‘They’re still there, darling,’ he assured her. ‘We haven’t done a thing to your room since you left, don’t worry.’
‘Really?’ She sounded touched and he smiled.
‘It will always be there for you when you want to come home. Sorry, darling, but I have to go and finish tying this goddamn tie or I’ll be late for dinner with Grandee and then he’ll have me roasted over a very slow fire. If there is one thing your grandfather cannot abide it is unpunctuality.’
‘Punctuality is the courtesy of kings,’ Cathy growled in a very good mimicry of Eddie Ramsey’s deep New England accents. Then she said, ‘Goodnight, Dad, see you soon. We can’t wait to welcome you to our home again.’
‘I can’t wait to be there. It seems years, not months, since I last saw you,’ he said, choked with sudden feeling, and heard her blow him a kiss before hanging up.
He didn’t even have time to get back to the dressing-table to finish tying his tie when the phone rang again.
This time it was the voice he had been waiting to hear. ‘I just heard on the local news that there was an accident on the subway this evening. A girl fell under a train.’
Gowrie hadn’t expected that. He said blankly, ‘Fell under a train? What girl?’
The voice was wary, no doubt remembering that there could be other ears listening to the calls he got on this line. ‘The Czech reporter – Sophie Narodni.’
Cold pearls of sweat sprang out on Gowrie’s pale forehead. He sat down abruptly on his bed, no longer able to stay on his feet, and gripped the phone so tightly his knuckles showed white.
‘Is she dead?’
As Catherine Gowrie put down the phone, an arm came up out of the bed and pulled her back into the warmth, the crumpled sheets, where they had made love an hour ago. A mouth nuzzled her neck, a hand cupped one of her naked breasts, her rounded flesh overflowing the hot crucible of fingers.
‘You and your father could talk the hind leg off a donkey. I thought you would never ring off. Chatter, chatter, chatter,’ Paul said. ‘There are better things to do in bed than talk. Mmm . . .’ His body pressed into her back, touching her from shoulder to ankle, and she felt the stirring rise of his flesh, heard his breathing quicken.
‘You’re insatiable,’ she said, laughing, half-incredulous, but feeling her insides melt as he began moving against her with that sweet, familiar insistence.
‘I can’t have enough of you, sweet Cat,’ he said, his lips parting on her nape, pushing aside her long silken hair, then beginning to trail down the deep indentation of her spine. He knew exactly how and where to touch her to arouse her. Shutting her eyes, she felt the rough brush of the hair on his thighs, the intimacy of his lips in the crease between her buttocks, seeking, sliding down, down, underneath and inward, until they found the heat and moistness hidden there, and she gave a groan of fierce pleasure.
‘Aaah,’ she moaned. ‘Oh . . . yes . . .’ Although they had made passionate love for half an hour so short a time ago, she was ready for him again. Her whole body was trembling, yielding, her bones waxen in her overheated flesh, as he turned her on to her back again and moved on top of her, entering her and slowly, slowly, tormentingly, began, refusing to let her hurry, rush on to the climax she was crying out to achieve.
With no other man had she ever felt anything like this wild clamouring for release to which Paul could bring her. His body had a power over hers that had become an addiction from that first night together.
They had met in Washington nearly a year ago, at a Christmas party given by a famous political hostess. Cathy had known almost everyone else in the huge, glittering room and had been a centre of attention as soon as she a
rrived. It had been a lively, noisy occasion, everyone dressed up like Christmas trees, jewellery blinding you on every side.
She remembered the instant she first saw Paul. Their eyes had met, quite literally, across a crowded room. She had seen a tall, distinguished man with a striking, powerful face, dark eyes that seemed to pierce her to her very soul, hair still jet-black and thick. Older than her, in his late forties, she suspected, but then she liked older men. Young men were either obsessed with sex or with themselves, and bored her. She had been talking to a crowd of politicians and she had gone on talking, smiling, pretending to listen, while all the time she was only aware of this stranger on the other side of the room.
She had had no idea who he was, except that he was English. She could hear his cool, deep, cultured tones without straining although he was not raising his voice and all around them both people were talking loudly. She had loved the way he talked, she had always loved the way the English talked. It was very close to the way her own people talked in New England.
She had made no move to go over to him; she had been so sure he would come over and speak to her and she had known, even then, right from the very first, that this was going to be the most important relationship of her life.
He had detached himself from the group he was talking to and strolled calmly, without hurrying, towards her, and she had waited without looking at him, her whole body alive with excitement.
She couldn’t remember what they had talked about, although they must have asked each other the obvious questions. ‘Who are you? What do you do? Where do you live?’ The only thing that mattered was that they had not felt like strangers; there had been something so familiar about him, as if she had known him in another life, and this was meant, intended, they belonged together.
After a while they had quietly slipped out of the party, indifferent to watching eyes or the gossip they might arouse. They were almost silent in the cab they took back to his hotel room. They had sat side by side, their bodies not even touching, from time to time looking at each other, and knowing what was going to happen as soon as they were alone.
Cathy had never before gone to bed with a stranger. She wasn’t promiscuous; there had not been that many men in her life. She had twice thought she was in love. If she had not met Paul she might have married the man she had been seeing just before the night of that party. Steve would have been there with her if he had not been abroad that month.
She had known Steve most of her life. She had believed she was in love with him for a while, but at the first sight of Paul she knew the difference.
Everything she had ever felt before had been playing at love. Paul hit her like lightning striking a house, setting her on fire, and the whole landscape of her life was illuminated for her by what she felt with him. She knew she would never be the same again.
They had made love three times that night, and in the morning after sleeping a few hours they had woken up and made love again. She had been so stunned that she had said to him, ‘You aren’t real! Do you always do it this often?’ and Paul had hoarsely laughed and shaken his head.
‘Never in my life before! I can’t believe it either. It’s just that I haven’t been to bed with anyone for a long time, and you’re so bloody marvellous, I can’t have enough of you. I feel like a starving man who gets his first meal for days and can’t stop eating.’