The Billionaire Banker(64)

Her heart feels as if it is breaking. She enters the room tentatively. It is quiet and full of flowers. Her eyes move to his face. His eyes are closed. She walks up to his bed and stands looking down on his sleeping face. He looks so pale under his dark tan. She knows it is very dull of her, but she loves this man. She doesn’t even care that her friends call her Sticky Vicky behind her back.#p#分页标题#e#

‘Oh, darling,’ she whispers. ‘What a perfectly awful fright you gave me.’ She takes his big hand in her small dainty ones and caresses the inside of his wrist. Every since she met him at her garden party when she was ten years old she has loved him.

‘I’m going to marry that boy,’ she told her father. Her father threw back his head and laughed but over the years, he has been shocked by her total dedication to ‘that boy’.

While Blake indulged in his meaningless affairs and liaisons she refused to seriously date anyone else. Of course, her father did not and would never know about the drunken one-night stands. Those didn’t count.

She lets her finger trace a vein. There is nothing she will not do for this man. She bends down and kisses that straight mouth. His lips feel cool. She remembers that other time she pressed her lips to his. Then, he was fifteen.

He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and looked at her scornfully. ‘You’re just a baby. Lip kisses are for grown-ups,’ he chided.

She gently pushes back a piece of hair that has strayed onto his forehead and smoothes it down. She knows he is not in love with her. But she can live with that. She wants him on any terms. She wants his seed in her. She wants to see him in her children’s faces. She wants to watch the grey appear in his temples, and she wants to sit out in her father’s French seaside home when they are old, watching the sunset. A fond look. An affectionate smile, a caring touch from him would be enough for her.

For a long time, she simply sits with her cheek against his hand. Eventually, there is a noise at the door and she turns her head.

Marcus has entered the room. He stands awkwardly in the middle of the room for a moment.

‘Hello, Marcus,’ she says.

‘Hey,’ he says and coming to her, kisses both her cheeks.

‘The nurse told me he regained consciousness for a short while. Did he say anything?’

She shakes her head. She didn’t want to tell him about Lana. ‘How did it happen?’

‘I don’t know…exactly,’ he says evasively, and moves to the other side of the bed. He didn’t want to tell her about Lana. About the stupid thing his brother did for love.

Victoria knows he is hiding something from her. Now she knows his accident has something to do with that Lana woman he has installed in a penthouse in St John’s Wood.

But all this while she thought it was not serious. That it was a strictly sex thing. She saw the contract, after all.

‘I guess I’ll come back in the evening,’ she says.

She closes the door and walks along the corridor. She hates the smell of hospitals. It always reminds her of her grandmother. The many months she spent in a hospital bed before she died. As she rounds the corner she stops and takes a step back. The nurse at the desk is talking to Blake’s tart and a ghoul-like creature covered in tattoos.

Anger bubbles inside her. These low people. How dare they? How dare they show up at this hospital where her father could very well come to? The cheek of it. She hears the nurse very firmly enforce the instructions she has left.

’I’m sorry but I have very strict instructions not to let anyone but the family members on this list.’

It looks to Victoria as if the ghoul would fight it out but Blake’s tart takes a step back and the ghoul says loudly, ‘You’re right, Lana, leave these stuck-up, la di da shits to get on with it.’ She grabs the Lana’s hand and pulls her away. They do not see Victoria. Now Victoria knows.

Something has to be done.





Thirty one

he doorbell rings and Lana turns in surprise and Tsimply stares at the door. None of her friends are allowed to visit, so she has never had a visitor. There is always somebody at her mother’s door wanting to borrow a hairdryer, a pen, red lipstick, a sparkly handbag, or something. But here? Such a possibility does not even cross her mind.

She walks to the door and opens it. There is a woman standing outside. She looks to be in her early twenties. She is dressed as if she is going to a lawn party. In an elegant linen dress and black pearls. Dully Lana notes that she would never have thought to combine black pearls with such an outfit. Her blonde hair is held back by a black band. She has very good skin and is wearing pale lipstick.