Death of a Nobody Read Online Free PDF Page B

He pulled her roughly on top of him; she giggled to disguise her embarrassment and delight as he pushed her limbs uncompromisingly into place.
    The next fifteen minutes made her wonder how soundproof the walls were between these hotel rooms; what a good idea those ‘Do not disturb’ cards were to hang on the door!
    ‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety,’ Ian said appreciatively as he eventually slid from beneath her. It was a dangerous line with an older woman, he knew, but he was confident of his ground with Gabrielle Berridge now.
    She did not mind. She liked the way he quoted things at her. James had never done that, and it somehow lifted the affair on to a higher plane in her mind. And if Ian was going to identify her with Cleopatra, that wasn’t a bad comparison.
    This time she let him leave her, stretching her sated limbs luxuriously as she listened to the shower and pictured him soaping his muscular torso.
    In quieter moments such as this, she was prepared to acknowledge to herself that it added a little excitement that Ian was one of her husband’s employees. Though she never put the idea into words, there was a strong sense of ironic satisfaction in the thought that the husband who had treated her with such contempt in their home should be supplanted not just by a man ten years his junior, but by someone whose money came from his own payroll.
    Berridge had supplied the car in which they had driven here; and whichever of them paid for their room and their food, the money had ultimately come from James. There was a pleasing neatness about the revenge they were taking. She wondered if Ian ever felt the same neat satisfaction. He was shafting the boss and his wife at one and the same time: she must remember that daring indelicacy. It would please Ian, if she could come up with it at the right time.
    Then, almost in the same thought, came the doubt which she was learning was never absent from the mistress’s role. Was that what had attracted Ian Faraday to her in the first place? The knowledge that he was putting one over on the boss? He had said it wasn’t, and she trusted him, but when you were four years older and your lover had the freedom to go elsewhere, you were bound to feel vulnerable.
    At that moment, as if he knew her anxiety, he came out of the shower and paused to look down at her tenderly as he dried his hair. Then he sat on the bed and fondled her ink-black hair. ‘Well, serpent of Old Nile, you’ve exercised your wiles again.’
    ‘Yes, but don’t expect me to leap out of a carpet at your feet. I’m not built for that any more. I reckon old Cleo must have been a mere slip of a girl when she pulled that one off.’
    In truth, Gabrielle was slim enough, despite her statuesque delights. He ran his fingers from her hair, across her shoulder, down the inside of her arm, nestling his knuckles in the crook of her elbow joint. ‘When are you going to make an honest man of me?’ he said.
    It was so much an answer to her anxiety that she had to check with herself that she had said nothing to reveal it. She knew she should put him off the idea of marriage until it was more practicable. But she found it so delicious that she could not help toying with it, hoping that he would not allow her to dismiss it too quickly and sensibly. ‘We can’t do anything yet, Ian. James is not a man you can cross.’
    Her tone belied the sense of her words, hoping he would find a way to refute the argument, though she knew there could be none. His smile disappeared; the little crooked frown she still found so attractive wrinkled his forehead beneath the brown hair. ‘No. You’re right about that.’ He wondered if she knew just how ruthless her husband could be with his enemies; he had seen Berridge operating upon them at close quarters, as probably she had not. ‘But it’s only a matter of time. We’ll find a way.’
    ‘But how?’ She knew how, but she wanted to hear him outline the