yield, the pleasure exploding inside her like a firework, a white-hot, blinding shower of stars.

But he was so stern and disapproving of her.

She tried a million different outfits, and none of them seemed to please him. Sometimes Diana felt they were

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circling each other like wolves about to strike, not sure whether to mate or fight.

She needed to know how he felt. She had hoped le would tell her she was being dumb, that he wanted to be seen with her.

No such luck. Cicero accepted what she was saying without hesitation. Diana was sure he didn’t love her.

‘Well, that’s settled.’ She smiled as brightly as.she

could. ‘I’ll go first; I know you like your breakfast.’ ‘Yeah, see you in the office. And maybe tonight.’ ‘Maybe,’ Diana agreed.

She lowered her glass, stood and walked out. She didn’t let the tears prickle in her eyes until she was safely out on the sidewalk.

She is one cold woman, Michael thought, grimly. He’s made of stone, Diana said to herself.

After that, they arrived at the office separately. The irony was that once the office doors had shut behind them, they got on famously, enjoying each other’s ambition and dynamism.

Michael drew up business plans and made presentations to software houses.

Diana listened to his vision and increased her hiring. It was amazing to her that he could found a computer games company when heknew nothing about computers. But Michael’s passion was infectious. Book industry insiders who knew him recommended him to colleagues in the tech market. It usually only took one meeting, with Michael’s business savvy and Diana’s poise, for the fishes to bite.

‘I don’t know code from crack, but I do know kids,’ Michael explained. ‘If we hire the right people, we can execute the vision. Is David Geffen a musician? Is Donald Trump an architect? Hell no. You don’t need to be. You’

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need to hire the right people and come up with the right numbers.’

‘But in that case we might as well be selling soap,’ Diana protested.

‘We might, but I don’t want to sell soap. You can work

to make money or you can work at your dream. But if you choose to work for the dream, you’ll make more money.’