between her toes, but she found it was almost body temperature. Gorgeous. She stood in the shallows and watched as Luke swung his lantern slowly back and forth across the water. Again and again he swung-and the silence and the solitariness of the place made her spine tingle.
‘No…no luck?’ Why on earth was it hard to make her voice work?
‘They must be here somewhere,’ he said, as if the most important thing in the world was to find a prawn and the prawns were personally disobliging him. ‘They’re always here.’
‘You’ve been prawning here before?’
‘Grandpa brought me here years ago-before the resort was built.’
‘Maybe they don’t like tourists.’
‘Prawns don’t have such good taste.’ He glowered into the dark. ‘Where are the damned things?’
‘There.’ Wendy pointed a finger as a shadow crossed beneath her. ‘Oh, I’m sure that’s one. But it’s practically translucent.’
‘We need an underwater lantern,’ Luke growled, trying to see what she was seeing, and the look of disgust on his face made Wendy chuckle.
‘Oil lanterns and candelabra aren’t all that effective underwater. Oh, there’s another one. They’re almost invisible.’
‘Got it. No, it’s gone. You’re right about them being transparent. I’d forgotten.’
‘It’s a defense mechanism.’
‘Great. And they’re here to mate. How the heck do they do that?’
‘Pardon?’ Wendy blinked.
‘They’re supposed to come into the estuaries to spawn,’ he said, puzzled. ‘So they come when there’s no moon and they’re practically transparent. Now, if you were a boy prawn, looking for a girl prawn…’
‘It must make it very difficult,’ Wendy agreed. Still there were tingles going up and down her spine. Damn, she needed cold water here. She needed cooling down. Like her, Luke had ditched his shoes. He’d rolled up his trousers; he was standing knee-deep in the water in his gorgeous dinner jacket and bow tie, and the lantern was playing light beams over his face. Now he was staring intently into the water, talking of girl prawns and boy prawns. And suddenly it was as if the sand was shifting under Wendy’s feet. Leaving her dizzy…
‘How do you think he’d find her-the boy prawn and the girl prawn, I mean?’ Luke was asking, and she concentrated fiercely on being sensible. On not being dizzy.
‘Maybe they just bump into each other in the dark,’ she said unsteadily. ‘And cling.’
‘It might work,’ he agreed, still staring down into the water. ‘But it shows a sad lack of discrimination on the part of the individual prawns. What if the boy prawn named Jake specifically wants a girl prawn called Maud?’
‘She’d have to wear a distinctive perfume,’ Wendy ventured. ‘I don’t know what, though. Eau-de-fish or something?’
‘So then he’d be able to find her?’ Luke said thoughtfully, turning his attention from prawn-hunting to the girl by his side. ‘In the dark?’
‘If…he wanted her badly enough.’ Why? Why was she breathless?
‘He does.’ Luke took a deep breath and seemed to come to a decision. He raised his lantern, and turned the wick down. The light flickered off. Then, deliberately, he walked back to the shore, set his lantern down on the dry sand and splashed back to her. The look in his eyes was different now. As if a decision had been made, and there was no going back.
And Wendy could hardly breathe…
‘He wants her very badly indeed,’ Luke said, and he lifted a hand to run his fingers through her curls. ‘So badly he can hardly bear it.’
‘Are we…?’ Good grief, how to make herself breathe in and out? He was so close. This was so…inevitable. So right…
It must be the champagne, she told herself desperately, but she knew it was no such thing. ‘Are we talking about prawns here, Luke Grey?’
‘We were,’ he said softly, and his hand lifted her hair and twisted it away from her face. There was so little light-just a sliver of silver from the crescent moon-but it was enough for him to see what he needed. His Wendy. His love. ‘We’ve moved on,’ he told her.
‘Luke…’
‘No.’ He touched her lips, ever so lightly with his fingers. ‘You are
‘I can’t.’ It was as if she was frozen solid, standing still in the shallows while his hands sent currents of fire right through her entire body.
‘Then I’ll tell you what I’m feeling,’ he answered. His hands cupped her face, forcing her to meet his eyes. ‘I’m feeling just like our prawn, Jake, who’s probably zooming around our ankles as we speak, desperately searching for his lady love. Only I’ve found mine. And you know the stupid thing? It seems I’ve been searching all my life, and I didn’t even know I was searching until I found her.’
‘No!’
‘Let me speak,’ he said forcibly, so forcibly that her eyes widened in shock. ‘I’ve taken a great deal of trouble to have you standing here, and the least you can do is listen for a bit. It’s common courtesy.’
This unlover-like speech made her blink, but she was a girl of spirit. ‘It’s my birthday,’ she said with asperity. ‘If I don’t want to listen to speeches on my birthday I don’t have to.’
‘It’s eleven forty-five. If we’re quibbling then we’ll wait for another fifteen minutes until it’s not your birthday.’ He gripped her hands, like it or not, and went right on where he’d left off. ‘Wendy, I never thought I would fall in love-’
‘Love!’
‘Shut up,’ he told her kindly. ‘Yes. Love. You know what it is. I know what it is. It’s what’s between us.’
‘It’s not!’
‘Don’t quibble,’ he ordered. ‘I just have to look at the way you react to me to know you feel this. This…bond. Like we’re two halves of a whole and we’re not right unless we’re together. I’ve spent the last ten years or so searching for the most beautiful woman. The wittiest. The most influential. I’ve gone out with one beautiful dingbat or intellectual wit after another.’
‘I don’t need to hear about your past love life,’ she said faintly, trying unsuccessfully to drag her hands away.
‘Yes, you do,’ he said, and his voice was suddenly savage. ‘Like I need to know about Adam. We need to acknowledge it and then move on. Because it’s different. What’s between us is so different it’s like we’ve been transported to another life. I want you, Wendy. I need you. I want to marry you, live with you, cherish you. Have more babies with you. Buy a few more puppies, even. But most of all…’
She was powerless to say a word. She could only listen.
His eyes gleamed down at her in the silvering moonlight. ‘Most of all,’ he said softly. ‘Right now…right now all I want is to make love to you. I want to take you to me and hold you and feel the warmth of your body, and I want it before you have time for any of your precious qualms. I love you so much, my beautiful Wendy, and I can’t see how you can stand here and not feel this thing I’m feeling…’
‘Luke, stop,’ she begged. ‘I can’t.’
‘You can’t?’ He smiled down at her, so tenderly that she thought she must surely melt into him. ‘You can’t? You didn’t say: you don’t.’
‘I…’
‘Can you say it, my love? Can you look at me and say, “I don’t love you”?’
She must! But Luke’s hands were holding hers, he was drawing her in so her breasts were moulding to his chest, and what she was feeling…
She’d never felt like this, she thought wildly. Not with Adam. With no one.
And Luke was looking down at her, then his face was buried in her hair, and she could feel his breath warm on her skin and his heart was beating in time with hers. They were still standing knee-deep in the warm outgoing tide; the night was black velvet around them and there was no room for anything but the truth.
Don’t think of tomorrow…
