Shopping With the Enemy (22 page)

‘Right.’

Svetlana looked on icily as Randall said his goodbyes. He didn’t even dare to try and shake her hand, just gave her a friendly wave.

‘It was an adventure meeting you, ma’am. Hope you get your boys back.’

Svetlana scowled and stalked off in the direction of the illuminated petrol station.

‘What time is it?’ Annie wondered.

‘Aha!’ Randall cracked another grin. ‘Time for our paths to uncross and for the rest of your life to begin.’

A plastic cup of coffee in her hand, Svetlana stared at the motorway ahead and watched as the road signs counted down the distance to Vienna.

‘What are we going to do when we get there?’ she asked, not taking her eyes from the road.

‘You’ll need to get some more information for us. Try Harry, try Michael again, or maybe you should finally talk to Igor so he realizes you’re totally
serious
about getting the boys back no matter what.’

Svetlana spent several minutes firing out messages with her phone and dialling numbers.

‘Harry has no more news on where the boys are,’ she said, staring at the text which had just come in. She punched in another number.

‘Hello, I wish to speak with Igor please. Tell him it’s Svetlana.’

She obviously got short shrift because she took the phone from her ear and exclaimed: ‘Oh! Igor!’

She tossed the remains of the coffee down her throat.

‘I will never get Igor out of my life. So long as I am the mother of his children, the boys who will inherit his empire, then I will always have to deal with his bullying.’

Annie suspected this was true. Men like Igor – well, there weren’t in fact many men like Igor. How many mighty, all-powerful billionaires could there be? Moguls who flitted between London, Moscow, the Middle East and the USA the way most people flitted between home, the office and the supermarket.

What advice could she possibly give on how to deal with an ex-husband like Igor? It wasn’t as if she could refer Svetlana to a self-help manual: ‘How to Cope with your Billionaire Ex-Husband.’

But then again, when Svetlana had worked out how to control him, she should probably write the book. There was bound to be some demand, although it was undoubtedly a niche market.

‘Just keep standing up to Igor,’ Annie advised: ‘that’s the only thing he respects. Never show weakness, just stand your ground and fight for your rights. It’s like dealing with a Rottweiler or an angry bull … probably.’

She’d be the first to admit she’d never had to face down either of these horrors.

Before Svetlana could reply, the phone she was holding tightly in her hand began to buzz.

‘It could be a message!’ she exclaimed, fumbling the handset and almost dropping it in her agitation.

‘
We are in Vienna, staying here tonight
,’ she read out, ‘
Michael
.’

‘Fantastic news!’ Annie said. ‘But where in Vienna? Ask him quickly, while he’s still got the phone in his hands.’

Svetlana tapped out a message and together they waited for the reply, Svetlana in a state of almost unbearable tension. For several minutes there was silence, apart from the hum of the Bentley engine, probably thrashing its way through one litre of fuel per second.

Then the phone buzzed again.

‘I don’t believe it!’ Svetlana whispered.

Holding the screen up she read out: ‘
Near a big church, in a square, saw sign for Konig something
.’

She turned to Annie, asking anxiously, ‘Do you think that could be enough? It doesn’t sound like enough … will we be able to find them?’

Chapter Thirty

New York

Parker’s date wear:

Skinny cut navy shirt (PS By Paul Smith – gift from Mom)

Black skinny jeans (Old Navy)

Brown leather sneakers (Converse)

Black pork-pie hat (The Brooklyn Hat Store)

Total est. cost: $195

LANA AND PARKER
had first of all done coffee in a place so urban cool she’d panicked about what to order. ‘Caramel latte’ just didn’t look as if it would cut it in a hangout with jagged metal sculptures rearing from the walls and moody waitresses with cropped hair and chunky boots.

Then they’d gone on to a live art event where the
artists
had splattered the crowd with paint while wailing at them about the destruction of the individual in a sea of corporate clones.

So far, this was Lana’s most exciting night out in New York ever. She’d hung onto every word Parker said and everywhere they’d gone, she’d been introduced to his friends and he’d explained about her tunic.

