Fast Friends (85 page)

The streets were black and glistening with rain. Puddles
reflected the orange glow of the streetlamps and
only the
occasional swoosh of car tyres broke the silence as they passed
by. The plane trees, ragged black outlines against the heavy sky, dripped
heavier raindrops on to the stretched dome of Poppy’s umbrella. Loulou, wanting
to be as wet as Mac, took it back
from him
and carefully closed it, hooking the handle over her
bare arm and
lifting her face to the rain.

‘We’ll always argue,’ he said, wondering whether to take
her
free arm, ‘but as long as we both know
that it doesn’t really
matter I think we could be OK.’

‘OK?’ she said in a low voice, as a man with a rather
smart
scarlet and white umbrella splashed
past them. ‘What do you
mean, OK?’

‘
I mean,’ he said with
a sigh, ‘that I don’t think we can be
happy without each other. I love
you, and I can’t seem to love anyone else. It’s over now between Cecilia and
myself.’

They were still walking side by side, not touching and not
looking at each other. Finally he stopped and
turned, taking
Loulou’s cold hands in his colder ones. ‘What I mean,’ he
said,
speaking each word with desperate care,
‘is will you marry me?
I love you. I will love Lili. I want the three of
us to be –’

‘Mac, wait.’ Her tone serious now, Loulou forestalled him.
‘This is important. How do you
really
feel about Lili?’

He shook his dark head, dismissing her fears. ‘I know I
was jealous, but I came to terms with that a long time ago. Lou, she might not
be mine, but she’s a gorgeous little girl. It would be
impossible
not
to love her . . . after all,’ he added, taking her
hand
and kissing it, ‘she’s your daughter. And she’s every bit as irresistible as
you are.’

‘Oh Mac, do you really mean that?’ sighed Loulou, and this
time he nodded, his eyes never leaving her face.

‘
I do. And I
promise
you that this time we’ll make it work. So now, you heartless woman, will
you please agree to marry
me so that we can at last get out of this
bloody rain?’

The Popeye umbrella tilted at a crazy angle as she flung
her arms around Mac’s neck. ‘Yes, yes, YES!’

Chapter 60

Marty didn’t need to say a word. Nico
took one look at the appalled expression on his face and realized that he had
to
move fast. Grabbing Marty’s small,
clammy hand he led him swiftly out of the room and up the stairs.

Glancing round the room, Camilla
wondered where Nico
was.
Charlotte was teaching Zoë the mechanics of belly dancing. Poppy and her
husband were deep in conversation with Sebastian
and Roz, and Toby had been adopted by a rowdy, rumbustious
group from Vampires who were teaching him
card tricks.
Marguerite was nose to nose with Laszlo de Lazzari and
Natalie, in a shady corner of the room, was bewitching a pair of raffish young
City brokers who could scarcely drag their eyes from her bare navel.

Camilla prayed that Loulou and Mac weren’t outside having
another fight.

And where was Marty? Realizing that he was nowhere to be
seen she slid quietly out of the noisy, smoky
sitting-room and
tried the kitchen, but apart from a couple wrapped in
an intimate embrace in front of the freezer and a remarkably guilty looking
Rocky with mayonnaise round his mouth, the room was empty.

She was only halfway up the staircase when she heard Nico’s
voice, low and comforting, and for a moment
thought that he
was with one of the girls from Vampires. The white-hot
stab of jealousy she experienced sent shivers down her spine. I have no right
to be jealous, she thought, taking a deep breath and pausing
near the top of the stairs. And I’m not spying on him, either.
I’m looking
for Marty, that’s all.

The bathroom door was wide open. Having moved silently
along the thickly carpeted landing, Camilla
watched unnoticed
as Marty’s small
shoulders quivered and he retched once more
into the lavatory bowl. Nico, one arm around his waist,
murmured encouragement and mopped the boy’s
sweating
forehead with a damp flannel. Camilla’s heart went out to Marty
as he gasped and sobbed, and clutched at Nico’s
hand for
reassurance.

‘
There you are. Good
boy. All finished now?’ said Nico
gently, rubbing Marty’s back and
wiping his tear-stained cheeks with the flannel. Marty nodded and staggered to
his feet, holding out his arms for a comforting embrace. Without a moment’s
hesitation Nico hugged him and Camilla heard Marty
say
brokenly, ‘I love you.’

‘And I love you,’ said Nico, smiling and rumpling the boy’s
short, spiky dark hair. ‘But I’ll love you a lot more when we’ve cleaned your
teeth. Which is your toothbrush?’

‘
The green one,’ said
Camilla, stepping out of the shadows
and
realizing how very, very much she loved Nico. The jolt
of jealousy, followed by the incredibly touching
scene she
had just witnessed, had forced that knowledge back into the
forefront of her mind and she didn’t know now whether to laugh
or cry because no-one understood better than she
did how
appalling it felt to love
someone who no longer returned that
love.

Avoiding Nico’s eyes, she reached
past him for the toothbrush
and said, ‘It
was very kind of you to look after him. Whoever
would have thought you’d be so good at dealing with this kind
of
thing?’

The words came out sounding far more offhand than she had
intended, and almost deliberately insulting. Nico
threw her an
icy look.

‘Me of all people,’ he said shortly, mocking her. ‘Incredible,
isn’t it?’

Flustered, Camilla turned her
attention to Marty who was
spitting toothpaste foam into the grey-marbled basin. ‘Are you
OK now, sweetheart?’

