‘I can’t,’ he said promptly. ‘I think I’ll stay here.’
‘And become a beachcomber?’
‘There are worse fates.’
‘You wouldn’t miss your surgery?’
Of course he would. They both knew it. Beachcombing was a dream. Beachcombing with Amy.
‘Do you want to walk out on the rocks?’ she asked, seeing Joss’s face and having enough sense to change the subject. ‘It’s great-though you might get your feet wet.’
‘Wetter,’ he muttered. His shoes had sunk into the wet sand and he could feel the damp creeping into his socks. ‘Well, why not?’
‘Excellent.’ Amy grinned and grabbed his hand. ‘Follow me.’
The feel of her hand changed things.
Follow her…
She was leading him to a rocky outcrop which spiked up out of the breakers. ‘It’s a bit dangerous,’ she warned. ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, you can get into trouble. So hang on.’
How could he do anything else?
A bit dangerous…
She needed her head read, he thought as she clambered over the first of the rocks, towing him behind. There were breakers smashing over the rocks in force. Back on the beach Bertram stood and looked on in concern. There was no way he was following and the look on his face said they were crazy to try.
But she’d done this a thousand times before.
The first few rocks were the worst-the foam from the breakers was surging over the slippery surface and they had to time their way between waves. Even then they didn’t quite make it-Joss ended up on the other side with shoes full of water.
‘Don’t tell me. It’s low tide now and the next wave will carry us off to our doom. Or we’ll be trapped with the tide rising inch by inch.’
‘You’ve been reading too many adventure novels,’ she said severely. “‘The moon was a ghostly galleon, tossed upon stormy seas…” With moonrakers, pirates, chests and chests of jewels, and a heroine chained to the rocks as the tide creeps higher…higher…’
‘I seem to remember,’ he said faintly, ‘that “The moon was a ghostly galleon” started a tale of a highwayman.’
‘Same difference,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Same criminal hero and a dopey heroine abandoning all for love. But don’t worry. The tide’s full now so it doesn’t get any worse than this, and I’m not about to end it all for anything. Look. Clear rock.’
It was, too. The outcrop of rock stretched right out into the bay, a breakwater in its own right. And where she was leading him now… It was a channel of rock. The rocks on both sides formed a barrier.
‘It’s like Moses and the Red Sea,’ he said, stunned, and she grinned.
‘Yep. The parting of the water. This is my very favourite place in the whole world and I love it best when it’s just like this. Wild and stormy and wonderful.’
Joss didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Maybe it was because he was concentrating on keeping his footing on the slippery rocks-or maybe it was that he was just plain bemused.
Finally they reached the end-a vast flat rock perched high above the breakers. Amy released his hand to scramble up the last few feet, leaving him to follow. When he found his feet she was standing right at the end, staring into the moonlight.
The shafts of moonlight were playing over her face. She looked up and he thought that he’d never seen anything so lovely.
‘
Where had that come from?
Wherever-from a poem deep in the recesses of his schoolboy reading-it suddenly seemed apt.
Only the pronoun was wrong.
Amy would be happy wherever she was, whatever she did, he thought. She made the most of her life. She cared.
She was soaked to the skin. Her braid had come unfastened and her curls were a tangled riot around her face. She was wearing a coat that was too small and clothes that were too old-and she was turning her face into the wind as if she’d been given the world.
It was too much. It would have been too much for any man.
He took her hands in his as if to steady himself, and when her body twisted toward him he pulled her close.
He kissed her.
Of course he kissed her. There was a compulsion happening here that he had no hope of controlling. He couldn’t even try.
She was so desirable. So beautiful. So…
He didn’t know. But there was a damp tendril coiling down her forehead that he had to push softly away. There was salt water on her face that he had to taste… And her lips were soft and pliant and…and waiting.
Waiting for him.
She was so lovely.
His woman…
‘Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear…’
Moon madness. That’s what this was-the same blessed moon that had caused Romeo to forsake all for his Juliet.
For heaven’s sake, he was a surgeon-not a poet!
But he was a poet tonight. Who wouldn’t be with such sweetness in his arms.
Amy was so right for him. It was as if a part of him had been missing and had found its way home. Each curve of their bodies fitted together as if they knew each other through and through.
Joss held her close and deepened the kiss-because nothing, ever, had felt so right before.
And Amy?
What was she doing? she thought wildly. She’d taken this man to her very special place-her place-the place where she’d sobbed her heart out as a child or come when life had been just too bleak for words. It was a place of sanctuary and of healing.
She hadn’t expected this to happen.
To fall in love…
Because that was what was happening. As though responding to a force beyond her control, she opened her lips to the man who held her. More. She opened her heart.
It was so right! Her body was melting into his-aching-wanting and welcoming.
She felt herself sinking into him. Desperate to deepen the kiss. Desperate to grow closer. Though how could they be closer than they were at this minute? Two halves of one sweet whole. They’d been torn asunder by some mystery of fate and could now come together for always.
Joss’s hands were pulling her body ever closer. His kiss deepened and deepened again-and so did the wonder.
She was like no woman he’d ever kissed, he thought, dazed with the sensation of what was happening to him. And why? She was sodden with sea spray. She wore no trace of make-up and her clothes were shabby and her hair was blown every which way. There were trickles of rainwater running down her nose, merging with the rain on his face where their lips met. She looked about as far from his ideal woman as he could possibly imagine any woman being.
So how could she be meeting this need-this desperate desire-that until now he’d never known he had?
He didn’t know. All he knew was that she was…Amy.
And that was enough.
