Fragile Crystal: Rubies and Rivalries (The Crystal Fragments Trilogy) (14 page)

That was too much. Feeling her blood boil, Kris spun around, her eyes blazing now, her face red and furious. “Don’t mention his name! Not now. Not here! He can’t know
anything
that happened here, do you understand?”

Maria shrugged and smirked at her. “I won’t tell him anything,” she said, her lips curling into a broader smile. “But you know much less about Daniel than you think you do. What makes you think he wouldn’t like this?”

Kris’s stomach lurched at this, but she made no response whatsoever. Instead, she turned her back on the bedroom and marched determinedly to the door. Opening it, she left Maria’s hotel room and did not look back as she found the elevator.

When the lift doors closed about her, she nearly collapsed at that point, but held herself together as she went, more slowly now, across the lobby floor. Outside there were no taxis so she began to walk down the Avenue de Liberdade. After twenty minutes, however, she had not yet reached the end and her ankle was hurting too much. Feeling utterly miserable, she sat down on a bench in the tree-lined parade between the main road and the narrower side lane, waiting for the sun to rise and traffic to begin again.

She tried not to berate herself for her stupidity. I was drunk, she told herself. It was stupid, but I was drunk. She wondered whether she would forgive Daniel if he had been the one fucking Maria Gosselin while drunk. But he was never drunk. It wouldn’t be the same.

She had no idea how long she sat there, but the first cars were beginning to pass her by, the city starting to wake, when her phone rang. It was Daniel.

“How are you?” he asked. “I didn’t wake you, did I? It’s late here, I know, but I was hoping you might be getting up before I go to sleep.”

“It’s okay,” she told him. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Hearing the tone of her voice, his own deep tones became softer, more worried. “Are you alright? What’s happened?”

“Really, it’s nothing. I couldn’t sleep so I came out for a walk, but then my leg hurt so I’m just sitting down for a while.”

“Call Jorge!” he told her. “Or Filipe. Get them to take you back to Cascais. You need someone to look after you.”

She felt a tear rolling down her cheek and thought herself utterly stupid as she wiped it away on the back of her sleeve.

“Yes,” she told him, hating herself for being so pathetic. “I do, Daniel. I do.”

Chapter Eleven

The room was light and spacious, white walls reaching up to the angular, conical roof that extended high above them. Through the glass panels at its zenith light streamed down into the gallery below.

On the wall before her was a series of prints in black and white. In the first, a black crow was beside a sofa on which cats, sleeping or dead, lay in twisted postures, another damaged bird lying in front of it. In the background, a stunted woman was stalking with her hands gripping the claws of a struggling crow.

As she stared at it, Daniel came up behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder. She did not take her eyes away from the pictures but did raise her own fingers to his, squeezing them affectionately. She could feel his height, his mass behind her, solid and secure.

Three days after that night which she had resolved to forget, she had caught the train to Cascais. She did not want one of Daniel’s drivers to take her, fearful of what either of them—Jorge in particular—might say, but in any case when she had alighted from the train at the station in the coastal town Jorge was waiting for her.

“How did you know I’d be here at this time?” she asked him in Portuguese.

He shrugged. “I didn’t. But when Mister Stone told me that you preferred to catch the train I thought it a good idea to come and wait for you. I’ve seen the past four trains come in. The fifth was the lucky one. Here, let me take that.”

As he drove her the shorter distance to the villa, she could not resist the urge to ask: “I thought you had to look after Madame Gosselin?”

“Normally, yes. But with Filipe off to collect Mister Stone, he had decided it would be better for me to fetch you today.”

“Who, Filipe?”

This made Jorge laugh. “No. Mister Stone. I’m sure the Madame will be fine by herself today.”

Kris digested this piece of information then asked, cautiously: “You enjoy driving her around?”

Jorge nodded his head, easygoing. “I do. She is friendly and polite, and she likes to know a lot about the places I take her. And, ah, I can’t tell a lie. She is very… easygoing on the eye.”

