Chapter 33
Appetites
Knocking on a door and having Logan Rush answer it? That never gets old. I laugh in delight.
“What?” Logan says, grabbing my hand and pulling me inside his hotel room, shutting the door behind us.
His suite is enormous — all polished wood furniture, thick brocade fabrics in muted greys and charcoals, black leather seats, and deep, soft carpets. Massive canvasses streaked with abstract splashes of red hang on the walls. Ceiling-high windows run the length of the room, looking out on the glittering, silver ocean of Table Bay. But my eyes are drawn inexorably to the view of Logan.
He’s wearing faded jeans and little else. His feet are bare and his sky-blue shirt —which turns his eyes the azure colour the sea is where shallow water meets deep — is unbuttoned, as if he just slipped it on to answer the door. The sight of his chest and abs does funny things to the inside of me. The hug he enfolds me in, crushing me against that bare chest, compounds the effect.
I am lost. Funny how it feels like I’m found.
“What?” he demands again, in response to the goofy grin I can feel on my face.
“The first time I met you, you told me about this room. You were right.”
He cocks an eyebrow.
“It is very nice. And big.”
“I said that, did I?”
“You did.”
“I always was one for the fancy words.”
“Oh, you used a fancy word to describe the shower — you said it was massive.”
“Did I describe the bed?” He walks backwards, towing me towards it.
My breath hitches in my throat. I shake my head.
“You could come check it out with me. Help me find the right word to describe it. You know, soft … hard … bouncy.” He smiles slowly and lazily. His eyes are hot with invitation. “And afterwards, we could explore that shower together. See if it is … big enough.”
I blush furiously, which seems to delight him. He grins and flicks the tip of my nose.
“I could just eat you right up, sugar-lips. But first I think I need to apologize for yesterday. Sorry I was such a grump.”
“No, I’m sorry — I had no right to tell you how to live your life. And,” I force myself to add, “I also want to apologize for something else.”
“Let’s have lunch first, okay? I’m starving, and there’s only so much emotion a man can take on an empty stomach. There’s a room service menu here somewhere.” He rifles through folders and room files in the drawers of the room’s massive desk, and finds a leather-bound menu. “So what do you fancy?” He flings himself onto one of the massive leather sofas and beckons me to join him. “How about some fois gras?”
“No! They force-feed those poor ducks, Logan!” I take a seat at the other end of the sofa. “Don’t tell me you eat that stuff. Do you know —”
“Hmm, I’m guessing you wouldn’t like the veal, then. How about steak tartare?”
I pull a face. “That’s raw meat, right?”
“Yeah, but —”
“Yeah, but no. Thank you.”
“Bobotie?” He pronounces it boh-boh-tye and reads the description of the dish with a growing look of disbelief. “Wait, there’s a regional speciality over here which is actually a dish of curried ground meat and raisins, with a baked custard on the top?”
“It’s an acquired taste,” I say, shrugging. “Besides, don’t they serve jello salad, and sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows in your neck of the woods? I watch the Cooking Channel, you know. Those who live in glass houses …”
“Vanilla smoked quail breast? Lobster bisque? Seared” — he does a double take and repeats — “Seared lamb’s brains with pan-fried scallops?”
I snort and take the menu from him.
“Just something light and simple — I’m not too hungry.”
That’s the truth. This morning’s discoveries and my guilt are sitting heavy on my stomach.
“How about a chicken club sandwich?” I suggest.
From what I can decipher from the fancy description, it sounds like a bog-standard, but extortionately expensive, toasted sandwich.
Logan rolls his eyes. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a cheap date?”
He snags the room’s phone, asks for room service, and puts in an order for oysters on the shell, caviar, and something called Bollinger. Then he lifts my feet, slips off the sandals, and swings me around so that I rest back against the cushions with my bare feet in his lap. He rubs his hands slowly down my soles, massages the balls of my feet, pushes deep circles into my heels. The worry that my feet might stink flashes briefly through my mind, but soon I’m lost in pure bliss.
“There you go,” he says when I sigh and relax back into the cushions. His fingers rotate my toes in small circles and tug on them. “You always look like your feet are hurting you.”
