Not even now.
Especially not now.
Deliberately she quickened her pace, walking up to the wide, imposing doors. A security guard stood there, very visibly, and as she approached moved to open the electronically controlled doors for her. But just as they opened, someone walked out.
‘Fraulein Tara! Was fur eine Uberraschung!’
She halted, totally taken aback. Hans Neuberger came up to her, pleasure on his kindly face, as well as the surprise he’d just exclaimed over seeing her.
‘How very good to see you again!’ he said in his punctilious manner. ‘And how glad I am to do so.’ He smiled. ‘This unexpected but delightful encounter provides me with an excellent opportunity! I wonder,’ he went on, his voice politely enquiring, ‘whether you would care to join me for lunch? I hope that you will say yes. Unless, of course,’ he added, ‘you have another engagement perhaps?’
‘Um—no. I mean, that is...’ Tara floundered, not really knowing what to say. She was trying to get her head around seeing Hans again, since the last time she’d seen him had been just after that party on the yacht in Cannes, with Celine’s dreadful friends...
‘Oh, then, please, it would be so very kind of you to indulge me in this request.’
His kindly face was smiling and expectant. It would be hard to say no, and she did not wish to hurt his feelings, however tumultuous hers were at seeing him again, which had plunged her head back to the time she’d spent in France. So, numbly, she let him guide her across the street where she saw, with a little frisson of recognition, the side entrance to a hotel that stung in her memory.
This was the hotel where Marc had deposited Celine that first fateful evening...
Emotion wove through her, but Hans was ushering her inside. His mood seemed buoyant, and he was far less crushed than he’d been at Marc’s villa. Getting Celine out of his life clearly suited him.
And so he informed her—though far more generously than Celine deserved. ‘I was not able to make her happy,’ he said sadly as they took their places in the hotel restaurant. ‘So it is good, I think, that she has now met another man who can. A Russian, this time! They are currently sailing the Black Sea on his new yacht. I am glad for her...’
Tactfully, Tara forbore to express her views on how the self-serving Celine had latched on to yet another rich man. Hans’s face had brightened, and he was changing the subject.
‘But that is quite enough about myself! Tell me, if you please, a little of what is happening with you?’ His expression changed. ‘I have, alas, been preoccupied with—well, all the business of setting Celine free, as she wishes to be. But I very much hope all is still well with you and Marc.’
There was only polite enquiry in his question, yet Tara froze. Floundering, she struggled for something to say. Anything...
‘No—that is to say Marc and I—Well, we are no longer together.’
She saw Hans’s face fall. ‘I am sorry to hear that,’ he said. His eyes rested on her and there was more than his habitual kindness in them. ‘You were, I think, very good for Marc.’ He paused, as if finding the right words. ‘He is possessed of a character that can be very...forceful, perhaps is the way to describe him. You were—how can I express this?—a good match for him.’
‘Yes,’ Tara said ruefully. ‘I did stand up to him—it’s not my nature to back down.’
Hans gave a little laugh. ‘Two equal forces meeting,’ he said.
She looked at him. ‘Yes, and then parting. As we have. Whatever there was,’ she said firmly, ‘is now finished.’
Hans’s eyes were on her still, and she wished they weren’t.
‘That is a pity,’ he said. ‘I wish it were otherwise,’
She took a breath. ‘Yes, well, there it is. Marc and I had a...a lovely time together... But, well, it ran its course and that is that.’
She wanted to change the subject—any way she could. Her throat had tightened, and she didn’t want it to. Seeing Hans again had brought everything back in vivid memory. And she didn’t want that. Couldn’t bear it. It just hurt too much.
‘So,’ she said, with determined brightness as the waiters brought over the menus, ‘what brings you to London? Have you been here long?’
Thankfully, Hans took her lead. ‘I arrived only this morning,’ he said. ‘My son Bernhardt will be joining me this evening with his fiancée. They are making a little holiday here. His mother-in-law-to-be is accompanying them. She was a close friend of my wife—my late wife—and, like me, was most sadly widowed a few years ago. We have always got on very well, both sharing the loss of our spouses, and now, with the engagement of our children, we have much in common. So much so that—well,’ he went on in a little rush of open emotion, ‘once my divorce from Celine is finalised, Ilse and I plan to make our future together. Our children could not be more delighted!’
A smile warmed Tara’s expression. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful!’ she exclaimed.
Just as she’d hoped, the kindly Hans would be marrying again—happily this time, surely? Such a match sounded ideal.
He leant forward. ‘You may have wondered,’ he said, ‘why I was emerging from that so very elegant jeweller’s when I encountered you—’
Tara hadn’t wondered—had been too taken aback to do anything of the sort—but she didn’t say so. Anyway, Hans was busy slipping a hand inside his jacket, removing from it a small cube of a box. Tara did not need X-ray vision to know what it would contain.