‘Look at this, look at this dress she’s wearing,’ he kept telling people. ‘This is my work. This is my print. Doesn’t it look cool? Lana works for this independent label and they are making up some really cool designs with my prints.’

One thing Lana had picked up in the course of the whirlwind evening was that Parker knew a lot of people.

He knew waitresses and doormen. He knew artists and gallery types. He knew students and designers, shop owners and barmen. On this evening alone, he seemed to have made seven new friends. He’d added everyone to his Facebook page and Twitter feed. He had 13,870 followers, he’d told her, twice.

And everyone who’d met her had been just a tiny little bit uninterested; well, that’s how Lana had read it.

No one had gushed: ‘Hi, how are you? How did you meet Parker?’ in that sort of you-must-be-Parker’s-new-love-interest kind of way.

In fact people had been very: ‘Hi …’ and then straight back into conversation with Parker. Was this because he was so charming and interesting and out-there and she, by comparison, just wasn’t?

And although it was a really fascinating evening and she’d loved being right beside him as he toured her through it, they’d hardly had any time to talk.

These were the niggles, the little considerations she thought about as they made the long walk to her apartment. He’d insisted on walking her home and told her off when she’d suggested a cab.

‘But it’s such a great evening. And New York at night is the best, plus walking is the most environmentally friendly way. You’ve got to remember that.’

They were walking past a huge gallery window with an oversized, multi-coloured cube in the window.

‘This is such a great piece, isn’t it?’ Parker said, slowing down and turning to face it.

‘Ummm … very colourful … very imposing,’ Lana said, hoping she didn’t sound like a complete twerp.

‘I have always wanted to kiss someone right here, right in front of this window. Right in front of the Vronsky cube.’

Lana felt a weird little shudder pass all the way down to her toes when he said this.

Kiss …

She had been thinking about kissing all evening: the if, the when, the where of kissing – and now it sounded as if there was about to be an important development on the kissing front.

‘You’ve always wanted to?’ she asked, then couldn’t help adding a little cynically, ‘but that cube’s probably only been there for a few weeks.’

Parker shrugged: ‘You know what I mean.’

‘You’ve always wanted to kiss
someone
,’ Lana repeated. ‘That doesn’t sound so good. That sounds as if anyone would do.’

She was standing very close to him now, close enough to see the stubble on his upper lip, close enough to smell the soap-meets-coffee smell he was giving off. Definitely close enough to kiss.

Here she was right at the moment she had been thinking about for days: right beside him, right beside the Vronsky cube. A kiss was imminent. His lips parted slightly, he leaned just a little closer, towards her.

And suddenly she just wasn’t quite sure.

She did very much want to see what it would be like to kiss Parker. But then the thought of having to tell Gracie was unbearable. Gracie had just about been able to forgive her for going on a date with Parker … but kissing … Lana did not know if Gracie would ever forgive kissing.

Now his lips were right in front of hers. Wouldn’t she like to find out …?

She moved forward, just to the point where she could feel Parker’s warm breath on her upper lip.

But no – Gracie, what about Gracie? Lana pulled her head away.

‘What’s the matter?’ Parker asked, his pupils wide and his voice a little husky.

Lana blurted out the first thing she could think of: ‘Look at the cube! It’s changed colour!’

Parker glanced through the gallery window then back at her. He put his hand under her chin and held it so she had to look into his face once again.

‘Lana from London?’ he asked. ‘Are we going to kiss … or what?’

Chapter Thirty-One

Austria

Lady of the night:

Short black fake fur coat (an admirer)

Black lace babydoll (C&A)

Black lace underwear (same)

Black stockings (same)

Dangly diamanté earrings (market stall)

Comfortable patent black heels (Prada – real)

Black and gold handbag (Prada – fake)

Total est. cost:
€
570

‘VIENNA NORTH? OR
Vienna South? What do you think?’ Annie asked as the motorway began to divide up into exits and options.

She was not exactly thrilled at the prospect of
having
to haul the great, clunking Bentley around city streets that she didn’t know. But now was not the time to dwell on minor inconveniences.

Svetlana was poring over the street map of Vienna she’d found in the back of the Austrian map book.

