Indiscretions - Elizabeth Adler [76]
Why, he wondered, can’t she just enjoy it for what it is? I could no more be happy married to Raymunda than she could to me—and she knows it.
Fitz stared out of his fortieth-floor eyrie at the rain. At least he could do something about the weather. The Fiesta was lying at anchor in Barbados with a crew ready and anxious for some action. Forget the squash games! The skies there were blue and the sun hot, and didn’t he deserve a week off? He’d get Morgan to join him. He could brief him on the Latin American situation and Morgan could fly on from there. Add Raymunda to the package and he’d beaten all three of today’s problems. Temporarily anyway, he added, picking up the telephone.
Kate Lancaster sat on Vennie’s bed, hugging her friend’s old teddy and eating a toasted Marmite sandwich, just the way they had done in the dorm at school.
“There are some tastes acquired in childhood,” she announced, taking another bite, “that never leave you. If I were cast away on a desert island I should long for Marmite on soggy toast.”
Vennie laughed. “If you were cast away with me I’d make you paw-paw soufflé and coconut pudding. ‘Dessert Isle’ would be a good name for a restaurant, you know,” she added thoughtfully.
“So what about the job at the Cafe Laurent? Shall you accept their meager offer or hold out for more?”
“I don’t know.” Wearing a pink leotard, Venetia was dancing energetically to the workout tape on the video. “God, this is killing,” she breathed, keeping pace with the tape.
“I don’t know why you bother.” Kate picked up another bit of toast. “You’re in better shape than the girls on the video. I shall wait until I’m fat and forty.”
“The idea,” gasped Vennie, “is never to be fat and never to look forty! Ohh.” She collapsed with a groan onto the floor. “Enough, enough …”
Kate leaned over the edge of the bed, surveying her friend as she lay spread eagle on the carpet, gasping. “It seems to me you’ll never get the chance to see forty if you keep up this pace. Here, have a Marmite sandwich.”
“Thanks.” Venetia leaned against the bed, chewing thoughtfully. “Kate, what shall I do?” she asked. “Or rather, do I have any choice?”
Kate Lancaster had glossy brown hair and her mother’s green eyes and the face, as her father always said, of a well-fed gamine, slightly plump and very appealing. However, behind that appeal lay the brain of a mathematical wizard. Kate was at Cambridge studying computer sciences, and her nature was analytical and practical.
“Let’s examine all the facts, Vennie,” she said. “One. You can’t go on cooking for those ghastly weekend orgies.”
“House parties,” corrected Venetia.
“They’d be orgies, all right, if those husbands had their way. Don’t interrupt, Vennie. One. No more weekend orgies; two. City lunches are potentially a good business but so far no one has offered you a full-time job, and occasional work doesn’t bring in enough loot.”
“Maybe I’m not good enough?” Venetia finished her toast and sank back onto the carpet, her eyes fixed on the athletic, super-fit, smiling Californians leaping their way through aerobic exercises.
“Nonsense—and I said you weren’t to interrupt. Now, three. The only other possibility at this point is a full-time job working in a wine bar or a restaurant, and the best of those bets is Laurent’s, because they’re new and it’ll give you a chance to make a name for yourself as a chef. However—and this is a major ‘but’—the money they are offering is a pittance because of your youth and inexperience. It’s exploitation and they know it—they’d have to pay five times as much for a man with just a couple of years’ work behind him, and he wouldn’t be nearly as good as you.”
“So?” Venetia turned from the video and her eyes met Kate’s. “What do I do?”
“I’m damned if I know!”
The phone rang and Kate leapt off the bed to answer it.
“That’s the trouble with you computer people,” Vennie shouted after her, “you lack human response.”