Temptation Island (45 page)

‘I’m going to have a baby.’

JB returned to Los Angeles in the same week that Lori departed for Spain.

He found out about her grandmother’s death. Since the moment of his intervention he had stood by his vow to keep watch over her. The scouts he employed to source for Cacatra were, from time to time, engaged in other purposes. Moreau had his own methods. They knew enough not to ask questions.

By the same manner he discovered her pregnancy. Or, rather, the suspicion of it. Lori had been forced to cancel several bookings through La Lumière and had been sighted incognito in a downtown pharmacy. It wasn’t long before word reached him that she was being moved into an arrangement with aspiring actor Maximo Diaz.

Wednesday lunch, JB met with a global clothing chain interested in acquiring a customised Moreau range. He ordered well, and ate and drank with apparent enjoyment. To look at him it would be impossible to know that anything in him was altered.

It was. As plans were laid before him, proposals set forward and pitches anxiously articulated, he listened with the same removed expression, the same still blue eyes that had become his trademark. Personnel elected for the meeting had been briefed that this was a practice designed to draw associates into saying more than they wished to: silence was a powerful negotiator. In reality it was nothing of the sort. It was the guard going up, the hatches slowly battening, the armour reassembled. A door ajar pulled shut.

‘Let us talk you through stock changes,’ chattered a nervous buyer, fumbling to retrieve her paperwork. ‘We’d anticipate an autumn-to-winter range,’ she babbled. ‘Chunky-knit coats, leather accessories, the works—let’s call it country chic with the Moreau signature twist.’

He supposed she had been with Maximo just after they had been together on Cacatra. Her dates would suggest as much. But then Lori’s declaration that he had been her first was no guarantee, for when had a word counted for anything? It was actions that mattered. If anyone should know that, it was him. And if she had been able to lie about her feelings then she would have lied about that.

But, then, what feelings had she admitted to? None. Lori had given an impression, certainly, but she’d never confirmed it. The rest had been his invention.

JB wasn’t a man who indulged in imagination. He dealt in facts. And he hadn’t realised till now that he’d started imagining again. He’d started dreaming.

The buyer was arranging a stack of documents on the table. It was awkward, she should have waited till coffee had been served, but enthusiasm or pressure was getting the better of her.

‘As you can see—’ she indicated the charts ‘—our yield at this time of year is streaks ahead of our competitors …’

If there was one thing JB Moreau could not abide, it was being made the fool. He himself had not been with another woman, not even his wife, since the night with Arabella Kline in Vegas. Wrongly he had expected the same of Lori—he’d
assumed
the same. He’d taken for granted that she would wait for him, when in truth during those first few months of their reacquaintance he’d given her no reason to do any such thing. Who knew how long
she’d been with other men? He’d understood the agreement with Peter Selznick, much as he’d hated it, to be platonic, but, then, who knew how far they had gone behind closed doors? Had she been with Peter in the way she had with him? And now, with Maximo? Pregnant with another man’s child when she
knew
the painful truth? When he’d confided the sad, sad reality that he was unable to ever become a father himself?

And at the centre of it all, the fact that he had made an error of judgement. JB was not accustomed to being wrong. He knew people, he was able to work for Cacatra by knowing people, and the discovery that he had misread Lori Garcia so dramatically did not sit easy on his mind. He’d been blinded by emotions, reeled in by imagining her to be reminiscent of somebody else when she wasn’t. She was an entirely different person.

Emotions, as he’d always known, were the dominion of the weak.

‘So—’ the buyer was flushed in the face, exhilarated following her presentation ‘—do you have any questions for us?’

For the first time since the meeting began, JB smiled. He suppressed a sensation that for any other would have been heartache, but for him was a silent thunderstorm, breaking over distant hills.

When Lori landed in California ten days later, she had a deluge of voicemails waiting. Three were from Maximo Diaz. On seeing the blinking lights, she’d hoped JB might have got in touch. She knew he’d been in Europe on business but would now be back in town. It was imperative she spoke to him.

To her disappointment, it was a different voice that emanated from the machine.

