Imaginary Affairs

By Robin Z. Arkus

Life has been a wild and wonderful ride for Mallory Hill. That is, up until her husband’s sudden death, leaving her to carry on alone with the life they had created together. After months of running with the wrong crowd, dating inappropriate men, and listening to conflicting advice from her gang of girlfriends, Mallory is finally ready for a major lifestyle change. With a big birthday fast approaching, she jets off to Thailand for some much needed celibacy and sobriety. But as she is just on the verge of a breakthrough, she encounters the man of her dreams. Best intentions fly out the window and romance races in through the door. Mallory’s story flits between the exotic Far East, lusty London, and the romantic south of France where she anguishes over her decisions. Is she ready to abandon her married lover, her Sugar Daddy and her Hollywood heartthrob? Impulsive passion, foolish decisions, broken promises. Will they ever end?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Oct 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684703715

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ARKUS

Copyright © 2019 Robin Z. Arkus.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-1-6847-0372-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6847-0371-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019907128

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 06/29/2019

For Queen Jeanne, who

would have loved this story

Mallory Hill

I thought it was for real.

He didn’t.

He made promises.

I believed him.

I waited.

He never came.

But in the end, did it matter at all? It was an imaginary affair that lasted for nine glorious days in an exotic land.

It wasn’t my first.

It wouldn’t be my last.

1

CHAPTER

Chiva Som—Thailand

SHE’S MY DAUGHTER WERE the first words I heard him say. Maybe she was. Maybe she wasn’t. We never got that far. Really, she is, this white-haired stranger announced to the half-empty lobby at Chiva Som, Thailand’s leading health spa. Sitting alone, I was the only one within hearing distance. But then I was half-hidden behind a leafy potted palm. He was talking to no one.

He had a voice like a Hollywood producer—deep, authoritative. I guessed he was from LA, the sort of guy you’d see in the movies bellowing through one of those megaphones in a carefully modulated baritone, when he wasn’t gazing into the mirror admiring his meticulously crafted appearance. He sounded that way, and he sure looked that way. Tall, tanned, and gaunt, with the look of someone whose weight fluctuated between a reasonable size and just plain fat, he was way down on the scales when I met him.

His black slacks hung loosely on his hips. A black silk Japanese designer shirt floated from his broad shoulders. It reeked of a Rodeo Drive purchase. Thinning white hair, precisely styled, topped a deeply lined face, aglow with a sandalwood-scented moisturizer. A two-carat diamond stud glinted in his right ear.

My kind of guy, I thought. But who was the young girl on his arm? She was thin and wan, with badly cut hair, and looked like she might recently have been rescued from rehab. Really, I thought, she must be his wife. No one travels arm in arm with a daughter like that. Well, no one that I know anyway.

She’s my daughter, he said for the third time.

Before lifting myself from the comfort of the plush sofa, I looked around the room deeply annoyed by this loudmouth’s intrusion into Chiva Som’s elegantly refined, Oriental-style sanctuary. As my eyes searched the tranquil lobby, I noticed not a plumped Thai silk cushion out of place, not a hint of disruption in the carefully placed vases bursting with sprays of vivid orchids, or the porcelain Thai figurines dressed in native costumes placed with obvious deliberation, or the precisely manicured potted palms that lined the walkway leading into the spa grounds. It was perfection, but this man was ruining it all for me. I stood and walked out, tiptoeing so as not to further disrupt the spell. I’d had enough of his loud voice in this tranquil place.

I had arrived just the day before, on my own, determined to find my inner strength. I had just celebrated a major birthday—one of those round ones. This one started with a five. And with no one other than myself to celebrate with, I had chosen a ten-day trip to the other side of the world. I wanted to be far from my hovering friends who were always ready with unwanted advice; far from my family, who thought that no matter what came my way, I could handle it; and, most of all, far away from the married lover I was determined to leave.

I had had enough of authoritarian voices. More than enough.

As I stepped out of the lobby pavilion into the blinding sun of the Thai afternoon, I followed the soft sounds of rustling palms and running water. I had an hour to kill before my afternoon spa treatments. At check-in, a sleek receptionist had promised me that a ravishing young Thai would plaster me with pungent seaweed, smear salty foam over my body, and follow it with a bone-soothing massage like only the Thais can do. Chiva Som was advertised as a place to center the senses, free the mind, indulge the body, and seek harmony with the inner soul. I was in desperate need of all of those things. Probably a whole lot more than just those things, but I was in no mood to overanalyze myself so early in the trip. Maybe once I had been soothed, smeared, and pummeled but not just yet.

Earlier that year, as the dreaded fiftieth birthday approached, I had sat in my cold, damp basement apartment in the heart of London’s fashionable Knightsbridge, studying travel magazines, devouring glossy brochures, and surfing the net for anything that promised rejuvenation. The big five-oh was as big as it gets in a woman’s life, especially a woman newly on her own. Well, not that newly but two years in a fifty-year span sure seemed very recent to me. Initially, I was intent on minimizing my travel time, not to mention expenses, so I called several spas in England, all the usual suspects—Grayshot Manor, Cliveden House, and Chewton Glen—but then the idea of more cold and damp overcame my good sense.

