Divas (23 page)

‘Is that what happened to you?’ David asked Lola, eyes wide.

‘Yes, tell us everything, ’ Jean-Marc said, picking up his chopsticks and selecting a salmon-skin roll from the sushi platter in front of him.

So Lola began.

By tea-time the next day, Lola was almost perfectly back to her usual state of exquisite, groomed glossiness. Her hair and nails were done, her legs and bikini line waxed; she
had had a long lovely facial, a detoxifying wrap, a full-body massage, and she was BeauBronzed from head to toe, a flawless spray tan. She even had an appointment with the best eyebrow specialist
in town, in two days’ time, and being able to get one at such short notice was a minor miracle that told her God truly was looking out for her now. Her luck had turned. She had rung George,
told him there would be no problem about any bills at all, no matter how large, and instructed him to hurry up the lawyer who was filing some sort of motion for her to get access to her father.

In short, every pressing need had been met. She hadn’t even bothered to get dressed so far today, as a procession of beauticians had come to her, filing in and out of her large, luxurious
set of rooms – bedroom, bathroom, living-room – at the far end of the Van der Veer suite. She was lounging on her sofa in a silk negligee, watching her plasma TV, or, rather, flicking
idly through the channels, one trashy and addictive reality show after another, when she heard someone let themselves in through the main door of the suite, far away down the long series of
rooms.

‘Jean-Marc?’ she called. ‘David?’

David was at work, Jean-Marc gone out for lunch and shopping, and they had all arranged to meet up in the early evening and have dinner somewhere unspecified, maybe catch a movie. Jean-Marc and
David had banned themselves from going near clubs of any description, because those places were so rife with drugs, and Lola was more than fine with that: after the drama and upsets of the past
week, a series of simple evenings spent on dinner-and-a-movie dates with the two boys was all the social life she felt she would need for weeks to come.

It did seem a little early for them to be back, though.

She got up, slipping on the silk robe that matched her negligee, and padded on bare feet out of her living-room and down the internal corridor. Maybe some delivery had come in, or someone had
come to change the flowers – Jean-Marc was obsessed with lovely arrangements and insisted they always be as fresh as possible – but it seemed odd that they wouldn’t have rung up
first, to alert her that someone was coming in . . .

In the main sitting-room, a man was standing with his back to her, looking at something on the desk. She knew instantly that it wasn’t either of the boys: firstly, because his back was
much too wide and muscular. Both Jean-Marc and David were delicately built, slim and elegant. This man had the shoulders of a bruiser by comparison. And secondly, he was wearing a grey suit, which
neither of them would ever, ever have done.

Suddenly she had a very bad feeling indeed. She was actually about to turn and flee when he spun round. He must have had the hearing of a cat to pick up the almost-inaudible sound of her feet on
the thick carpeting.

Lola’s entire body froze. She literally could not move a muscle. The way he was looking at her was so frightening she was paralysed to the spot. She was the rabbit once more, staring at
the snake.

‘
You!
’ Niels van der Veer’s silver eyes narrowed in fury and contempt. ‘Little Miss Spoilt Princess! What the hell are
you
doing here? I told you never to
come near my brother again!’

And he started towards her menacingly, his shoulders bunching under the expensive suit.

L
awrence was sulking. Evie had never seen him in this mood before, and she didn’t much like it. Lawrence was always so balanced, so calm;
even when they were having sex he maintained a Zen-like state of poise and equilibrium. But as soon as Evie had announced that she was moving – not miles away, not to Bay Ridge or Hoboken or
somewhere an hour and a half away on the subway or PATH train, but just one floor down – his self-control had slipped, and he had become, by his own high standards, quite impossible.

‘I thought you’d be
pleased!
’ Evie protested, for the tenth time that day. ‘You and Autumn were fighting all the time because I was staying here! Now I’m
just on the next floor down, I’ve got my own room, you can come visit me whenever you want – I thought this was perfect!’

Lawrence shrugged and mumbled something under his breath. His full lips were pushed out into what, on anyone else, Evie would have called a pout, and his shoulders were hunched in what, on
anyone else, he himself would have called terrible posture.

