The Chocolate Lovers' Club

  Ted unbuttoned her blouse, kissing her skin as he slowly exposed her to him, and then he eased off her bra until she was naked beneath him. He stripped off his own clothes and lay along the length of her, their limbs entwined on the sofa. When he eased himself inside her, Chantal was more than ready for him, and she gasped with pleasure as she pulled him to her. Their lovemaking was soft and gentle and had never felt sweeter.

  Afterward, she pulled the cozy chenille throw from the sofa over them and they lay in each other’s arms as they drank their wine and listened to the soulful voice of James Blunt softly serenading them. She didn’t know what had caused this change in Ted, but she knew that she very much liked it. Why couldn’t it be like this permanently? This was always where she wanted to be, Chantal thought. Lying in her husband’s arms. Not in some hotel room with a guy she’d only just met, getting her brains fucked out with no emotional connection, no love, no caring. She leaned against her husband. “I love you so much, Ted.”

  “I love you too, honey.” He stroked her hair absently. Then he cleared his throat and said, “You’re okay with the fact that we didn’t use protection?”

  She nuzzled his neck. “I’ll go to the drugstore tomorrow and get the morning-after pill.” His body tensed against her and she looked up at him. “What?”

  “This is always about what you want, isn’t it?” he said.

  Chantal was shocked. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “Is this about me getting the contraceptive pill? We don’t want me getting pregnant. We don’t want a family.”

  He sat upright now. “Don’t we?” he said sarcastically. “Or is it just you that feels like that?”

  “We’ve never wanted children,” she countered. “We’ve talked about it often enough.” Though not in recent times, Chantal had to concede. “We hate kids. We hate our friends’ kids. You get completely stressed when Kyle and Lara bring their boys to our home and they put chocolaty fingerprints over everything and nearly burst your eardrums with their incessant noise. You have to take a handful of Nurofen the minute they’ve gone.”

  “Things change,” he said. “And we don’t talk about anything anymore. This whole relationship is run on your terms. With you it’s ‘my way or the highway’ Perhaps I’ve had enough of that.”

  “But that’s because you avoid me,” she said, pulling the throw up to her neck, suddenly embarrassed by her nakedness. “You avoid conversations with me. You avoid me in the bedroom.”

  “What’s the point?” Ted said. “Why do we need a sex life when there’s no point to it?”

  “Do you mean that we shouldn’t have sex unless we’re making a baby?” She was stunned by his crazy viewpoint. Chantal touched his arm, but he shrugged her away. “Is that why you don’t sleep with me?”

  He stood up and pulled his shorts and his jeans back onto his long frame. Her insides lurched when she thought of where she’d been minutes ago—in ecstasy in his arms—and how they’d come so quickly to this.

  “I find your voracious appetite a turnoff,” he stated frankly, avoiding her eyes. “It makes me sick when I think that there’s never going to be a purpose to it.”

  “When did you start to feel like this?” she wanted to know. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I tried.” Her husband sighed loudly and she could hear the pent-up frustration in his voice. “But you just don’t listen to things you don’t want to hear. We’re not in a marriage anymore. We’re two people conveniently sharing a house. I want more than that. I want a wife who cares about me enough to consider my wishes. I want a family, Chantal. I want kids of my own. And you don’t.”

  “Let’s talk about this,” she said. “I love you.”

  “Sometimes that simply isn’t enough,” he answered.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  “SO YOU COULDN’T STAY AWAY, Gorgeous,” Crush says. He has his feet up on his desk and his hands are behind his head. There’s a wide grin on his face. Which, strangely, seems to have grown more handsome since I’ve been away.

  I’m standing in front of his desk feeling like a schoolgirl in front of the headmaster—a smug bastard headmaster. “You’re the only people who will employ me,” I admit. There’s a truth in that statement that’s too horrible to acknowledge. Targa, politically incorrect stress machine, is my spiritual home.

  The only good thing about being back here is that I’ve already managed to persuade Dirty Derek from the post room to return all the other rescued handbags from our heist back to their original owners, courtesy of Targa’s postal account.

