Indiscretions (23 page)

“We’ll talk about this later,” she said icily, “but I shall make sure to report your behavior to the agency.”

Venetia untied her apron. “Call them now, Mrs. Fox-Lawten,” she said, walking toward her, “and ask them to send you someone else. I’m leaving.”

“But you can’t!” gasped Sondra.

An American expression fluttered through Vennie’s head. “Wanna bet?” she asked as she brushed past on her way through the door.

11

Something was getting on Fitz McBain’s nerves. Was it the filthy New York weather? Was it the constant stalling on the petrochemical deal in Latin America? Or was it the capricious antics of Raymunda Ortiz?

Fitz swiveled his gray leather chair, turning from the papers on his desk to the view of Manhattan, almost obliterated today by the rain lashing from a leaden sky. The sight held little charm, and putting his shirt-sleeved arms behind his head he wondered again what to do about that deal. It should have been completed a month ago—licensing agreements had been reached, refineries made available, documents awaited exchange. Everyone they had dealt with had been charming and reassuring—and yet the damned thing still hung fire. It was going to take another trip down to Brazil—his third in two months—another round of reassurances, more lengthy dinners with businessmen and their socially ambitious wives, and at the end, would he have accomplished his purpose and signed the deal? He had to admit that for
once he didn’t know. What he did know was that he was losing patience with the situation.

He wondered moodily whether it was all worth it—not just this deal but
all
of it, all the wheeling and dealing, the jockeying for position, and beating out the competitors. It had meant everything to him in the beginning, when life was just survival, and then, when survival was taken care of, it had become fun. When, he asked himself, did the fun depart and habit begin?

Perhaps he should give it all up. Retire and hand over to Morgan. And then what? He was forty-four years old and had worked since he was thirteen. What the hell did you do if you didn’t work? With a shudder he contemplated a life spent squiring a Raymunda Ortiz from one jet-set party to another. How different might it have been if Morgan’s mother had lived? That was always how he thought of Ellen now, as “Morgan’s mother.” Their love for each other and their youthful romantic passion seemed a long time ago. Maybe they would have had other children and a proper home, not just this selection of desirable properties in various parts of the world for which he paid all the bills, and in which he slept only occasionally. Morgan always said that his plane was his home and Fitz was damned if he wasn’t right; he was happier alone in that one room suspended between time changes and continents and surrounded by the clouds than anywhere else on earth.

Enough of that! He’d go to the club and play some squash, get rid of the depression and rev up his energy level a notch or two. Work was the single most important entity in his life. Retirement didn’t exist in his vocabulary and the Raymunda Ortizes were a long way down on his priority list.

Fitz pressed the buzzer on his desk and waited for his secretary to answer. Miss Clarke had been with him for ten years. He had always believed in equal opportunity
within his companies and she was more than just a secretary, she was his personal assistant with two secretaries of her own; she was part of his life, a keeper of secrets, and he counted her a friend. But he still called her Miss Clarke and she always called him Mr. McBain.

“Hold my calls please, Miss Clarke. I’m going down to the gym to get in a game of squash—I’ll be back in forty minutes.”

What he needed was a different viewpoint on that Latin American contract, he decided as he changed into a gray track suit in the bathroom that adjoined his office. He’d send Morgan to Brazil; it would be something he’d enjoy, and coming fresh to the situation he’d probably be able to spot what was wrong. One thing was for sure, the Latin Americans weren’t going to tell him. Dealing with them was as baffling as dealing with Japanese—they never liked to say no. A polite agreement and “tomorrow” were meant to make you understand that perhaps they didn’t quite agree.

It was exactly the same with Raymunda; she flirted and teased and agreed—and then she’d be aloof and haughty. Raymunda was a beautiful woman, and a sensuous one. He liked being with her—at least when she was behaving reasonably and not like some spoiled teenager—and he enjoyed being in bed with her, very much so, but he had the feeling that Raymunda was playing out the marriage cards. Lately she’d been evasive on the telephone, or aloof over dinner, and had even gone so far as to cancel two dates at the last moment for unspecified reasons.