‘I just don’t understand why you’ve done this, ’ he said finally, pacing the length of the kitchen. He’d been working on some stretches when Evie came in to tell
him her news, and he was wearing a singlet and an old pair of running shorts. Even now, annoyed as Evie was by his attitude, she couldn’t help watching the flex of the long muscles in his
thighs, the round firm bulge of his buttocks in the tight shorts, and feel herself getting more than a little turned on.

‘I thought it was a great idea, ’ she repeated impatiently. ‘I mean, it’s the best solution. You know, it isn’t so cool for me to have Autumn always sneering at me
because of Benny and my fur coats and everything—’

‘Oh, Autumn’s coming round, ’ Lawrence said. ‘Don’t you think? I think she’s warming to you.’

He stopped in his tracks and fixed Evie with a pleading grey gaze.

‘No, Lawrence, I
don’t
think, ’ Evie said firmly. ‘She hates my guts.’

Because she’s in love with you
, she added beneath her breath. She wouldn’t say that out loud, though, because she was much too wise for that. Evie had a lot of experience with
men, and one thing she knew was that if you told them a woman was in love with them, it made them more interested in her. And Evie didn’t want Lawrence getting interested in Autumn. There was
no mileage for Evie in living out some sort of bohemian love triangle.

Lawrence had kept Evie satisfied sexually for longer than any man before him, and she had no intention, if she could help it, of letting that go; it had been nearly eight months now, and she
still got hot looking at him the way he was now, his bare shoulders with those gorgeous caps of muscle, the slight dent in the centre showing how defined they were. She loved to run her tongue
along that dent, taste the delicate salt of his sweat, lick down to his armpit, which always smelt and tasted delicious.

She shifted on her chair, wanting to stop talking and start making out.

‘Look, come here, ’ she coaxed him. ‘Let’s not fight. There’s so many more fun things we could be doing.’

And she gave him that look from beneath her eyelashes, ducking her chin down and looking up at him with her big brown eyes, the look that never failed to get a rise out of him.

She saw it immediately, his cock beginning to stir in his shorts, and her lips curled into a little smile of triumph.

‘No, Evie!’ he said crossly, turning away. ‘This is important! I’m not going to let you distract me. I thought we were – I thought we had – I thought you
liked
us living together.’

‘I don’t even see that much of you, Lawrence, ’ Evie pointed out. ‘You’re up at the crack of dawn, doing your yoga, and then you’re out training and taking
classes all day—’

‘Which makes it
more
important that we’re sharing a room, because at least we sleep together!’ He turned to face her again, his light brown hair falling over his face,
and impatiently he tilted his head back, pulling his hair into a ponytail, twisting it into its elastic band. ‘I wake up and you’re there, lying next to me, sleeping so soundly . . . I
creep out of the room in the mornings so as not to wake you up . . .’

‘Isn’t that a big nuisance?’ Evie asked, not understanding his point.

‘No! I
like
it! God, you’re just not getting this – it’s like talking to a wall!’

He paced back again, to the table where she was sitting, and pulled up a chair to face her, twisting it so he was straddling the seat, his arms propped on its back.

‘I want us to be a couple, Evie, ’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve really enjoyed having you here.’ He gazed at her, his handsome features very serious, his high cheekbones
elegantly carved. ‘I believe in sexual freedom, you know that. I don’t think anyone should ever tie any other human being’s sexuality down, or try to control it. But I want us to
be a couple. I think I realised that the first day you were here, when I came in and found you curled up in my bed.’

‘Oh, Lawrence . . .’

Evie’s face knotted up with embarrassment. She thought she was so clever with men, did she? Thought she knew them inside out, how to manoeuvre them, get them to do exactly what she wanted?
Well, she sure as hell hadn’t seen this one coming.

And now she was fucked.

Because if she agreed to what Lawrence wanted, it would weaken her. Maybe fatally. If she were living with Lawrence, coming home to him every night, how could she still be focused as hard as she
needed to be on looking for the rich man who would take her away from this crappy place and install her back in another Tribeca penthouse?

