Belle - Lesley Pearse [141]
‘What d’you mean by that?’ he said, catching hold of her forearms.
‘You’ve been horrible to me for weeks now. Each time you come you are worse. You never take me out anywhere, or even talk to me,’ she said, trying to get away from him because his fingertips were digging into her flesh.
‘I got you this place, I come at least once a week, what more do you want?’
Belle didn’t like the way his voice was rising, or his high colour.
‘I told you before, I wanted it the way it was at Martha’s,’ she said. ‘You seemed to really care about me as a person then, we used to talk and laugh together, it wasn’t only the sex.’
‘You expect five hundred dollars a night, do you?’ he flung back at her.
She was so shocked at his words, and the spite in his voice, that for a moment she didn’t know how to reply.
‘You know I never got that money,’ she said eventually. ‘You know too how I came to be at Martha’s, it was never my choice.’
‘So you say, honey, so you say,’ he said in a sarcastic Texan drawl. ‘So are you writing a letter home, begging them to rescue you?’ He snatched her sketchbook up off the table and opened it.
He looked at the first picture for a few seconds, then flicked through other pages.
‘What is this?’ he asked.
Faldo’s features were very sharp, with a pointed nose and chin, and angular cheekbones too. But suspicion made them seem sharper still.
‘I like to draw hats,’ she said.
‘Why?’
Belle shrugged. ‘I told you once before, when I was back in London I used to dream of having a hat shop.’
She was scared now, afraid he’d somehow found out that she was never in during the day. Maybe he even thought she was seeing another man. She needed to calm him down. ‘Would you like a drink, Faldo, or something to eat?’ she asked, then went over to him, took away the sketchbook and put her arms around him. ‘You seem very tense.’
‘You are enough to make any man tense,’ he said, pushing her away from him. ‘What is it you want?’
Belle didn’t understand what he meant, and his fierceness was frightening. ‘I’ve got everything I want right here,’ she lied. ‘A nice place to live, you taking care of me. I just wish you came to see me more often and talked to me. Why do you say I make you tense?’
‘Damn it!’ he exploded. ‘I know it’s not me you want. You just went along with it to get out of Martha’s. But like a fool I let myself believe you cared for me.’
Regardless of him being right about her motives, Belle had wanted a loving relationship with him, and it was he who had failed on that count. At risk of making him still angrier with her, she intended to stick up for herself.
‘I did care for you when you brought me here, but you’ve managed to make me feel more of a whore than I ever felt at Martha’s,’ she spat at him. ‘How can you expect me to love you when you won’t come early enough to share a meal with me? When you don’t even ask what I do all day, and then you just fuck me like I was a dollar whore and clear off in the morning without even saying when you’ll be back? Why did you come tonight? To try and catch me with someone else?’
He moved so quickly she didn’t even see his fist until it connected with her jaw. She reeled back from the impact and fell against the table, jarring her back.
‘How could you do that?’ she asked angrily, holding her jaw with one hand. ‘I took you for a gentleman. You disappoint me.’
It hurt like mad and she thought that by morning she’d have a huge bruise.
‘I didn’t mean to hurt you,’ he said, grabbing hold of her shoulders and shaking her. ‘You just make me mad because I know you’ll never be mine, not in the way I want you to be.’
‘What way do you want me?’ she shouted at him, angry tears running down her cheeks. ‘I’m always here for you, I do whatever you ask. What else is there?’
‘I want your heart,’ he shouted back, his face flushed and contorted.
Belle was too angry and hurt to respond with any assurances that he had it. ‘You might have got it if you’d treated me like your sweetheart