“I’m sure she is,” Kris muttered to herself. Looking up, she saw Jorge glancing at her in his mirror, a slight smile on his face. What had Maria told him about herself? She did not dare ask, but kept her silence for the rest of the journey.

When Daniel had arrived, she had almost fallen upon him, covering him with kisses and her hands, making him laugh and scoop her up, spinning her around as though she were a child. After this she had half-dragged him to the bedroom and pulled him inside her, rough and frantic, utterly selfish as to his needs after the flight. He, however, was delighted, and when she came, still dressed in her skirt and blouse, he fully clothed, only their loins naked and locked together, she had raked his flesh under his shirt.

They had fucked again and again after that, almost brutish, animalistic lovemaking. By the time she was naked, any marks upon her body no doubt he would put down to his own actions and, in any case, the tender but strong holds he had placed upon her had covered any traces of her former indiscretions. When they had finally finished and he fell asleep, his head resting in her arms, she had even been able to forget about Maria Gosselin for a while.

By noon on the following day, he felt that perhaps they should do something else. “I’m glad you missed me, but I think you’ll drain me dry,” he told her, a little ruefully after having admitted that even his manhood was having trouble keeping up with her. “I have a surprise for you.”

She did not have the heart to tell him that she had been to the Paula Rego museum before, but instead gave full vent to a delighted ardour that was not entirely dishonest. “I’ve always wanted to come here,” she told him.

“You never stay at the villa long enough—except when you were injured, of course. You know her work?”

She gave him a stern glare, and he shook his head at this, laughing at himself. “Okay,” he murmured. “Enough patronising. Come on, it will make for a less… exhausting afternoon.”

She loved the building, had since she had first ever been here. It stood with its two high, truncated pyramids, in a peaceful garden not far from the old ground. This was, in fact, only the second time she had ever visited, and as with the first she was a little surprised (if also secretly pleased) at how empty it was.

The large galleries, with paintings and prints spaced out leisurely along the walls, were as peaceful as the gardens outside, even if Rego’s own dark imagination hinted at hidden perversions but also strong women rising up from the darkness.

“You like these?” Daniel was taking in the crow prints for himself.

She nodded her head, feeling his chest rub against the crown of her head. “
The Crow’s House
. Crow is always sinister when he invites the other animals to play in his house,” she told him. “He lets them cavort and gambol around the old, motheaten furniture, but little do they realise that the toys they use are the stuffed animals that he has killed before.”

Daniel was silent as she spoke, then she felt his chin resting on her head as his hand slid down, beneath her breast and around her rig-cage, tightening ever so slightly. “And who is the crow?” he asked at last. “Me?”

“No!” She laughed at the suggestion and, finally, turned to look at him, extricating herself from his arm and placing her hand on his cheek, making him bend slightly so that she could kiss him gently on the lips. “You’re more of a big, old, stuffed bear,” she told him when their lips parted. “There’s nothing dangerous about you.”

He raised an eyebrow, a motion that made her tighten up inside for some reason, and murmured: “Flattered, I’m sure. So are you the crow?”

“Perhaps,” she said, returning her gaze back to the print and allowing him once more to return his protective arm around her. “Her animals were often women where you’d expect men… and men where you would expect women.”

They lingered in the galleries for a while before returning to the atrium that led into the building. Winter was coming in, and the weather was colder now but still more languid and pleasant than it would have been back in England.

Outside the exhibition spaces and past the long, dark desk where a receptionist sat, serious faced and no doubt serious minded, was a cafeteria. There was no one else around and the single waitress looked bored as she came across to them. It was still a bright afternoon and there was no need for them to rush anywhere. Daniel had promised to take her for a meal that evening, and although there was a part of Kris that wanted to take him back to the villa and fuck his brains out, she suspected that whatever business and exertions had taken up his time while away had left him without as much energy as previously.

They ordered coffees and Daniel excused himself for a moment to make his way to the toilets. The galleries were such that any mobile signal was blocked and, while he was away, Kris took out her phone to check for messages. There was one, and when she opened it her blood seemed to freeze inside her, becoming colder than any Portuguese winter.

I need to see you. Call me.

