Kiss and Tell (66 page)

But Hugo talked right across her. ‘Nobody’s heard of Rory over there. You’re Olympic silver medallist and World Champion, Lough. I’m gold medallist. That’s a dream ticket. We could double the profit.’

‘I’m staying here.’

Hugo held Lough’s glare until Sylva thought she might have to erect a screen between them to stop them fighting like two stallions.

‘What amazing sportsmen!’ She was determined to wrest attention this time. ‘As I am Sylva, that makes two silvers and a gold. So much precious metal. I smell money, don’t you?’

The stallions snorted, stamped their hooves and repositioned to sniff the new mare.

Sylva had found the stand-off thrillingly sexy. Her whitest smile seemed to grow even whiter as her eyes widened. ‘Hugo, can I take you aside for a moment to talk about buying a horse?’

Hugo was still looking like a thundercloud, especially when Lough muttered something about spotting an old New Zealand teammate and shot off.

Glaring at his retreating back for a moment, Hugo then turned to Sylva with a mannerly apology, but his eyes took a telltale second too long to focus, revealing that he really was quite drunk.

‘You want to buy a horse?’ he said carefully.

Sylva manoeuvred him to the farm’s back door amid a sea of boots and coats, one of the quietest spots in the house while all the guests were still safely contained inside and only the smokers were braving the elements, clustered in the front porch at the opposite end.

‘I want to buy a three day eventer,’ she insisted, standing much
closer to him than necessary so that she had to tilt her head right back to see him – always very flattering to the facial bone structure.

‘So Tash tells me.’ He had a fantastically devilish smile, she realised as he looked down at her.

‘Money is no object.’ Sylva flashed her eyes and moved forwards, positioning herself directly beneath Hugo’s chin.

‘I can find you a horse to own if you’re really serious.’ He stepped back so that he was almost enveloped in the coats hanging from the rail behinds his head.

‘Oh, I’m serious.’ She let her very pink tongue stroke her upper lip for just a second, her eyes not leaving his. ‘Tell me, do you ride women as well as you ride horses?’

He suddenly barked with laughter, catching her by surprise. ‘Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs Frost?’

Sylva stalled for effect, adoring his straightforwardness. She knew that he had never liked her very much, but that was part of the challenge.

‘Yes, I am,’ she admitted. ‘But I want to buy a horse more.’

Drunk, bad-tempered, aroused and in no mood for mind games, Hugo wondered where Tash had disappeared to. Lough and Niall were both on the prowl, and now he had Sylva Frost to deflect. He couldn’t help finding her enticing, and he knew that he could sell her a horse at a massively over-inflated price if she were seduced a little, but he wasn’t in the mood right now.

‘I’m going outside for a cigarette,’ he excused himself with an apologetic shrug, knowing it was the best means of escape from situations like these.

But he hadn’t accounted for the fact that Sylva was accustomed to her Slovak cousins on fifty Mayfair a day. ‘I will come with you. I need the fresh air. You can show me around the stables here.’

In the larder, the conversation was coming to a close and Tash had found a convenient pile of paper napkins to use to blow her nose and mop up the mascara from her cheeks.

‘You really think I should tell Hugo how insecure I’m feeling?’

Zoe nodded. ‘Silence just breeds misunderstanding. Don’t wage war with a great lecture or pity-me monologue, but simply say that you know things aren’t great and it’s time to do something about it –
oh, here … shh.’ She handed her another napkin as Tash started to cry again. ‘Admitting it is half the solution.’

‘D-do you think he could be having an affair?’

‘I don’t know him well enough,’ Zoe hedged. ‘But talking will help you find out. Look out for lines like ‘You’re too good for me’ and ‘I don’t deserve you’ – classic giveaways that he’s got a guilty conscience. Equally, he could get hyper-critical about everything you say and do, trying to find excuses for his behaviour.’ She was a world expert, for all she loved her own philanderer.

Tash nodded. ‘He’s been so cold and angry. It was pretty bad over Christmas with my family staying: he seemed to resent them all, except perhaps Ben. But he’s been
much
worse since Lough arrived.’

‘Your sexy New Zealander,’ Zoe smiled knowingly. ‘Now there’s a surprise. Is it true he was arrested on suspicion of murder?’ She had heard enticing smatterings of gossip.

