As promised, when Gerald returned, Carolyn was still glowing from her hot sweetly scented bath and lying luxuriously face down on the bed with the lights dimmed. The picture differed from the painting Gerald remembered only in that Carolyn had draped the corner of a sheet over her thighs. Gerald looked down at her soft flesh and imagined tracing the smooth curves with his finger, enticing her to turn round. A feeling of triumph welled up inside him. Soon he would cup her curves in his hands, remove the sheet and then take her.
The room was silent except for the ebb and flow of the sea. Carolyn could feel him standing nearby. She wondered if it would help imagining it was somebody else making love to her. She wondered if she would be strong enough to stop him turning her around if he wanted her that way, if he wanted to put his cold fleshy lips on hers. For a moment, she concentrated hard. Yes she could still remember how it felt to make love to her last husband. But the presence of Gerald above her was too real to be imagined away. She heard the rustle of clothes at the foot of the bed and the sound of shoes falling onto the smooth cold tiles. She felt his weight on the bed, kneeling above her and the sheet beginning to slide across her skin, his knees on either side of her legs. She could hear him breathing heavily now, in anticipation.
The sound of Gerald’s mobile phone seemed far away.
Then everything happened in reverse. She felt his weight moving away across the bed then heard the sound of his jacket being picked up off the chair to retrieve the electronic inconvenience.
“This had better be good,” Gerald said, tersely. He listened and Carolyn who had turned on her elbow and drawn the sheet around her again saw his face go white with anger.
“What you mean, I have to come back. I have only just got here, it’s the middle of the night and I am expecting you here tomorrow.”
He listened to the person at the other end of the phone, pacing now across the bedroom floor; the slap of his feet on the tiles was heavy and angry.
“There is no way under the sun that I can be back before 7 oclock this morning and even less chance that I could get into London by that time. Contact Christian and tell him that I’ve agreed to the meeting at my house. Just remember, I have no interest in sorting out your problems. You are responsible for your side of things, Christian is responsible for his and I control the hardware and corporate deals. I thought this was clear from the beginning. If you want to change things now, just because you’ve run into a few difficulties or to renegotiate the deal, then there will be hell to pay.”
Gerald cut the link and slammed the phone down on the table and turned to Carolyn apologetically.
“You’ll never believe this, theres something going on back in England and my colleagues want to hold the meeting closer to where we can deal with them, so it’s back to my house.”
Carolyn was already getting dressed and saw Gerald move to try to stop her. She slipped quickly out of his arms.
“Perhaps our first tryst will have to be the Bentley,” she said. “We will just have to find that sunny corner of the field when youve got your business sorted out.” The charming smile she gave Gerald showed nothing of the surge of relief inside her.
Back in England, the computer with which Gerald had unknowingly been talking switched voice profiles and re-dialled. There were two others to be telephoned, this time using Geralds voice.