Nothing else, no name. The number was hardly one that was inscribed into Kris’s memory, but she required no prompt to inform her who the sender was. Without thinking, she deleted it and quickly pushed her phone back into her coat pocket.

“Are you okay?” His voice was tender as he sat down across from her. She had been twiddling her thumbs together, staring fretfully out of the window and had not even heard him return, flashbacks of that terrible night rising unbidden in her memory. “Is it your ankle? Is it still hurting?”

“A little,” she told him, smiling and hoping that her eyes matched the expression on her mouth. She was grateful of the opportunity provided by his question. Her own answer was not a lie, though it was far from the full truth. Better to allow him to decide what it meant.

“It’s taking a long time to heal.” There was a slight frown on his face as he fished around behind him in his own jacket. At first, she thought he was reaching for his wallet to pay for the coffees, then she felt her stomach churn a little as he pulled out his own phone. Her hand half flexed and reached across the table in reaction, almost desperate to grab hold of him, to tell him not to look, but instead she pulled her fingers back and smiled nervously.

“Sorry,” he said, his eyes flicking up at her apologetically. “I just needed to check. The world of Stone Enterprises won’t quite leave me alone. He flicked through a couple and his face darkened slightly. She wondered what he was reading, what terrible truths were being revealed. Then a warmth returned to his face as he smiled.

“Well, there’s some good news at least,” he said, placing the phone back in his pocket.

“What’s that?” Kris asked, feigning insouciance.

“The Chiado deal is about to be wrapped up. Maria’s done a grand job with it.”

“Well that’s good.” Kris felt as though the smile on her face had been carved into her skin. “Will she have to return to Paris soon?”

Daniel nodded. “Yes. After what’s happened recently, I think she’s the only one I can trust to get a job done. I’ll pay her a visit tomorrow, to give her my thanks.”

Now Kris could not stop her hand reaching out, grabbing hold of his wrist. “Do you have to?” she blurted out.

This made him frown. “Yes,” he replied simply. “She’s done a lot for me. It would… well, it would be rude not to.”

“Of course!” She released her hand, retrieving it like a wounded animal. “I’m sorry. I was just being selfish. It’s been so long… I just wanted to keep you to myself.”

He smiled at this. “Yeah, well, I don’t have to go tomorrow. She’s here for a couple more days then she’ll head back to Paris. I do want to see her before she goes, however. Perhaps I’ll invite her here for a meal in Cascais, or we can find somewhere in Lisbon.”

Kris’s smile was a frozen rictus on her face, her emotions a tumble of confusion inside her. Whatever else had been said in those messages, her own secret with the Gosselin woman was still safe, for the moment. She was not sure, however, as to Daniel’s own reactions. Was he tormenting her for some secret purpose with a former lover? Or had Maria lied to her? For reasons she couldn’t quite explain, although Kris did not trust everything that Maria Gosselin had said an intuition told her that she and Daniel Stone had, in some shape or form, been lovers.

Yet there was also his apparent indifference to that fact. Was that a source of triumph or despair to Kris—a demonstration that no other woman meant anything to him, or a warning of how he would respond to her once he cast her off? She could not tell if this was a deeper cruelty than she could ever imagine. Unbidden, a fragment of the conversation with Maria bubbled up from her unconscious.
How do you stop him, when he goes too far? And what guarantee is there for you?

“Hey there, daydreamer.” She looked up and saw Daniel staring down at her. His shoulders were so broad, so powerful. His body, tough and muscular, was protective at times, but at others? Those strange eyes of his. She couldn’t decipher the expression in them as he gazed at her, and for a second he shivered.

“Come on,” he said, his hand reaching out for hers. “I thought we could celebrate a little more before going for a meal.”

Chapter Twelve

Standing in front of her canvas, Kris stared at the streaks of paint, muddy and blurred. It was no good. She couldn’t do it. Across the room her most recent success,
Orgasm II
as she self-mockingly referred to it, was leaning against the room. How was it that something that had flowed out of her, from her fingertips, as though the oil were the secretions of her body, her blood, had worked so completely—and yet today… nothing?