And she greeted the director with a smile so radiant that he almost jumped back in surprise.
She’d assumed that Diaz would stick around until they could leave together, and her heart sank when she suddenly realised that he’d already gone. Slipped away into the night at some point while she was talking to Helen, the euphoric lead in an undoubted hit.
As soon as she could she made her own excuses and left too. Sitting in the back of a cab, she let herself think about Diaz—how he’d looked, what he’d said, and the way his lightest touch could make her feel—until she tingled all over, wondering how soon she would see him again. Praying she would not have to wait too long. Teasing herself that she ought to be ashamed of her eagerness. Hoping that he would not be too disappointed when he realised she didn’t have the experience he expected.
All the lights in the flat seemed to be on when she let herself in, and she halted abruptly, brows lifting, when she saw the dining table laid for two with her nicest lace placemats and crystal, and tall ivory candles already lit in their ceramic holders.
As Donna came in, carrying the salt and pepper shakers, Rhianna turned on her. ‘Just what is going on here?’
‘Simon’s coming over.’ The other girl’s face had a sharp, intense look. ‘He rang earlier, sounding completely different, and said he wanted to talk.’
‘And you’re cooking him dinner—here—in my flat?’ Rhianna fought the sheer rage welling up inside her. ‘Knowing how I feel about all that’s happened—about him?’ She punched a clenched fist at the ceiling. ‘How dare you?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Well, that’s the end, Donna. From now on you’re on your own. You can give me back the key you’ve been using and go.’
‘Rhianna, please—let me stay—just one last time. Simon and I can’t talk properly, not in that shoe box I live in, and I simply have to see him—don’t you understand?’ Donna’s voice trembled. ‘Something’s changed with him. I know it has. And I have a really good feeling about it.’
‘Which makes one of us.’ Rhianna walked to the mantelpiece and took the embossed invitation wedged behind the clock. ‘Recognise this?’ She flung it on the table. ‘The wedding is still going ahead, whatever you may think.’
She saw the other woman flinch, and, remembering her charged emotional state, made herself speak more gently. ‘He’s messing you around, Donna. Playing with your head. He won’t give up Carrie and he wants you to go ahead with the termination, as agreed. In your heart you must know that.’
‘Heart!’ Donna spat the word. ‘What would you know about hearts?’
‘More than you think, perhaps.’ Rhianna stalked to the bedroom, pulled out an overnight bag and began to fill it, swiftly and economically.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Getting out of here and going to a hotel. I can’t throw you out physically, though I’d like to, but I’m damned if I’m going to hang around as if it’s all right when it’s all wrong.’ Rhianna zipped her bag and swung it off the bed, giving Donna the look with which Lady Ariadne regularly curdled men’s blood—and never to better effect.
‘As it is,’ she went on, ‘you’ll kindly get both of yourselves out of here when you’ve eaten. I’ll be back by seven a.m. tomorrow, and I’d better not find you here.’
The hotel she went to had only a suite available, but as Rhianna slapped down her credit card she told herself it was worth every penny.
In the end she waited until gone nine o’clock the following morning before staging her return, to find the flat deserted and her bed ominously stripped.
She would consider the implications of that later, she told herself, drawing a deep breath.
The dinner table, however, had not been cleared, and although Rhianna wrinkled her nose at the used plates and cutlery, the crumbs and dribbles of wine, and the candle wax that had been allowed to spill down the holders, at least it was a mess she could deal with. Besides, it seemed a small price to pay in order to be rid of that precious pair and their squalid affair.
But don’t rejoice too soon, she thought with sudden grimness. If Simon has changed his mind and they really are together permanently, how am I going to cope with the fallout? And how can I possibly explain my part in it all to Carrie? Come to that, what the hell will she do?
She went into the bathroom and began to run water into the tub.
‘Survive,’ she said aloud. ‘That’s what women do when they’re dumped by the only men who’ll ever matter to them. When they’re torn and bleeding and stumbling around. They survive. Somehow.’