Temptation Island

‘Hey, lady, get outta the street!’

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, blinking behind her glasses. She’d developed the habit a lot of English people have where they say sorry for something when it’s not really their fault.

She took refuge in a café with an Italian name, all red leather booths and an overhead ceiling fan, tickets being shouted for lattes and Americanos, and bustling, harassed baristas. After putting in her order and grabbing a folded copy of the New York Times, Stevie slid into one of the booths and took her phone out of her bag. She pushed the bridge of her glasses up on her nose, a nervous tendency she indulged in even when she wasn’t wearing them.

As often they were, her phone proved to be a useful distraction. A guy sitting in the adjacent booth was eyeing her keenly. She was surprised at his unabashed scrutiny: she’d never before considered that looking someone up and down actually meant looking someone up and down. He was wearing a suit—it being a little past seven a.m.—and, judging by the laptop and stack of paperwork in front of him, ought to be focusing on something other than her. He was short, at least his top half was, and bald, with a muscular neck and shoulders. Parts of his body appeared inflated, as if someone had put a bicycle pump up a vital orifice and filled him with air.

Stevie glanced away. Even if she had found the man attractive, and even if she had become accustomed to picking up strangers in cafés within hours of arriving in a new city, the attention made her uncomfortable. What gave him the right? Was it the suit, the expensive shoes, the bulging wallet? It was the last thing she needed or wanted. It was the reason she’d come here in the first place, why she’d boarded a plane back in London and vowed never to look back.

Her drink arrived and she thanked the waitress, her English accent piquing the guy’s interest. She focused on her phone, scrolling down the accommodation sites she’d had a brief trawl through before arriving. Any of her friends would have laughed at the idea that sensible Stevie would just turn up somewhere without a place to stay, but the decision had been so immediate that there’d been little opportunity for preparation. And anyway, they didn’t know the context. She’d spent her whole life planning and arranging and playing by the rules, and look where that had got her: to a reflection in the mirror she barely recognised.

At twenty-seven, towards the elder end of six siblings, Stevie had always been described as the quiet, studious one. With that big a family it was easy to blend into the background and be tagged with a character, as much a means of identification as anything else. But it wasn’t always possible to be how everyone else expected you to be, and, in any case, nobody was that clear-cut: nobody was immune to stepping out of themselves if the circumstances were right. Her behaviour over the past few months would stun them all.

She was tired after the flight and put more sugar than usual in her coffee. As she did so she made the mistake of briefly meeting her admirer’s eye. She imagined how he saw her. Shy, probably. Nervous. Maybe a bit geeky, certainly she had been at school, when she’d worn braces and been timid with boys and hadn’t grown into her face yet.

Stevie was petite, with dark, serious features and a precise, angular, pale-skinned beauty that had been described in the past as both ‘classical’ and ‘timeless’. She was never sure how to take this: it made her think of the marble busts at the British Museum with their Roman noses and blank, staring eyes like peeled boiled eggs. Her hair was very dark red like the skin on a cherry, and she wore it back, in a neat ponytail. She used mascara but no other make-up—one of the preferences she’d recently reclaimed, because he’d liked a woman to look a certain way, and that had meant shadows and powders and waxy lipsticks. Stevie didn’t need any of this. She was beautiful, in the way only someone without a scrap of vanity can be.

‘Excuse me?’

Would it be rude to ignore him? Yes.

Reluctantly, she looked up. The man had packed his stuff away and appeared to be heading out.

‘I couldn’t help overhearing you,’ he said. ‘Are you from London?’ Up close he had crescents of sweat under each eye. She didn’t think she’d ever seen someone sweat there before.

‘Yes,’ she replied, with a smile that was neither encouraging nor dismissive.

‘Great city,’ he enthused. ‘Is it your first time in New York?’

She nodded.

‘Need someone to show you around?’

Stevie thought how to articulate her response: he seemed friendly enough, but she had no intention of getting attached to someone this quickly. Besides, while she hadn’t been to New York before, she felt as if she knew it, however wrongly or remotely, from films she’d seen and friends who’d visited, and was confident she’d find her feet soon enough.

‘Thanks.’ She lifted her mobile to indicate she already had a network, and with it came the inspiration of a lie. ‘I’ve got family here.’

‘Sure, sure.’ He grinned. ‘But if you change your mind …?’ From his pocket he removed a business card and slid it on to the table. His hands were soft, the nails clean. She sensed he had a lot of money.

