Edge of Paradise (22 page)

She wanted to say, ‘You work too hard. Is it
worth
it? Take time to eat your meals, darling, and go to bed at a reasonable hour.' Instead she said, ‘I hate goodbyes.'

‘This one won't be for long. I'll be with you in, oh . . . four days at the outside.'

If only he meant it. If only he wasn't still saving face in front of the others, who had discreetly moved away to give them a few moments alone together to say their goodbyes, but were still within hearing and seeing distance.

‘Do you think you can put a firm clamp on your impulsive nature and stay out of trouble until then?'

‘I'll . . . try,' she said, speaking 'round a lump in her throat the size of a duck egg, or so it seemed.

‘What's Ally's phone number? I'll give her a ring and alert her that you're coming.'

She told him and he jotted it down.

‘I'll feel better knowing you'll be met.'

She had expected him to kiss her, for the benefit of the others, but even so, she was unprepared for the force with which he swept her into his arms. Searing, cherishing, lifting her off the ground, his kiss took every part of her into the custody of his
feigned
caring.

If only it could have been for real. If only he were really this unwilling to let her go.

She boarded the plane blindly, the tears coursing unashamedly, agonizingly, down her cheeks. Someone—the cameraman who'd
volunteered
to keep an eye on her, she thought—said, ‘It was like tearing his right arm off to let you go. And you're no better. You two sure have something good going for you!'

Something very good, a good sham . . . on Paul's part, anyway, she thought bitterly.

Paul must have got through to Ally on the telephone, because there she was, waiting for Catherine and waving like mad as the jet touched down.

Catherine couldn't wait to get through the formalities and fall into her friend's arms. ‘Oh, Ally, it's good to see you. You don't know how good.'

More tears, happy tears this time, mingled as affectionate kisses of greeting were exchanged, and then Ally said, ‘You've got the most gorgeous suntan, but that's the only thing good about you. Haven't you been sleeping properly? You look positively haggard, all eyes and anguish. I'm going to take you home with me and spoil you rotten. I want to hear everything that's happened to you, but can I be very selfish and get my news in first? Because if I don't tell you I'll explode!' Without waiting for consent she charged straight on. ‘I'm getting married again.'

‘Oh, Ally, that's marvelous! When?'

‘Not too soon. In about six months' time. I want to give proper respect to Ray.'

‘He wouldn't have wanted you to waste yourself in widowhood, Ally. He would have
been
overjoyed for you—just as I am. Who's the lucky guy? Anyone I know?'

‘You should, but you don't.' Ally's face was a mixture of concern and laughter. ‘Funny you should call him lucky, because that's who he is. Lucky Chance, the author you were supposed to be going out to work for.'

‘You know about the mix-up? That's a stupid question. If you've met the real author, and got on such friendly terms with him that you're going to marry him, obviously you know. I expect you can guess what happened. At the party, I picked the wrong man.'

‘Did you?' Ally inquired with more astuteness than she could have imagined. ‘If your face is anything to go by, I guess that's so. You left the right one for me.'

Where did she go from here? Catherine wondered. Ally's forthcoming marriage to her Lucian meant that Allycats would have to be wound up. It had been Ally's brainchild, her baby, and Catherine didn't feel any great sense of loss about that. No, not about that . . .

She spent the next three days telling herself that Paul had merely been talking and that he wouldn't get in touch with her. After all, why should he? She had served her usefulness. He had made his point to Zoe and the rest of the team, and if he did have plans for getting back with Zoe, she herself would only be an encumbrance. But when the phone rang on day three, the sound of his voice seriously
impeded
the beat of her heart, and she knew that she had been living in expectation of that call.

‘I've just got in. Will you meet me for lunch?'

‘Where?'

He named a place. She got the feeling he'd picked it out at random. His voice sounded strained. She promised to be there in half an hour. As she put the phone down she realized she'd been impulsive again. Why did she always speak first and think afterward? Would it hurt for her to get things in the right order for once? Thirty minutes, including getting-there time, didn't give her much leeway. She ought to have insisted on at least two hours in which to indulge in a leisurely toilette and choose something really flattering to wear. Ally, who had been the soul of tact and hadn't plied her with one embarrassing or hurtful question, although she must have been burning up with curiosity about what had happened, helped out by calling a cab and assuring Catherine that she looked delicious enough to eat in her hastily donned dress and warm coat. She still wasn't conditioned to the change in climate.

Paul was already installed at a table when she got there. He pulled out a chair for her and she thankfully sank down. Her legs weren't behaving too well.

‘Hello, kitten-face,' he said, and her heart
turned
over.

The beard had gone, but the tiredness was even more deeply etched on his face. He looked as though he needed to go to bed for a week.

‘I'm sorry about this dreadful place,' he apologized. ‘I couldn't think of anywhere to suggest, although I must know a hundred places—slight exaggeration, but you know what I mean.'

It was rather uninspiring, somber colors and apparently indifferent service, because no one was rushing to take their order, but it was beautiful in her eyes because she was with Paul. Get on with it, her heart pleaded. Please say something.

He placed an oblong box on the table. ‘Your property safely returned to you. Something you've missed perhaps?'

‘You mean something I forgot to pack? There's nothing as far as I know.'

‘Your hairbrush set. The one with the pretty ivory backs. Cleopatra found it after you'd gone. She asked me to act as delivery boy. She said you knew how much she coveted it and she would hate you to think she had stolen it. Cleopatra isn't a thief.'

