Holly Lester Read Online Free Page B

prejudiced?’ It was his turn to laugh, and then the intercom squawked again, this time unintelligibly.
    â€˜Have you got children?’ Holly asked.
    He shook his head.
    â€˜Still single then?’
    â€˜I’m single
again
, actually. My wife and I are separated.’
    She looked pleased at this news, but said ‘I’m sorry’ nonetheless.
    â€˜Who said I am?’ he asked, and she giggled.
    She kicked off her shoes, drew up her legs onto the bedspread, and held both ankles with her hand. They were splendid legs, he decided, wondering just what he was doing in the bedroom of the leader of the Labour party. ‘So,’ she said, ‘I suppose you’re back on the sexual warpath.’ She looked at him with a teasing smile.
    Downstairs and with the nanny, she had seemed so matter-of-fact that he had not dared to entertain any fantasies about why he was here. Now he could not help himself. ‘Actually, I don’t meet many people these days. I lead a pretty quiet life.’
    She smiled knowingly. ‘Surely you meet the odd female customer. I should think they’d be very keen. You’re very good-looking.’
    Billings knew this was an irresistible form of flattery intended to please him. It did, and he felt a warm blush start to glow in his cheeks.
    â€˜Have I embarrassed you?’ Holly asked, again teasingly. ‘I bet all the girls say that, don’t they?’
    He found himself suddenly unable to respond. When he had met Marla seven years before, she had been forthright about her interest in him, while he in English fashion, had dillied and dallied. If he remembered correctly, Marla had finally had to ask
him
out. But her style was what Americans would have called ‘up front’. There was none of the sexual coquetry Holly was exuding, which made him feel about twelve years old.
    â€˜I
have
embarrassed you,’ Holly declared, and swung her feet onto the floor and stood up. ‘So where should we put the Burgess?’
    â€˜There?’ asked Billings, pointing to the far wall where there was an empty space with a lonely-looking picture hook stuck in the plaster. ‘Isn’t that what you had in mind?’
    â€˜No, not there,’ she said, and walked past him and opened another door. He stood up and followed, then entered possibly the largest bathroom he had ever seen. He realized after a moment that its size was in part illusion, fostered by a band of mirror on its far wall at waist height, and the presence of white tiles everywhere on the walls. The room comfortably held an enormous standing shower and a long bath spread across the wall in front of him. But what instantly struck him was a Hockney painting from his swimming pool period that hung fifteen feet – it seemed like fifty – across the room above the bath.
    Holly turned and saw him staring at the picture. ‘Do you like it?’ she asked, a little anxiously.
    â€˜It’s terrible,’ he said, and saw her face fall. ‘No, I mean the painting’s wonderful, but what’s it doing
here
? The steam and moisture will kill it. Are you mad?’
    â€˜Don’t worry,’ she said firmly, reaching behind him to close the bathroom door. ‘It’s only in here during the day. No one uses this room then – I’m at work. The rest of the time it sits in that space on the wall you just pointed to.’
    â€˜A sort of time share painting? Is that what you’re going to do with the Burgess?’
    â€˜Why not?’ She stepped forward and opened the shower’s double-width door. ‘I thought I’d put it in here. Come and have a look.’
    Conscious of his shoes, he stepped gingerly up onto the shower’s tiled floor. Holly closed this door behind him, making him feel awkward and absurd – two clothed adults standing in a shower. Nervously he pointed at the only wall of the cubicle that wasn’t glass. ‘You mean