‘I haven’t stopped thinking about you,’
the first message said.
‘I must see you again.’
The second was a direct invitation:
‘I’m having dinner with friends on Saturday. Join me?’
The third, Maximo seemed to remember the reason for her absence:
‘Anything you need, I’m here. ’

She and Maximo had met just once, as promised to Jacqueline, days before she left for Spain. Maximo had been courteous, friendly, and as incredible in the flesh as One Touch had promised. But Lori had felt nothing. How could she, when every waking moment was consumed with memories of JB Moreau?

And how could she, when she was carrying his child?

Oh, she had battled it. Pretended it wasn’t happening. Buried it and unearthed it and dusted it off and tried to find a way of handling it that made any kind of sense.

Even now she could scarcely believe it was true.

Tony had taken the news badly. He had imagined his daughter to still be the good Catholic girl he and Maria had raised. The irony was, for a long while, she had been.

‘How could you do this?’
He had charged across his mother’s kitchen, reeling from the blow.
‘What were you thinking?’

Lori had fought to restrain her own temper. Her concern was for JB and their unborn child. She had neither time nor inclination for trial in her father’s court.

‘I found what I was waiting for.’

‘Which was?’
He had been unable to comprehend why she would even consider keeping the child, jettisoning her career in the same sweep as shaming herself.

‘Love. ’

‘You know nothing about love—and even less about this man. And yet you’re prepared to throw your life away for him?’

‘I don’t see it as throwing my life away.’

‘He’s
married,
Loriana.’
Tony could barely spit the words out, he was so furious.
‘He has a
wife.
Are you mad? How could you be so thoughtless?’

But, in spite of how Lori feared the discovery of her pregnancy, she had never before been thinking more clearly. Her time on Cacatra had been the most lucid of her life.

Now she was back in America, it was clear what she had to do. If Tony didn’t want to help her then she was not going to beg. It hurt, but what choice did she have? She was a woman now, not a girl. JB had shown her that. Once she spoke with him, everything would be OK. They were meant for each other and this child was proof. She wanted to tell him that Rebecca Stuttgart had been wrong. That he could and would be a father. That their union had resulted in the miracle she had no doubt he longed for. That she loved him.

How would he take it? What would he say? He’d be shocked at first, but then what? He’d be overjoyed, she was sure, but he’d tread carefully, too—the timing was far from ideal and there were people, commitments, to consider. Lori moved between states of ecstasy and unease, knowing her news would change both their lives beyond recognition.

Lori managed to put it off for most of the day, returning Maximo’s calls and politely declining the invite to dinner. She swam and fixed lunch. She spoke to Desideria about the fragrance brand she’d been signed for. She welcomed
her assistant, a fresh-faced, efficient girl named Anne, who talked through her schedule for the week and brought her mail.

‘Most I’ve sorted,’ she said, ‘but it’s really piled up since you’ve been away.’

By evening, Lori had exhausted all avenues of diversion.

She dialled JB’s number and it rang and rang. She considered trying the agency but knew the chances of him being there were minimal. Perhaps she would leave a message.

Hello, it’s Lori. I’m pregnant with your child. Call me
.

She’d try again in the morning.

Sleep evaded her that night. Lori’s mind fevered with thoughts of Corazón and her father, the island of Cacatra, the feel of JB moving inside her and the feel of a life growing, now, where he had been. The mystery number—LA864—that insisted on surfacing though she tried to keep it down. She dreamed of the Indian Ocean littered with torn pages and woke needing water.

At one a.m., she padded downstairs in the gloom. The stack of mail Anne had left caught her eye and automatically she sifted through it.

Immediately, she spotted them.

Three sealed, plain white envelopes, identical to the one she had received weeks ago.

Quickly, before she changed her mind, she tore them open, one after the other. Presumably an order had been intended, but her absence meant they had lost their sequence.

d E S
e r V e t O b e P U
ni
s H e d

P r E Tt y Gi R L s w H o bRea K Pr Om I Se S

R e M em
b e
r T
h
a t

Rigid with fear, Lori read the notes a second time, then a third.

All possessed the same quality that had concerned her about the first. They were somehow knowing, somehow familiar. Messages meant only for her.

Temptation was to send them the same way, but sense told her to keep the evidence. Whoever this person was had crossed a line. They had been to the house … more than once. They knew where she lived. They might be on her right now.

