Flawless (40 page)

“That’s true,” said Scarlett, brightening.

“If it’s any consolation, things are bloody terrible here,” said Jake. “Mum’s gone into nag overdrive, Dad’s drunk day and night, and Diana spends half of every day slumped over the toilet with morning sickness, pretending she’s got a stomach bug, which of course Ma’s interpreting as some sort of sly dig at her cooking. I’ve been trying to stay out of the house, but there’re only so many hours you can spend in clubs on your own without looking like a loser.”

“What about Danny?” asked Scarlett, trying to banish a mental picture of Jake alone in a trendy London club, surrounded by marauding women. Whatever he said, she very much doubted he’d spent the last two evenings alone. “Didn’t he come with you?”

“Nah. He’s stuck to Diana like glue, trying to protect her from Ma. If the old girl keeps this up, picking on Diana all the time, I doubt Danny’ll be back next Christmas. They’ll have a kid by then,” he added, almost disbelievingly. It did all seem to have happened terribly fast. “How’re your lot?”

“Dreadful,” said Scarlett with feeling. “Indescribably bad.”

She told him about Cameron getting spooked by Brogan.

“That’s bizarre,” he said. “Why would he want to put the screws to
your
brother? I mean, I can understand his problem with mine.”

“I know,” she said. “I don’t want to feed Cam’s paranoia, or my mother’s, any more than I have to. But I have to say, it worries me. I’m definitely back in the center of Brogan’s radar screen since Trade Fair started focusing on Yakutia. To lose NPR and
Vanity Fair
within weeks of each other can’t be a coincidence.”

“Hmm,” said Jake. “Are you sure this new campaign of yours is worth it?”

Scarlett sounded put out. “Not you too? Of course I’m sure. You were the one who told me I should raise Trade Fair’s profile in America, remember?”

“Yeah, I know,” Jake sounded doubtful. “But that was when you were trying to help the Africans. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I feel bad for those Russian guys.”

“The ones dying of cancer, you mean,” Scarlett reminded him tersely.

“Yes, all right, but let’s be honest. The shit going down in O’Donnell’s mines is hardly on a par with what’s going on in Congo or Sierra Leone. No one’s starving, or watching their family get chopped up by some heroin-crazed militia. Are they?”

Scarlett felt a knot of anger grow tighter in her chest. This was rich! Jake lecturing
her
on Africa’s problems?

“Death is death. Injustice is injustice,” she said sanctimoniously. “Those Yakutian miners are as deserving of help as anybody else in this industry, suffering at the hands of greedy bastards like Brogan O’Donnell. Besides, what do you know about Sierra Leone? You and Danny are too busy partying on those buying trips of yours to notice the misery on the streets. Since when did you care about anything other than your precious profits?”

“Thanks,” said Jake quietly. “Thanks a lot.”

He’d been in two minds whether to tell her about his dealings with Dr. Katenge last month, but there was no way he was going to open up now. Screw her. Did she think she was the only person in the world with a fucking heart?

“Oh, look, sorry,” said Scarlett. Why was she being so mean to him? He’d made a real effort to change his ways since they teamed up on Flawless. She ought to give him some credit for that, especially now that they were supposedly “together.” (
Were
they together? They hadn’t really talked about it properly. There hadn’t been time.)

“I really need your support about Brogan, that’s all. I’ve got my brother, my parents, everybody telling me to walk away. But I made a promise to try to help those men, and I have to honor it.”

“Fine,” said Jake. “I understand. Just don’t make me the enemy, Scarlett. All right?”

“All right,” said Scarlett meekly, hanging up.

If she and Jake
were
going to work as a couple, they were going to have to learn how to communicate. They might have known each other for years, but all they’d ever done was bicker. Not the greatest foundation for true love.

“Y
OU HAD THESE
results yesterday?”

Brogan had his back turned toward his doctor and was staring out the window as he spoke. Below, on Fifth Avenue, a crush of bargain hunters was thronging to the red-tag sales. A human wave of post-Christmas consumerism, like a thick blood clot forcing its way through the arteries of the city, they made him feel sick. Why weren’t they at home with their families instead of out shopping, stuffing their greedy arms full of yet more crap they couldn’t possibly need?

“Why didn’t you call me right away?”

“On Christmas Day?” said the doctor, gently. “Come on, Brogan.”

“But every day counts, right? Every hour?” Leaning against the cool glass of the window, Brogan evidently didn’t trust himself to turn around. As if eye contact with the bearer of such bad news might somehow unleash the fear burning its way through his insides like acid.

“One day wouldn’t have made a difference,” said the doctor. “Trust me on that. Besides, I want Lennox Dubray to do the operation. He’s the best there is, and he wouldn’t have taken my call on Christmas morning.”

Brogan shook his head and let out a short, joyless laugh. Lung cancer. Fucking
lung
cancer, of all the shitty illnesses in the world. The irony wasn’t lost on him—nor, he knew, would it be lost on his enemies—that the great Brogan O’Donnell should be struck down with the very same disease that had crippled his Siberian workforce, and for which he had steadfastly refused to pay the treatment costs.

“I never smoked, you know,” he said, finally composing himself enough to resume his seat opposite the doctor’s desk. “Not even as a kid.”

The doctor shrugged. “Sometimes it happens that way. It doesn’t have to be something you did. Could be genetic. Could be just…random. I know that’s not very comforting.”

“So you’re certain they should operate?” said Brogan, cutting to the chase. “What about chemo?”

