Simone proved a revelation.
She ordered and ate Cornish mussels in a creamy white wine sauce with hunks of bread and devoured both with the same attention to detail and energy she reserved for sex. I settled for steak and triple-cooked chips. Between us, we demolished a bottle of house red.
I played it straight. If Simone was bait, I didn’t want her to think I’d tumbled to it. Not yet.
‘Are you all right?’ She ejected a mussel from its shell and peeped up at me through her long dark lashes.
I frowned. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘You keep checking your phone.’
‘Like I said, potential tenant.’
She wiped her mouth, paddled her fingers in a lemon-scented finger bowl, dried each neatly and gave me a straight look. I sensed that underneath the calm façade she was angry. ‘Why did you leave?’
It seemed we both had questions.
I shrugged. She topped up her drink and snatched at her glass. Suspecting that she was the volatile type, it crossed my mind that she might empty the contents over my head. I pushed my chair back casually. Her aim would need to be very good to make contact.
‘That is not an answer.’
‘It was your gig and you looked busy.’
‘Not too busy to fuck you.’ Her dark eyes flashed.
I smiled. ‘I don’t understand why you are so upset.’
She let out an angry little sigh. I don’t think she was getting the reaction she expected. ‘Did Zara say something to you?’
‘Zara?’ I made out that I had no idea who she was talking about.
‘The blonde I left you with.’
‘Oh yes, I remember. Who was the man screwing her?’
‘Which man?’
‘Wore a gold mask.’
Simone shrugged. ‘How should I know? He was a guest. Why do you ask?’
I scratched my chin. ‘I thought I recognised him from somewhere.’
She gave another shrug. She looked like she was going to go all silent on me.
‘Zara said that she’d known you for five years yet didn’t seem to know a thing about you. Odd, I thought.’
‘Why? She is not my friend.’
‘What is she then?’
‘A client.’
‘But I take it you have friends. You must make lots in your line of work.’
Simone tossed back her head and laughed. ‘Is this what it’s all about, this petulance?’ She pronounced it with heavy French intonation. ‘You are jealous.’
‘I’m not the jealous type,’ I said, which was true. ‘But if I’m sleeping with a woman, I like to know something about her.’
She fixed me with a Medusa-like stare. ‘You didn’t seem to care when I picked you up two nights ago. I could say the same about the men I screw.’
Touché, I thought, and a fair point. And she’d admitted to picking me up. Perhaps I’d got her all wrong. Perhaps she really was on the level.
‘The simple truth – you do not trust me.’ Her eyes blazed. She was mad as hell.
‘That’s not the way I read it.’ I’d let her do things to me that no other woman had ever done. I don’t play submissive and yet, with Simone, I had allowed her to dominate. I had the bruises to prove it.
Simone wasn’t done. ‘I think you are not as adventurous as you make out. I think you are a little bit scared.’
‘Scared?’ This was not something I’d ever been accused of.
‘You pretend to be mysterious, but you are not mysterious at all. I have no time for games,’ she said, snapping her fingers and gathering up her things. ‘Call me when you, how do you say, man up and grow some balls.’
And with that, she flounced out, leaving me to pick up the tab. I stared after her in astonishment and wondered how it was that, in the space of a couple of hours, my life had taken such a nosedive. McCallen had stood me up and now Simone. I guessed this was the type of stuff that happened in the real world.