‘Well, he didn’t actually reveal a lot about it. He’s not a great talker and, as I say, Hugo’s been so horribly offhand with everyone since he arrived that we’ve hardly seen anything of Lough.’

Zoe shook her head with a rueful smile. ‘And you wonder why your marriage is suffering? You might be harbouring a murderer in exile right now, and you’re “too busy to talk about it” and besides, the suspect “isn’t a great talker”! Somebody has to start talking, Tash. It might as well be you.’

‘You think I should speak to Lough about his arrest?’

‘No! I mean, yes, maybe, but talk to Hugo first. Please talk to Hugo first. The sooner you put it out there, the sooner you sort it.’

Beccy was still wearing her coat, which was starting to smell pretty dubious. Sweating heavily and feeling increasingly sick after drinking a lot of punch, she was desperate to go outside and cool off, but the others refused to join her.

‘It’s freezing out there,’ Faith pointed out, and Lemon agreed, putting an arm around her bare shoulders.

‘Well I’m going,’ Beccy huffed, hoping that they would follow her if she fled looking upset.

They didn’t follow. They’d been doing their ‘exclusive’ thing all night: Lemon flirting with Faith and her goading him in return, doubly so because she was in a bad mood that Rory wasn’t there. Beccy felt excluded and very hurt.

Outside, she lurched around in the slush for a bit, cannoning into cars, before her head cleared and her body cooled sufficiently for her to focus a little better.

Then she realised that she wasn’t alone in the darkness.

Beccy stopped to listen. A couple laughing as they moved closer sent her scuttling behind a car.

‘Told you there wasn’t much to see,’ drawled an all-too-familiar male voice.

‘It is interesting,’ purred a Bond Girl voice. ‘So different from your beautiful stables.’

‘This is still a top set-up. The Moncrieffs know their stuff and you could do a lot worse than finding a horse through them. I can have a word if you like.’

‘I want to find a horse through
you
, Hugo.’ Her voice dripped with entendre. ‘A pretty one.’

Beccy felt a jealous squeeze in her chest as she peered out through the darkness, but there was absolutely no moon tonight and they were too far from the house lights, so all she could see was a brief spark, flame and red glow as Hugo lit a cigarette.

‘I’ll find you a horse if you really want one, but they’re not like shoes, you know. You can’t throw them to the back of the wardrobe and forget about them.’

‘I never throw my shoes to the back of my closet – I have an automated carousel that carries one hundred pairs.’

‘I bet you do. So it’s just skeletons in the closet, then.’

‘Care to come and look?’

‘Tempting, but no thank you. My wife might be more interested in seeing your closet and shoe carousel in action.’

‘Her feet are much bigger than mine.’

‘So don’t try to fill
her
shoes.’

She let out a hot gurgle of laughter. ‘I’m not trying. I always walk tall and fuck barefoot.’

He laughed too. ‘Spoken like a true peasant.’

Sylva’s voice was pure honey now. ‘If you’re so well-heeled, Prince Charming, why not take the weight off your feet and drive it deep into me?’

Beccy gasped. She’d never heard anything like it, a come-on as audacious and ballsy as it was vulgar and – she had to admit – sexy.

There was a long pause and she strained to hear sucky kissy
sounds, but there was nothing. She saw the cigarette end glow again. Then a door opened and closed, briefly beaming light across the farm yard. Hugo was now standing alone, smoking his cigarette in solitude.

Beccy longed to casually wander out from behind her shielding car and accidentally bump into him, to have him confess his utter desolation – unhappily married, no longer in love with Tash, propositioned by Sylva Frost but impotent to her lust because he had secretly always loved her, Beccy.

But she stayed glued to the spot, crouching low to the ground, discreetly sniffing her coat and realising that it still had an odour that was more mackerel than MAC fragrance. She hated waxed cotton.

Jerking her head away from the pong, punch still swilling through her system, she lost her balance and lurched back against another parked car, sending its alarm suddenly blaring, its lights flashing.

‘Who’s there?’ Hugo demanded, flicking away his fag and stepping forwards.

Beccy backed into rapid retreat, shuffling through several more cars until she was up against the exterior wall of the main stable yard. There was more light here and she could see Hugo’s shadow moving towards her through the cars. Within seconds he would find her and realise that she had been eavesdropping on him and Sylva, a secret party to their high-grade flirtation.

