Page 9 of The Honeymoon Affair

Chapter 4

Ariel

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

Stephen King

An agent and her best client becoming lovers is probably a literary cliché, but it was impossible not to fall in love with Charles Miller. He was kind and thoughtful, clever and sympathetic, as well as being the sexiest man alive. I was astonished that he was still single, although I knew, because I’d quizzed him, that he’d had a couple of longer-term relationships in the past. However, none had become serious enough for him to live with the women involved. My questions about his love life were entirely professional – at least that’s what I told myself – because I was trying to find interesting personal anecdotes that could be used for publicity.

The first time he came back to my apartment was after the Saxby-Brown and Xerxes teams had celebrated his Booker nomination in traditional fashion with champagne and cocktails at a trendy new Soho bar, and he was full of praise for me and all I’d done for him.

‘You’re my client,’ I told him as I handed him the coffee I’d invited him in for (with the purest of motives, honestly; he’d muttered about needing to sober up before going back to his hotel). ‘Of course I’ve done all I can for you.’

‘I might be a client to you, but you’re more than an agent to me.’ His voice was huskier than ever. ‘I mean it, Ariel. I . . . well . . . honestly, I don’t know how I’d manage without you.’

And then we were in each other’s arms and the coffee was forgotten as we stumbled to the bedroom and had hot, steamy sex with the curtains open and the lights of London cheering us on in the background.

It was as though a dam had burst. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Charles was still living in Dublin, but he came to London every second weekend. We had sex in every room of my apartment, in the Saxby-Brown offices (late one evening, when the staff had gone home) and in the various hotels we took off to around the country. We were mad for each other, and it was the best time of my life.

We managed to keep our relationship under wraps for longer than I expected, but were eventually outed when another agent and his wife stayed at the same hotel as us one weekend. By then, though, I didn’t care who knew. I was proud to be Charles’s agent and equally proud to be his lover.

After that, when we were out together, we were the ultimate literary couple. I loved turning up to events with him, knowing I looked good, felt great and was well respected. I glowed from the inside out. My skin was dewy. And because I went to the gym every morning before work, my body was firm and lean.

I said all this, except for my body self-praise, one morning as we lay in bed together, exhausted from the publishing party we’d been to the night before and the great sex we’d had when we woke up.

‘You make it sound as though we’re a commercial arrangement.’ He frowned.

‘I’ve also just said I love you,’ I told him. ‘That’s hardly commercial.’

‘But you said it as though you were telling me to take an offer, not as though you really meant it.’

‘After what we’ve just done, you think I don’t mean it?’ I raised an eyebrow and then burrowed under the light summer duvet, where I began to kiss him slowly.

‘I . . .’ He wasn’t able to say anything else.

I’m even better at sex than at being an agent. After all, if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. One of my maternal granny’s favourite clichés and one that I actually live by.

When we’d both regained our breath, he propped himself up on one arm.

‘Move back to Dublin with me.’

I automatically glanced towards the full-length window, where I could see the Thames, busy with boats. I always considered the river to be the spine of the city, a proper working waterway, unlike Dublin’s Liffey, which was under-utilised by comparison.

‘I came to London to build my career,’ I reminded him as I turned to face him again. ‘Dublin’s far too small a pond for me to fish in.’

‘And yet you found me.’

‘You found me.’ I smiled.

‘We found each other,’ he amended. ‘And I don’t want to lose you. But we can’t go on like this, commuting back and forth, seeing each other so infrequently.’

‘We see each other twice a month But perhaps I could come to Dublin the other weekends,’ I suggested.

‘It’s still a peripatetic lifestyle, isn’t it?’

‘I wonder how many people use that word in actual day-to-day living,’ I murmured. ‘We travel back and forth because we want to.’

‘What if I don’t want to any more?’