Evie faced the truth about herself. She hadn’t taken the room downstairs because she couldn’t stand Autumn, and the tension in the loft, any more. She’d taken it because she
needed to be free. Not softened up by Lawrence’s sweetness, the way he mumbled her name in his sleep when she crawled into bed beside him, and pulled her close, spooning her, his breath warm
on the back of her neck.

Her feelings for him would ruin her dreams. She’d end up living here with him in even worse squalor than she’d grown up in.

‘I can’t, ’ she said simply. ‘I’m sorry, Lawrence.’

Lawrence nodded slowly.

‘You just can’t settle down with a poor yoga teacher, ’ he said softly.

She couldn’t answer him. But his clear grey eyes looked directly into hers and read the truth there.

‘Then you’re right, ’ he said, swinging one leg easily over the chair seat, standing up, pushing it away from him. ‘You should move out.’

Evie jumped up.

‘I still want us to—’ she started. ‘This doesn’t need to change anything—’

But Lawrence dodged her as she came towards him, shaking his head.

‘Yes, it does, ’ he said sadly. ‘I’m sorry, Evie. I thought I was OK with this. I thought I could handle it. But I guess I can’t handle it after all, and I have to
be honest with myself and you.’

He reached his arms up behind his head, cracking out his shoulders in a long stretch. The sight of his biceps flexing and swelling with the movement, jutting forwards, the light brown hair in
his pale armpits, slightly damp and salty, made Evie’s thighs twitch together with desire.

‘Lawrence—’ she tried again.

But he shook his head, almost angrily, and plunged away from her, towards the door.

‘I’ll go out for an hour, ’ he said over his shoulder. ‘That should give you time to move your stuff downstairs.’ He darted a quick look at her. ‘I’ll
see you around, Evie.’

And then he was gone. She heard him taking the stairs two at a time.

It was the right thing to do. Evie was absolutely sure of it.

It was just shitty that seeing him go made her feel like bursting into tears. Totally shitty.

She turned and walked slowly down the corridor, to the room she’d shared with him, the room she was leaving. The first thing she saw as she pushed open the door was her pole, still in its
moulded plastic carrying case, leaning against the wall, and for some reason the sight of it lifted her miserable spirits just a fraction. She picked it up, slung the strap over her shoulder, and
carried it back through the apartment and downstairs.

Everyone was out in her new place. The trapezes were pulled back up to the ceiling, as they always were when not in use, cords slung round them and wrapped around figure-of-eight hooks on the
wall, holding them out of the way. So there was plenty of room for Evie to take out her pole, open it up, and extend it till it touched the ceiling. She was relieved: these old industrial lofts had
such high ceilings, she hadn’t been sure if the pole would be long enough.

She pulled out the little screwdriver she kept in the pole case, and heaved the pole into position at the centre of the room, screwing the base tight till she was sure it wouldn’t budge a
fraction of an inch. A quarter of an hour later, she had forgotten everything but the reality of the pole between her ankles, digging in, as she climbed it yet again. At the top, close enough to
reach up and touch the ceiling, she gripped it hard instead, making sure she had a good wrap, working it under one arm so it was tightly clamped into her armpit. She squeezed it in, getting secure.
Then she took her legs off the pole and stretched them out, away from each other, into near-perfect splits. It was one of her signature moves, this ability to make and hold the splits in mid-air,
and she was very proud of it.

For a moment, Evie was static, holding the pose, in perfect balance. Then she loosened her grip on the pole with hands and arm, just fractionally, but enough to start her moving, sliding down
it, keeping her legs in the splits all the way down, till she landed on the floor, legs sliding along it, and let go of the pole, reaching back with both hands to grasp the foot of the leg
stretched out behind her.

The sound of clapping came from the open door, and she twisted round in surprise.

Natalie and Jeremy were standing there, smiling at her. But the applause wasn’t coming from one of them. They fell to either side of the doorway as a woman walked through, a woman one
definitely needed to make space for: she was of medium height, with bleached-blonde hair, milky-white skin that should never see the sun, and weighing a good two hundred pounds – every pound
of which, as far as Evie could tell, looked to be in exactly the right place.