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I hear her squawk as she steps out onto the balcony—it’s just below zero out there. I turn around just in time to see her running across the tiles and up the one step before sliding in over the edge, so just her head bobs up. The relief on her face takes my breath away.
So does the fact she’s here, in my penthouse, her smile, her eyes, her body, her laugh.
I spin away and yank out some beers, cracking the tops of them as I walk, placing hers on the edge of the hot tub.
‘Oh, thank God, it’s real beer.’
‘What did you expect?’
‘Tepid lager?’ she says with an impish grin.
I laugh, stripping out of my clothes, down to my jocks, and stepping over the edge of the spa. She’s watching me with undisguised hunger and my dick reacts accordingly.
‘It did take me a while but it turns out I’ve developed a taste for your beer.’
She sips from her bottle, moving to one of the seats on the edge of the tub. Manhattan sparkles beneath us, an array of little tiny lights that make up a thriving island metropolis.
‘Do you think you’ll miss it?’
‘American beer?’
‘New York,’ she corrects, smiling.
‘Yeah.’ I’m surprised by how deep the word comes out, and troubled seeming.
‘I can’t imagine not living here,’ she says, simply.
‘You don’t miss home?’
‘LA?’ Her face is one of disgust. ‘I miss it during the winter,’ she says after a second. ‘And I miss some people. And I guess there’s always a nostalgia for where you grew up, so that on certain days I find myself thinking about the way the light would hit my bedroom wall, and I long to go back. Not to LA but to when I was a teenager and everything was so much simpler.’
It’s a fascinating statement.
‘In what way is your life no longer simple?’
‘Are you kidding? My life is a study in clean simplicity,’ she says with a self-deprecating smile. ‘No mess, no fuss, no complications. I mean that people aren’t simple. Life is messy and complicated, no matter how hard you try to fight that. I can control only so much, you know?’
‘You sound like someone who’s been hurt,’ I prompt with curiosity, swimming across to her and taking the seat right beside her, careful not to touch because touching Imogen invariably leads to much, much more.
‘Not really.’ But she’s lying.
‘Imogen?’
Her eyes fix to mine, her pupils huge, swallowing up almost all of her icy blue. ‘I’m just speaking generally,’ she says unconvincingly, after a lengthy pause.
There’s more to it, I’m sure of it. ‘As you get older,’ I say, sipping my beer, ‘things do get more complex.’
‘Yes.’ She smiles, a little uneasily. ‘You come to understand people and their motivations better.’
We’re quiet a moment, reflective.
‘So what happens when you go home?’ It’s a clunky attempt to change the topic but I let it go. My wheels are turning, wondering what she was thinking about a minute ago, and we’ll come back to it later, when she’s a little more relaxed, less guarded.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, do you become the Playboy of London?’
Frustration nips at my heels, a frustration that’s hard to fathom. ‘No, I expect not.’