  First thing this morning, I loaded all of the bags into a black bin bag— taking longing looks at a particularly fine Prada number that’s probably worth a bob or two—and took a taxi so that I could bring our haul in. Every single bag had some identification inside, so I had a good old nosey at the details of the other women whom Chantal’s gentleman thief rogered and relieved of their handbags. There are a wide range of gullible women out there and I hope that, like our friend, they’ve learned their lessons too. Derek’s packing the bags up even as we speak. I might well bring him some chocolate to say thank you for his help.

  I did briefly consider, after our ultra-successful operation to liberate Chantal’s jewelry on Friday night, becoming a full-time heist master. This is a talent I didn’t previously know that I possessed and something, I’m not too modest to admit, at which I excelled. Surely criminality is a growth industry? There must be plenty of jobs I can do in the dark recesses of the underworld. I could just see my name on my office door—LUCY LOMBARD, MASTER CRIMINAL. I’d have to get some Master Criminal…style accessories like a slobbering Doberman, a facial deformity or two and maybe some form of insanity involving grave mental disturbance. I’d need a lot of high-tech gadgetry Particularly a machine for feeding do-gooders to hungry sharks—always handy—and a team of shaven-headed, muscled henchmen too. It’s nice to dream. This job is sounding more attractive by the minute. However, I’ve decided to give going straight one last go.

  I turn my attention back to Crush. It’s humiliating being back here so soon, especially when Mr. Aiden “How Smug Am I?” Holby seems to be taking great delight in my discomfiture. Crush has an extensive selection of those executive toys on his desk, including a Newton’s Cradle—and I feel moved to knock his balls together.

  “The others don’t know what they’re missing,” he tells me. He even tries to sound sincere.

  I don’t inform him that “the others” are now missing neatly organized rows of rare volumes about war, and a few racks of hideously expensive evening gowns. I don’t tell him that I’ve been blacklisted by every major agency in town, and that a tearful, begging call to the hideous, gorgon-headed monsters of the Human Resources Department first thing this morning was required to get me this job back. I also promised them a very large box of chocolates from Chocolate Heaven. Every week for the next month.

  “I knew that Tracy would crack before long,” Crush says. “Motherhood and working don’t mix. The minute you drop a few kids, your brain shrinks. She was even worse than you.”

  I think he’s being ironic, but I’m never quite sure. “Well,” I say, “I’m glad that your expectations of me are so low. I hope to be able to fulfill them.”

  Crush laughs. “Have you brought chocolate?”

  “Is Russell Crowe one hot Australian?”

  “Good,” he says. “My blood-sugar levels have been dangerously low since you left.” He makes a steeple of his hands and fixes me with his big brown eyes. “The office has been quiet without you, Gorgeous.”

  “You could have called me,” I say, and then I want to bite my own tongue off. I don’t want Aiden Holby to think that he’s even featured in my thought processes while I’ve been away.

  “I did,” he tells me. “Seventeen times, to be exact. The owner of the mobile phone number you gave me was getting very pissed off.”

  “You called me?”

  “No,” he says. “I called someone calle
d Marcia. Who sounded very cute, but told me that she was, unfortunately, very married and that I must have got the wrong number.”

  My mouth is gaping open. “I didn’t give you the wrong number?”

  Crush fumbles in his pocket and pulls out a crumpled piece of paper which he then, slowly and methodically, straightens on his desk before passing it to me.

  I read the number. One digit is wrong. I look at it aghast. I can’t believe that I’m not even capable of writing down my own phone number correctly. What chance is there of me ever forming a deep and meaningful relationship if I can’t be trusted with my own phone number? Staring up at Crush, I say, “I can’t believe this.”

  “I can take a hint, Gorgeous,” he states.

  “It wasn’t a hint,” I say. “It was a genuine mistake. One of the digits is wrong.”

  “Ah, that old chestnut—the one-digit-wrong trick.”

  “Why were you calling me?”

