He was downstairs in a moment, a towel wrapped around his middle. Pippa was gliding away from him, oblivious. At the poolside he dropped the towel by the diving board and went out to stand on the edge. A slight creak of the board alerted her and she rolled over on her back just in time to see Luke, as naked as she, flying through the air. The gleaming surface broke into a thousand fragments as he struck the water and vanished.
She felt the disturbance as he neared her, and dog-paddled, waiting for his head to break the surface, then she turned and glided away. He came after her, caught up, but didn't try to touch her, swimming silently by her side.
Suddenly she dived. For a moment he had a ravishing picture of a rounded, shimmering bottom breaking the surface before vanishing. He dived with her, and in the darkness below he touched her hand. But he retreated at once, and when she came up she couldn't find him at first.
He was at the far end, his back to her, and this would have been a good chance to climb out and return to bed. Instead she joined him in the deep water and they swam silently, side by side. At this moment she could hardly believe that she was ill. She felt better and stronger than she'd done for ages. At the pool's edge they turned together and, as if by a signal, both changed to the backstroke, finding in movement the harmony that had eluded them in words. In the shallow end they stood, and he took her hand, looking into her face. She looked back at him. They had come to the end of a confusing journey. What now?
His face was in shadow, but something told her that he was asking the same question, and everything depended on her answer. She let her head fall back so that her mouth was raised, close to his, expectant. Still holding her hand he leaned down and touched her lips with his own, as lightly as a feather. She swayed closer toward him, her thighs touching his, her breasts pressed against his chest. He put his arms around her, she wrapped hers around him, and they stood together for a long time, motionless, gleaming in the moonlight.
'Come back to me,' he whispered. 'Please come back to me.'
This might have been the moment to apologize for her bitter words, but a wise instinct held her silent. It had all needed to be said, and perhaps, with that done, they could find a way forward. She said nothing, but rested her head on his shoulder.
'Come inside,' he said. 'You'll catch a cold out here.'
Upstairs he fetched fresh towels from the bathroom, brought them to her room and settled on the floor, drying her feet. From this angle she couldn't see his face, and perhaps that was why he had chosen it.
'Do you want to leave?' he asked quietly.
'No.'
'Are you sure? I'll drive you home, and I won' trouble you. I got it wrong. Everything you said i true, but I thought I could make it right. I guess that was just my conceit.'
'Luke, stop.' She laid her fingers gently over his mouth. He took her hand, turned it and brushed the back with his lips.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I knew, really. I found my dream, but you didn't have the chance to find yours, because I left you with all the burdens. I think it was when you said about always cooking chips that I realized what I'd done to you.' He kissed her hand again, and kept hold of it.
'Did you mean it?' he asked, in a low voice. 'About wishing you'd never met me?'
'No, I didn't mean that.'
'Of course not, because of Josie, but-'
'Not just because of Josie. I wouldn't want to lose what we had. It was so beautiful.'
'It was the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me. And when I found that I'd fallen in love with you again-or still loved you-a bit of both perhaps-I thought…' Luke made a gesture of frustration, 'Dammit, I can find the words easily enough when they don't mean anything.' He looked up. 'But not with you.'
She brushed the hair out of his eyes, looking down into his face with love.
'Was it true what you told me,' she asked, 'about turning back at the airport?'
'Yes. I couldn't believe that you'd really let me go, but you did. So I turned back. It half killed me to be the one to crack first, but you meant more to me than pride. And you weren't there.'
'I was too proud to stay,' she confessed. 'I walked off at once because I thought hanging around would have been pathetic.'
They looked at each other.
'We could have had it then,' she whispered. 'If I'd only stayed a little longer-if I hadn't put my pride first, we could have been together all these years.' She put her head in her hands and wept.
'My darling, don't.' He got up onto the bed beside her and took her in his arms. 'Don't, please don't. It's no good looking back.'
'But the years we wasted. I can't bear it. All this time we could have been together.' She clung to him, sobbing in a kind of angry despair.
'Pippa-Pippa, please-look at me, darling-don't cry-please don't cry.'
He could almost have wept himself. There was an unfamiliar pain in his heart at the lost years, and her pain made it greater. He kissed her tear-stained cheeks, seeking to console her, for until she was happy again he knew that nothing would go right with him. Suddenly he was kissing her mouth, and it was as warm and soft to him as it had been hard and unwelcoming before.
Pippa reached for him eagerly. She was in Luke's arms again, and this time it was right. The old magic was working, flooding her senses with sweetness, telling her she was where she belonged. He was hers as she had always been his, and now she was free to tell him so with her lips, her hands, her loins.
A slight tug and her robe fell open. She shrugged it quickly aside, pulled at his towel and they were naked together. He touched her reverently. He seemed to have suffered a mysterious loss of confidence. There was a hesitancy in his manner as though he were asking for reassurance every step of the way. She gave it to him joyfully. She, too, needed reassurance, and she found it in the love in his eyes and the gentleness of his touch.
Pippa had tried to imagine the woman she had become making love with the man he had become, but the vision always collapsed against the memory of their younger selves, feverish and frantic, thinking pleasure was everything. The pleasure was still there, but it had changed character. Once their mat-ings had been fierce, volatile, but always with an underlying tenderness. Now the tenderness was greater, infusing every gesture and every whispered word.
'Tell me that you want me,' he murmured. 'I need to hear you say it.'
'I never stopped wanting you.'
'But now-this moment?'
'Now-and always.'
As he entered her, Pippa felt a profound peace overtake her, as though all was now well because she had returned to where she was meant to be. And it was the most wonderful place on earth, a place where the storms were stilled and only joy remained. With his old instinctive understanding of her Luke made love with her now in just the way she needed, cradling her as though she was something precious and breakable that he feared to harm.
As they lay in each other's arms afterward he said, 'There was never really anyone else. Only you.' Certain memories assailed him and he added hastily, 'However it may have looked.'
Pippa smiled. 'It's all right. I know what you mean.' And she did.
It had never been like this before. Their young selves had collapsed with exhaustion, not lain together in such deep, healing calm.
'I've been thinking,' he murmured after a while. 'Perhaps it's as well that you left the barrier when you did. We were kids. If we'd married then, we might not have lasted. I wouldn't have left you, but I'd have been lousy as a husband, and you'd have gotten fed up and thrown me out. As it is, we've got years and years ahead of us.'
'Years and years,' she echoed wistfully. 'Oh, Luke, I do hope so.'
'Of course we have. We'll see our golden wedding, and I'll look back and remind you of tonight.' He grinned. 'Josie will be sixty by then, fussing around her grandchildren. Can you imagine that? And I'll be in my eighties, still relying on you to keep me on the straight and narrow. As long as I have you I'll be all right. But-' his arms tightened suddenly, and for the first time ever she heard a note of fear in his voice ''-but you have to be there. I faced life without you once before, but I couldn't face it again.'
'Hush,' she whispered, 'don't say things like that.'
'I know I'm talking nonsense. It's just that I can't believe how lucky I am to have been given a second
