When Connie reached home, she groaned when she saw that Michael's car was already in the drive. He would want to know what had kept her so late on Christmas Eve of all nights, and she knew that the evidence was far too plain to see, if he cared to look for it. All her lipstick had been kissed off, and she did look a little disheveled. She let herself through the front door, and heard the pop of a cork as he opened a bottle of wine in the kitchen. He always seemed to be doing that these days, she realised, the sound of the popping cork often greeting her as she entered the house.
"You're back late," He called as she moved towards the stairs. "No later than usual," She countered back, not wanting to see him before she'd had a bath, removing all traces of Ric from her body. "It is Christmas Eve, Connie, or had you forgotten." Tempted to tell him that her Christmas had come early this year, she said, "Oh, you know how it is, there was a pile up with a couple of serious chest traumas to deal with. The party season and too much alcohol, I've no doubt," She added, thoughtfully eyeing the glass of Burgundy he had in his hand. "I'm going to have a bath," She told him, beginning to walk up the stairs, desperately trying to avoid his scrutinizing gaze. "Do you want a glass of this?" he asked, watching her speculatively. "Yes please," She replied, happy to get him off the subject of her whereabouts.
As she waited for the bath to fill with hot, steamy, scented water, she flicked on the stereo on the dressing table, currently containing Chris de Burgh. None of her colleagues would ever suspect that their feisty Medical Director liked such soppy music, but after a long, hard day, it often provided the perfect accompaniment to a good soak in the bath, followed by some leisurely screwing in the enormous four-poster bed in the centre of the room. Slowly removing her clothes, and discarding them in the laundry basket, she stood and looked at herself critically in the mirror. Ric had said that she looked tired, and now, taking in her every feature, she supposed he was right. She hadn't been getting enough sleep, or enough food lately, and it was definitely beginning to show. Yet, Ric had still found her attractive, beautiful even, certainly arresting enough to capture his attention for a couple of hours. As she ran her hands over her silky soft skin, the words of the song on the CD caught her attention, stilling her hands in their tracks.
"Well, God's not around, and look what I've found. This one's mine!"
Spanish Train, the story of the Lord and the devil playing poker for the souls of the dead. The thought occurred to her that she was in the middle of an equally dangerous game. Was Ric the good guy, and Michael taking the guise of the devil? And were they about to have a mindlessly macho gamble over her soul? God, it made her shiver to think of it. She had no doubt that Ric was an expert at poker, but how often had he lost? The Lord in this story always lost, because the devil always cheated. Did Michael's being her husband give him something of a head start in this fight for her soul? As Connie moved into the bathroom and switched off the taps, she spared a thought to hope that her soul would still be alive by the end of it. Fight over her they might, but not for any man would she become a soul of the dead.
Having arranged to meet Zubin at the end of his shift, Ric walked out to the car park after leaving Connie's office, finding his old friend waiting in his car reading the evening paper. "No guesses as to where you've been," Zubin said as Ric opened the passenger's door. "Just catching up with a few friends," Ric told him evasively. "So, was Connie pleased to see you?" Zubin asked, putting the car in gear and pulling out into the stream of traffic. "Yes, I think so," Ric replied, not quite able to hide a smile. Several highly uncomplimentary names ran through Zubin's mind for Ric, but he didn't utter any of them. They had agreed to this uneasy truce for Jess's sake, and so that Ric could finally meet his first grandchild. Six months apart seemed to have done their friendship the world of good, giving it a long overdue airing. "You can say it, you know," Ric told him kindly, realising the direction Zubin's thoughts had strayed into. "What?" Zubin spared him the briefest of glances. "You can voice your opinion on me and Connie. You would have done in the old days, so I'm not expecting you to withhold it now." "Is there a you and Connie?" Zubin asked, trying to take Ric's olive branch in the manner in which it was intended. "I'm not sure," Ric said truthfully. "She's unhappy with Michael, but then who wouldn't be. She didn't want to come back from Ghana, and we've been writing to each other ever since. I don't know how much more there is to it." "You've done with Connie, what you always do with women, haven't you," Zubin said almost fondly, remembering all of Ric's previous scrapes that he'd been privy to. "What do I always do with women?" Ric asked with a broad smile. "Besides marry too many of them." "You fall hook, line and sinker for them, and always when they've got problems like husbands or unresolved exes tagging along behind them." "Oh, says he," Ric threw back with a laugh. "Do I need to remind you about Caroline Dewer? That was her name, wasn't it?" "She was different," Zubin said quickly, keeping his eyes firmly on the road. "Yes, she was, very different," Ric said dryly. "She was a prostitute. Connie might be married, but at least there isn't a whole diary of clients to fight my way through." Zubin was about to say that sometimes you might just wonder, when they arrived in front of the house he now shared with Ric's daughter.