  “I wanted to take you out to dinner.”

  “Oh.”

  “Would you have come?”

  “I, er … I, er …”

  “Or are you still seeing someone else?”

  “Jacob,” I say. In fact, he phoned me twice over the weekend. Once to tell me that the charity event on Friday night was a great success, even though one of the designers had suffered the misfortune of having all her dresses stolen from a van in the afternoon, and that someone else had been forced to step in to the breach. I tried not to hyperventilate too much while he was telling me. Jacob also checked that I was still available for “our date” on Tuesday evening at Chocolate Heaven, and that I hadn’t been stupid enough to double book myself once again. He didn’t say that, but you know sometimes how you can tell what someone’s thinking. Then he phoned me on Sunday for nothing in particular, just to chat as he was between appointments. That guy works so hard. If this relationship continues, I’ll have to make sure he cuts down his hours. I’ve been down this road before with Marcus.

  As for me, I felt drugged all weekend following our successful jewelry heist. Despite a feeling of euphoria that we’d pulled it off, I had to lie on the sofa and eat lots of chocolate to recuperate instead of leaping around the room with Davina. A smile plays at my lips and I finally remember to answer Crush’s question. “I would really have loved to come to dinner with you,” I say. “I can’t believe I’m such an idiot.”

  Aiden looks at me as if to say he can.

  “But, yes,” I admit hesitantly, “I’m still seeing Jacob.”

  Crush is suddenly businesslike. “Well,” he says, sounding slightly piqued, “no harm done then, because I’m seeing someone else too.”

  We sound more like kids in the playground rather than the mature, consenting adults that we are, but I can’t help feeling a nip of jealousy. “Oh?”

  “Charlotte from the call center.”

  I’ve heard that she’s a tart. Pretty, but a tart. Clever, but very definitely a tart. Destined for management, in fact, if she wasn’t such a tart. “She’s lovely,” I say.

  “Ithink so,” Crush says, and there’s a boyish pink flush to his cheeks that makes me want to scream. They’re at it, I can tell. Call it women’s intuition. I haven’t been gone from here for five minutes and he’s already shacked up and shagged up with someone else. If that man thinks I’m going to share my chocolate with him, then he’s got another think coming.

  He grins at me and says, “So what chocolate have you got today?”

  I rub my toe into the hideous brown carpet. “A Twix.”

  He raises his eyebrows and with a pointed sigh, I delve into my handbag and fish out my Twix. When I open the packet, I reluctantly hand him one of the bars, which he tucks into straightaway. Can I refuse this man nothing? I’m weak willed and feebleminded. If there was anything about me, I’d have told him to go and get his damn chocolate from Charlotte the Harlot. At least I didn’t fess up about the Mars Bar and the Snickers that are lurking in there too. I’m not as easy as I look. Ha. “I’d better do some work,” I say.

  “There’s another team-bonding event coming up,” Crush informs me with a rakish expression. Oh, no. Wasn’t the whitewater rafting enough? If he’s imagining my bare bottom sticking up out of that boat then I’d like to wipe the smile off his silly face. “You’d better just run through the arrangements and make sure that everything’s set up for us.”

  “What is it this time? Dinner at the Ivy? A day at the Mandarin Oriental spa?”

  “Go-carting!” There’s a competitive glint in Crush’s eye. Oh joy. Go-carting. “Coming with us?”

  “Sure,” I say with a nonchalant shrug.

  “Fab.” Crush sits back in his chair again, folding his arms contentedly. And I could kick myself in the leg for being so stupid.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  “HOW’D IT GO, MISS?” FRASER wanted to know.

  It was the end of the lesson and he’d hung around especially to talk to Autumn. He stood amid the debris of his creative efforts, shards of glass littered all over his workbench, the wonky suncatcher that had been his project for the last month gradually starting to take shape. Fraser was the most untidy of all her students.

  Autumn pulled a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk out of the box of goodies she’d bought with the money Lucy had given her from the heist and held it out to him.

  “What’s this for?” Fraser wanted to know.

