Lovers in Their Fashion Read Free Page B

to feel that while you’re with me, you’re with me. If you see what I mean.’
    John stepped forward with the fluffy bath towel and wrapped it around her. She bit her lip as he patted her dry, lingering over the small, firm breasts. Her legs parted willingly and she gasped as he gently dried her most intimate places.
    J ohn woke at three the next morning, his body still functioning on London time. Cathy was fast asleep beside him, her black hair spread out on the pillow, her limbs flung in abandon across the rumpled sheets. How long? he wondered. How many nights was he doomed to spend like this, his hungry male body satisfied but his heart filled only with longing for what could not be?
    They had gone from bathroom to bedroom, sitting in their white robes on the broad bed, drinking champagne and feeding each other with plump, succulent morsels of lobster interspersed with increasingly passionate kisses. Then they had stripped off their robes and explored each other’s bodies – frankly and openly, exulting in their mutual desire. It had been a time out of time, a time of giving and sharing. The room seemed still to echo with Cathy’s cries of joy as he had pleasured her with his tongue. Then, when he had raised himself above her, he had smothered her face and throat with kisses as she reached down, holding him, guiding him into herself.
    Afterwards they had lain in each other’s arms and talked. She had told him about the end of her relationship, her sense of loss and the fellow-feeling that had driven her to invite him to change hotels. ‘I’m not usually as forward as this,’ she had whispered. ‘You may not believe that, but it’s true. I saw something in you that spoke to my own pain, and I wanted you.’
    And John had told her what it was that she had recognized. Possibly for the first time with any woman, he had talked about Alice and what she had meant to him. He had told Cathy how certain he had been that he and Alice would marry. And, sipping the last of the champagne, he had told her of that dreadful day when Alice had explained that it could never be. When she had told him that, young though she was, there was something in her past of which she was deeply ashamed. Something she knew would return to haunt her. Something that would prevent his ever respecting her, and doom their marriage to failure.
    Cathy had rested on her elbow, looking into his eyes, sharing his pain. ‘And she wouldn’t tell you what it was?’
    John had shaken his head. ‘I tried. Heaven knows I tried. But she was immovable.’

Chapter 4
    T hree o’clock in New York is eight o’clock in London. While John lay in his hotel bed, thinking about the past, Alice had already been up for two hours. As she showered and prepared to leave for her meeting with the Italian designers, she played back in her mind the end of last night’s dinner.
    An English friend might have been more reticent, unwilling to ask what she desperately wanted to know. But Merrill was American, and Americans aren’t like that.
    ‘Why couldn’t you marry him?’ she had demanded to know. ‘What was this terrible secret you couldn’t tell him?’ And, ‘ Why are you so infuriating, Alice? If this man loved you like he said he did, he’d have accepted whatever you had to tell him. Didn’t you trust him enough to put him to the test?’
    It was a good question. Wasn’t that what love was – the knowledge that you could trust the person who loved you to go on doing so, no matter what? But she had been young, and what was clear to her now had not necessarily been so then. Perhaps she should have made a clean breast of it and left it to him to decide whether their relationship could survive? Instead of taking the decision for him? Still – whatever she should have done, or could have done, it didn’t matter now. No man who had been treated as she had treated him would ever come back to her. Men didn’t forgive like that. Not even perfect men. She longed for