The Billionaire Banker (20 page)

And suddenly she tenses. Al this will end soon. This apartment, this bed, these clothes, this delicious banter, this man…will disappear into nothing. She will be left only with memories. She clutches his forearms and pulls his mouth down to hers and kisses him desperately, opening her mouth, begging him to be inside her. He has already left his mark on her. She must leave her mark on him. She lies naked but for her necklace, and realizes she doesn’t know how to.

When the desert wind blew it covered everything in sand.

Twenty six

emember when you said you wanted to be part of ‘Rmy world? Do you still want to?’

‘Yes.’

‘It is very ugly.’

‘I don’t care. I want to know.’

For a moment, he hesitates, there is doubt there, and then an indescribable expression flashes in his eyes. ‘All right. Let’s go.’ He leads her to a BMW parked in the street. She looks at him questioningly.

‘Hired,’ he says briefly.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Somewhere in the New Forest.’

They drive in silence, the atmosphere in the car taut and foreign, and stop outside what seems to be a lodge of some kind. Lana looks at her watch. 10.00pm. The building is small and unremarkable. There are other cars parked in the car park, but something feels different.

‘They are all hired, aren’t they?’

‘Yes,’ he says shortly. ‘Come.’

While she looks around her, he gets out of the car, opens the boot and takes out two boxes. They go into the low building and enter a large empty room with many doors. All the doors are open except one. Lana shivers.

Something about the place doesn’t feel right. They enter one of the rooms and Blake closes the door behind them.

There is nothing in that room except a table and a mirror.

Blake puts the two boxes on the table.

‘You wanted to come into my world. Here’s your chance. Are you sure?’

He looks different. His eyes are cold. He is hoping she will say no. But she wants to enter his world. So badly, she throws caution to the winds. She licks her lips, swallows, and then nods.

He holds out the box tied with a red ribbon.

She takes the box from him. It is not heavy. ‘What’s in it?’‘Open it and see.’

He watches her untie the ribbon and lift the lid. She pushes aside the tissue and finds a mask. White and pretty.

She raises her eyes to him. ‘Do I put it on?’

‘Not yet.’

She puts the mask aside and takes out the bulky red garment inside. It is a cloak with a hood. She looks at him.

Her expression begs, ‘What? What is this all about?’

He ignores her unspoken query. ‘Wear it.’

She slips into it and he steps forward and does the button at her throat. The coat is thick and voluminous. It covers her entirely. Then he pulls the hood up and puts the mask on her face. He stands her in front of the mirror.

‘Remember,’ he warns. ‘Do not take this mask off after we leave this room. No matter what happens the mask and the robes do not come off. Do you understand?’

She nods in the mirror.

He opens his box and dresses himself in the black robes that are inside. His mask is gold with a beaked nose.

Unlike hers his seems sinister and forbidding.

‘Ready?’

‘Yes.’

He puts his hand in the small of her back and guides her out of the room. They cross the large empty space and go through another door. It turns out to be the back door of the lodge. A man sitting on a horse-drawn coach is waiting. He does not turn to look at them but stares straight ahead. The bizarre and forbidding alchemy of the moment causes Lana to blankly note the white socks on the horse. They climb in and the coachman immediately sets the horse to a trot. They follow a path that snakes through woods until they suddenly come upon a grand mansion perched on high ground.

Lana breath is swept away by it. Made of cut gray stone, it is like something found in a windswept ghost story. Awestruck, she stares at the roaring gargoyles and the many soaring gothic spires that pierce the purple sky.

Hundreds of windows stare out like glassy dead eyes. Lana thinks one of the windows might have blinked, a flash of yellow iris, before it snapped shut. Someone was watching their arrival.

The coach comes to a stop on the entrance stairs and they climb out. She feels Blake’s hand on her waist as he helps her out.

‘Remember, the mask does not come off, even in the ladies.’

‘OK.’

‘And don’t tell anyone your name.’

‘OK.’

‘Don’t speak unless spoken to.’

‘Right.’

‘I’m serious, Lana.’

She looks up at his masked face. ‘You’re making me nervous, Blake.’

‘It’s important.’

‘Then don’t leave my side.’

