what was becoming clearer by the minute. He was hungry for Rachel.
Rachel was unavailable. What had she said about her husband?
Maybe Christine was all there was.
‘So you are going to marry her?’
Rachel was watching him with the air of an inquisitive sparrow. Furious, with himself as well as her, he started to haul the picnic things together.
‘I think it’s time we took Toby home.’
‘Toby’s asleep. He can’t be any more asleep at home than he is right now. And you haven’t answered the question.’
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘Mmm, but I thought we’d agreed we’d already been impolite. We may as well keep going, don’t you think?’
‘No,’ he said, goaded, and she smiled.
‘You started it.’
He had, he conceded, with his talk of her scarring. But he had no intention of continuing.
Rachel had no intention of stopping.
‘Toby doesn’t like Christine much,’ she told him. ‘Neither does Myra. Do you think Christine would soften with the brocade-remembering-Beth thing if you married?’
‘Look-’
‘I wouldn’t want to live with it.’ She stretched her legs out full length, admiring her sandy toes. She had beautiful crimson toenails.
Very distracting toenails.
‘I can see why you’d want to, of course!’ she conceded. ‘She’s lovely. Is Christine very like your wife was?’
‘Will you cut it out?’ He was half laughing, half angry. ‘Why don’t we talk about you for a change?’
‘Like what about me?’ She was still admiring her toenails.
‘Like what is it between you and your husband? You were fighting like cat and dog at the weekend. It can’t be much of a marriage.’
The laughter left her face. She’d been teasing him-it had been light-hearted banter-but suddenly there was no banter left. There was a long silence. Then…
‘No,’ she said at last, and she spoke so softly he had to strain to hear what she was saying. ‘No, I don’t have much of a marriage.’
He shouldn’t go further. He should stop this potentially hurtful conversation right now.
He couldn’t. The devil-or something-was driving him. He had to push.
‘Yet you’re criticising me for potentially making a loveless marriage?’
‘Whoa…’ Her eyes flashed at that. ‘I didn’t say a word about a loveless marriage,’ she retorted, spirit re- entering her voice with a vengeance. ‘I may not have much of a marriage but I surely went into it with love.’
‘Yet you want out?’
The conversation had become suddenly so intense he could hardly breathe. Hell, how had this happened? He watched her face and her eyes were blind, as if she was consumed by panic.
‘I’m out now, aren’t I?’ she whispered. ‘Dear God, I shouldn’t be, but I’m out.’
He didn’t know what was happening. He didn’t understand. All he knew was that he’d hurt her somehow, and hurt her badly. ‘Rachel, don’t look like that.’
‘Look like what?’
‘Like there’s something inside you that’s tearing apart.’
‘I’m not… It’s not…’
Her hands were fumbling, trying to collect the picnic things together, but he could see she wasn’t thinking of what she was doing. Her hands weren’t connected to her thoughts and her eyes were still so pain-filled that he found himself reaching out, grasping her fingers between his. Holding…
She didn’t pull away.
She didn’t move.
How long they stayed there he could never afterwards tell. The night was creeping in through the smoky haze. The sun had slipped unnoticed, behind the mountains, behind the distant fires. The beach was deserted.
All was still, apart from the soft hush, hush, hush of the waves slipping into shore, one after the other.
Endless.
Time was nothing. There was nothing. This had started as comfort-hadn’t it?-but now it was more. Deeper. For this moment there was just this man and this woman and a meeting that neither could understand, that neither wanted, that simply was.
Still their hands held. It was their eyes doing the talking, searching, locked to each other and discovering in each a link. A bond. An aching need and a knowledge that in each other pain could be assuaged.
The moment stretched on.
He should break his hold. He should release her hands, pull back…
But still his eyes searched hers and with every moment that passed the need to do more became increasingly compulsive.
Inescapable.
One man. One woman. One moment.
He pulled her into his arms and he kissed her.
What was she doing here? Rachel hardly knew. All she knew was that the moment Hugo’s fingers touched hers, her mind shut down to everything that wasn’t him.
Toby was asleep. The dogs were far off, fruitlessly chasing gulls in endless circles around the beach. There were no witnesses to what was happening here.
There was no problem with witnesses. No one would gainsay her this pleasure. Dottie had told her that as she’d packed the gorgeous lingerie and pushed her out the door to what she’d thought would be a romantic weekend with Michael.
Only it would never have worked. Even if Michael had been…nice, she could never have let him near her. The guilt had still been with her. The overriding bitterness at what could have been.
But all of that was lost the moment Hugo’s hands touched hers. He pulled her into him and as his mouth claimed hers and as she melted effortlessly into him, all she felt was joy.
Oh, the pleasure. The aching wonder. Eight years of sorrow and loneliness were all dispelled in this one kiss. In this meeting of bodies, one with the other.
It was a kiss, but it was so much more than a kiss. It was a melting of barriers, a moving forward, a reaffirmation of life itself.
She couldn’t pull away. She knew she should but she hadn’t the strength. Rachel, who’d been so strong for so long, was falling now as she hadn’t let herself ever fall. She’d been alone and now…she was home. She was where she belonged. Hugo was kissing her and she was moving from an old life into a new, like a butterfly emerging from a faded and torn chrysalis to begin a new life.
Hugo.
Life or death. Living or dying.
The dogs disturbed them. The flock of gulls they’d been chasing finally wheeled out to sea. Delirious with excitement, the dogs came hurtling up the beach, soaking wet. They landed on the picnic rug and proceeded to shake what seemed gallons of seawater over everyone.
Including Toby. He woke and whimpered a little. Hugo pulled away for an instant and it was enough. To let reality in.
To let Rachel’s reality sink in.
What was she doing?
And there they all were-the old doubts, the fears and the loneliness and the endless future. They hadn’t