“They are. It’s the heels,” I murmur from deep in my sensuous trance.
“Then why d’you wear them, if they hurt?”
“Cilla.”
“Ah, Cilla. She who must be obeyed.”
I groan as he kneads knuckles into the flesh under my arches. All the tension locked into my body melts down into a puddle of delicious pleasure.
“You ever taste caviar, Romy?”
I move my head slowly from one side to the other. I’m beyond speech.
“Tastes of the sea. I think you’ll like it.”
The caviar, when it arrives and I can be persuaded to rouse myself to take a look, is served in a round blue tin set on a bed of crushed ice atop a glass pedestal. A delicate mother-of-pearl spoon protrudes from the gleaming black mass of tiny eggs.
“Is this ethically sourced?” I ask, trying to wake my brain up. I realise I don’t know how caviar is harvested. Do they kill the fish to get the eggs?
“Shhh.” Logan’s lips purse as he shushes me, and my gaze fixes on them like a limpet on a wet rock.
He scoops up a spoonful of caviar and holds it out to me, saying, “Just taste.”
I open my mouth and draw the caviar off the spoon with my lips, then bite down on it. Tiny bubbles pop between my teeth and dissolve into a subtle brininess.
“Good, isn’t it?”
In answer, I open my mouth for more and Logan obliges. This time I burst the delicate eggs with the tip of my tongue against my palate. They taste like buttery bubbles of salty sea air.
“Now a sip of this.”
Logan pours a flute of champagne and hands it to me. Rising lines of fine bubbles sway up like miniature pearl necklaces through the pale golden liquid. I take a sip. Heavenly! If caviar is like eating the ocean air, then this is like drinking cold, gold, liquid sunshine.
“You know,” I say. “I could get used to the finer things in life.”
“You know, I could give you the finer things in life.”
I elbow him. It bothers me that he’s so rich, so good-looking, so talented, so everything. It makes us lopsided.
“The best things in life can’t be bought,” I say with a sniff.
“Don’t I know it.”
I load tiny piles of caviar onto triangular points of toast and mini-pancakes, and we gorge ourselves. Then we start in on the oysters. I’ve had oysters before, but these are delicious — plump and succulent. It feels decadent and faintly embarrassing to eat them, though that may be because of the way Logan is staring at my mouth.
We fall into a sated silence once we’ve finished the food. Oysters, champagne, and caviar, with chocolate truffles for afters — it’s a long way from Donny’s Dinette in Fairville, Alabama.
Almost as if he can sense my mind straying back to my online discoveries, Logan asks, “So, what have you been doing all morning?”
“Um …” Damn. And we’ve been having such fun. “Research.” My voice breaks and goes up at the end, so it comes out sounding like a question.
“Research!” Logan looks puzzled for a moment, then his face clears. “More about sharks, I s’pose?”
“Well, actually —”
I sit up straight, moving slowly, heavy with a growing sense of dread. I can’t figure out what to say next, which words to use. I can’t just blurt out: “Well, I fished in your trash and read your private letter and then poked around into your background, snooping for details of what you’d rather leave buried. And I discovered that you’re the only son of a good-for-nothing drunk, white-supremacist murderer and wife beater. And then I figured out that you changed your name and reinvented a different past. And now your vile father is blackmailing you, threatening to reveal the truth which would sink your rising star. But my goodness, isn’t the ocean looking just beautiful today, and is there any more of that champagne left, by any chance?”
I’m aware of my heart beating in an unpleasantly fast way, and feeling sensitive around the edges — as if anticipating a painful strike. I wish I’d never stuck my nose into what was none of my business. That I hadn’t found out any of it. I feel disloyal, scared, nervous about how he’ll respond to me checking up on him, and knowing his secrets.
Will he be angry? Or hurt? Perhaps he’ll worry that I might betray him and tell someone else. And if he just takes it in his stride, is his usual chilled self, will that be because he loves me enough to forgive me, or will it be just so I’ll keep the secret?
These thoughts race through my mind while Logan smiles at me in unconcerned expectation.
“Well, no.” I blow out a long breath. “My … research … wasn’t about sharks.”