As Connie lay in the bath, the music washing over her, she closed her eyes, and drifted in that twilight state between sleeping and waking. It wasn't just the sex that had tired her out, because she usually had far greater stamina than that, but it was her emotional reaction to seeing Ric again. She had also tried to banish any growing feelings towards him, because she knew that she could never really act upon them, not beyond the regular letters and the possibility of a rendezvous once a year. She caught her breath at the words of the next song to pierce her thoughts, because they brought forth a whole load of unanswerable questions.
"Is it real, what I feel? Is it love?"
No, she thought to herself, she didn't love him, did she? Connie didn't think so, but then she wasn't entirely sure that she'd ever really known what love was. She and Michael very rarely said it, because it was a word that made them both feel especially vulnerable. Michael wasn't even one of those men who said it to try and win an argument, or to try and make up with her when he'd upset her, not that she ever let him see. Connie only ever allowed Michael to see her anger, never her pain. That made her begin to wonder why she didn't let him see her real feelings most of the time. Was it because she was terrified of handing him even more of the trump cards? Or was it because she simply didn't trust him to respect them? A bit of both, she supposed. But where did that leave her with regards to Ric? Sexually, they clicked impeccably well. Where ideals were concerned, she wasn't sure. She knew that they had both come into the medical profession because they wanted to save lives, but somewhere along the line, her ideals and hopes for the future appeared to have changed. But again, wasn't that more Michael's doing than her own?
"I stumble on my words, and all the things I want to say come out wrong. I am lost in a dream, I know this is more than it seems..."
That was something she had never done, Connie thought in fond amusement, stumble on her words. Her voice was a tool, the purring of a contented cat, or the hiss of an angry snake, whichever suited the situation most. Taking in a deep breath of the aroma surrounding her, Connie again moved her hands over her voluptuous body, trying to make herself believe that she wasn't in the bath in her house, but in the gently rocking, sun warmed sea near Ric's house. She could remember his hands sliding over her in that water, his delicate surgeon's fingers tracing every inch of her body. Her nipples hardened under her ministrations, as she slipped one hand beneath the water, to do to herself what he had done only a couple of hours earlier.
"All I want is this diamond in the dark, to begin what must be."
Was Ric her diamond in the dark? Well, he was certainly the only hint of light she had in her life these days, appearing mostly in her dreams when she slept at Michael's side. As though the thought of Michael had conjured him up, Connie's eyes snapped open, and she whipped her hand almost guiltily from between her legs. There he was, looking down at her, with a look of thoughtful speculation on his face. "Thinking of something nice, were you?" He asked, putting the glass of red wine down on the corner of the bath. She was about to answer, though with what, she couldn't quite say, when he kept on going. "It would be nice if you were thinking about your husband for a change, but I suspect that would be too much to ask." Connie stared at him. It wouldn't be that difficult for him to work it out, especially if he'd somehow found out that Ric was back in the country. Besides, Michael hadn't ever felt guilty about his dalliances, so why the hell should she? "I wasn't actually thinking about anyone," She told him firmly, focusing on her thoughts of the sea, not who had been submerged in the water with her. "Really," Michael said disbelievingly, turning on his heel and walking out of the bathroom. Suddenly not feeling like the leisurely soak she had planned, Connie knocked back the wine, scrubbed herself all over and got out of the bath, feeling bitterly fed up that Ric wasn't there with her instead.
Later that night, as she lay stiffly on her side of the bed, praying that Michael wouldn't reach for her, a line from the song about the poker playing adversaries came back to her, chilling her to the bone by its implication.
"The devil let out a mighty shout, my hand wins!"