‘Not yet…’
‘Please…’
‘Nikki, tomorrow I’ll be gone. I can’t stay here. We both know that.’
Nikki shook her head. ‘I don’t know that. I don’t see why you have to keep running.’
‘I’m not running.’
‘No?’
He closed his eyes. His face was haggard in the moonlight. ‘Nikki, I’m just trying to come to terms with myself-with what’s happened. Can’t you see that?’
‘With the fact that you can’t have children.’
He nodded. ‘Yes. It’s important to me.’
‘Luke…’
It was so close. The words were so close. Instead Nikki drew in her breath. She wouldn’t buy this man’s love. She wouldn’t. It had to be for her…
‘Luke, I love you,’ she whispered. ‘Isn’t that enough? Can’t that be enough?’
He stood motionless in the still, tropical night. Around them even the cicadas fell to silence, waiting. And then Luke shook his head.
‘I don’t think it can be,’ he said roughly. ‘God knows it should be. But I can’t make it work. Even though I want you…’
‘Do you want me?’
‘You don’t know how much.’ He opened his eyes and stared across at her. She stood motionless, waiting. She was playing with every card she had. There was only tonight. There was only now.
‘I’m yours if you want me, Luke,’ she whispered. ‘If you want me…’
She could do no more. She closed her eyes and waited.
And he would have had to be less than human to resist. In the moonlight, her soft white dress floating around her and her tousled curls gold-red in the moonlight, she was almost ethereal. Luke groaned and half turned away. Nikki didn’t move. Please, she was whispering over and over in her heart. Please…
And he came to her. He had to. It was as if they were two parts of a magnetic force that only had attraction for each other. He came and gathered her into his arms as though he were drowning. His lips took hers and Nikki gave herself to him with joy.
She could never recall how it happened, but somehow…somehow they were inside, in her big, cool bedroom, and he was kicking the wide French windows closed behind them. Nikki’s dress was somehow falling on to the polished floorboards and she was being lifted to lie on the smooth sheets, to wait…to wait for her love.
This was her place. This was her rightful home in the universe. She was with her man-of her man-one-and her body responded with all the joy that was in her heart.
This man was her love. This man was the father of the child she carried in her body, and her whole being reacted with light and love. Her hands took him to her, greedily, hungrily. She wanted to know every part of him, forever and ever and ever.
They were mad that night. They were two hearts, wounded and somehow made whole for the blessing of one magic night. In each other’s bodies they found joy and peace and love. They made love and slept and woke and made love again and Nikki tried to keep awake in Luke’s arms, so that she could savour it-this night that she wanted to go on for the rest of her life.
‘I love you,’ she whispered over and over again as he loved her body-as he made her feel the most loved and wanted woman on the face of the earth. She ran her fingers over his muscled frame and sought to make him hers- sought to melt her body into his. ‘I love you,’ she whispered, but he didn’t respond.
He didn’t reply.
His lovemaking told her that he wanted her-that he needed her-and that when he was gone he would be desperate for the comfort of her body.
His tongue tasted her and loved her, but didn’t say the words that would tie him to her forever.
Nothing.
And, finally, Nikki slept.
She woke at dawn as Luke stirred beside her, disengaged his body from hers and rose.
Sleepily Nikki looked up, loving the strong curves of his muscled body. Her eyes sought to know every inch of him. Instinctively she knew that there was to be no more. This was the end. The end…
She didn’t speak. She couldn’t. Instead she lay in the weak dawn light and watched the man she loved prepare to leave.
Finally, clothed, he turned to face her. Wordlessly she watched, waiting. Silence stretched out between them. It went on and on, as if neither was willing to face what had now become inevitable. Finally Luke swore softly and crossed to the bed to look down at her.
Nikki lay still, her red-blonde hair tumbled on the pillow around her too pale face. Her eyes were enormous as she looked up at him, waiting for the hurt.
And, sure enough, it came.
‘Last night shouldn’t have happened,’ he said quietly, his eyes pain-filled. ‘These whole three weeks…’
‘Should never have happened,’ Nikki agreed. ‘I know. But they have, Luke. And…and I’ve changed forever because of it.’
He touched her hair as if it hurt to do so. ‘I’m glad…if it means you’ll get out more. Meet people. Find someone…’
‘Someone who’ll love me…’ Nikki’s voice broke and she turned into her pillow. ‘Luke, how can you say that? How can you say that when you know I love you?’
‘God, Nikki…’
She turned back to him then and rose to a sitting position, the sheet falling away to reveal her lovely nakedness. Her hand came out to touch his-a wordless pleading.
‘Luke, why don’t you want me?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t…I don’t understand. You don’t feel what I feel?’
‘Hell!’ Luke pulled his hand from hers and turned away to stand and stare out of the window. ‘I want you, Nikki. God knows…’
‘But not enough to ask me to stay with you.’
‘For a while, yes,’ he said bleakly. ‘I want you. At this moment I want you more than anything I have ever wanted in my life. But I want more than that, Nikki. I want things I can’t have. I want a family…’
‘And I’m not enough.’
‘No.’ He stared sightlessly out of the window. ‘For a few crazy moments here I thought it might be. I thought that with you and Amy I could be at peace. But I don’t think I can ever be at peace, Nikki.’
‘So the fact that you can’t father a child is more important than your love for us?’
Nikki’s heart shrank from what he was saying. She could have this man, she knew, just by opening her mouth and promising him his child. And it would be no better than what she had had with Scott. Scott hadn’t wanted her unless she had money. Now Luke had no use for her unless she had his child.
‘Nikki, it seems unfair…’
‘It is unfair.’ Nikki took a deep breath and rose, pulling her sheet after her. She wound it around her as if it were some sort of defence against him, but her defence had come too late.
‘You made love to me as if you loved me,’ she whispered. ‘You made me feel…you made me feel as if I was part of you. And I gave myself to you. Not just my body, Luke Marriott, but myself. My love. My heart. And now… now you tell me that because of your damned past-because of an illness that’s robbed you of the ability to bear children-my love’s not enough.’
‘Nikki…’
Anger came then, as some sort of in-built defence against the pain. It gave her strength to lash out one more time. ‘You’ve got a damned nerve.’ Nikki’s eyes flashed fire. ‘You want me if I can bear your children, but not otherwise. What the hell does that make me, Luke Marriott?’
‘I know. It’s unfair…’
‘Too damned right it’s unfair.’
He shook his head. Luke’s hands came up as if to touch her and then fell away uselessly to his sides.
