He gave her another long, tumultuous look before he turned abruptly and walked away.
Bennett foiled any further attempts at reconciliation that afternoon by turning completely neurotic. He refused to let any of the cast out of his sight, and started demanding peer critiques, as if they were doing group exercises back at drama school. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was far too self-absorbed to care about his minions’ sex lives, Lainie would have suspected him of deliberate troublemaking. For the last hour before they had to report to makeup and wardrobe, he forced Richard and Chloe to sit in the audience and observe the “total lack of chemistry” between her and Will. Richard sat with his legs stretched out in front of him, one ankle crossed over the other. When Bennett requested constructive criticism of the love scene, he turned a stare on the director that could have whittled the edges from a diamond.
It wasn’t the strongest performance of the run, but they made it through the evening without incident. Lainie intended to tackle Richard again after the curtain call, but was ambushed backstage by Victoria and a couple of her friends, whom she’d completely forgotten were coming. She wouldn’t have minded so much if it had been Sarah, but Vicky wasn’t shy about expressing unsought and usually unwelcome opinions.
“Where’s Richard?” Vicky looked around the dressing room and peered under the vanity table. As if they’d been interrupted midtryst and he might be crouching naked under there.
Lainie drew on every remaining scrap of patience. “He’s gone home.” Damn it.
Her sister-in-law checked her watch and exchanged knowing glances with the other women. “He doesn’t hang around, does he?”
“He has an early meeting tomorrow,” she lied stiffly, but the attempt at deflection only resulted in more arch smiles.
“Oh,” said Vicky. Another one bites the dust, said her expression.
Lainie smiled serenely at her brother’s ever so slightly unfortunate choice of wife.
Inwardly, she curled into a ball and reached glumly for the ice cream spoon.
*
Richard was woken at nine o’clock by his phone, after lying awake until almost five. The first thing that registered on a conscious level was the faint scent of perfume. His vision was bleary; his eyes felt red and gritty from lack of sleep.
Red. He’d always associated his father with the colour red. The redness of rage. The red bloom of whisky. The red stain of blood.
Of shame.
Red. Lainie’s hair, smooth and silky around his fingers. He clenched his jaw as he stared up at the ceiling.
Everything was temporary. It didn’t last—the bad.
Apparently the good was equally short-lived.
Without looking at the phone, he reached out and grabbed it from the side table.
“Yes?” His tone didn’t encourage loquacity. He was going to be running on caffeine and obstinacy today.
“Richard? It’s Greg. Were we supposed to meet this morning? I’m outside your front door, but there’s no answer.”
Fuck. Richard threw off the bedcovers and reached for the trousers he’d left on the floor. “I slept in. Sorry. Two minutes.”
When he opened the front door, his assistant was holding a briefcase in one hand and a tray of coffees and bakery bags in the other. The daily papers were wedged under his elbow. Richard looked at the disposable cups and his mouth curved. “Expect a Christmas bonus. I’ll have a shower and meet you in the study.”
They were halfway through a stack of financial grant contracts, and Greg Worth had doubled the size of his impending bonus by not mentioning the morning tabloids, when the doorbell rang. The document Richard was holding creased under the pressure of his grip.
Greg glanced at him. “I’ll get it, shall I?”
“Thanks.” He tried to concentrate on the contract, but the words swam into illegible nonsense. He threw it down on the desk in disgust, and turned to wait for her.
Lainie came in ahead of Greg, offering his assistant a polite smile when the other man bowed out, closing the door behind him.
“Good morning.” Her voice was quiet.
Richard noted the heaviness around her eyes, which she’d tried to hide with makeup. Her hair was in a long, thick plait over one shoulder, and she was wearing a woollen bobble hat. Probably hand-knitted by Rachel Graham. There had been a basket of wool and knitting needles at her parents’ house. Lainie came from the sort of family where people made things for each other, gifted things simply because they wanted to.
The two of them were worlds apart.
“Good morning.” He sat down on the edge of the desk and nodded toward a leather chair. “Do you want to sit?”
Lainie’s air of trepidation was rapidly dissolving into more familiar sparks. “No.” The line of her pretty mouth was mutinous. “I want you to stop treating me like I’m here to audit your taxes.”
He surveyed her. “If you were here to audit my taxes, I would have offered you a coffee.”