in a strained voice.
While the others ordered food, Robert caught his fiancée’s eye and she gave him a wobbly smile. She looked radiant tonight in a bronze figure-skimming dress, her blonde hair piled high on her head. He smiled back, made a face that enquired if everything was OK. She nodded briefly.
‘So I say to them, it’s all about the vision.’ Bernstein tore off a hunk of ciabatta, dunked it in oil and threw it into this mouth. ‘Time an’ again we’ve proved it, it’s not all about the casinos, the gaming enterprises–I’m talkin’ development of conference space, shopping facilities—’
‘Time spent in our hotels,’ interjected Robert. ‘We know what people want before they know it themselves. It has to be about our guests. Everything in this business is.’
Bernstein pointed a chunk of bread at him. ‘Exactly.’
‘And growth into Europe,’ noted Jerry Gollancz, an elderly man with pink-tipped ears and watery eyes.
‘In time,’ said Robert. ‘We’re considering all routes carefully. You’ll see my plans in the spring.’
As the food came, talk turned to leverage and dividends, capital pools and portfolios, and Robert noticed that Elisabeth’s attention was elsewhere. How could Bernstein imagine she was really interested in getting into this business?
But there was more to it. She was on edge tonight: she seemed anxious and jumpy, kept shooting nervous smiles in his direction. He had hoped this trip would bring them closer together, force him to stop thinking about Lana Falcon. Instead it seemed to be having the reverse effect.
‘I assume you’re working towards Asian expansion?’ Jerry Gollancz enquired.
Robert tuned back in. ‘Wynn Resorts has done it,’ he answered smoothly, ‘I don’t see why we can’t. Macau is incredibly fertile casino territory.’
Bernstein refilled his elder daughter’s glass. ‘Elisabeth knows all about that, doncha, doll? She’s been to Macau.’
Jessica snorted loudly. ‘Yeah, on vacation. What does she know?’ She drained her martini and instantly ordered another, without asking anyone else if they wanted anything.
Elisabeth took a moment to tune back in. ‘Sorry?’ she asked, a bit dazed.
‘Are you OK?’ asked Robert.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Elisabeth, a little snappily. The table plunged into silence.
Jessica, blissfully unaware, broke it. ‘What is this?’ she demanded loudly, holding up her fork, upon the end of which hung a sad-looking anchovy. ‘It’s hairy!’
Ellen Fontaine, the woman who had propositioned Robert earlier, leaned over to explain. She regarded Jessica with some distaste, before turning her gaze to Robert and suggestively feeding a stick of grissini into her mouth.
‘Eat up and go to bed, cookie,’ Bernstein told his younger daughter. ‘It’s no fun for you.’
‘Like hell I will,’ said Jessica, fishing for the olive in her fresh vermouth.
‘Frank tells me you’ve got Sam Lucas’s premiere coming to the Orient next year,’ said Glenn Fontaine, steering the conversation on to safer ground.
‘Yes,’ said Robert, relaxing. ‘It’s a bold move.’
‘I’d love to be there,’ enthused Ellen, touching a hand to her white throat, where a grape-sized diamond clung to her skin. ‘We met Lana Falcon at something or other last year, didn’t we, darling? And that rather wonderful husband of hers.’
‘How was she?’ Robert jumped in, without thinking. Elisabeth’s eyes darted to his.
The question threw Ellen, but before Robert could begin to unpick it, she answered, ‘Well, we didn’t speak to them for long. I remember thinking how charming she was.’ Then, to be polite, she asked, ‘Do you know her?’
The quiet felt longer than it actually was.
‘No, I don’t,’ said Robert. ‘I don’t know her at all.’
‘What is it about goddamn Lana Falcon?’ stormed Elisabeth. ‘Every time I bring up her name you go all weird on me. Look at you now, it’s like you’ve seen a ghost!’
They reached the jetty, where a boat was waiting to take them back to the moored yacht. The others had gone ahead.
Robert stared straight ahead. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘You can tell me it’s nothing all you like,’ she said tearfully. ‘I wish you could be honest with me. Is that too much to ask?’
Robert watched her beautiful, expectant face and felt suddenly sorry. How could he possibly explain to her the history he and Lana shared? Elisabeth, so upstanding, so respectable; and he hiding a terrible secret, a monstrous crime that would bury them both. No, she didn’t know what he was capable of–and she didn’t want to.
‘It’s not too much,’ he said. He wanted to say more but the words didn’t come. It was hopelessly inadequate.
Instead he guided her on to the boat, slipping an arm round her bare shoulders as they took a seat on the padded leather bench. ‘You look wonderful,’ he murmured.
She nodded, not looking at him.
The dark water below glinted in the moonlight. As they moved off the smell of salt filled the night air.
Elisabeth feared that if she spoke she would burst into tears. She watched the open water and the bobbing, distant red lights of vessels on the horizon.
Back on the yacht they had fumbling, drunk sex before Elisabeth fell asleep.
Robert lay awake for a while, the gentle rock of water beneath him, before giving up and going out on deck. The still-warm air filled his lungs and he looked out across the black sea, stars twinkling above like air-holes punched in the sky. And that was what they were, for he could breathe better at night. He could be alone and remember the evenings he had spent all those years ago in Belleville, before the tragedy. When they had been young and innocent and free and in love.
He wondered what she was doing now. Was she thinking about him? For all his money and success he didn’t have the one person he would give it all up for in a heartbeat. She couldn’t be happy with Cole Steel, could she? Not the same kind of happiness they had shared.
It couldn’t go on. He had to tell Elisabeth the truth, and if it was out in the open he could decide if they still had a future. And yet it was a risk. He hated himself for still caring this way, couldn’t understand why he did, but, damn it, he had to protect Lana.
But, then, it wasn’t Lana who had done that awful thing back in Belleville, was it?
It was him.
Belleville, Ohio, 1997
