The Maestro Read Free Page A

line.
    'Look,
seriously, if you're busy, I can make my own way to the hotel. I
can meet you tomorrow.'
    'Linda, first
I want to meet you, secondly Maria wants to meet you. She's very
interested in you after what I've told her, and thirdly what would
you think of Catalan hospitality? There is a nation's honour at
stake.'
    'Well thank
you. I can see that you wouldn't want to disgrace your country.'
She laughed.
    'Did Sebastian
get away okay?'
    'Yes, this
morning.'
    'I'm looking
forward to seeing you very much, Linda.'
    'And I'm
looking forward to seeing you, Alfonso.'
    'Good.'
     
     

Chapter
2
     
    'Linda,
fantastic to see you!'
    She was barely
through the perspex parting door and into the arrival's hall when
she saw the tall figure of Alfonso coursing up to her from the
metal rail. He looked more healthy than normal; his naturally sepia
skin was tanned to a darker brown hue. He looked good, too, in the
baggy collar-less cotton shirt and the casual beige slacks.
    His embrace
was long and firm. She could smell a heady masculine aroma of
cologne on his soft skin as he held her tightly.
    'Alfonso!' she
exclaimed theatrically when they withdrew.
    'Good
flight?'
    'Perfect.' No,
he wasn't as good-looking as Sebastian, but for such a rogue he had
beautiful, soulful eyes.
    She momentarily scanned the people clustered behind Alfonso
for his amor , but
she could not detect anybody that she felt he would be attracted
to.
    'Maria
couldn't make it, but we can meet tonight for dinner, if that is
okay?' he said as if reading her mind.
    He took the
luggage trolley with a proprietorial eagerness and began wheeling
it through the crowded concourse.
    'So this
Maria, is it love?'
    He laughed.
'You know I have always found that concept a little, what can I
say?'
    'Challenging?'
    'Challenging.'
He mulled the word over in his mind. 'Maria is very
interesting.'
    As the sliding
doors opened she was hit by the warmer, Spanish air.
    'Where did you
meet her?'
    'She's a
model.'
    'An artist's
model?'
    'Yes.'
    'Isn't there
some Hippocratic thing about that?'
    'Most of the
great artists fell for their models, not that I am a great artist,
but I do know great beauty when I see it.'
    'So, she's
beautiful?'
    'Of course she's beautiful, but then again mi carina , so are you.'
     
    They drove
into the centre of the city in Alfonso's lipstick-red sports car.
She had visited Barcelona many times before, for pleasure or
conferences and once with Sebastian when he had been filming
something for the BBC about the Spanish Civil War, but however many
times she came, there was still that rush of adrenaline when she
reached the outskirts of the city.
    'I've reserved
a room for you at the Imperial on Las Ramblas, near the Opera
House.'
    'Fantastic.'
    'You know
it?'
    'Yes, I stayed
there once with Sebastian. It's fabulous.'
    Occasionally
as Alfonso drove through the broad nineteenth century avenues of
the grid like L'Eixample, he would turn to look at her as they
aimlessly chatted. She didn't know where his gaze rested through
his opaque sunglasses, whether it was her face, her fulsome
breasts, her lap or the expanse of her sun-starved shapely legs
beneath her cream shorts. She found it arousing never quite knowing
where his eyes strayed, where they lingered, or what erotic images
they were producing in his lusty mind.
    They parked in
an underground car park near the hotel, Alfonso insisting on
lugging both her suitcases the short block to the hotel.
    A certain
sexual tension was building in her, an affect of the excitement of
the day, she supposed later, of imagining Alfonso fucking her, of
sitting beside him in the car, of anticipating what it would be
like to go to bed with him in her hotel room. She was also tired, a
little groggy from the flight, so her usual defences of logic and
her sense of plausibility as much of propriety were not as strong
as they might usually be. The thought of inviting him to her room
seemed lodged in her mind. She felt her heartbeat increase