Why, he wondered, can’t she just enjoy it for what it is? I could no more be happy married to Raymunda than she could to me—and she knows it.

Fitz stared out of his fortieth-floor eyrie at the rain. At least he could do something about the weather. The
Fiesta
was lying at anchor in Barbados with a crew ready
and anxious for some action. Forget the squash games! The skies there were blue and the sun hot, and didn’t he deserve a week off? He’d get Morgan to join him. He could brief him on the Latin American situation and Morgan could fly on from there. Add Raymunda to the package and he’d beaten all three of today’s problems. Temporarily anyway, he added, picking up the telephone.

Kate Lancaster sat on Vennie’s bed, hugging her friend’s old teddy and eating a toasted Marmite sandwich, just the way they had done in the dorm at school.

“There are some tastes acquired in childhood,” she announced, taking another bite, “that never leave you. If I were cast away on a desert island I should long for Marmite on soggy toast.”

Vennie laughed. “If you were cast away with me I’d make you paw-paw soufflé and coconut pudding. ‘Dessert Isle’ would be a good name for a restaurant, you know,” she added thoughtfully.

“So what about the job at the Café Laurent? Shall you accept their meager offer or hold out for more?”

“I don’t know.” Wearing a pink leotard, Venetia was dancing energetically to the workout tape on the video. “God, this is killing,” she breathed, keeping pace with the tape.

“I don’t know why you bother.” Kate picked up another bit of toast. “You’re in better shape than the girls on the video. I shall wait until I’m fat and forty.”

“The idea,” gasped Vennie, “is never to be fat and never to look forty! Ohh.” She collapsed with a groan onto the floor. “Enough, enough …”

Kate leaned over the edge of the bed, surveying her friend as she lay spread eagle on the carpet, gasping. “It seems to me you’ll never get the chance to see forty if you keep up this pace. Here, have a Marmite sandwich.”

“Thanks.” Venetia leaned against the bed, chewing
thoughtfully. “Kate, what shall I do?” she asked. “Or rather, do I have any choice?”

Kate Lancaster had glossy brown hair and her mother’s green eyes and the face, as her father always said, of a well-fed gamine, slightly plump and very appealing. However, behind that appeal lay the brain of a mathematical wizard. Kate was at Cambridge studying computer sciences, and her nature was analytical and practical.

“Let’s examine all the facts, Vennie,” she said. “One. You can’t go on cooking for those ghastly weekend orgies.”

“House parties,” corrected Venetia.

“They’d be orgies, all right, if those husbands had their way. Don’t interrupt, Vennie. One. No more weekend orgies; two. City lunches are potentially a good business but so far no one has offered you a full-time job, and occasional work doesn’t bring in enough loot.”

“Maybe I’m not good enough?” Venetia finished her toast and sank back onto the carpet, her eyes fixed on the athletic, super-fit, smiling Californians leaping their way through aerobic exercises.

“Nonsense—and I said you weren’t to interrupt. Now, three. The only other possibility at this point is a full-time job working in a wine bar or a restaurant, and the best of those bets is Laurent’s, because they’re new and it’ll give you a chance to make a name for yourself as a chef. However—and this is a major ‘but’—the money they are offering is a pittance because of your youth and inexperience. It’s exploitation and they know it—they’d have to pay five times as much for a man with just a couple of years’ work behind him, and he wouldn’t be nearly as good as you.”

“So?” Venetia turned from the video and her eyes met Kate’s. “What do I do?”

“I’m damned if I know!”

The phone rang and Kate leapt off the bed to answer it.

“That’s the trouble with you computer people,” Vennie shouted after her, “you lack human response.” She turned down the tape, listening to see if she knew who Kate was chatting with on the phone. It must be someone nice, she sounded very up.

“Vennie,” called Kate from the hall, “it’s for you.”

“Who is it?” Venetia unrolled herself lazily from the floor.

