The Sweet Caress Read Online Free PDF Page B

relationship she had had with her mother.
    Candia’s beauty and intelligence – she could seduce men with no more effort than a smile, a glance – gave her a power that had brought her everything she had ever wanted. But for all her sophistication, she was also strangely innocent about people. Just like her mother when she had been younger, Candia took the world at face value; she never looked beneath the surface for hidden faults or ulterior motives. When it finally hit her that she had no real life of her own but was held tight in Pierre’s grasp and that he would never let her go, the shock galvanised her into action. It took her nearly eight months to organise and make her escape but she had managed it magnificently.
    It began with an early morning exit from Pierre’s bed in his mansion high up overlooking Hong Kong. Commercial and chartered planes, trains, and yachts took her through many countries until she finally walked off a yacht in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. She had evaded US passport control and customs with the help of the yacht’s captain who was happy to oblige a woman whose beautywas more than matched by her financial generosity. Having disposed of all identification and clothing except for what she wore for the final lap of her marathon journey to Rose Cottage, she prepared to begin her new life. In the event it was when Cissie Atwood had handed her a Styrofoam cup of black coffee and Candia had told her lie that her new life had truly begun.
    As she reviewed the recent events of her life, the horror of the nightmare receded. Facing the truth about Pierre and how he had abused her love had made her understand for the first time her mother’s paranoia about men. Candia’s disillusionment with her life and love and her anger with herself for allowing her independence and strength of character to slip away from her had opened her eyes to the true nature of another aspect of her life: her business partnership with Yves.
    She discovered that he had been using their business as a front for drug trafficking. Appalled, her mother’s paranoia and penchant for secrecy came to the fore to save her. She never spoke to Yves of what she had learned; she simply walked away from their partnership as she walked away from Pierre, but only after she had stripped their company of her share of the assets. As a form of receipt for what she had taken, she left a letter in the office safe in which she disassociated herself from him and the company. These were not men it was safe to cross, but then she had always known that. She had thought that she could swim with the sharks because they loved her. Vanity? Ego? Lust and love? Pathetic, not worthy of her, was her judgement on herself.
    Jessica placed her hands over her face and shook her head from side to side with a sigh. It was a sigh of relief. She had left all that behind her for Rose Cottage, a new life and the kindness of strangers, a slower, more humane existence which did not revolve round sophistication, greed, and power. She considered the lie she was going to base her new life on as justifiable, a matter of survival in a better world,and she vowed, bad dreams or not, that memories would be banished. The past was over and done with; there was no turning back.
    She went to the bathroom and turned on the taps, splashed her face with water and then slipped into her cashmere dress. Clasping the platinum belt buckle with its large and wondrous black opal round her waist, she was checking herself in the mirror when she heard the doorbell.
Her
doorbell,
her
house,
her
first visitor. A surge of happiness brought a smile to her lips as she skipped down the stairs and en route to the front door pulled more white dust sheets off furniture. They were still in her hand and dragging on the floor when she opened the door to see Cissie, Officer Raburn and a stranger standing on her doorstep, all of them bearing carrier bags filled with food.
    ‘This is Ben Wheeler, and