‘I’ve no intention of doing that.’

They go up the shallow stone steps. When they reach the top, Lana turns to look down upon the magnificent garden maze. In the purplish light it is very beautiful. At the entrance, a totally expressionless, bone-thin man, dressed in black coat-tails, nods at Blake and slowly waves his hand towards the interior of the house.

There are more ushers and silent staff dressed in black who nod at them and wave them deeper into the interior.

The funereal garments and the silence begin to seep into Lana. She recognizes them to be poisonous.

Finally, two men open a pair of double doors and they enter a large hall full of masked, robed people. There is a stage at one end with a throne on it. The room reminds her of an old-fashioned theater with balconies, where people are standing and talking in whispers. There are also many doors that lead away from the hall. A strange throbbing music is playing into that odd air of expectancy and waiting.

Lana looks up at Blake. ‘This reminds me of Eyes Wide Shut.’

‘Yes, Stanley Kubrick’s movies are filled with hidden messages.’

A waiter brings a tray. Blake shakes his head. When Lana tries to reach for a glass, she feels the subtle pressure that he exerts on her hand. She shakes her head. It is at this point that Lana realizes that there are other women besides her who are wearing the exact same mask as her.

‘Hello,’ a man’s voice addresses them from behind.

They turn. A stocky man in an odd grey and silver mask is standing about a foot away from them. ‘You brought…someone,’ he says, his eyes glittering blackly through the eyeholes of his mask. Lana feels Blake tense.

‘Yes.’

‘Will you be going into the main room?’ the man asks.

‘Of course,’ Blake says smoothly, but Lana feels the tremor that goes through his body.

‘Good, I will see you there. If I don’t, tell your father I send my regards.’

Blake nods, and the man turns on his heel and disappears into the crowd of robes and masks.

‘Come,’ Blake says, and leads her towards the entrance.

The large doors open, and they retrace their steps out into the evening air. They go down the shallow steps and into a waiting coach.

When she turns to Blake, he puts a finger to his lips.

The coach drops them off outside the lodge house, they traverse that strange empty room, and go back out to where the hired car is waiting. Blake unlocks the car.

‘Take your cloak off and drop it on the ground,’ he orders as he takes his own cloak off and chucks it into the back seat.

She does as she is told and gets into the car. Her hands are trembling. Blake’s fear and tension have transferred themselves to her.

Blake starts the engine and the car screeches away. He says nothing and drives very fast.

‘Chuck the mask out of the window,’ he says when he has been driving for about five minutes. He takes his mask off and flips it onto the back seat where it lands on his black cloak.

‘Why did I have to throw mine away but not you?’

‘Yours is generic; my cloak has my family insignia sewn into it and my mask is distinct to me.’

Ten minutes later, Blake pulls off the road and, turning around, takes her into his arms. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t have taken you there. I don’t know what I was thinking of. You’re just a baby.’

‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘Nothing happened.’

He looks into her eyes. He is ful of secrets. ‘Yes, nothing happened.’

That night he jerks awake in a cold sweat. He sits upright. The movement wakes her. ‘Did you have a nightmare?’ she asks, her hand reaching for his back.

‘I dreamed I took you into the main room,’ he says. His voice is hoarse with horror.

‘What happens in the main room?’

He turns to her. In the dark his eyes are tormented pools. ‘Oh, Lana, Lana, Lana,’ he whispers in her hair.

‘Tell me,’ she urges, but he shakes his head. ‘My world is ugly and corrupt. It only looks good from the outside.

When our time is over, I must return you the way I found you, pure and innocent.’

Gently he opens her legs. ‘Let me hide a little while longer in your world,’ he rasps and buries his mouth in her sex. His mouth is warm and soft. Her body responds, arches; her hands come out to grasp his hair; her legs entwine like ropes around his head, and she comes with a gasp while she is wonderfully full of him, but through it all she never forgets what he said—when our time is over.

