Chapter Fifty-Eight #2
Emme was gobsmacked. The vast penthouse, with its luxe furnishing, capacious layout and impressive panorama was incredible, and so different to the cosy apartment in town, it made Emme even more acutely aware of all the different facets of Tristan.
‘Oh my goodness,’ she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. ‘This is insane! And it’s yours?’
Tristan nodded as he put the groceries down in a large plush kitchen with salmon-pink Italian onyx worktops under a huge copper pendant that looked more like an art installation than a light.
In front of them was a sunken living room with a long thin lava fire and retractable window walls, firmly closed to keep the high flurry out.
Emme walked to it as if she were a moth to a flame.
‘It’s … unreal!’ she said, smoothing her hand along the glass wall, not quite daring to touch it lest she leave a fingerprint.
‘You want a drink?’
Emme was distracted. It was like she was in a dream.
‘Erm, yeah, just a sparkling water thanks.’
‘Take your coat off, make yourself at home …’ Tristan busied himself fixing the drinks and a platter of bread, cheese and charcuterie.
Emme put her coat on the low cream sofa and looked around the apartment, aware that they were dizzyingly high up – the penthouse was designed to give the illusion of floating in the clouds, and it certainly worked.
The interior looked like something Emme had seen on Selling Sunset or Buying Beverly Hills, yet it had been plucked out of California and placed on top of a Swiss mountain.
‘It’s incredible!’ she said quietly.
Tristan brought the glasses and a board of food over, set them on the coffee table, and handed Emme the sparkling water.
‘Cheers,’ he said.
They clinked glasses and he observed her for a second, before kissing her carefully on the lips. He winced as he leaned over.
She pulled back.
‘Still hurts?’
‘A little,’ he said, clutching his shoulder.
Emme took a sip of her iced water and looked around.
It all made sense now – the humble pied à terre in town felt more everyday and accessible than this stunning hard-to-reach space.
But then hard-to-reach felt appropriate for Tristan Du Kok.
She realised she didn’t know anything about him, other than the very little he had told her, and a whole lot of gossip.
‘Was this your dad’s?’ Emme asked, knowing he was so sensitive about it, but she didn’t want to tiptoe around him now.
Tristan took an olive and nodded.
‘He won the hotel in a card game,’ he added sheepishly. Emme nodded gently, encouraging him to continue. She was desperate to hear his version.
‘I used to live up here with my dad when we were in town.’
Emme took a slice of focaccia and looked at the snow whirling outside between Vitreum and the Silberschnee.
‘Best view in the village.’ He double clapped his hands sharply.
‘Fire!’ he added in a commanding voice, which startled Emme, then made her laugh when she realised.
More bloody tech, she internally eye-rolled, laughing at the mad scenario she was in, and thinking, if only her friends could see her now.
The long thin fire at one end of the room lit in an elegant ribbon.
‘Sorry to make you jump,’ Tristan added wryly.
Emme laughed. ‘It’s OK. I am slowly getting used to Kristalldorf ways,’ she said, although this penthouse was next level. She had no clue where televisions, fire or ice would appear from at any given moment. She looked back to the view.
‘It is the best view in town. Does that not also make it sad for you?’ Emme dared to ask. ‘That you shared this place with your dad?’ She turned back to Tristan, searching his face for clues.
‘I guess. But I can’t let this go.’
‘Of course not.’
‘I sold the hotel to Alexey Stognev on the condition I keep this as my home. But …’ he looked around, a little embarrassed. ‘I struggle to sleep up here, so I use it more as an office.’
‘And sleep down in the village,’ Emme said, joining the dots.
Tristan turned up the fire and Emme saw the sadness in his eyes. She crouched down and rubbed a hand over the navy jumper that covered his athletic, sore shoulder.
‘We were up here the morning before he died.’
His hair flopped into his eyes and he pushed it away, along with a tear, on the palm of his hand.
‘Look, you don’t have to tell me anything – I shouldn’t have said anything about Lexy …’
Tristan almost laughed.
