A Life Sublime (24 page)

Distracted by his nudity, she answered, “It doesn’t have a lock.”

“And why would you need one of those?”

“For five minutes without you molesting me!” she argued. “I’m coming back. Just behave.”

“Entirely impossible for me,” he assured her. She rolled her eyes and padded down the corridor naked into the bathroom closing the door behind her. Her reflection terrified her. Hair in mad peaks and troughs, mascara smeared half way down her cheek and her mouth looked twice its normal size. Underneath the mess, her skin positively glowed. She was loathe to admit those children were right but Massimo was doing wonders for her appearance. “Just not at the moment.”

She opened the bathroom door and clapped hands over the vulnerable parts of her nude body at the sight of Sofia on the top step.

“Jesus Christ!” Sofia yelped.

“Oh lord!” Belinda gasped, closing the bathroom door again. “What are you doing here?” she yelled from behind the door.

“I honestly cannot remember. Jesus Christ.”

The child was embarrassing her more than she thought possible. “Stop taking the Lord’s name in vain!”

“I just wanted to get those accounts Pads promised me.”

“What on earth?” Belinda heard Massimo’s voice in the corridor. “Sofia, what is the matter?”

“You er, you don’t take your time do you? Look, I’ve seen your lady love undressed and to cover for the trauma I think you should find my premises for me and pay the first three months’ rent.”

“Absolutely not,” he refused, and damn him, Belinda could hear the laughter in his voice. “Go downstairs. I will find the plans I have arranged for you.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever recover from the shock, although I will say, well done. Auntie looks very well er, done over.”

A knock sounded on the bathroom door. “Are you all right, Bella?”

“I think I’m having a stroke,” she muttered. “Do you see why we need to be civilised?”

“I see the need to change the locks of my home. Come out. We can pretend to the world that we do not know each other intimately for an hour or two.”

She opened the bathroom door at a crack. Massimo was standing on the other side in a towelling robe. “That’s not what I mean. I want us to do fun things.”

He sighed. “If you had an electric toothbrush here and a beauty salon of products, would that make you feel like we are having more than just bedroom fun?”

“Maybe,” she said morosely.

“Then it will be done. Hurry, Bella. You have your sort of fun and I have mine. While I do not appreciate the order it comes in, I will be somewhat patient.”

While Massimo made himself presentable, Belinda tip toed downstairs in the hope that Sofia had gone home. No such luck. Perched in the kitchen, Sofia took one look at Belinda’s crumpled dress and mussed hair and pushed a glass of wine to her without a single word.

“I’ve never seen you this quiet,” Belinda murmured, picking up the glass and taking a sip.

“I’ve never been blinded before.” Her eyes narrowed in amusement, “Look at you, all
End of the Affair
.”

“I’m not married,” Belinda objected. “It’s not an affair.”

Sofia’s gave a careless shrug, “I like to think of any er... passionate relationship as an
affaire
.”

Belinda felt her temper slipping, “I am not having an affair!”

“Tomayto, tomahto. Whatever helps you sleep at night. Besides my father-in-law.”

“And why is it your business?”

“Oh, darling, I’ve got a stake in some high value jewellery. A gorgeous pair of ruby earrings that used to belong to Elizabeth Taylor.”

Belinda snorted, “I’m glad you’re benefitting from my life.”

Sofia drew a finger around the rim of her glass. “I love my father-in-law very much. I couldn’t give a flying fuck what he does for a living because he’s only ever looked after me. I know I swore.” She said just as Belinda made a motion to clip her ear. “It’s only my business because you just don’t seem the type to let loose and be all
Eat, Pray, Love
.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re not full of the joys of life, are you?”

“Because you think I’m old.”

Sofia grimaced, “Well darling, you’re hardly sailing close to the thirty-something wind.”

“And so what? You think everything turns off after you are forty? Do you feel any older than you were yesterday? A week ago? A month ago? Then, why do you think that I’d be any different? The only thing that changes is the outside. The way you drink, I’m sure I’m younger than you!”

Sofia gave Belinda a little clap. “Marvellous defence. But honestly. Are you serious? About Padre? You’re not just living out some long seated revenge against men?”

Belinda hesitated to say no, because she wasn’t the type to do things like this. Quite frankly she’d given up on men altogether and the Angel Gabriel himself could have come down from heaven and told her Massimo Da Canaveze would love her. She’d have drop kicked the angel back up into heaven for aligning himself with the devil by lying. Was it like living out a role that she’d been continuously told wasn’t right for her? Not if she had very deep and very real feelings for the man.

Sofia continued, “He’s always had women throwing themselves at him and he’s always stayed faithful. Not that mega biatch Mary Alice deserved it, because it went against his very honour to be so fucking disrespectful to his wife. Even at her funeral, and God he looked awful, they were still all falling at his feet. Granted, his moral compass doesn’t point true north, more south west, but whose does these days?”

“Not many,” Belinda agreed. “But as you said, why would I mess about? You don’t think rats were sniffing around me when my husband left? You don’t think it would have been easy to take up with any one of them to prove a point? I didn’t because I don’t do that sort of thing.”

“Did Mr. Afriyie actually have standards?”

Belinda gave a dismissive snort, “No. Any man who makes you feel less of a woman from the inside out can’t have standards. He was a useless man on his best day.”