When the man had gone, she returned to the flat-sharing site. Nothing new had come up since she’d last checked, and tapping in revised criteria didn’t help.

The necessities of a flat and a job were about as far ahead as she could consider. When she’d made that snap decision only a few days ago, waking up one morning too many with the familiar hollow sickness, America had been the obvious place to go. Her father had originally been from Boston—he’d left when Stevie was a teenager, into the arms of another woman, and she had neither seen nor heard from him since: a while ago news came he’d died of a heart attack while skiing in Austria—and her American passport gave her a window to find work here and ascertain where she was heading … whether this really was a bolt hole or something more permanent. The way she felt right now, she never wanted to see London again.

She’d check into a hotel, at least for tonight. Tomorrow, she’d start her search in earnest.

Gathering up her things, save for the business card, Stevie downed the last of her coffee and rooted for some coins for a tip. She wasn’t sure it was the done thing, but following a gruesome waitressing stint in her teens she’d been a strict twelve-per-center.

It was only as she was leaving that she noticed the bit of paper stuck to the café window. There were other notes, too, pasted over each other, photos and contact details and petitions—for lost dogs, nanny work, Pilates classes—but it was this one that jumped out at her. She crossed to look at it. The advertisement was scrawled erratically in red pen, an address and a number and a lot of exclamation marks, concluding with: AND I PROMISE WE’LL HAVE AN ADVENTURE!!!!

Stevie tapped the digits into her phone. Without thinking too much about it, she stepped out on to the street and pressed the green call button. She held it to her ear and waited.

And that was how she found Bibi Reiner.

4 Lori

Enrique Marquez worked the boats at the harbour at San Pedro. Lori spotted him straight away, bent over the rigs on one of the bigger pleasure cruisers, his jet tattoo creeping like oil from where it began at his collarbone and travelled down one arm. He was bare-chested, his black hair tied in a short high ponytail, strands escaping. His jeans were low-slung on his waist and a white rag, covered in some kind of grease, was thrown over one shoulder.

‘Hello, stranger.’

He turned at the sound of her voice, a smile breaking out across his boyish face.

‘I nearly forgot how gorgeous you are,’ he said.

Lori waved away his compliment, but the fact of their time apart rang true. They hadn’t been able to see each other for days—it was hard to escape her responsibilities at Tres Hermanas and, once she got home, forget it. Her father would explode if he suspected she was seeing a Mexican boy. Worse, one from the notorious Marquez family.

‘Come here.’ Rico held out his hand.

Lori stepped off the pier and on to the yacht. The LA sun bounced off the sleek white surfaces and crisp flat sails. Rico’s strong grip encircled her waist and he drew her into a kiss. When the kiss became more fevered, Lori pulled away.

‘This one’s beautiful,’ she commented, scoping the length of the boat. ‘Whose is it?’

Rico shrugged broad shoulders. ‘Beats me,’ he said, ‘I’m just paid to make sure it goes.’ He grinned, showing his dimples. ‘Someday I’ll be the guy some kid’s sweating his balls off for. I’ll be the owner of a piece like this, you’ll see.’

‘And would you sail me a long way away?’

‘Wherever you wanted to go.’ He kissed her again, his hands running down her short dress and over her luscious hips. She felt him harden, his tongue slip into her mouth.

‘Not getting distracted, I hope?’ a voice admonished from behind. Lori turned her head to see a rotund man removing his shades and rubbing them on his shirt.

‘Almost done here, boss,’ said Rico, holding Lori firmly to him.

Rico’s supervisor frowned. He scanned Lori’s body, from her mane of wild hair to her bronzed calves and scuffed sneakers. ‘You know I don’t let girlfriends on the boats, Marquez.’

‘It won’t happen again.’ But still he didn’t release her.

The man watched them uncertainly before moving off down the boardwalk.

‘Can you let me go now?’ Lori teased.

‘Can we wait till I’m in a position to move?’ Rico laughed.

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah, oh. You know what you do to me.’

Lori glanced away. It was unfair of her to hold out on Rico—she liked him; he was good, he was kind and he treated her right. Yet instinct kept telling her she wasn’t ready. She wasn’t sure what she was waiting for: marriage, soul mates, a new life.? People talked about meeting The One, that single person you wait and hold out for because you love them more than anything else in the world and you’ll always be together, always always no matter what. but that was fantasy, a plot from one of her books. Stories, only stories. Real life didn’t work out that way.

Then why did it scare her that she didn’t feel those things with Rico? If they didn’t exist, why should it count?