‘Yah, lots of people think I killed my father. I was with him ski touring that day. I was the lone son and heir. No body found. I know what they say.’
Emme felt guilty for having looked it up. For having given Cat’s hypothesis any air time.
‘He was a difficult man, but not so difficult I would push him down a ravine.’
‘Of course not!’ snapped Emme. ‘I didn’t think for a second!’
‘Yes you did …’ Tristan said, looking at her with his magnetic, troubled gaze, then back to the fire.
‘So what happened? That day?’
Emme hadn’t been aware of it at the time – deep in her studies and social life at twenty.
But since Cat told her, she’d googled the coverage that popped up in newspapers all over Europe, the Sunday Times in South Africa, and small stories in the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal.
All of them quoted canton police statements and said the search for Charles Joubert’s body was ongoing, until a later story on the BBC said the case was being closed.
From the haunted look on Tristan’s face, it would never be closed for him.
‘We were out skiing, we’d had a great day, great conditions.
On the Teufelsgletscher glacier, but we both knew what we were doing.
I was ahead, and then I heard a cry – a terrible cry.
It was desperate …’ Tristan swallowed hard, as he looked to the fire in bewilderment.
‘I didn’t see him fall, but I know he went down the Hexenfinger ravine.
I heard that cry disappear and get further away.
I heard a godawful thump and the silence. I hear it every night.’
He shuddered.
‘Was he not wearing a tracking device?’
‘It was in his coat, which was found miles away. I hadn’t noticed him take it off.’
‘And search and rescue couldn’t recover the body?’
‘No. You’ve seen choppers on the mountain, how hard it is to land on a piste. Only cavers could get down there, and they didn’t deem it worth putting anyone else’s life at risk.’
Emme smoothed her palm under Tristan’s jumper, up over his spine.
‘Cat reckons the mountain gives up its secrets. Maybe your dad will be found one day.’
‘She’s right. That’s why I hang out with the instructors. They’re useless drunks but they’re the best for the job of searching for something in the snow. I pay them to see if they can find anything down there, or anything along the trails. In case there was anything I might have missed.’
‘And that’s why you stuck around here, looking for him?’
Tristan nodded.
‘And the beauty of the place,’ she added.
He nodded again, and caressed her nose with his thumb.
‘You never know what’s going to happen next here,’ he said, quietly.
But Emme knew right at this moment. She kissed Tristan gently on the lips, he tasted of olive brine and musk.
He took Emme’s face in his hands, kissing her intently as she lifted her jumper over her head and freed her breasts from her T-shirt.
Within minutes they were both naked on the bearskin rug in front of the fire, caressing every curve and sinew of each other’s bodies.
Tristan lowered his kisses to Emme’s abdomen, to her pussy, to her clitoris, before she moaned exquisitely and rolled over, liberated on all fours while she arched her back and pushed her bottom towards him.
Tristan had a steady hand on each hip, caressing Emme’s peachy curves as he took her from behind with a solid, rhythmic power.
As she took his thrusts she looked out at the view with a smile. The length of him, his touch, the way he leaned down and kissed the skin on her tingling spine was so sensational, she had to bite her lip and try to think of something else to stave off her orgasm and prolong the joy.
She held off as long as she could, until Tristan Du Kok lay on top of her on the bearskin, the weight of his muscular body all streaming to one delicious point between her legs.
She came with a roar as dynamite exploded and reverberated around the valley.
Tristan followed soon after, legs paralysed as he filled Emme and they fell into a bruised and lovestruck heap.
When Emme woke from the post-orgasmic glow, the Silberschnee was turning pink in the panorama outside the window.
The fire was low, and Tristan had put a blanket over them in their huddle.
She looked at Tristan’s Patek Phillipe watch, ticking quietly, remembering it from the airport shuttle.
She groaned when she saw the time. It was almost 4pm; the Harringtons would be back from Zurich soon, she imagined, and today was meant to be her fresh start.
Her heart sank. She didn’t want to move from this spot.
She didn’t want to be Harry and Bella’s nanny.
