Free Sleeping Tiger by Rosamunde Pilcher Page A

an acumen she had inherited not only from her father, but from her two ex-husbands as well.
    She was not nearly forty, but everything about her belied the passing of years. Tall, very thin, tanned like a boy, with her blonde head a tangle of artless curls, she wore, and got away with, the sort of clothes normally reserved for teenagers. Tight pants, and men’s shirts, and bikinis that were no more than a couple of knotted handkerchiefs. She chain-smoked, and she knew she was drinking too much, but most of the time, and this morning in particular, life was just as good as she’d always meant it to be.
    The party last night, thrown in honour of Olaf Svensen’s first exhibition, had been particularly successful. Olaf was the dirtiest young man ever seen, even by San Antonio standards, with a scrofulous beard and toe-nails that scarcely bore looking at, but his pop-art sculpture was guaranteed to open eyes, and Frances took a certain mild pleasure in shocking the public. George Dyer had certainly been asked to the party—since the publication of his book he had become something of a celebrity—but that was no guarantee that he would come, and Frances’s spirits had soared in pleasure when she saw him come through the door and start to thread his way towards her through the crowded smoke-filled room. He told her that he was in San Antonio to pick up a spare part for his boat, and after hearing his comments on Olaf’s work, she knew that he had only come to the party for the free drink, but what did it matter provided he was there, and what was more, had stayed, right to the end of the party, and then afterwards, with Frances. She had known him, now, for about a year. Last spring, she had driven over to Cala Fuerte to look at the work of a young French painter who lived there. She had wound up, inevitably, in Rudolfo’s bar, standing the painter a string of martinis, but when George Dyer walked in, she had abandoned the Frenchman, who went to sleep with his head on the table, and started to talk to George instead, and they ended up having lunch together, and were still drinking coffee at six o’clock in the evening, when it was time to switch back to brandy again.
    He usually came to San Antonio about once a week, to pick up his mail from the Yacht Club, and go to the bank, and stock up on supplies for his boat, and on these occasions he nearly always looked Frances up, and they would have dinner, or attach themselves to some party already in full swing in one of the waterside bars. She was enormously attracted by him—more so, she knew, than he was to her, but this only served to make him all the more desirable. It made her jealous, too, of his other interests, of anything that kept him away from her. His writing, his yacht, but most of all the self-contained existence he led at Cala Fuerte. She would have liked him to need her, but he seemed to need nothing. He was unimpressed by her money, but delighted in her coarse and very masculine sense of humor. Watching him now, she thought, with satisfaction, that he was the first real man she had met in years.
    He was getting ready to go, packing the things he had bought into a basket. Just watching his brown hands perform this homely task made Frances ache with physical desire. She said, against her better judgment, but hoping to make him stay a little longer, “You’ve had nothing to eat.”
    â€œI’ll get something at home.”
    At home. She wished this were his home. She said, “A drink?”
    He laughed, and looked up at her, distinctly bloodshot and amused as hell. “Look, ducky, I have a three-hour drive.”
    â€œA drink wouldn’t kill you.” She wanted one herself.
    â€œNo, but a ruddy great truck might, after I’d gone to sleep.”
    The basket was packed. He stood up and said, “I must go.”
    Frances stood too, stooped to stub out her cigarette and went to help him with his things.