Always the Best Man

by Fiona Harper

  When she did, she found Damien in exactly the same position he’d been when she’d closed them, hand still outstretched, the remains of the prawn tail still pinched between finger and thumb. And he had a rather strange expression on his face. What was up with him?

  He seemed to realise what he was doing, because suddenly he pulled his arm back and dropped the tail on his plate. Then he stared at the one remaining curl of battered seafood before dunking it in the sauce and holding it up in front of him, looking at it as if he’d never seen one before in his life.

  Was this some weird kind of delayed seasickness that had got him in its grip? Zoe didn’t know. But anything that took his critical focus off her and onto something else must be a good thing.

  Up until now he’d been eating the prawns and accompanying salad as if it was a task to be got through, something to be ticked off an invisible list inside his head, no satisfaction to be had until the job was done, but now he closed his eyes and chewed slowly.

  She could see it in his face—the revelations brought by each new taste and texture. She could almost feel her own taste buds responding as the different flavours hit his tongue. And then it was Zoe’s turn to find herself frozen in position. A warm, fizzing lightning bolt shot through her, starting at the top of her head and raising gooseflesh as it travelled down her body to her toes. She shook herself slightly to quell the feeling of bubbles dancing along her skin. She quickly picked up a fork and attacked her forgotten crabmeat just as Damien opened his eyes again.

  It’s nothing, she told herself. Just a residual tingle from the kiss last night. It doesn’t mean you fancy Damien Stone.

  She scooped the rest of her crab up and stuffed it into her mouth in one go. The cool creamy taste would eradicate the memory of that prawn, get her back to normal again. She hoped.

  And more conversation would be good. Something to distract her from the ideas of eating and tasting. And, from the looks of him, Damien needed distraction too. He was staring at his empty plate as if it held all the answers of the universe.

  Pick a topic, Zoe. Any topic. It’s not normally a problem for you, is it?

  ‘So, how did you meet Luke?’ she blurted out, her mouth only just emptied of crab. ‘I know you’ve been friends for years, but I don’t really know how it all began.’

  Probably because she made a habit of tuning out or finding someone else to talk to whenever Damien had been around before.

  She had, hadn’t she?

  It hadn’t been a conscious thing, at least not at first. But he reminded her of that love-rat Aiden, so she’d steered clear, but after a while Damien had earned the dubious honour of irritating her completely on his own merits.

  He had that same kind of I-rule-the-world confidence that Aiden had. However, when—like Damien—you headed a construction company that had just won a contract to erect buildings that would change the London skyline, you were probably entitled to be a little pleased with yourself.

  But it bothered Zoe. Mostly because she had personal knowledge of just what was under that layer of confidence in a man like that. Nowhere near as pretty as the packaging, that was certain.

  And she should know—she’d been engaged to it once.

  * * *

  How could one prawn result in such a profound experience?

  Damien liked good food, would have said he enjoyed it, but in the end it was just calories and fats and proteins. Fuel, basically, no matter how much you dressed it up. But then he’d watched Zoe eat that prawn, her eyes sliding closed in obvious pleasure, and he’d realised he’d eaten six of the things already and had got none of that level of satisfaction. So he’d decided to try it her way.

  And…wow.

  Stopping for a moment, taking time to savour the tastes and textures, had been a totally new experience, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. He decided to put it on the backburner and let it simmer for a while. He also needed to find something to do to stop him thinking over and over again about Zoe’s lips closing around that prawn.

  ‘You wanted to know how I met Luke?’

  Zoe sipped her wine and nodded.

  ‘Both of our families used to rent holiday cottages down here—the same ones each year—at least until…’ He stopped himself. She didn’t need to know that. It was too personal. ‘Until I was about fifteen. Luke and I were roughly the same age, so we teamed up occasionally, but it was the year we both begged our parents to enrol us in sailing school that the friendship really began. We bonded over a shared love: wind, waves, water—and finding the fastest way to travel across them.’

  ‘So why don’t you have a boat? I presume you don’t, otherwise you wouldn’t be borrowing Luke’s.’

  That was a good question. A very good question, actually. Zoe was as sharp as she was blunt. Interesting.

  ‘I plan to,’ he said. It had always been part of the plan: establish the business, settle down, buy a house, then maybe he’d think about a boat. ‘It’s just not been the right time yet.’

  Zoe pulled her mouth downwards. ‘That’s a pity. You seem to love it so much. Why wait?’

  Because…

  Because he didn’t like doing things out of order, or changing a perfectly good plan for no other reason than it might be fun. Succumbing to those self-indulgent urges was what had caused his father to destroy their family. As a result, Damien was rather suspicious of things with a feel-good factor. He weighed decisions to engage in such activities carefully. But he couldn’t say something like that to someone like Zoe. She’d never understand.

  ‘I just haven’t found the perfect boat yet,’ he replied finally. That sounded better.

  Zoe pulled her napkin off her lap and placed it back on the table before leaning back in her chair and twisting her head slightly to take in the view.

  Take in the view… That was the right phrase to describe what she did. She didn’t just look at the fork of the estuary, the little sailing boats left impotent on a mud bank now the tide had receded, or the white dots of the seagulls circling above them. She seemed to engage in it, draw it all into herself using every sense at her disposal.

  She turned and looked at him. ‘So why not buy a “good enough for now” boat and enjoy that until the perfect one comes along?’

  Hmm. He hadn’t thought of that. And he didn’t like admitting a different plan would be better than the one he’d already set in stone.

  ‘I don’t have to,’ he said rather smugly. ‘I can borrow Luke’s.’

  Zoe smiled reluctantly. ‘It’s nice that you share things. He’s like a brother to you, isn’t he?’