While still in the planning stages and lunching with my friend Lavinia Cross, she gave me her advice. "I have a friend who went to Barbados. She loved it. Found herself and found a man.

Why don’t you begin your diet here, get started with a tanning bed, and buy a sexy new bikini? That way, on day one, you’ll be ready to knock ’em dead.

I winced. Knock ’em dead. I was looking for a live one, not one who could be bowled over by a tummy-flattening bathing suit and a store-bought tan.

Thanks. I’ll consider it, but I’m not sure Barbados is my style, I said.

Lavinia Cross and I had an odd friendship. We met once a month for lunch, discussed everything that had gone on since our last meal, and then spoke only on the phone to make arrangements for the next meet up. If we saw each other more frequently, we probably wouldn’t have been friends.

We were very different people. Lavinia had her perfectly coifed hair. She never missed her twice-weekly appointment with Michael John, who cut, colored, crimped, coifed, and consoled his best customer. The fact that she was the initial investor in what was now London’s most highly acclaimed hair salon only made her regular presence that much more important. In public, she always wore Oscar. At home, her La Perla collection of swishy silk pajamas was legendary. Being an heiress to a central London real estate fortune left to her by her second husband only made her that much more attractive to all her younger admirers. But then you didn’t need to be that young to be a younger admirer of Lavinia’s. No one, not ever her closest confidante, Mallory, knew her real age, but forty-five, plus sales tax, worked for most of her friends. You wouldn’t dare ask. But then who cared? She was rich, with peaches-and-cream skin, widely spaced dark brown eyes, and brows that made Joan Crawford look like she needed eyebrow pencil and glam through and through. Lavinia had brains. How else could she manage her fortune? But her scruples were something she discarded when she married Husband Number Four. Reputation was a dirty word to her.

If I’m not going to stay here in England, I’d rather go far, far away, I said, swirling my quarter-full wineglass and attempting a tight smile. Lavinia always thought she knew best. There’s this place in Thailand called Chiva Som, about a three-hour drive south of Bangkok, on the Gulf of Thailand in Hua Hin. It’s won all the big awards in the travel competitions, and it sounds just like what I’m looking for.

Which is what? Lavinia asked as she poured herself another glass of half water and half white wine. What exactly are you looking for? Why do you think this place is for you? she asked before sipping her watery Chablis.

I detected a frown forming just at the hairline of her over-Botoxed forehead.

You know me, I said, laughing, always ready to try something new. I don’t know a soul who has been there, so all those accolades mean nothing until I give it my personal seal of approval. And it’s so far away that I won’t be running into all the same people I see here in London at Le Caprice or Daphne’s.

I paused to take a sip of my water-free wine. In my heart, I knew that the real reason was it that it read like a rich man’s paradise filled with what I hoped would be eligible candidates for my next husband. I was tired of life alone and ready to find steady companionship. No matter how far I needed to travel to find it.

Finally, Chiva Som has promise. Who knows who I’ll meet that far off in the East? I nibbled at the edges of my salad niçoise. I’d always had a thing for exquisitely thin Asian men, but then Lavinia didn’t know that. And I wasn’t sure that she should.

Well, whatever you want to do. Just be careful, she said before stuffing a forkful of caesar salad into her mouth.

Careful. Now there was a word that didn’t fit into my vocabulary. I was accustomed to taking risks, and that was well known to my circle of friends. But then, I was always the first to admit I had made a mistake.

And I had made some big ones. My current lover was one of those big ones. After two years, he had grown into a long, drawn-out mistake.

Don’t go there, I thought. I was at Chiva Som, and I was going to enjoy every minute of it.

Heading toward the spa, I thought how true all the hype and hoopla had been about this place. Chiva Som was indeed a haven in the midst of the madness of the rest of the world. Just hours after my arrival, I already felt like an honored guest, enjoying a privileged paradise. Passing by the Thai-styled suites, each named for a different exotic fragrance, I had no regrets at all that I had chosen a sensible seaside room with a balcony facing the beach. It was the perfect place for my new beginning.

Perhaps, just maybe, that Hollywood guy and the spaced-out young girl on his arm really were father and daughter, I thought as I strolled slowly across an arched bridge, spanning a lotus-filled pond, on my way to the meditation pagoda. Once inside, I found a stack of yoga mats, pulled a mauve-colored one to the center of the platform, lowered myself to the floor, contorted myself into the lotus position, then closed my eyes and began to breathe deeply.

In great gulps, I greedily sucked in the warm, fragrant air, filling the depths of my lungs until they felt about to burst. With an exaggerated effort, I exhaled. I needed to concentrate, to focus, to shut out the rest of the world. My attempt to exercise such precise control was killing me, but I soldiered on. My twenty-plus years of weekly yoga classes, Pilates, and step classes had made me a borderline fanatic.

In-out. In-out. Repeat again. Let go of the conscious self. Imagine yourself floating. Feel, visualize. Relax your mind. Open up to new experiences. I was like a drill sergeant shouting orders that only I could hear.