Catherine had given the set to Cleopatra. Cleopatra had invented the story of Catherine's having left it behind to set up a meeting between her and Paul. For one wild, improbable moment she'd thought that Paul
had
come on his own initiative, that he'd realized he couldn't live without her and had come to claim her. The desolation of knowing that wasn't so was almost more than she could bear.

No, Cleopatra wasn't a thief. She was dear and sweet and misinformed, and Catherine wished she hadn't meddled. After the wonderful surge of hope that had gone through her when Paul phoned, how was she going to sit there and talk normally and not let him know how utterly and irredeemably she loved him?

She couldn't give Cleopatra away, and so she said, ‘I'm sorry you've been put to the trouble of returning it. Perhaps leaving it was a Freudian slip, because I meant to make a gift of it to Cleopatra. I must get it back to her somehow.'

‘It was no trouble at all. I was coming to see you in any case.'

‘You were?'

‘Didn't I say so at the airport?'

‘I thought that was for the others.'

‘And that kiss?' he queried. ‘Whose benefit do you think that was for?'

‘The others', just the same. For the sake of appearance.'

‘I've never cared all that much about what other people think or say.'

‘But you asked me to stay with you so there wouldn't be a recurrence of the old gossip.'

His
smile was endearingly sheepish. ‘I had to say something to keep you under my eye. I must admit that my original reason for wanting you there was to salvage my pride, but then everything changed, and I just wanted you with me. Can you imagine the dilemma I was in when our mutual mix-up came to light? That funny look on your face—shock, horror, indignation—will live forever in my mind. I knew that you meant—it when you said you were going home. No way was I going to risk that. By the time filming was finished and I could follow you, you might have met someone else. But I couldn't give you the attention you deserved either. There weren't enough hours in the day to get through what I had to do as it was. I was tied up doing a very exacting job. I couldn't drop everything, go back to the beginning, and court you properly, ideal as that would have been.'

‘But why would you want to?'

‘Can't you guess?'

‘Very probably. I'm good at guessing, jumping to conclusions. I've been given strict instructions not to, because it always lands me in dreadful trouble,' said Catherine.

‘Mm. As I'm the one who gave you those instructions, I suppose I can't grumble. The simple truth is, I had something quite good going for me, but then I spoiled it all by falling in love with you.'

‘You—what?'

‘I
fell in love with you.'

‘And that spoiled it?'

‘In a sense. It was a killer situation from the word go. Scruples got in the way, and I don't just mean yours. I was madly attracted to you from the beginning, but when I thought you were on the make, although I wanted you more than I've ever wanted a woman in my life, I fought to resist it. Then, when I found out that it was all a mistake, that you were everything I ever dreamed of finding in a woman, I couldn't take advantage of you. Not to mention that I made the error of giving you my word that I wouldn't lay a finger on you when we were alone.'

‘A promise which you broke,' she reminded him.

‘Yes. To my shame, I wasn't very honorable. My feelings sort of piled up on me. Your full and very warm cooperation was my undoing. After seeming to be on intimate terms with you in public, it was hell having to get back into line in private. I couldn't keep my hands off you when we were alone, and I didn't play fair when others were present. I made the most of you, for my own self-indulgence. By that time I didn't give a hoot what they thought. But I cared for you.'

The waitress came to take their order. He waited until she had gone and then picked up from where he had left off.

‘Walking past your door that night, letting
you
decide, was the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life. Poor little kitten, you had nothing to draw on, no heavy emotional situations in your past. You didn't know what it was all about. I should have looked after you, not tried to railroad you into something. I shouldn't have let myself get carried away.'

‘I won't let you take all the blame,' said Catherine. ‘We both got carried away. But I really was coming to your room to say that I couldn't go through with it. I thought the love scene you played with Zoe earlier in the day had got you steamed up, and that you just wanted to work your passions out on me. And then, when I saw Zoe in your room, I thought you wouldn't need me, after all.'

‘I couldn't get rid of Zoe fast enough. She was getting to be a pain in the neck, but I had the film to complete and she was rather an essential character, so I had to go along with her stupid pretexts and placate her. I don't know what I ever saw in her in the first place. I suppose she filled a purpose, and that's all there was to it. I've never lain awake at night, hollowed out with longing for her as I have for you. I've never been driven to the brink of desperation with desire for her. There were times . . . One occasion stands out in particular, the last time we watched the sunset together. You wouldn't have noticed, but I wanted you so much I didn't dare touch you.'

‘I noticed,' she said brokenly.

‘What
I'm leading up to is this. Can we start again? Do you think you can bring yourself to cancel out the bad beginning and give me another chance? Give me time to prove how much I love you. Is that too much to ask? And, hopefully, if I'm very lucky, you'll come to love me.'

‘But I love you already. And I hope that you're not going to become too saintly, because I fell in love with you just as you were, and I couldn't bear it if you changed too drastically.'

‘Are you saying that you're not going to make me wait? You'll marry me at once?' he asked urgently.

‘I was right,' she said huskily, ‘when I thought that paradise wasn't a certain place. It's everywhere . . . could be anywhere . . . even here.' She was enchanted by his caring. His words sparkled in her mind like sunbeams. This dull, cold day, these drab surroundings, would always stay golden in her mind. She laughed. ‘What am I saying, “even here”?
Especially
here. When I came in just now, it wrung my heart to see how tired you looked. The thought crossed my mind that you needed to go to bed for a week. Can I come with you?'

‘Not the traditionally worded acceptance. But, from you, perhaps the predictable one.' He took some bills from his wallet, and placed them on the table to cover the food they'd ordered, which hadn't yet arrived. ‘Food can
wait.
Let's get out of here,' he said thickly. ‘I'm a
very
tired man.'