He nodded,
pale but proud. ‘Sick!’

‘
He ate about a gallon of strawberries downstairs. He’ll be fine now.’
Nico, still guarded, watched Camilla’s reflection in
the mirror.
Dammit, why the hell couldn’t he say what he wanted to say!

‘Well, don’t have anything else to eat,’ admonished
Camilla, smoothing Marty’s hair away from his forehead.

He shook his head vigorously, then grinned his wide
heartwarming grin. ‘I love Nico.’

‘Nice to know I’m appreciated,’ said Nico lightly when
Marty had left. Camilla, desperate to keep him there a little longer,
examined her own reflection in the mirror and
pretended to
fiddle with a strand of
hair at her temple. ‘I didn’t mean to
sound sarcastic just now,’ she
said hesitantly. ‘And I am grateful
to you
for looking after him. Sometimes I say things and they
come out wrong.’

Nico leant back against the basin and watched her twirl
the strand of hair around her index finger. ‘Sometimes I don’t say
things because I’m not sure whether I’ll like the
replies,’ he
said, breathing in the mingled scents of Camilla’s perfume
and
Marty’s toothpaste. ‘Maybe we should all
be more like Marty,
just say what we think and to hell with everything
else.’

‘
Maybe we should,’ agreed Camilla cautiously,
her heart
thumping
against her ribs. Gaining in confidence, Nico adjusted his stance so that he
was once more addressing her through the mirror. Winking at her, he said, ‘Go
on then, you first.’

‘
I – I can’t,’ she
stammered, aching with loneliness. Nico
was standing only inches away from her and it might just as
well
have been miles.

‘
But you must,’ he explained, frowning slightly
and moving fractionally closer. ‘It’s important, you see.’

‘
Why?’ she countered, panicking and afraid that he
was
playing some awful game with her.

‘
Oh, bloody hell, Camilla!’ Grabbing her arms, Nico shook
her. ‘It’s important because once, years ago now, you
deliberately seduced me. And ever since then you’ve been
running
away, finding excuses to back off whenever anything
remotely interesting threatens to happen.’ His green eyes
darkened as he glared at her. ‘And I’m telling you
now that I’m
just about bloody sick of it.’

Joy mingled with outrage as she realized what he was
saying.
He wanted her, he really
did
still
want her . . . and he was
placing
her
entirely to blame for
everything.

‘That’s not fair!’ she gasped, her sequinned dress
ricocheting
rainbow dots of light as she
struggled to wrench her arms free.
‘I
was married, you were married . . . you got married first! I
didn’t
force you into that –’

‘
Oh yes, you bloody did. You turned me down
flat . . . what the hell was I supposed to do, join a monastery?’

‘
You were supposed to make me change my mind!’ exclaimed
Camilla
breathlessly, and Nico’s dark eyebrows arched in amazement.

‘
After you’d told me
what a disaster I was in bed? Jesus, I
spent the next two years proving
to every woman I could lay my hands on that I wasn’t. Talk about hitting below
the belt . . . Tell me the truth now,’ he demanded, his fingers gripping her
arms even more tightly. ‘Was I really so terrible?
Was
I?’

She stopped struggling. Telling Nico that had been the
single
biggest mistake of her life.
Deliberate, destructive . . . it had
been an act of revenge, tragically
mis-aimed and one which she had never stopped regretting.

‘Of course you weren’t,’ she said in a low voice, her eyes
betraying her longing and regret. ‘You were perfect. And I
am
sorry.’

‘So if I’m that perfect,’ said Nico more gently now, ‘why
do you still turn me down? If I’m so damn perfect, how can you possibly resist
me?’

This truth game, thought Camilla with
trepidation, was
getting
scary. Having hidden her true feelings for so very long
she didn’t know if she could handle all this blatant
honesty now.

In the silence that followed she
listened to the raucous noise
of the party downstairs and wondered if Loulou had returned
yet with Mac.

‘
I’m waiting,’ Nico reminded her.

Stiffening her shoulders, she met his
gaze. ‘You’re a rock
star. I’m a divorced, widowed mother of two, almost three
children and I have scars on my face and body that will
never
completely disappear. Why should I go
to bed with you again
just so that you can prove how irresistible you
are?’

Exasperated beyond belief, Nico
pulled her into his arms
and kissed her, hard. He kissed her cheeks, her nose, her chin
and her neck, and avoided her mouth entirely.

‘
Don’t make excuses,’ he whispered in her ear,
before kissing that too. ‘You know damn well that I want to marry you.’
Shakily, her entire body yearning for the final kiss he had so
shrewdly withheld, Camilla said, ‘But you are
married. You
aren’t divorced yet.’

‘
Yes, I am,’
he white-lied. The decree nisi was due to come through in the next three or
four days, but Camilla could be so
damn
stubborn sometimes and she wasn’t going to wriggle
away now after all
this effort . . . ‘My divorce was finalized
yesterday.
Caroline’s happy with the settlement, I’m just glad
it’s all over, and poor old Paddy doesn’t know
quite what’s hit him yet. To his amazement he’s grown rather fond of her, and
that’s
not his style at all.’

‘
Oh,’ said Camilla in a
small voice. If Nico didn’t kiss her
now she was liable to do something
drastic.

‘
Oh,’ he mimicked, teasing her. At last, at
last,
he was in
control. ‘Well, any more excuses or have they finally run
out?’