“You’ll have that too, afterwards. Look, Lennox’ll make the final assessment, not me. But if your primary tumor’s operable, and I’m ninety percent sure it is from the CAT scan, I know he’ll want to take it out as soon as possible.”

“Which is?”

“Wednesday,” said the doctor. “Theater’s already booked for nine a.m., pending Dubray’s findings this afternoon. They’ll need you in pre-op the night before.”

“Fine,” said Brogan brusquely, rising to go. “I’ll clear my schedule for the week.”

The doctor raised an eyebrow. “You’re gonna have to clear it for a lot longer than that, I’m afraid. Even if everything goes well, you’re going to be weak for some considerable time. Work is out of the question.”

Crunching his way along the icy sidewalks twenty minutes later, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his Burberry Prorsum overcoat, Brogan turned the words over in his mind: “You’re going to be weak.” He’d spent a lifetime fighting to be strong, to
be the fittest, fastest, and best, in business and in every aspect of his life. He hated weak. He didn’t
accept
weak.

When Diana left him, this time last year, he’d felt weak. Like a shorn Samson railing at the heavens, the strength had poured out of him. He knew it wasn’t rational, but it was hard not to link this latest weakness, this cancer, to that earlier blow. As if, if he only had her with him, had her back, he could turn back the clock, drive this shitty tumor out of his body through sheer force of will. Or something.

Thank God Natalia wasn’t with him, he thought, turning the corner onto Lexington and walking aimlessly north. She’d offered to come with him to his appointment today—evidently her disaster radar was more accurate than his—but he’d brushed her off and was glad he had. Having to talk through his feelings with her, or anyone, was the last thing he wanted. In fact, he’d already begun to feel that the relationship had run its course. She was a stunning girl, smart, funny, not in the least bit clingy. Everything he professed to want, in fact. But he’d found the holidays depressing, cooped up in the apartment with her twenty-four/seven. They’d decided to stay in New York because Telluride brought back too many unhappy memories of Diana and last Christmas, but with hindsight that had been a mistake. At least in Colorado he could ski and get away on his own. Here he had no excuse not to “relax” at home, while she pranced around in her new red silk La Perla panties, miming to “Santa Baby” and getting happy on Cristal.

It should have been sexy, but it wasn’t; it was sad. Loneliness, and longing for his wife, sank over him like a cloud. And now this. Cancer. He could no more talk to Natalia about it than to a stranger on the subway. The one person he
could
talk to about it was gone.

Diana sat on a damp bench in Regent’s Park staring at a Mallard duck and his mate as they preened one another lovingly, huddling together against the cold.

I wish Danny would huddle together with me
, she thought sadly, thinking of the arctic atmosphere back at the house in St. John’s Wood and looking at her watch. It was after eleven—he’d promised to meet her at ten this morning for a walk, as soon as he’d dropped Minty at his Auntie Bella’s place—but something must have happened. Obviously he wasn’t coming, not now.

The London Christmas she’d so looked forward to had turned out to be a crushing disappointment. Danny had warned her that his parents had reservations about him marrying outside his religion, but he hadn’t prepared her for the caustic levels of rejection doled out by Minty on a daily basis. Nothing Diana did or said was right. It was as if she were being held personally responsible for every wrong ever perpetrated by America, Christianity, and wealthy women generally, not to mention blamed for all of Danny’s present business troubles.

“He was doing so well last year, before he met you,” Minty sighed pointedly over Christmas lunch. “Now he can barely afford the plane fare home.”

“Don’t exaggerate, Ma,” said Danny, not looking up from his mountain of roast potatoes. “We’re fine.”

“You are not fine, Daniel. Tell him, Rudy,” she turned to her husband. “Jake told me you said your new apartment is an S-H-I-T hole. Said it wasn’t fit for rats and you were the most miserable you’ve ever been since you moved to New York.”

“
Mum
!” said Jake and Danny in unison.

“I never said that.” Danny turned placatingly to Diana. “I never said I was miserable.” But of course she knew he had.

“We’re going to move to something a lot better, Mrs. Meyer,” she offered meekly. “As soon as my divorce comes through.”

Minty gave a derisory snort. “Oh, of course you are. With your husband’s money, I suppose. The same husband who’s made it his business to try and
ruin
my boys this past year.”

“Ma, that’s enough,” said Jake. That was another thing that upset Diana—it always seemed to be Jake leaping to her defense, not Danny. Not that she wasn’t grateful for his support. But it was Danny she’d given everything up for, Danny whose child she was now carrying. He might have stuck his neck out on her behalf just once with his awful, poisonous mother.

Then, last night, they’d had a titanic fight because Diana, backed into another corner by Minty, had blurted out the news about her pregnancy, something she’d promised Danny she wouldn’t do on this trip. In the back of her mind, she’d hoped that perhaps a first grandchild might soften the old witch up, but no such luck. Minty was furious.

“A child? Unmarried? And with her still married to what’s-his-face? Are you out of your mind?” she screeched at Danny.

“I do have a name, you know,” said Diana quietly from her seat in the corner of the living room. But mother and son were too busy shouting at each other to notice.

“Lay off, Ma, for God’s sake. We will be married,” said Danny. “Soon.”

“Why? Because she’s pregnant?” sobbed Minty.

“No.” Danny clapped a hand to his throbbing head. “Not because she’s pregnant. Because we love each other. The baby was a mistake.”

“A
mistake
?” That was the last straw for Diana. “A
mistake
? How dare you!”