‘Breathing space. Just for a little while,’ she grinned.
‘OK. Let’s keep a respectable distance. For now, anyway.’ He leaned in to kiss her. ‘Although I’m not sure how long is respectable these days,’ he said, moving his lips down to her shoulder. ‘A day, a week . . .’
Jennifer gave a soft, sexy laugh. ‘I’m not sure how long I can resist you,’ she said, wrapping her arms around him.
Jim rolled her over so that she was on her stomach. He gently brushed her hair off her neck and kissed the top of her spine, moving slowly down.
‘Look at this,’ he said, stroking the dark groove where her spine disappeared between the twin mounds of her buttocks. ‘You have a mole. A diamond-shaped mole.’ He wondered whether Connor had noticed the landmarks of her body.
‘Have I?’ she smiled, turning over.
He kissed her belly, her breasts, lingering over one nipple, then the other, sucking, tasting her, sweet and delicious. She moaned and parted her legs and they mad
e love again, more slowly than the night before.
‘I can’t believe I have to walk the streets of New York in this dress,’ she smiled after they had showered. ‘You know I’ve even left my coat at the Met.’
‘Borrow something of mine,’ he offered.
‘You’re a six-foot guy.’
‘Not so much taller than you.’
He padded to the wardrobe, sifting through his rack of clothes. He glanced back at her. She had folded her arms across her naked body and was smiling at him playfully.
‘This should be interesting,’ she laughed.
He took a pair of black trousers from his favourite suit and handed them to her.
‘Slimmest cut I’ve got,’ he said, reaching for a belt and T-shirt. ‘So much so that I can’t quite get into them . . .’
He watched her dress, gathering the trousers around her waist with the belt.
‘So now I look like a crazy person rather than a hooker,’ she said, studying her reflection in the full-length mirror.
‘Oi, they’re Saint Laurent.’
Once Jim was dressed too, he packed a bag and got his passport.
‘Right then.’
‘I thought you were going to say righty-ho,’ she teased him.
‘And of course in the movie of our lives I’d be played by Hugh Grant . . . So when am I going to see you again?’ he asked, threading his arms around the back of her neck.
‘I’ll call you,’ she said, and this time he believed her.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jim looked out of the window of the cab, willing it to go faster. It wasn’t the car’s fault, of course, just good old-fashioned Manhattan gridlock in all its maddening stop-go glory. Jennifer had been correct that he had plenty of time to make his flight, but Jim had an errand to run before heading to the airport: he had to meet Saul Black, his father’s agent.
‘Can you take West 48th, get across to Fifth?’ he said, leaning forward. ‘I think it’ll be less solid this time of day.’
Listen to me, he thought as the driver made the turn. Native New Yorker already.
Saul’s home was in the Upper East Side, and Jim’s smile faded as he realised they were about to pass near to Jennifer’s town house – or rather, Connor’s house as it would be, once Jennifer moved out. Jim imagined him at home, drinking his coffee, stewing, hating Jim, and wanted to get out of this part of the city as quickly as he could.
He had received the summons to go and see Saul a couple of weeks earlier. His mother had been pestering him to visit his father’s old agent for months, but somehow Jim had never got round to it. He’d been at the office late one night when a call came in from Saul himself.