“It’s Morgan. Hurry up, he’s in Barbados.”

“Barbados?” Venetia shot to her feet and ran down the hall to Lydia’s room, where Kate sat on the edge of her mother’s bed, giggling with Morgan McBain.

“Bye, then,” she called. “Here’s Vennie.”

“Morgan, hello. Are you
really
in Barbados? You are? And is the sky really blue and is there still sunshine somewhere in this wet world?” Venetia curled up on the bed and tucked her feet under her comfortably, a smile lighting her face. “Yes … I
think
I’m missing you.”

Kate watched with interest. There was no doubt in her mind that Morgan was
very
keen on Venetia.

“Morgan, really? You can’t mean it? But I can’t—I mean it’s impossible … I might be starting a new job next week. What do you mean, doing what? Cooking, of course—actually, as chef at a new restaurant.”

Kate gazed at her anxiously. “What’s going on?” she whispered.

Vennie put her hand over the receiver. “He wants me to go to Barbados for a week or two—to stay on his father’s yacht. But how can I? I’ve got to take this job.”

“Ohh,” groaned Kate, clapping her hand to her head dramatically and falling backward onto the rug, “Venetia Haven, you are so
thick
sometimes, I can’t bear it.”

Venetia grinned at her doubtfully. “No, no, Morgan, it’s just Kate acting silly.” She looked at Kate again. “He says you can come too.”

Kate groaned louder. “I have exams for the next two weeks, Vennie! But you don’t.”

“Morgan,” said Venetia firmly, “I can’t come, it’s very tempting, but I can’t. I really must take this job. What? Oh, now you
are
joking! You’ll check to make sure? Okay. Yes, yes. Right … yes, me too. Bye.”

“What?” cried Kate. “What now?”

“Morgan said that the chef from the
Fiesta
wants to go back to New York to work, and they have to find someone else. He’s pretty sure I could have the job for the entire winter season in the Caribbean.” Vennie clapped her hands over her ears at Kate’s scream of delight.

“Amazing!” shrieked Kate. “Brilliant! It’s option four! Wait a minute, how much will they pay you?”

“Oh, Kate, I don’t know,” laughed Venetia, “but in any case I don’t think that I could accept the job.”

“Why ever not? You’re good enough.”

“It’s sort of … well, they would really be doing me a favor offering it to me.”

“And what else,” demanded Kate, “are friends for? I only wish they needed a half-trained computer scientist!”

Venetia laughed. “Then you think I should take the job—that is, if it is offered?”

“Take it,” said Kate firmly, “and take a large jar of Marmite with you in case you’re shipwrecked on a desert island with Morgan. Give or take a prince or two, Morgan McBain is the catch of the decade, and I think it’s you he’s after!”

“I’m just a passing fancy,” said Venetia, remembering the way Morgan’s mouth had felt on hers, the pressure of his strong, slim body as he held her close.

“Don’t you believe it,” Kate assured her. “He has all the signs of a man in the early throes of love, and you are the object of his secret passion!”

As their eyes met they burst into laughter, rolling on
the bed in delight. “Imagine me as the object of anyone’s secret passion?” gasped Venetia. “
Me
, a femme fatale!”

Lydia Lancaster wondered what was going on. The two girls were hovering near the phone, pouncing on it every time it rang like lovelorn teenagers—Which I expect they are, she told herself, picking up the phone and dialing.

“Mummy! Who are you calling?”

Lydia stared at Kate in astonishment. “I’m calling Jennifer Herbert, dear. Why?”

“Ohh, Mummy,
please
, not now—you’re always ages with her and we’re expecting a call
any minute
. An
important
call,” she added, placing her finger on the receiver rest.

“Kate! Really, that’s too much—you’ve cut me off!”

“I’m sorry, Mummy, but
please—
just this once. It’s truly important.”

Kate stood implacably holding down the phone rest with her finger as Lydia glared at her.

“Who—”

The phone rang and Kate lifted her finger.

“Hello?” said a voice.