She could feel Tristan’s enormous arms around her; his velvety cosh pressing into her buttocks.
She wanted to enjoy an extended holiday, not be a nanny in a tense household.
Then a thought struck her, which she said out loud, before she could stop herself.
‘Do you know what happened to Jenny?’ she asked, as she stroked the hairs on Tristan’s arm.
‘Who’s Jenny?’ he said softly, into her ear.
‘The nanny before me. She left suddenly, it must have been at the end of October.’
Tristan was quiet, still half asleep. Emme rolled over to face him. She couldn’t help thinking about Lexy last night in the laundry room, warning Emme off Tristan, as if she personally had lost something because of him.
Be wary of anyone who can break three hearts in one callous hit.
Had Tristan broken Jenny’s heart? He had joked about ‘the previous nanny’s dispatch’ that first day on the slopes.
‘Look, if you slept with her, I can handle it. I’d rather know …’
Tristan looked like he was trying to remember a Jenny in his conquests. It made Emme feel a bit sick. He yawned and stretched.
‘I don’t know a Jenny,’ he said. But Emme had seen him lie to a woman before; and she couldn’t help thinking he was now.
‘People are telling me not to trust you.’ As Emme said it, she knew what she meant was, I don’t think I trust you.
‘Lexy’s telling you not to trust me, right?’ Tristan quipped. ‘That’s rich. I mean … Lexy Harrington is not the most reliable narrator, she’s all over the place.’
But Emme couldn’t stop pondering it.
‘At first I thought Jenny had an affair with Bill, but now I’m wondering …’
Tristan was fast waking up.
Emme knew she risked him going cold on her again, but her curiosity was too much. Tristan rubbed his eyes and looked at Emme intently.
‘Look, I didn’t push my dad down a ravine and I swear I never had a conversation with this Jenny girl, let alone had sex with her.’
Tristan stroked Emme’s cheek.
‘Come on, it’s not a crime to be a single guy and sleep with a woman. Or two.’
Tristan’s tone was transparent and honest and Emme admired him all the more for it. ‘I never professed that either Vivian or Anastasia were the love of my life, although I know morally, it was perhaps unwise …’ He smiled. Emme threw him a theatrical frown as if to say you can say that again.
‘I didn’t sleep with your predecessor, I swear. And I’ve never lied to you about what I’ve done or haven’t done, have I?’
‘No but I’ve seen how easily you do.’
Tristan frowned.
‘I’m an open book,’ he said, and leaned in to kiss Emme.
‘So what was this morning about?’
‘You caught me off guard. I wasn’t in the mood to talk about my dad then, but I’ve had some time. I thought about you. I wanted to bring you up here and show you.’
Emme looked at him and melted as they kissed, passionately, naked and entwined. She still couldn’t believe this was happening so hard and so fast. Or what Tristan might see in her.
He pulled back.
‘Look, I have to go back to Cape Town.’
Emme groaned.
‘When?’
‘Next weekend, for about a week, maybe ten days. See my mother. Go through some business stuff.’
Emme looked a little dejected.
‘I’ll be back for Christmas, and I would love to spend it with you, if you’re around?’
Emme needed to have a conversation with Lexy about which days she was needed over the Christmas holiday. She had Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off for sure, and the thought of a Christmas reunion with Tristan was enchanting.
After luxuriating together under Tristan’s rain shower, where Emme examined every beautiful mole on his body – and took his cock in her mouth – she got dressed, and Tristan led her by the hand towards the lobby.
‘What about this week?’ she said, as they exited the penthouse lift. ‘I hate leaving it to chance to bump into you.’ They kissed again, under the sparkling shards of the art installation in the centre of Vitreum’s lobby and all the people milling around them.
Tristan broke off.
‘Give me your number, yah?’ he said, handing his phone over to her. She pressed her digits into it, and handed it back. ‘And we have this week, I’m not flying until Saturday,’ he smiled.
Emme knew as she said goodbye and walked towards the mountain lift, reborn and reset, that a lot could happen in Kristalldorf in a week.