“Because you couldn’t have kids or you didn’t have kids?”

“Couldn’t. And you?”

Sofia raised delicate brows. “Me what?”

“Are you a can’t or a won’t?”

Sofia looked down at her glass, “Maybe a combination of both. I had an unstable childhood with a money grabbing whore of a mother and an even more materialistic father. I didn’t understand the whole fuss around Jane Austen and the marriage market until I decided I was going to marry Paul. I was bartered off like fucking cattle. So I thought, fuck bringing a child into this disaster.”

Belinda winced, “Sofia. Mind your tongue.”

“I just needed to vent a little, Auntie, that’s all. But we’ll see what happens when I get my earrings.”

“Life isn’t all about jewellery.”

Sofia looked at Belinda with a stillness that seeped into Belinda. “I realised that when my father-in-law was bleeding all over me, dying. When my best friend lost her baby. When I thought my marriage was completely over and there was nothing left of me. Or who I used to be. But that’s all by the by. My point is, please don’t use my Padre to prove a point. To anyone or even yourself. You know that you can attract a powerful man or that you can be impulsive and it won’t hurt a fly. It’s not fair. Not when he looks at you and thinks that anything is possible.”

Belinda felt her heart racing. There was far too much going on with the girl for anyone to start helping with. “This is very bold of you.”

“I do see myself in you.”

“God help me!”

“You don’t need Him for that. Only, you don’t have to justify anything to anyone. My husband is
obsessed
with you. My brother and sister-in-law adore you. My father-in-law is madly in love with you. I think you’re all right.” She gave a shrug of her skinny shoulders, much to Belinda’s irritation. She was more than
all right
! “So, there’s your two fingers up to the world. As long as you love him back.”

“This is just all too—”

“Naughty? Me or you? You? Yes, it is Mrs. Prim and Proper. I suspect that’s half of why you’re carrying on. Being good for sixty...”

“Fifty three,” Belinda corrected through her teeth. The flaming cheek!

“Fifty three years of your life must take a toll darling. We’re not meant to be good and perfect. You know who lives longer? Married couples who enjoy under the sheets time alone. Enjoy the fun, but understand there must be an end goal.”

Was Sofia champagne-runs-in-my-veins Da Canaveze dictating the virtues of marriage to her? “Listen to me young lady, you haven’t been through what I have been through, you haven’t seen what I have seen. You haven’t lived my life to tell me what I should be doing. Nothing in this world is as simple as — just be together.”

Sofia blinked. “Why ever not?”

“You don’t understand,” Belinda sighed. “When you get to my age...”

“Lots of Botox and possibly a face lift later.”

“You’ll be on my side and understand what it is to really trust a man. Even a man such as your father-in-law, when everyone who has ever come before him has either left you or let you down. And as good as he is, Massimo is not
all
good.”

Sofia looked entirely unconvinced. “I think he needs to keep you locked in a bedroom with him for a month. That’ll show you.”

Belinda rolled her eyes. “You are naughty,” she said in Fanti, finishing the wine. Massimo strolled into the kitchen, making them both jump.

“Ready to go, Bella?”

“Let me get my shoes,” she smiled, leaning up to kiss his cheek. The world had to be wrong when Belinda was the one behaving amorally and Sofia was telling her to get into moral line. Another thought occurred to her, sending the wine back to sear her oesophagus. Just what, if any of that conversation had Massimo heard?

Massimo was not the type of man to rage against a dead person, but Herbert Afriyie deserved serious resurrection only to be put to death. How dare he make this wonderful woman feel anything less than the queen she was? How dare anyone else make her feel unworthy?

Belinda had no idea the attention she attracted on the Southbank. He had a feeling it was partly the fact that she looked thoroughly loved, from the mused curls of her hair to the slight bruising of her lips to the wrinkles in her dress that had spent the better part of eight hours crumpled on his bedroom carpet. Part of it came from her possessive clasp around his bicep and that she didn’t take notice of any of the men who openly stared at her.

Men tended to look at a happy woman and wonder if they could make her happier — usually with however many inches that man carried between his legs. Massimo stared back, the message in his eyes clear enough to not require subtitles.
She is mine. Eyes back in your heads or lose them
.

The exhibition crossed the Southbank between the National Theatre and the Millennium Bridge. The wind from the Thames whipped at them, and Belinda cuddled into Massimo until the musicians began to encourage the crowd around them to dance. His pleasure came not just from the music, joyous and rhythmically infectious, but from Belinda’s laughter. It warmed him from the inside out. She warmed him.

“Civilised is good, I told you!”

“This is my type of fun, just more dressed,” he reminded her, his mouth close to her ear. She spun back into the circle of his arms and wrapped herself closer.

“You’re making me very happy,” she murmured. Massimo blinked in complete surprise.
What did she just say to him?
“I thought you should know.”

He leaned down to kiss her, only to feel a prod from his front. A glance up tightened his jaw and flexed his muscles. An idiot was attempting to grind his hideous self against his sweet Belinda’s generous bottom. The man sent Massimo a grin, as if to say
what a free for all!

Massimo caught the man in a stare that had in the past induced heart attacks. “Go. Away.”

The man gulped and disappeared into the crowd. Belinda looked up with a frown. “What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“Is this going to happen a lot?” she asked, the frown deepening. He kissed the frown away.