There was a small door directly beside her. She tried the handle and it opened, letting her dart inside. She was immediately faced with a steep, narrow staircase in the pitch darkness. She scrambled up it, working by feel, until she reached a wooden boarded upper level that appeared to have rugs and old haynets piled everywhere. Stumbling blindly across the floor, Beccy slumped on to a quilted stable rug and listened to her heart crashing wildly in her ears.

Gradually, the adrenalin began to wear off and, away from the cold fresh air, the punch kicked in again, clawing at her head and making her feel groggy and sick. She could hear a horse moving around beneath her, another kicking its door just feet away: she was in a room above the stables, safe and alone. She sagged back against the rugs and opened her coat to cool off, head tipped back and nostrils flared as they sought more air.

‘You okay?’

She ducked her face away as it was struck by the white, focused glare of a little halogen torch. ‘Please turn that off!’

The beam was cut.

Once extinguished, she was in absolute darkness again, uncertain if she was imagining things or if it really was …

‘Hugo?’

‘Yes,’ he sounded surprised to be identified.

She hadn’t heard him come up, but the blood was still rushing so loudly through her ears that she wouldn’t have heard a SWAT team crashing in.

‘Want a drink?’ A champagne bottle was thrust at her through the gloom. He sounded different, the drawl a little lighter and croakier.

‘Sure.’ She took it despite her heaving stomach, anxious not to break the magic of the moment.

There was a long silence.

She swigged more champagne, guessing he must know that she had overheard and want to ensure her silence.

‘I won’t say anything, I promise,’ she said carefully.

The champagne was making speech tricky again. She took deep breaths to stop the room spinning.

‘You’re hot,’ he said, crouching down beside her.

‘I am a bit sweaty,’ she agreed, although it came out rather slurred, and could have equally been ‘slutty’ or ‘sweety’.

‘Really hot.’ He sat down next to her in the pitch darkness, the smell of his aftershave easily drowning out the coat’s fishy smell. She couldn’t remember Hugo smelling so strongly of Ralph Lauren Safari before, but she knew it was one of the bottles that was lined up in his dressing room because she had seen it there, along with the gold cufflinks, ivory-backed hairbrushes and several watches that she sometimes tried on when she sneaked in to snoop around.

She took another swig from the bottle and fought over-excited nausea as she registered the heat of his body next to hers. Her Hugo. Here with her. A dream come true.

‘Mind if I sit down?’ he joked, already leaning warmly against her.

‘Be my guest.’ She handed back the bottle and giggled: ‘Why don’t you take the weight off your feet and thrust it straight into me, big boy?’ she quoted, badly.

The kiss that landed on her lips was harder than the bottle neck which had just left them, his grip on her shoulders urgent, as was the way he wrestled with the hem of her coat hoiking it and her dress up to reveal her rib-to-knee control pants.

Breathing hard now, he tried to prise them back like a particularly tough avocado peel to reveal the ripe flesh of the fruit beneath.

It wasn’t quite the seduction Beccy had anticipated, but she was really feeling too gratified to care. Hugo was on top of her, his weight pressing down on her, ready to take her cherry, kept perfectly ripe just for him to pick. Her years in exile had been rewarded.

At last the Spanx were lowered in his honour.

‘Do you have a condom?’ she asked as he pulled her knees apart.

His breath was coming out in excited little bursts but he managed to pull his wits together with great effort.

‘Don’t go away.’ He straightened up and fumbled behind him for the pockets of the trousers that were around his ankles.

There was no real light in the store room, but now that her eyes had become accustomed to the dark Beccy could just about make out an outline and was surprised how much smaller than expected Hugo looked. She had very little experience of a semi-naked man at such close quarters, but she had somehow imagined him to be more imposing and – manly. But when she tried to focus through the dark, her head began spinning again and she felt sick.

He was fiddling about for ages, cursing and muttering angrily to himself now.

Beccy started to feel paranoid. Perhaps he had lost his erection? He didn’t fancy her that much – she was a poor substitute for Sylva after all – and, when it came to the crunch, he couldn’t carry through.

‘What’s wrong …?’ she asked shakily.