The Ultimate Surrender

Before Suzi could voice the protests he could see she wanted to make, he released himself from her hold and stepped away, telling her shortly, ‘I’d better go. I’ve got an early start in the morning. I’m flying to China on business.’

His company was engaged in very delicate negotiations with the Chinese about certain explorative mining work, and the last thing he really needed right now was the kind of intensely personal anxiety he was experiencing.

Heading for the exit, he stepped outside into the cool night air whilst the doorman summoned him a taxi. Once in it, he gave the driver the address of the small hotel he had booked himself into. Quiet and well run, it was part of the same informal group of very select small hotels of which Fraser House was also a member and lay on the other side of London.

Fifteen minutes later he emerged from his taxi to head for the hotel’s foyer, where the receptionist was in conversation with another guest. Checking that he had his key card, Marcus headed for the lift. His room was on the third floor, one of a small group of six rooms that overlooked the street.

Sliding the key card into the lock, he waited until the light turned green and then went in.

The first thing that struck him was her perfume, so familiar to him that initially he felt he must simply be imagining it, but then, in the dim glow from the entrance light he had switched on as he’d entered the room, he could see her shape beneath the bedclothes and the soft tangle of her hair.

She slept curled up like a child, not quite but almost hugging her pillow. His heart started to beat very fast and then very slowly. What on earth was Polly doing in his room…in his bed?

Frowning, he backed towards the bedroom door and walked back out into the hallway, letting the door close quietly behind him.

Downstairs in the foyer the receptionist tried to be helpful.

‘Mrs Fraser? Yes, she is booked into room number 113.’

Room 113…That was his room. There had quite obviously been a mistake. He was just about to say as much to the receptionist when a middle-aged couple came up to the desk.

‘We’re booked into room 204,’ the man explained to the receptionist. ‘But there’s a street light outside and it’s disturbing my wife. I wonder if we could possibly change to another room?’

The receptionist immediately shook her head, explaining regretfully, ‘I’m sorry, sir, but we’re fully booked. A large party of Americans…We don’t have a single empty room.’

No empty rooms. So that put paid to his own as yet unspoken request to book into another room…a room that was not already occupied by Polly, Marcus acknowledged.

Grimly he turned and headed back towards the lift.

Five minutes later he was in the hotel bedroom gazing down at Polly’s sleeping body.

Like him, she had obviously booked a room here which meant…Which meant what? That even though he had seen her leaving the restaurant with Phil Bernstein she was plainly not spending the night with him. Had they quarrelled, perhaps? Had he…? Had she…? Jealousy had to be the most damaging, soul-destroying waste of time there could be. It had been bad enough when it had just been his jealousy of his dead cousin he’d had to contend with, but this…

Softly he spoke Polly’s name, but she was so deeply asleep that she didn’t waken.

The sensible, the right and proper thing for him to do now would be to persist and wake her up, explain the situation to her and then offer to spend the night sleeping in a chair.

But, faced with the prospect of the next day’s long flight ahead of him, the thought of trying to sleep upright in an uncomfortable and undersized armchair was not an appealing one.

Quietly unlocking the side of the wardrobe where he had placed his overnight bag, Marcus hung up his jacket and then made his way to the bathroom. The towels he had used earlier had been carefully refolded on the drying rail to make room for the one Polly had used. Smiling at this evidence of her housewifeliness, he undressed and turned on the shower.

It was the noise of the water that woke Polly. At first confused and half asleep, she thought it had started to rain—very hard—and then, as she became fully awake, she thought she must be able to hear the shower in the adjoining bedroom: But then, as she lifted her head from the pillow and saw the bar of light showing under the closed en suite bathroom door, the full realisation that someone was actually in the shower in her room, hit her.

Without considering that she could be putting herself in danger, she got out of bed, pulling on the hotel robe as she marched purposefully towards the bathroom door and pushed it open.

As he saw the bathroom door opening Marcus quickly grabbed a towel, turning off the shower.