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‘And landed on her?’ The nurse turned to Emerald. ‘I suppose you’re going to stick to the same story, are you?’
Emerald nodded.
‘Mmm. Right. Well, you can stay here,’ the nurse told Rose, going to the back of the wheelchair.
‘No. I want her to come with me,’ Emerald said.
For a moment Rose thought the nurse was going to refuse but then a commotion by the door as some new patients arrived distracted her and as she left Emerald she called, ‘Third cubicle on your left.’
The young doctor was thorough and patient, finally pronouncing that Emerald was very lucky that she had got off as lightly as she had, with badly bruised ribs and what would probably end up as a black eye.
‘We’ll get you cleaned up and bandaged, and then you can go home. You’ll be in pain for a few days, so I’ll give you a prescription for sleeping pills and painkillers. If you aren’t starting to feel better within the week then you’ll need to go and see your own GP. You’ll need to have someone with you for tonight. I don’t think there’s any risk of concussion but just in case, I can only release you if you can assure me that you won’t
be on your own.’
‘Perhaps you ought to stay here in the hospital—’ Rose began in alarm. But Emerald told the doctor, ‘She’ll be with me. She’s my cousin.’
It was just gone two o’clock in the morning when they finally got back into the Mini.
Rose started the engine. She felt completely drained of energy, exhausted and shivery with the aftermath of shock.
As she reached for the handbrake, Emerald, who hadn’t spoken to her since they had left casualty, looked straight ahead through the windscreen and said quietly, ‘Thanks.’
Rose wasn’t sure which of them was the more astonished, her or Emerald herself, who was now looking away from her and demanding fretfully, ‘For goodness’ sake, are you going to drive this thing or are we going to sit here all night?’
Chapter Forty-Four
New York. Sunshine. Pretty girls. This was the life, Ollie acknowledged, or at least it would have been if he hadn’t been having to work with Princess Frigid Knickers today.
He’d been in Vogue’s general office the previous week, waiting to see the fashion editor when he’d overheard some of the girls talking about Ella, marvelling about the fact that she was keeping some guy or other dangling. He was quite a catch, according to what Ollie had overheard, and they were bemused by Ella’s attitude to him. Well, he wasn’t. He’d seen in London how she’d worked that ice princess stuff of hers. He felt sorry for any poor sod who got the hots for her. They’d have to take a blowtorch to the ice. Personally he liked his women hot and willing. Luckily for him there was no shortage of his kind of girl, either in London or here in New York.
He was fortunate that Vogue had offered him the use of an apartment belonging to a fellow photographer–a photojournalist who was working overseas for a year. The apartment came with everything Ollie needed, and a view over Central Park. The photojournalist was well connected and had family money. Oliver too had family money now, of course, thanks to his real father. Funny how he’d not been able to stop wondering and wishing about the man who had fathered him: wondering what he’d really been like and wishing that he had spent more time with him. That’s what happened when life held too many unanswered questions and a kid didn’t get to know who his dad was until it was too late.
This had to be the longest interview and photo shoot she’d ever been involved with, Ella thought tiredly.
She’d been sick in the night–something she’d eaten, she suspected–and although she was fine now, the combination of lost sleep, a demanding interviewee, an even more demanding photographer, and the fact that the post had brought her the most intoxicating letter from Brad, telling her that he was wishing the summer away so that he could be with her, had resulted in her feeling both wrung out and somehow also weirdly elated.
The interview had gone well, and she’d got some wonderful quotes, not because of her interview technique so much as Oliver’s ability to use his well-documented sexual chemistry on any and every woman–except, of course, her.
Maisie Fischerbaum, the eighty-year-old philanthropist whose art collection was on loan to the Guggenheim and promised to it after her death, had been a wealth of anecdotes–some so potentially scandalous that they were unprintable. She and her late husband had, it seemed, known and met everyone, including President Kennedy, whose death, even now, was so raw and unbelievable, and whilst Oliver flirted with her and photographed her, Ella had kept on asking questions and taking down the answers in shorthand.
The afternoon had been punctuated by the frequent appearances of Maisie’s maid, bringing in Martinis, Maisie’s favourite cocktail, and Ella had been amazed to see just how much the old lady could drink without it affecting her, other than to make her increasingly flirtatious with Oliver, and even more garrulous.
Embarrassingly, at one point she had asked Ella if she was sleeping with Oliver. After Ella had shaken her head and said tersely that their relationship was very much a professional one, Maisie had pursed her lips and given Oliver a sidelong look.
‘Professional, is it?’ she said to Ella. ‘In my day there was only one kind of professional activity a girl would have wanted to share with a good-looking man like him.’
To Ella’s surprise, Oliver had come to her rescue, telling Maisie, ‘She’s already got some handsome New Yorker chasing after her.’
Of course, Maisie had wanted to know who the handsome New Yorker was, and Ella had inwardly cursed Oliver for somehow or other knowing about Brad.
‘He’s another journalist,’ was all she allowed herself to say.
Now Ella and Oliver were standing back outside in the baking heat of the late afternoon. It was five o’clock, and even the trees in Central Park looked heat weary, their leaves drooping, as she too drooped, unaware that Oliver was studying her.
She had a very different body from the models he photographed, Oliver recognised, much curvier, with full breasts and a narrow waist rather than the more androgynous look that was currently so fashionable; a woman now, not the soft-fleshed young girl she’d been when he’d first seen her, nor the too-thin hyped-up person she’d become when she’d been taking those wretched diet pills. She looked far better than when he had last seen her–far, far better, he acknowledged. Her hair was tied up, restrained in a sleek chignon, her blouse and skirt combination as crisp-looking as it had been when they had left the Vogue office earlier, except for the fact that he could see a small bead of sweat lying in the hollow at the base of her throat, trembling as it prepared to roll down between her breasts. What would she do if he reached out and captured it, licking it off his fingertip like a boy licking an ice cream? He was tempted to try it just to find out.
Maisie’s comment and Ella’s response, confirming the existence of her New Yorker boyfriend, had brought out his hunting instinct. Oliver never had been able to resist seducing a woman away from another man–just as his father had seduced his mother away from her husband? He gave a dismissive mental shrug. So what if he had? She’d obviously been willing, and he was obviously his true father’s son.