Lori shivered. She crept back upstairs but it was hours until she got any sleep.

47
Aurora

‘Fuck Strike Records,’ announced Casey Amos, drawing on a fat joint before offering it to Aurora. ‘I’ll talk to my dad and he’ll talk to his people, piece-o’-cake.’

They were in the basement home-movie-theatre at Roland Amos’s Venice Beach pad. Casey was sprawled across a leather couch, his hand buried deep in a bucket of gummy bears. Aurora had only known him a month but had learned already he was as addicted to them as he was to his bags of white powder and pills.

Nepotism
, one of the words Pascale had taught her, sprang to mind. Above, she felt the weight of Roland Amos’s success bearing down on them: framed platinum discs adorning the walls, all those photographs of the famous mogul grinning alongside hallowed names of the music industry, going way back to the big guns of the seventies and eighties.

‘Forget it,’ said Aurora. ‘Rita’s on the case.’

Casey raised an unconvinced eyebrow and she didn’t blame him. Strike Records was pissed off. She had aborted on three meetings now and clearly they deemed her too much of a liability. OK, so the first time was her fault, she accepted that, but the second occasion she swore Rita hadn’t even told her about (even though Rita claimed she’d been drunk and hadn’t remembered). The third she turned up at the wrong address and spent an hour in traffic across town. Everyone had left by the time she got there and all she had to show for it were several fuming messages from Rita on her iPhone.
‘You ‘re falling apart,’
her agent had blasted.
‘What’s going on, Aurora? What’s the matter?’
As if she could tell Rita. As if she could tell anyone.

Nepotism
. What was the difference between pulling favours from Strike because of Tom Nash’s kudos, and Casey’s promise that his dad would help her out? Absolutely nothing.

‘Good luck with that,’ said Casey, groping in the bucket of gums.

Aurora toked heavily on the joint and sat back. Justin Bieber’s new music video filled the screen and Casey snorted in a derogatory way and ate more bears.

‘Who gives a shit anyway?’ she muttered. ‘I can’t sing.’

‘Since when’s that got anything to do with it?’

‘It’s kind of the point, isn’t it? I can’t dance, I can’t perform. I haven’t got a musical bone in my body.’ Bieber’s hair was mesmerising.

‘Crap,’ said Casey. ‘It’s in the genes.’

She gulped.
Genes
.

‘Success, the right connections,’ she conceded. ‘Not talent.’

‘Who gives a rat’s ass about talent?’ Casey gestured
to the screen. The sound of him chewing on the gummy bears was all of a sudden intolerable. ‘My pop looks out for me. Sure, he’ll bring me in on the big time. I’m hardly the schmuck who’s gonna complain.’

‘What if you wanted to do something else?’

‘Like what?’

‘Something different.’

Casey shrugged. ‘What’d be the point?’ He retrieved the roll-up and sucked on its end, lying back to eject a thin stream of smoke.

They sat in silence for a bit. The Bieber video ended. Aurora asked, ‘How do you separate who you really are from the person you’re supposed to be?’

Casey screwed up his face. ‘Huh?’

‘Imagine you were born on the other side of the world, to different parents, in a whole other life … What then?’

‘Fuck all.’

‘How can you be sure?’

He reached for her. ‘Wanna gimme a blow job?’

‘Get screwed.’

He was unoffended. ‘Quit complaining. Enjoy what you got. Millions would.’

Aurora had an unexpected longing for St Agnes. Much as she’d whinged about it, right now she wanted nothing more than to sit up in her dorm talking to Pascale after lights-out. She wanted to ask Pascale everything she knew about JB and Cacatra and Reuben van der Meyde, but at the same time was loath to acknowledge that Pascale might have been privy to the facts all along and that made her as deranged as her cousin. Fran Harrington had messaged her last week saying that Pascale had been accepted into a top college in Geneva and had acquired a boyfriend twice her
age who played in a folk band. That part of her life seemed now like a daydream, which was ironic since it was the only part of her life where she’d felt engaged. Her friendship with Pascale had been the anchor she’d never known, one that forced her to assess things where she’d never assessed things before. LA, the people here, they ate her up.