Barefoot Bride

happen to anyone these days.

‘Market research-it is market research, isn’t it?-obviously pays well if you can afford six weeks somewhere like this when you’re between jobs,’ said Will, with just a hint of snideness. ‘But then, you always wanted to make money, didn’t you?’

‘I wanted to be secure,’ said Alice, hating the faintly defensive note in her voice. ‘And I am.’ What was wrong with wanting security? ‘I wanted to be successful, and I am,’ she added for good measure.

Well, she had been until last year, but, when your company was the subject of a hostile takeover, there wasn’t much you could do about it, no matter how good you were at your job.

It hadn’t been a good year. Her only lucky break had been winning nearly two thousand pounds in the lottery, and that had been a fluke. Normally, Alice wouldn’t even have thought about buying a ticket, but she had been in a mood when she was prepared to try anything to change the dreary trend of her life.

It wasn’t as if she had won millions. Two thousand pounds wasn’t enough to change her life, but it was just enough for a ticket to an out-of-the-way place like St Bonaventure, and Alice had taken it as a sign. At any other time, she would have been sensible. She would have bought herself a pair of shoes and put the rest of the money towards some much-needed repairs on her flat-the unexpected windfall would have covered the cost of a new boiler, for instance-but that hadn’t been any other time. That had been the day she heard that Tony and Sandi were getting married.

Alice had gone straight out and bought a plane ticket. And some shoes.

Still, there was no harm in letting Will think that she had earned so much money that she didn’t know what to do with it all. Not that it would impress him. He was more likely to disapprove of what he thought of as her materialistic lifestyle, but Alice was desperate for him to believe that she had made it.

‘We all make choices,’ she reminded him. ‘I made mine, and I don’t have any regrets,’

‘I’m glad you got what you wanted, then,’ said Will flatly.

‘You too,’ said Alice, and for a jarring moment their eyes met. It was as if the polite mask they both wore dropped for an instant, and they saw each other properly for the first time. The sense of recognition was like a blow to Alice’s stomach, pushing the air from her lungs and leaving her breathless and giddy and almost nauseous.

But then Will jerked his head away, the guarded expression clanging back into place with such finality that Alice wondered if she had imagined that look.

‘You didn’t marry Clive, then?’ he asked abruptly.

‘Clive?’ Alice was thrown by the sudden change of subject.

‘The Clive you were so in love with at Roger and Beth’s wedding,’ Will reminded her with an edge of savagery. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten him!’

‘I didn’t-’ Alice opened her mouth to strenuously deny ever loving Clive and then shut it again. If she hadn’t loved Clive, why had she let Will believe that she did? Why hadn’t she been able to tell him the truth that day?

‘No, I didn’t marry Clive,’ she said quietly. ‘We split up soon after…after Roger’s wedding,’ she finished after a tiny moment of hesitation.

She had so nearly said ‘after you kissed me’, and she might as well have done. The memory of that dark night in the hotel gardens jangled in the air between them. Those desperate kisses, the spiralling excitement, the sense of utter rightness at being back in each other’s arms.

The tightness around her heart as she’d watched him walk away.

Alice could feel them all as vividly as if they had kissed the night before.

Will had to be remembering those kisses too. She wanted to be able to talk about it, laugh about it even, pretend that it didn’t matter and it was all in the past, but she couldn’t. Not yet.

So she drew a steadying breath and summoned another of her bright smiles. ‘Then I met Tony, and we were together for four years. We talked about getting married, but…well, we decided it wouldn’t have worked.’

Tony had decided that, anyway.

‘We stopped ourselves making a terrible mistake just in time,’ Alice finished.

OK, it might not be the whole story, but why should she tell Will all her sad secrets? Anyway, it might not be the whole truth, but it was the truth. It would have been a mistake if she and Tony had gone ahead with the wedding. Nothing but unhappiness would have come from their marriage when Tony was in love with someone else. Alice’s world might have fallen apart the day Tony had sat her down to tell her about Sandi, but she’d accepted even then that he had done the right thing.

Today was Tony and Sandi’s wedding day, Alice was startled to remember. She had spent so long dreading this day, imagining how hard it would be for her to think about another woman taking what should have been her place, and, now that it was here, she hadn’t even thought about it.

Perhaps she ought to be grateful to Will for distracting her?

Will drained the last of his beer and turned aside to put the empty bottle on the decking rail. ‘Still avoiding commitment, I see,’ he commented with a sardonic glance over his shoulder at Alice, who flushed at the injustice of it.

She wasn’t the one who had called off the wedding. If it had been down to her, she would be happily married to Tony right now, but she bit back the words. She had just convinced him that ending her engagement to Tony had been a mutual decision, so she could hardly tell him the truth now.

Which was worse? That he thought she was afraid of commitment, or that he felt sorry for her?

No question.

‘Still determined not to get married until I’m absolutely sure it’s perfect,’ she corrected Will. ‘So…I’m fancy free, and on the lookout for Mr Right. I’m not going to get married until I’ve found him, and, until then I’m just having fun!’

Will was unimpressed by her bravado. ‘You seem very tense for someone who’s having fun,’ he said.

Alice gritted her teeth. ‘I am not tense,’ she snapped. Tensely, in fact. ‘I’m a bit jet- lagged, that’s all. I only got here a couple of days ago.’

‘Ah,’ said Will, not bothering to hide the fact that he was totally unconvinced by her explanation. Which just made Alice even crosser, but she sucked in her breath and resisted the temptation to retort in kind. She didn’t want Will to think that he was getting to her, or that she cared in the slightest what he thought of her.

Friendly but unobtainable, wasn’t that how she wanted him to think of her? Pleasant but cool. His long-lost love who had turned into a mysterious stranger. Anything but sad and tense and a failure.

She fixed a smile to her face. ‘I gather you weren’t as hesitant about taking the plunge,’ she said.

‘The plunge?’

‘Marriage,’ she reminded him sweetly, and a strange expression flitted over his face.

‘Ah. Yes. I did get married,’ he agreed. ‘Why? Did you think I would never get over you?’

‘Of course not,’ said Alice with dignity. ‘If I thought about you at all-which I can’t say was that often-’ she added crushingly, ‘it was only to hope that you were happy.’

Will raised his brows in disbelief. ‘Really?’

‘Yes, really.’ Alice had been nursing a glass of Roger’s lethal tropical punch, but it didn’t seem to be having a very good effect on her. She set it on the rail next to Will’s empty bottle.

‘Have you been happy?’ she asked him, the words out of her mouth before she had thought about them properly.

Will didn’t answer immediately. He thought about Lily, about how it had felt when he had held his daughter in his arms for the first time. About drifting along the reef, fish flitting past him in flashes of iridescent colour and looking up to see the sunlight filtering down through the water to the deep blue silence. About sitting on a boat and watching dolphins curving and cresting in the foamy wake, while the water glittered and the sea breeze lifted his hair.

He had been happy then. It hadn’t been the same feeling as the happiness he had felt lying next to Alice after they had made love, holding her into the curve of his body, smoothing his hand over her soft skin, breathing in her fragrance, marvelling that this quirky, contrary, vibrant woman was really his, but, still, he had been happy since.

In a different way, but, yes, he’d been happy.

‘I’ve had times of great happiness,’ he said eventually, very conscious of Alice’s great golden eyes on his face. ‘But not in my marriage,’ he found himself admitting. ‘We weren’t as sensible as you. We didn’t realise what a