After ten minutes, I was convinced that I was on the verge of attaining nirvana. I envisioned myself floating high above the pagoda, gazing down all-knowingly at the ground far below me. But then it might have just been plain old-fashioned hyperventilation. It had happened before, but each time, I had never been sure if it was desirable or dangerous.

Anybody here? Anybody working here?

Unwilling to interrupt my rapture, I said nothing as I recognized the loudmouth from the lobby.

Rudely impatient, he continued hollering from the base of the raised pagoda. I thought this was guided meditation period. So where’s the instructor? What’s going on here?

Dad, calm down. That’s what we’re here for. Rest, relaxation. Leave the shouting at home. Don’t bring it here. Maybe she really was his daughter.

Mr. Hollywood, I thought. How annoying. I rose quickly, gathered my things, descended the steps from where they were standing, and left without acknowledging them. Aggravation I did not need.

I glanced at my watch. Thirty minutes to go before my body wrap. There would just be time to have a nice, relaxing steam bath.

As I entered the spa pavilion, a chorus of lyric, Thai-accented voices greeted me by name. As if by magic, a plush cotton robe was draped over my shoulders, soft padded slippers were placed on my feet, and two bath sheets, big enough for a king-size bed, were carried to the door of the steam room. Two achingly slim, sarong-clad attendants smoothed them over the warm marble-surfaced bench.

We will call you when your treatment is scheduled, Miss Mallory. Enjoy yourself, the spa attendant said.

I entered the fragrant steam-filled room. The distinctive minty-piney-honey scent of eucalyptus enveloped me. I settled onto the bench, and the steam was so dense that I could see no farther than my hand. Quickly, I surrendered to the overwhelming comfort of this cocoon-like place. Now, I really was floating. If there had been anyone else in room, I wouldn’t have known. Or cared.

Dreamily, I remembered a Turkish hammam, tucked down a dim alley in central Istanbul, where I had hidden in a dark alcove, listening to the native women gossip among themselves. Or the one in our hotel in Marrakesh, which was so dark that I could not find the door to make my escape when the heat began to burn my feet. Recalling steam rooms in all the spas I had visited worldwide, this one was perfection. It certainly ranked in the top five.

Mind if I ask you something? a familiar voice said, coming out of the mist.

Who was that? It had to be the daughter. No one else had so much as looked my way since I had arrived. In fact, I had seen very few other guests other than those two. How did she get in here before me? I wondered.

I saw you at the meditation pagoda. Are you here on your own?

Oh no, my worst fear realized. It was the daughter. Did I say nothing? Pretend I didn’t hear her? Or maybe she wasn’t so bad. Maybe I should be more charitable to her.

She didn’t wait for my response. I’m here with my dad. He can be difficult, but that’s because I’m his daughter. He really is a nice guy, and once you get past the bluster, he can be a real sweetie.

Were we thinking of the same guy? Perhaps there was someone else here with their father, although I rather suspected that the other May-to-December couples were not masquerading as fathers and daughters.

I saw you when you arrived, I admitted. Your father made quite an entry. Is he always like that?

Yeah, always. Larger than life, and he wants everyone to know it. We’ve been here five times before. He thinks he practically owns the place. Dad likes to get in condition before he begins his annual trek in Nepal. Me, I’m just here for the relaxation, if you can call it that, while trying to handle him, she said with a smile. Forget I said that. He really is nice.

Was she trying to convince me? Maybe I had been too hasty in my opinion. Through the eucalyptus-scented, gauzy fog, I could see her frail outline. Maybe keeping up with her old man really had worn her out. Maybe she felt that she had to keep up with him and whatever his obsessions might be. Maybe she was just looking for a friend.

Would you join us for dinner? she blurted out. I know they have a communal table, they call it the talking table here, but with what I’ve seen over the years of the other guests, you’re the best shot I have of interesting him in someone other than myself.

So was this a fix-up by a twenty-something-year-old daughter? Maybe both she and he needed a friend. Wasn’t I here to make new friends myself? Wasn’t this an opportunity dumped directly into what should be my overly receptive lap? Who was I to say no? Start slowly, I told myself. Don’t appear anxious or judgmental. Let it flow naturally.

What’s your name? I asked. It didn’t seem like too personal a question. What’s his?

I’m Barb. He’s Brad. Barbara and Bradley Miller.

Short and sweet. I liked that. I could remember that. Where you from?

Toronto. In Canada.

Did she think I was a dolt? Me, I’m from the States, I said, but I left there years ago. Now I live in London and Cannes. Split my time according to the seasons. But let me tell you—if the weather in London doesn’t improve soon, there will be a permanent vacancy in my Kensington apartment.

That bad? Barb asked as she moved closer to me. She actually was not nearly as bad-looking as I had thought. Kind of cute in an outdoorsy way.

Worse. The steam room door opened, letting in a rush of cool air.

Miss Mallory, time for your wrap, the attendant called.

Gotta go, I said to Barb.

"So