Droplets of water had glistened on Mal's shoulders as he surfaced and he had smiled as he shook the wet hair out of his eyes and reached for her. They had climbed the hill to the ruined fort overlooking the beach and watched the sunset, and when the soft night had closed around them making love had been the most natural thing in the world. Afterwards they had walked down to the sea again, to sink into the cool, dark water, and the phosphorescence had glimmered around their entwined bodies.
'Stay,' Mal had said on the last night, but Copper had been part of an overland tour making its way back to London, where friends were expecting her. It hadn't seemed so bad saying goodbye when he had her contact address there and promised to ring her as soon as he got there himself. She had been so sure that they had been meant for each other. How was she to have known that it would be seven years before she saw him again?
No reason to remember him? With an effort, Copper wrenched her eyes from Mal and back to the present. The beach snapped into a dirt track, the warm Mediterranean night into the fierce glare of an outback afternoon, and she was left feeling jarred and disorientated by the abrupt transition. 'Of course I remembered,' she said in a low voice.
'Why didn't you say anything?'
'The same sort of reasons, I suppose,' she said weakly. 'I didn't think you remembered me. All I knew was that you'd been married and that your wife had died, so it didn't seem very appropriate to remind you that we'd met before. And there didn't seem much point. It was just a holiday romance,' she added, trying to convince herself.
'Was it?' said Mal, without looking at her.
'You never got in touch,' Copper reminded him. She wanted to sound casual, as if she hadn't really cared one way or the other, but her voice came out flat, accusing.
'I rang you,' he said.
Surprise made her swing round. 'No, you didn't!'
'I did,' he insisted. Linking his hands loosely together, he leant on the top rail once more. Copper could see the dust on his skin, the pulse beating below his ear. 'I'd spent that year working as an agricultural consultant in East Africa. I'd waited until Brett had finished school and could help Dad while I was away and knew I would never have a better chance to travel than when my contract was finished. I was making the most of that chance in Turkey because I knew that once I got back there wouldn't be many opportunities like it, but it meant that I was out of contact for a couple of months.'
Mal's voice lost all expression. 'When I got to London there was a message saying that my father had died suddenly over a month before. Brett was too young to manage on his own so I had to get the first plane home.' He hesitated. 'I rang you from the airport. One of your friends answered the phone. She said you were at a party but that she'd give you the message. Didn't you get it?'
'No,' said Copper slowly, thinking how differently she might have felt if she had known that Mal had tried to contact her. 'No, I never got a message.'
'I even tried to ring you from here when I got back,' Mal went on after a moment. 'But you were out again and…oh, I don't know.' He stopped, narrowing his eyes at the distant horizon. 'I suppose there didn't seem much point, just like you said. You were on the other side of the world and obviously having a good time. I remembered what you'd said about your life in Adelaide, about the parties and the clubs and the sailing weekends, and I couldn't see you giving all that up for the kind of life I could offer you out here. I had other things on my mind as well, trying to get Birraminda back together after my father's death.'
He paused again and brought his eyes back to Copper's face. 'You'd seemed like the kind of girl who would enjoy herself whatever she was doing, so I didn't think you would waste much time wondering what had happened to me.'
Only seven years. 'No,' said Copper.
'Anyway,' Mal finished, 'it doesn't matter now. It's all in the past.'
'Yes,' said Copper.
There was an uncomfortable silence. At least she found it uncomfortable. Mal didn't look as if it bothered him in the least. It ought to be so easy now that each knew that the other remembered. It ought to be easy to relax, to laugh, to say 'Do you remember?' or 'We had a good time, didn't we?' But somehow it wasn't easy at all. Memories shimmered in the air between them, so close that Copper felt as if she could reach out and push them apart with her hands.
'It's…er…quite a coincidence, isn't it?' she managed at last, moving a few surreptitious inches away from Mal. 'Ending up together again after all this time, I mean.'
'Does it make any difference?' he asked coolly, and she knew that he wasn't thinking of the past but of the present, of Megan and his determination to provide her with stability for as long as he could.
'No,' said Copper awkwardly. She ought to be thinking of the present too, of the future and what this marriage would gain for Copley Travel. 'No, of course not.'
Mal's eyes rested on her standing rigidly away from him, her arms hugged together in an unconsciously defensive posture. 'As far as I'm concerned, as long as you behave like a wife in public after we're married, how you behave in private is your decision. My feeling is that we're both adults, and we've found each other attractive in the past, so we might as well make the most of the time we're going to spend together in bed as well as out of it. We did before.'
'It was different then,' she said with a touch of desperation. 'We're different. You hadn't been married then; I hadn't met Glyn. It can't ever be the same as it was then.'
Mal's eyes flickered at the mention of Glyn. 'I'm not saying it would be the same,' he said a little impatiently. 'I'm just suggesting that since we're going to be sharing a bed for three years we should enjoy a physical as well as a business relationship, but it's entirely up to you. I won't lay a finger on you in private unless invited. All you have to do is ask…nicely, of course!'
Copper tensed at the undercurrent of mockery in his voice. 'Will I have to put in a formal request?' she snapped, wishing she had never raised the subject in the first place.
'I'm sure you'll know just what to say if the occasion arises,' said Mal, but when she only scowled at the horses standing companionably nose to tail in the shade, he sighed. 'Look, I can see you don't like the idea. Fine. I respect that. We can even put it in the contract, if that makes you feel any better. As far as I'm concerned, the matter's closed, but if you change your mind, you only have to say so. Until you do, there's no need for you to feel nervous about climbing into bed beside me. Is that clear enough for you?'
'Yes,' said Copper stiltedly. 'Thank you.' Mal's assurance that he wouldn't touch her unless she asked should have been reassuring, but somehow it only made her feel worse. She could hardly object to his willingness to make the choice hers, but he hadn't sounded as if he cared much one way or the other. Did he really expect her to coolly ask him to make love to her?
Copper tried to imagine herself putting in a casual request. Oh, by the way, Mal, I want you to make love to me tonight. Or maybe he had an unspoken invitation in mind? Perhaps he expected her to roll over to his side of the bed and trail her fingers suggestively over his body?
And what would Mal do then? He hadn't exactly fallen over himself to persuade her that they would be as good together as they had been before. He might sigh and shake her off, or-worse-turn over with a martyred air and apply himself to the tedious business of satisfying her. Copper burned with humiliation at the thought. She would never be able to do it! But how could she spend three years sleeping beside him and never touching him while their memories made a taunting third in the bed?
'So,' said Mal, settling his hat on his head as he straightened. 'Do we have a deal?'
Three years keeping house or driving home to tell her father that she had failed him again? Three years with Mal or the rest of her life without him? 'Yes,' she said after a.tiny pause. 'We have a deal.'
Mal hadn't missed that moment of hesitation. 'Your business must mean a lot to you,' he commented with a sardonic look, and she knew that he was thinking of Lisa, who had also put business first.
Well, what did it matter if he thought she was just like his wife? Wasn't that better than letting him know that she was afraid of the treacherous clamour of her own body more than anything he might do? 'It does,' she said, gathering the vestiges of her pride around her and with only a trace of huskiness in her voice. 'I would hardly have agreed to marry you if it didn't, would I?'
'No,' he said. 'I suppose you wouldn't.'
Another painful pause. Couldn't he see how desperate she was for reassurance? Why couldn't he put his arms
