pain held her back.
But in the water…
She’d always been better than Kirsty in the water. She’d captained her junior-high waterpolo team. She’d been selected to play for the state, and only the fact that her life had got busy had stopped her going further. But for Susie swimming was an extension of breathing.
Now she walked stiffly into the water, stood for one lovely, lingering, anticipatory moment-and then knifed forward into an oncoming wave.
Gorgeous. Just gorgeous. The moment she was through the breaker she felt her other life kick in, the life she’d known before the accident, before Rory’s death, before motherhood. She was a girl again, free, her body whole and healthy and ready for whatever the day should bring.
It almost gave her the courage to face the future.
She turned to the beach and Hamish was watching. Even from here she could see that he was tense. He was sitting on the sand with Boris beside him. His arm was draped over the dog. Rosie was curled up close by, sound asleep in the shade, but Hamish was still in the sun. He should be lying on the sun-warmed sand and snoozing, she thought, but he was bolt upright, watching.
He was playing lifeguard, she thought suddenly, recognising his tension for what it was. If she got into trouble he’d be down here in a minute, surging to her rescue.
She waved. He waved back but the tension didn’t ease.
She grinned-and then the smile died.
She liked it, she realised. She liked it a lot that he was playing lifeguard for her.
Who’d play lifeguard for her when she went back to the States?
You won’t need a lifeguard, she told herself fiercely. You’ll be fine. Don’t even think that you might still need someone. You’ve been depressed before and you’re not getting depressed again.
She turned to face the other end of the cove. She put her head down-and she swam.
Hamish watched as Susie limped down to the shoreline and was…astonished. She was beautiful, he thought. Gorgeous.
But she was also damaged. She was wearing a bikini that showed off every lovely curve, but it also revealed a wide, jagged scar across the small of her back. Was this the back injury that caused her limp?
She’d lost a husband. She was raising a baby on her own.
He was kicking her out of her castle.
Something inside his gut clenched as he watched her walk into the waves. Emotional decisions were not appropriate here, he told himself fiercely. This castle was worth a small fortune-no, a large fortune-and to keep a woman and a baby here in perpetuity was ridiculous. The lawyers had told him she’d been well provided for, and she’d reiterated that herself. She could go back to America and get on with whatever life she’d had before she’d met this Rory character and been dragged into this make-believe fantasy of titles and castles and…emotion.
He continued to watch as she stood, thigh deep in the waves, seeming to simply soak in the sun. She gazed about her as if taking in the sheer beauty of the cove, though she must have seen it so many times.
She stilled, then knifed forward into the oncoming wave and he forgot about the beauty of the cove.
She simply disappeared. Her dive into the wave produced nary a splash. Her body became a streamlined torpedo, slicing down and under, and it was as if she’d never been there.
She didn’t surface.
He was standing up, startling Boris who’d had his ears resting on his knees. Boris barked, expecting adventure, but Hamish had his eyes shaded. He was moving forward, trying to see…
She surfaced finally fifty yards from where she’d gone under. One breath, a slight turn and then down under again, and he was searching once more.
Where…where…?
Twenty yards this time, only twenty yards and she was moving along the cove rather than out to sea. Another breath, hardly perceptible-the break of her head above water could hardly be seen-and then under again, swift and sure, like a sleek young seal, surfacing to breathe but all economy of effort underwater.
He’d never seen anything like it. He thought he was a good swimmer, but she was magnificent.
He’d run a few steps in those first panicked seconds and Boris was bouncing around his legs, barking, expecting excitement. He lifted a piece of driftwood and threw it into the shallows, pretending to any unseen onlooker that he’d stood specifically to do this. That he hadn’t panicked. That the sight of Susie moving with such economy of action-with such beauty-didn’t have the power to move him.
Only, of course, it did have the power to move him. He felt…
He didn’t know how he felt.
Boris came streaming back up the beach, hauling his driftwood for another throw. The stick was laid at his feet and the big dog shook, sending a spray of sand and sea, hauling Hamish’s thoughts back to reality. To at least some semblance of normality.
‘I’m going back to babysitting,’ he told Boris. ‘I’m not watching.’
Boris put his head on the side and gazed at him in mute enquiry.
‘Well, I’m hardly a lifesaver,’ he muttered, sitting on the beach, hugging the dog and staring out to sea. ‘She can swim better than I can. There’s nothing I can do for your mistress, boy, except sit with her sleeping baby and give her a few more moments’ freedom.’
She waved from behind the breakers and he waved back.
Freedom…
She was glorying in her freedom, he thought, and suddenly he remembered his office back in Manhattan. It was a magnificent office. He had plate-glass windows that looked all the way to the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.
There was still plate glass between him and the sea.
‘It’s just because you’ve never had a holiday that you’re thinking like this,’ he told himself, suddenly angry. ‘Get over it. Cut it out with the emotion, Douglas. You know where that gets you, and you don’t want to go there.’
He lay back on the sand and closed his eyes.
Then he half opened one. Then he shrugged and sat up.
He’d just watch.
It had been a fabulous swim.
Susie came out of the water laughing with delight, pleasure and sheer wellbeing. OK, she was leaving this place, but its memories would stay with her for ever and one of them was this day. She shook herself like Boris, holding her hands out and wiggling her whole body so a spray of water went everywhere. Boris, who’d bounded down the beach to meet her, backed off as the water hit him, and she laughed with delight at her neat reversal of roles.
She looked up the beach and Hamish was watching her. She switched back. She’d had her time out.
Back to being the castle relic.
She walked up the beach and he rose to meet her, holding out her towel. She hesitated for a moment, just because the gesture seemed curiously intimate.
Which was dumb. It meant nothing. How many times had Kirsty done the same thing? She took the towel and retired behind it, enveloping her whole face so she didn’t have to look at him.
‘Best beach in the world,’ he said softly, and she let her towel drop to her shoulders and tried to smile.
‘It is.’
‘You’ll hate leaving it.’
‘I will. But I’ve had it for over a year. It’s time for someone else to enjoy it.’ Her smile became a little more determined. ‘Or many someones. All the people who’ll come to your hotel.’
‘It’s the sensible thing to do, to sell it.’
‘It is.’
‘You will be all right?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she told him, determined. ‘Thank you for looking after Rose.’
‘I’ve never babysat before.’
