emerging from the base of the cliffs to throw dappled shade if you wanted to be in the shade. There were rock pools toward the end of the cove. The waves at one end of the cove were high enough to form low surf, but at the more sheltered end there were no waves at all. Here the water sloped out gently, making the sea a nursery pool to beat the finest nursery pool anyone could ever imagine.
‘You see why I cracked and asked for help?’ Susie asked. She was kneeling on the rug, removing Rosie’s nappy and plastering her with sunblock. ‘I can’t bear not to be down here.’
‘Why did you have to crack before you asked?’
She hesitated. ‘I don’t like to ask for help.’
‘It’s more than that, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘You’re afraid of me?’
‘No. I…’
‘What did my cousin do to you?’
‘It’s not that.’
‘Tell me.’
She flinched. Carefully she replaced the tube of sunblock in her holdall and then set her naked daughter on the sand. Rose started crawling determinedly toward Boris. Seeing Boris was chasing gulls in circles, here was an occupation that was going to take some time.
Hamish waited, giving Susie space. Finally she sat back on her heels and gazed out to sea.
‘They were both your cousins,’ she whispered. ‘Kenneth and Rory. Kenneth killed Rory so he’d inherit all this- and when he discovered I was pregnant he tried to kill me as well. He hauled me and my twin, Kirsty, onto a boat right here in this cove and tried to drive us onto rocks.’ She shivered but then gave a tentative smile. ‘But we’re tough. No one messes with the McMahon twins.’
‘You’re a twin?’
‘Yep. And proud of it. Kirsty fell for the local doctor and they married last year. She now has two little stepdaughters and is fast becoming a local.’
‘But you want to go home?’
‘My life is in the States. It’s time to get on with it. You either get on with life or you die,’ she said simply. ‘I was a mess for a while, but I’ve come out the other side.’
‘So why are you afraid of me?’
‘I’m not afraid.’
‘I think you are.’
‘Rose needs a swim,’ she said, almost angrily. ‘It’s too good a day to mess with by talking about what’s past.’
‘I agree,’ he told her. ‘I could use a swim, too.’
‘The wave end is better for swimming,’ she told him. ‘Rose and I use the end without waves.’
‘Different ends. Now, how did I know you were going to say that?’
‘Just swim,’ she snapped. ‘Enough with the psychoanalysis. This might be the last time I swim in this place and I intend to enjoy it.’
Susie spent the next hour in the shallows and she was aware of Hamish every single minute. She took Rosie up to her knees in water, then sat with the little girl on her lap while the wavelets washed over them. Rosie splashed and cooed and giggled and Susie giggled with her-but still she watched Hamish.
He was a strong swimmer, she decided. He used a clean, efficient stroke that said he’d been properly trained and he wasn’t out of practice. He took no chances in an unknown environment, not going deeper than chest depth but stroking strongly from one end of the cove to the other and back again. When he wearied of swimming he bodysurfed, catching the white breakers with an ease that said he’d done this, too.
He was glorying in the water, in the sun and in the day just as much as she was, she thought. She watched his lithe body slicing through the water with something akin to jealousy. He looked free. He was free to live in this place if he wanted.
He didn’t want. He intended to make money from it and leave.
Finally Rose started wearying. She curled into her mother’s lap and snuggled and Susie struggled upright and carried her daughter up the beach to dry her off and give her lunch. She fed Rose and gave her a bottle.
While she fed her daughter Hamish still didn’t come near. Instead he threw driftwood over and over into the waves for Boris. Boris would take as much of this as anyone would give him, and Hamish gave him a lot, but as Rose snuggled down and closed her eyes in satisfied sleep, Hamish came jogging up the beach to join them.
He looked fantastic, Susie thought. Wide shoulders tapering to narrow hips, not an ounce of spare flesh on him, his tanned skin coated in a fine mist of sand, his black curls flopping forward making him look almost endearing…
Cut it out! she told herself urgently. Get your hormones back where they belong.
‘There are sandwiches here,’ she managed. ‘Rose and I have eaten. Would you like some?’
‘Food!’ He fell to his knees like a man who hadn’t seen food for a week and as he bit into her sandwiches Susie had another of those…moments. Watching him enjoy the food she’d prepared… There was nothing sexy about it at all, she told herself crossly, but she knew that she lied.
‘You swim well,’ she told him, and if she sounded stiff and formal there wasn’t a blind thing she could do about it.
‘I was raised in California,’ he told her. ‘I’m an original beach bum. I’ve never seen a beach as good as this, though.’
‘You’re still tanned.’
‘I have a penthouse with a sunroof. And a heated pool.’
Oh, of course.
‘You’re just a paddler?’ he asked, polite as well.
She thought, Drat him. How dared he put her in this state of she didn’t know what?
‘I like swimming.’
‘You weren’t swimming,’ he pointed out, and she flushed.
‘Right, like I can swim when I have an attached fourteen-month-old.’
‘You’d like to swim?’ he asked, and she bit back another angry retort.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Rose is asleep. You could swim now.’
‘I don’t like leaving Rose on the beach by herself.’
‘She’s not by herself,’ he said gently. ‘She’s with me.’
So she was. Her baby was soundly asleep. She wouldn’t wake for a couple of hours. Hamish was offering her freedom, and she’d really, really like a swim.
But something was holding her back. Not distrust, exactly. More…
She couldn’t put a finger on it.
‘You can trust me,’ he said, forcing her to try.
‘I know.’
‘You’ll be able to see her all the time you’re swimming. Go on, Susie, you know you’d love to.’
She would.
‘What’s stopping you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Swim,’ he told her. ‘Or I’ll lift you up and hurl you into the waves with my bare hands.’
‘I’d like to see you try.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ he confessed. ‘I might have inherited a title, but Big Bad Sir Brian Blipping Villagers On the Head is a far cry from a wimpish stockbroker who values his back.’
It was only Hamish who was making her nervous. Swimming didn’t.
Susie did this often, whenever Kirsty brought her twins over. They’d take turns to play childminder while the other took off into deep water and gloried in the freedom the water allowed.
It did allow freedom. The car accident that had killed Rory had damaged Susie’s spine. Slowly, slowly she was recovering from the damage it had caused but she wasn’t free to walk and run as she’d like. Stiffness and residual