  “A thank-you present from my friend—and from me.”

  “Share it?”

  She was well aware that Fraser knew her weakness for anything involving chocolate—as did all her students. “I’d love to.”

  Breaking two squares from the bar, he handed it back to Autumn and she did likewise. She smiled at him indulgently as she enjoyed the creamy taste on her tongue. Beneath the hard-nut exterior, his shaved head and his many piercings, there was a softer side to Fraser that Autumn liked to think that she encouraged.

  “It went well?”

  “It went very well,” she said, with a hint of pride in her voice. “Thanks to your expert tuition.”

  “You got your friend’s jewelry back?”

  “All of it,” she confirmed. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am. During the course of one evening, I lifted a room key, picked a lock and broke into a safe.”

  “Nice one, Miss!” Fraser laughed.

  “Yes,” she said. “I quite surprised myself.” Autumn shook her head as if she still couldn’t quite believe what she and her other chums in the Chocolate Lovers’ Club had managed to get up to on Friday night. Who would have thought that she—shy, mousy, politically Green Autumn Fielding—had these hidden talents. “Please don’t let this go any further though or I’ll lose my job. And I’d miss you lot too much if that happened.” She hoped to goodness that Addison Deacon would never find out about her criminal tendencies. For some reason, it suddenly seemed important to Autumn that her colleague thought well of her.

  “I wilna tell anyone,” Fraser promised solemnly. “There’s still some honor among thieves.”

  “I wouldn’t normally condone such behavior,” Autumn said, “but this was all in a very good cause. You and I might just have helped to save my friend’s marriage.” She tried to look sternly at her young charge. “Remember, though, crime doesn’t usually pay.”

  Fraser shrugged. “I’ve found that it does, Miss. Sometimes.”

  “Well,” she said with a sigh, “I think we’d both be better to stay on the straight and narrow from now on, Fraser.”

  “That’s fine for you, Miss,” he replied flatly. “You can go back to your wee comfortable life. I might have been clean for a few months, but I’m still an ex-junkie of no fixed abode. It can be hard to do the right thing.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “But at least you’re trying. If there’s ever anything I can do for you …”

  “You can clear up after me, Miss,” he said with a cheeky grin. “I’ve made a fine mess an’ I’ve got an appointment to be at.”


  “Go on.” She nodded toward the door.

  “Yer great!”

  “I hope it’s something legal,” Autumn said to his retreating back. But he merely held up a hand to her in a friendly wave. Sometimes it was best not to know.

  AUTUMN HAD DULY TIDIED AWAY Fraser’s project and the rest of the classroom before she’d jumped onto her bike and taken her daily dice with death as she cycled home through the dense evening traffic to her flat. She’d hoped that she might have seen Addison again this evening, but there’d been no sign of him at the center since the night that he’d asked her out.

  The light was shining out from the living room as she chained her bike to the railings, which meant that Richard was in residence. It was time that her brother started looking for a proper job again, instead of spending the day hanging around the flat doing who knows what. Coming home now made her heart feel heavy. All she wanted to do was put up her feet and have a mug of steaming hot chocolate. There were some of her favorite Charbonnel et Walker real chocolate flakes in the cupboard, the thought of which had kept her going all day. She wanted to be alone. As much as she loved him, she didn’t want to listen to her spoiled brother whining on about how bad his lot was. He ought to try living like some of her kids at the center did—then he’d know that life was tough. If she’d been in his situation, living on the charity of his sister, she would at least have made some effort during the day—kept the place clean, maybe had dinner ready. But he did nothing. Nothing that made her feel he was in the slightest bit grateful for her help. Autumn tried to push down her mounting irritation. How could she feel that she could help her clients when she couldn’t even turn her own brother around?

  The door was open as she approached the flat, but that wasn’t unusual these days. Richard had a steady stream of seedy visitors coming through her home at all hours of the day and night, and closing the door behind themselves seemed to be too much trouble. She took a deep breath before going inside. And when she saw the sight that greeted her, she forgot to exhale again.