suddenly she was being held tightly in his arms, crushed against his chest, kissed and kissed some more.
This was dumb. This was crazy, letting herself be kissed in the moonlight, letting herself be kissed as she’d been kissed all those years ago.
For it was the same, exactly as she remembered. It was a searing, molten kiss that felt like two forces were being hauled together and fused into one. It was a white-hot heat that made her heart twist with longing and desire and love.
Ben.
She couldn’t pull away. Where was the strength for that? Nowhere.
How could she ever have thought she could love Jacques? She’d tried so hard and she’d failed and she knew it was no character flaw in Jacques that had prevented it-though, heaven knew, it should have been. It was because she considered herself irrevocably married to this man.
Her heart.
But here was no happy ending. Ben had been raised to never give his heart. How could such a man change? How could such a man admit a need?
He couldn’t, but she did. Oh, she did, she thought as her body melted into his. She kissed him back with a fierceness that matched his own. She loved him with every fibre of her being, willing him to soften, willing him to love her as she loved him.
His hands were tugging her against him. He felt wonderful-a big man, superbly muscled, strengthened by years of military training, moving from emergency to emergency, running…
He was still running, she thought in that tiny fragment of her mind that was available for such thought-which wasn’t much, admittedly, but it was enough to tinge this kiss with sadness, to tinge it with the inevitability of parting.
He was so right for her. She was so right for him. Her breasts moulded against his chest as if she was somehow meant to be there. They’d been made in one cast and then split somehow, and now, for this tiny fragment of time, the two halves of the whole had come together.
There had to be a way. There had to.
The kiss extended for as long as a kiss could without moving to the next step-the seemingly inevitable step for a man and a woman who’d loved before and who’d been apart for seven long years. She couldn’t take that step, she thought. She mustn’t. There was no such thing as a one hundred per cent effective birth control and to take another pregnancy back to the island…
‘No,’ she managed as he drew back a little, and she saw a trace of confusion cross his face.
‘No?’
Heaven knew where she found the strength to say it, but it had to be said. ‘No further, Ben. We can’t.’
‘But-’
‘I don’t want another child.’ But that was a lie, she thought. She’d love another child. Another piece of Ben to carry forward into her life without him.
‘Hey, we’re not about to…’
‘We might have been about to,’ she whispered. ‘But we can’t.’
‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘I think it does,’ she said, and pulled further away. Just a little. Just as much as she could bear to. ‘Ben, I love you.’
‘Maybe I do-’
‘Don’t say it,’ she said, suddenly urgent. ‘Because you don’t. You never have. You just love the part of me that you’re prepared to accept.’
‘What does that mean?’ He seemed genuinely baffled and she shook her head. Nothing had changed, she thought bitterly. This was the same problem they’d had seven years ago. Oh, maybe it had been clearer then. The islanders had paid for her medical training and there was no way she could refuse to return. But there were two reasons she couldn’t be near with Ben. One was her obligation to her island home. And the other was that Ben didn’t want her.
Ben didn’t want her.
‘Maybe we could work something out,’ he said, his voice husky with passion and desire. ‘Lily, OK, I don’t do family, but maybe…What I feel for you… There’ll never be another woman I feel this way about. So maybe we could do something. Marriage or something. Maybe I could come to the island whenever I’m on leave.’
She stared at him, stunned. ‘You’re talking marriage?’
‘I don’t know.’ He ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture of pure bewilderment. ‘But we have to do something-to make this work.’
‘For Benjy?’
‘How can I be a father to him if you’re not there? And if we were married, would that make you feel better about me being there-sometimes?’
‘You’re asking me to marry you because of Benjy?’
‘I want you, too, Lily.’
‘Two weeks a year?’
‘However long I can spare. I’ll try-’
‘You can’t just…try.’
But then she looked into his eyes and saw his confusion and she felt her heart twist. He was trying. He was trying so hard…
This was her Ben. If she said yes he’d sweep her into bed right now, she thought, and that was what she wanted more than anything else in the world. All she had to do was say yes and he’d marry her and Benjy would have a father and then…
And then he’d leave for the next crisis.
‘Would you think of us while you were away?’ she asked, and the look of surprise she saw in his eyes answered her question before he spoke.
‘Of course I would,’ he said, but she didn’t believe him.
‘Did you remember I was on Kapua?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sam said you didn’t.’
‘Sam-’
‘Sam talks too much,’ she whispered. ‘But he answered my questions. He knows you well, Sam. And so do Doug and Rosa. They say you never stay long enough anywhere to be involved. You run like you’re terrified of what happens if you lose your heart.’
‘Psychoanalysis by Rosa and Doug.’
‘And by Sam and by Lily,’ she whispered. ‘What did they do to you, those parents of yours, to make you so fearful?’ She hesitated. ‘Ben, what happened to Bethany?’
‘Bethany…’
‘Your sister. All the time we spent together, you never told me you had a sister.’
‘She died when I was six. It’s old news.’
‘Did you love her?’
‘Hell, Lily, I was tiny.’
‘Did you love her?’
‘That is none of your business. And it’s nothing to do with what I am now. I’m a grown man.’
‘Yes, you are.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And I’m a grown woman. A woman who thought about you every day that we were apart. Who’d die a little if you died. And who feels sick that you lost someone you loved and you won’t talk about it. But you won’t. You’ve closed off. God knows if it’s because of your sister. I don’t. You won’t let me near enough to find out. But, Ben, if any of us went missing…Doug or Rosa or me or Benjy or Sam or anyone else who cares for you…would you miss us?’
‘Of course.’
‘Be truthful, Ben.’
He paused. She stepped back a little. The veranda light was on and she could see his face clearly. What she saw there answered her question without him finding the words.