‘There are so many, many, many places with Konig at the start of their name. Too many.’

‘Don’t panic.’ Annie saw a sign above the next lane which indicated ‘Vienna Centrum’, made a late lane change and earned herself a severe honking from the car behind.

‘No need to panic,’ she added, although her heart was now racing: ‘I thought we would drive around the places you and Igor used to visit. Men are creatures of habit, if they’ve been somewhere once and liked it, they usually go back. Is he like that?’

‘Yes!’ Svetlana exclaimed and suddenly looked much more hopeful. ‘He has two favourite hotels in Vienna, this is where we need to try first. Genius Annah, I would not have thought of this.’

‘Right. Get out your phone, look those hotels up, find the addresses and see if you can download some basic sort of satnav that will get us there. It’s only eleven o’clock … we’ve got hours of time to find them.’

‘We will find them,’ Svetlana said, but her voice didn’t have its usual ring of confidence. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘The Hotel Brunswick. We try there first. Keep
following
signs for town centre and I will try to direct you.’

At least the roads were quiet, Annie kept telling herself as she navigated the Beast up streets and along avenues, trying to negotiate traffic lights, tramlines and all the other hazards of a foreign city.

She clipped the high kerb of a roundabout once and dragged the bottom of the car over several vicious speed bumps. These injuries to the Bentley made her cringe because one day, hopefully soon, the car would have to be returned to the Villa Verdina and she did not want to be around when Carlo and the chauffeur took a look at it.

Thunk.

As she pulled up for a red traffic light, she clipped the wing mirror against a railing.

‘Be careful,’ Svetlana warned.

‘I’m trying.’

‘This is the opera and the Hotel Brunswick is not far from here.’

After a missed turning, a slightly heated debate and a U-turn across four lanes, the Bentley rattled to a halt outside exactly the kind of hotel Annie could have guessed Igor would frequent: an ornate, classical building with liveried doormen in top hats and tails.

‘I will go in and ask. You wait here,’ Svetlana instructed.

‘You’ll go in and ask?’ Annie repeated incredulously. ‘Do you think they’re just going to tell you at reception: yes, no problem, Igor the billionaire and his two kidnapped children are staying here?’

Svetlana reapplied her lipstick, smoothed down her hair-do, then pushed open the car door and stepped out, clasping her clutch bag firmly.

‘I know all of Igor’s aliases and I know how to make hotel staff talk,’ she said firmly.

Annie felt a wave of relief. Svetlana was back in action. With that kind of attitude and an alligator purse full of huge denomination euro notes, she was very likely to succeed.

As Svetlana strode towards the hotel lobby, Annie reverse parked gingerly in a space she hoped would be big enough. A nasty scraping sound suggested that hubcap and solid Viennese kerb had suffered another bruising encounter.

She leaned back in the seat and rested her eyelids briefly. Tired? Tired didn’t even come close, plus her shoulders and arms were locked solid after an entire day and night spent manoeuvring the Beast up and down the mountains.

A luxury spa break?! Pah! She would need one to recover from this trip.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw a woman a little way off leaning against a railing and looking at the car. She was in the highest heels,
sheerest
black 10 deniers and what looked like a very short black fur coat over a very short dress.

‘No, I’m not your taxi and I hope it turns up soon,’ Annie said to herself.

Moments later, Svetlana’s high heels could be heard clacking down the pavement towards her. Annie reached over to open the door and Svetlana flung herself into the seat.

‘I have never been so insulted in my life!’ she declared. ‘They think I am some hotel hooker, like this one over here.’

With that she pointed at the woman in the short fur coat.

‘Oh, is that what she’s doing? I thought she was waiting for a taxi.’

Svetlana snorted.

‘I check all his names, they say no to every one of them. Then they look at me and say women like me are not welcome at the Hotel Brunswick. Can you believe this? I mean – I have stayed there! In the presidential suite! I show him my necklace and say what kind of woman do you think I am? Do women like this buy their jewellery in Cartier? He replies: “I believe so, ma’am.” Oh my God, I am so angry I just about kill him.’