The Last Letter from Your Lover(37)
Author: Jojo Moyes

“Your girlfriend not coming?” Felipe slid into the seat beside him. The club had filled up now. Tables buzzed with chatter, a pianist played in the corner, and there was another half hour before Felipe would take up his trumpet. Overhead, the fan whirred lazily, hardly stirring the thick air. “Now, you ain’t going to end up slaughtered again, are you?”

“It’s coffee.”

“You want to be careful, Tony.”

“I told you, it’s coffee.”

“Not the drink. One of these days, you’re going to fool around with the wrong woman. One day a husband’s going to do for you.”

Anthony held up his hand for more coffee. “I’m flattered, Felipe, that you take my welfare so seriously but, first, I’ve always been careful in my choice of partner.” He flashed a sideways grin. “Believe me, you have to have a certain confidence in your powers of discretion to let a dentist loose with a drill in your mouth less than an hour after you’ve . . . um . . . entertained his wife.”

Felipe couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re shameless, man.”

“Not at all. Because, second, there will be no more married women.”

“Just single ones, eh?”

“No. No more women. This is The One.”

“The one hundred and one, you mean.” Felipe barked a laugh. “You’re gonna tell me you’ve taken up Bible studies next.”

And there was the irony: the more he wrote and the harder he tried to convince her of what he felt, the more it seemed she suspected that the words were meaningless, that they tripped from his pen too easily. She had teased him about it several times—but he could taste the gunmetal bite of truth underneath.

She and Felipe saw the same thing: someone incapable of real love. Someone who would desire the unobtainable for just as long as it took to get it.

“One day, Felipe, my friend, I might just surprise you.”

“Tony, you sit in this place long enough, there are no more surprises. And, look, talk of the devil. Here comes your birthday present. And so nicely wrapped, too.”

Anthony glanced up and saw a pair of emerald green silk shoes negotiating the stairs. She walked slowly, one hand on the rail, as she had the first time he watched her coming down her front steps, revealing herself inch by inch until her face, flushed and slightly damp, was directly before him. At the sight of her, his breath was briefly knocked from his chest.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, as she kissed his cheek. He got a warm waft of perfume, could feel the moisture on her cheeks transferring to his own. Her fingers squeezed his lightly. “It was . . . difficult getting here. Is there somewhere we can sit?”

Felipe showed them to a booth, and she attempted to smooth her hair.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” he said, after Felipe had brought her a martini.

“Laurence’s mother made one of her unannounced visits. She will go on and on. I sat there pouring tea and thought I was going to scream.”

“Where is he?” He reached out a hand under the table and enclosed hers in it. God, he loved the feel of it.

“Trip to Paris. He’s meeting someone from Citroën about brake linings or something.”

“If you were mine,” Anthony said, “I wouldn’t leave you alone for a minute.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“Don’t,” he said. “I hate that.”

“Oh, you can’t pretend you haven’t used all your best lines on other women first. I know you, Boot. You told me, remember?”

He sighed. “So this is where honesty gets you. No wonder I never felt like trying it before.” He felt her shuffle along the seat so that they were close to each other, her legs curling around his, and something in him relaxed. She drank her martini, then a second, and there, in the snug booth, with her beside him, he enjoyed a fleeting sense of possession. The band struck up, Felipe began to play his trumpet, and as she watched, her face illuminated by candlelight and pleasure, he watched her secretly, knowing with unfathomable certainty that she would be the only woman who could ever make him feel like this.

“Dance?”

There were other couples already on the floor, swaying to the music in the near darkness. He held her, breathing in the scent of her hair, feeling the pressure of her body against his, allowing himself to believe it was just the two of them, the music and the softness of her skin.

“Jenny?”

“Yes?”

“Kiss me.”

Every kiss since that first in Postman’s Park had been a hidden thing: in his car, in a quiet suburban street, at the back of a restaurant. He could see the protest forming on her lips: Here? In front of all these people? He waited for her to tell him it was too much of a risk. But perhaps something in his expression chimed in her, and, her face softening as it always did when it was just millimeters from his own, she lifted a hand to his cheek and kissed him, a tender, passionate kiss.

“You do make me happy, you know,” she said quietly, confirming to him that she hadn’t been before. Her fingers entwined in his; possessive, certain. “I can’t pretend this does, but you do.”

“So leave him.” The words were out of his mouth before he knew what he was saying.

“What?”

“Leave him. Come and live with me. I’ve been offered a posting. We could just disappear.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Talk like that. You know it’s impossible.”

“Why?” he said. He could hear the demanding note in his voice. “Why is it impossible?”

“We—we don’t really know each other at all.”

“Yes, we do. You know we do.”

He lowered his head and kissed her again. He felt her resist a little this time, and pulled her to him, his hand on the small of her back, feeling her meld against him. The music receded, he lifted her hair from the nape of her neck with one hand, feeling the dampness underneath, and paused. Her eyes were closed, her head tilted slightly to one side, her lips very slightly parted.

Her blue eyes opened, bored into his, and then she smiled, a heady half smile that spoke of her own desire. How often did a man see a smile like that? Not an expression of tolerance, of affection, of obligation. Yes, all right, dear, if you really want to. Jennifer Stirling wanted him. She wanted him like he wanted her. “I’m awfully hot,” she said, her eyes not leaving his.