Twenty seven

ana wakes up and turns around to look at the man Lbeside her. In the dimness she stares at him. He is so heartbreakingly beautiful when he sleeps he makes her want to cry. That hard mouth softened, the thick, stubby eyelashes dark-blue smudges on his face. She slips out of bed quietly. She is ravenous these days. She smiles to think it must be all the sex. She closes the bedroom door and pads into the kitchen. She switches on the light and goes to the fridge. Her hands reach for the tin of caviar and a jar of marmalade. She goes to the breadbox and cuts two slice of nutty bread. She pops them into the toaster and stands by the counter, yawning.

When they are ready, she spreads a thick layer of caviar on one slice of toast and spoons a dollop of marmalade over the other. She slaps them together, pops herself on a stool, and bites into her creation. It is so delicious she closes her eyes to savor it. She opens her mouth to take a second bite.

‘Is this another terrible combination that you Brits have conjured up?’ Blake teases from the doorway.

Her eyes snap open, her mouth closes, and her eyes move over her food. Marmalade and caviar. Slowly her gaze lifts to him. He is lounging against the doorframe as nude as the day he was born.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asks.

She closes her mouth and tries to smile. ‘It’s my own thing,’ she says weakly. Her heart is beating so loud in her ears that she is sure he must be able to hear. She puts the sandwich down and looks at him. ‘Can’t you sleep?’

‘Come back to bed and put me to sleep,’ he invites, his eyes darkening.

‘OK, I’l finish my sandwich and come join you. Go ahead.’

She smiles at him, willing him not to enter the kitchen, but go back to bedroom and wait for her. He looks at her and as if he has heard her wishes he nods and, turning around, leaves. The air escapes her lungs in a rush. She puts her elbow on the surface and leans her forehead against her hand. She actually feels sick. She opens the sandwich and really looks at what she has concocted. The smeared caviar and marmalade. It is revolting.

Her mother ate anchovies and marmalade when she was pregnant. She covers her mouth.

She’s pregnant.

She looks at the clock above the door. It is two in the morning. She closes the sandwich. Her appetite is gone.

Oh God, what now? She begins to count backwards.

Yes, she is definitely two weeks late.

Twenty eight

lake opens the door to the apartment and instantly Bfeels that she is gone. Not gone out shopping or gone to see her mother, but gone away from him. Forever.

Her presence seems to have evaporated into thin air. He pushes down the sensation of horror and walks down the corridor to the living room.

The curtains are drawn shut. It is dim and cool. He moves to the coffee table. It is empty. He passes the dining room on his way to the bedroom, his eyes skimming the long table. His gaze falls on her purse. For an odd moment, he finds himself staring at it. The thoughts in his brain are foreign. He shakes his head and walks away. Three steps down the corridor, he stops and goes back. Like a sleepwalker he drifts to her bag. He puts a hand out and lifts it by its strap, a metal and black leather interlaced affair.

He raises the flap and looks inside.

Lip gloss, ballpoint pen, compact mirror, sparkly eye shadow and…a small maroon wallet. He fishes it out, runs his finger along the leather and opens it. He looks at what appears to be a collage of photographs cut out from different photographs and carefully, lovingly stuck together. Her mother, Billie and Harry. The child-like innocence of her handiwork causes him pain.

He does not know why it should. He closes the flap, returns it to her handbag, and walks away from the dining room. He has never done such a thing before. His shoulders feel tense with worry and confusion. What is the matter with him? He has never been curious about the contents of any other woman’s purse before.

In the bedroom, he glances towards his bedside table then hers. Nothing. He goes into the kitchen. He looks at the island top, his eyes scanning the room quickly. No, she has left no note. He goes back into the bedroom and opens the cupboard. Handbags, shoes, clothes. It is all there. She has taken nothing. He keys in the combination and opens the safe. The velvet box is in there. He opens it and the necklace lays nestled on its satin bed. He sighs with relief, puts it back carefully and locks the safe.

She must have gone to visit her mother. He rings her number and waits, but on the second ring he hears another ring coming from the living room. He follows the sound.

Her phone is lying on the sofa. He cuts the connection and picks up her phone. Last caller, him, last call, her mother. He rings her mother’s landline. It rings out. He goes through her address list and rings Billie. Her cocky recorded voice comes on and he leaves a message for her to call him back urgently. He rings Jack. Jack answers on the sixth ring just as he is about to give up.