  Damien nodded. Being an only child, he didn’t know much about that sort of thing, but he’d imagined that was what having a brother might have been like. Thoughts of his friendship with Luke inevitably led to comparisons with Zoe and Sara’s relationship. No one would ever describe those two as sisters. Opposite ends of the spectrum, maybe, but never sisters. He decided to satisfy his curiosity on that front.

  ‘What about you and Sara? You must go back a long way as well.’

  Zoe’s face blossomed into the most beautiful smile at the mention of her friend’s name, and Damien couldn’t help letting his lips curl up a little too as they shared that particular mental picture.

  ‘We’ve known each other since school. Sara was one of the popular girls…’ She frowned and looked intently at him. ‘Not the mean variety. I just meant that everyone wanted to be like her.’

  ‘Did you?’ He hadn’t meant to let that question pop out, but out it had come. Too late to call it back now.

  For a moment Zoe looked as if she was going to say something biting and sarcastic, but her expression suddenly softened. ‘Maybe. I was in awe of her a bit, I suppose. I didn’t really understand why she befriended me.’ She gave Damien a sardonic look. ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but I seem to be very talented at rubbing people up the wrong way.’

  ‘No kidding.’ But he smiled as he said it, and the glitter of c
hallenge that ignited in Zoe’s eyes softened instantly into humour.

  He had the oddest sense that there was more to Zoe St James’s outrageous remarks than just having no filter between brain and mouth. She chose to be that way, he realised. Chose to act that way, even though she’d just come out straight and told him she knew the effect it had on others. Why would anyone do that?

  Their main courses arrived and Damien jokingly pushed his plate in Zoe’s direction, one eyebrow raised. She rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  ‘I think I’ll stick with my tuna, thanks.’

  Damien picked up his knife and fork and began carving his steak precisely. ‘You say that now, but I don’t want you staring lovingly at my plate for the next half-hour. It would drive me crazy—a bit like having someone read over your shoulder.’

  Zoe shrugged as she chewed her first bit of tuna. ‘I never did understand why that was such a problem. I read over people’s shoulders all the time.’

  Damien shook his head and reached for the salt. ‘Anyway…So you kept in touch with Sara after school?’ He felt slightly guilty even saying her name, but it seemed their mutual admiration for Sara was the one thing he and Zoe had in common, and the lull in their sparring was actually quite pleasant.

  She nodded and swallowed her mouthful. ‘I suppose lots of people lose touch with friends after school, but Sara’s very loyal.’ She looked down at her plate and lines appeared on her forehead.

  ‘What?’

  Her bottom lip protruded slightly and she looked thoughtful.

  ‘Odd, isn’t it?’ she said, looking back at him. ‘The things you remember from your school days. Kids can be so cruel…’

  Damien leaned forward. ‘What did they say?’

  Zoe gave him a lopsided smile. ‘You think, with this hair and this figure they didn’t have plenty of ammunition? Can’t you guess?’

  Damien could imagine it. Even worse, he felt ashamed he’d thought the same thing himself. Kids would pick on anything that marked someone out as different. But Zoe’s hair wasn’t ugly because it was different. Look at it now—the edges of those unruly curls lit up gold by the setting sun.

  She flicked those very same curls back off her face and looked at him, her chin raised a notch. ‘They didn’t say anything I hadn’t heard before. I’ve got four older brothers. Believe me, I can dish it out just as good as I can take it. But there was this one girl—Abigail—she always had to go the extra mile.’

  ‘You shouldn’t let it bother you, not now. That was a long time ago.’

  Zoe turned her attention to her tuna and ate another mouthful before she answered. ‘She said the only reason anyone would want to be friends with me was because it made them look better when they stood beside me.’

  Damien wanted to say something conciliatory, but the memory of his own prejudice was lodged in his throat, preventing him. Hadn’t he thought something similar? Not that nasty, of course, but he hadn’t been able to help comparing the two friends and judging them on their differences. Sara did seem to shine even brighter next to Zoe, but that wasn’t Zoe’s fault. Or Sara’s.

  He put down his knife and fork and looked directly at her. ‘You and I both know that nothing is further from the truth in Sara’s case.’

  Zoe lifted her chin even higher and looked back at him. ‘I know,’ she said quietly.

  But deep down somewhere she hadn’t recovered from that comment, Damien realised. What must that be like? To always be cast as second best or, even worse, the ‘ugly one’? He’d never known comparisons like that. He’d been an only child and the golden boy at school, the one who went after what he wanted and got it.

  The mood had grown far too serious. He decided to use one of Zoe’s well-known tactics to lighten things up: he reached over with his fork and stole a juicy chunk of tuna.

  ‘Hey!’

  He refused to look repentant. She could take it as well as she dished it out, could she? He wasn’t so sure. But, even if she couldn’t, it was good to see the fire back in her eyes as she retaliated by stealing a chip from his plate, one eyebrow arched saucily high.

  * * *

  After dinner they walked back down the endless cobbled steps to the marina. Once back on board Dream Weaver, Zoe flopped onto one of the long padded benches in the main cabin, winced and sat back up again.

  ‘Need more of that aftersun?’ he asked, and headed off to retrieve it from one of the small lockers above the bench he’d be using as a berth later on before she could answer.

  Zoe nodded and took the tube gratefully from him. She then spent a few minutes gently patting the cooling gel into the reddened skin at the tops of her shoulders.

  ‘You have to be careful out on the water,’ he said.

  Zoe glanced over her shoulder and gave him a sharp look. ‘I was careful. I was covered top to toe in sunblock.’

  He squashed a spike of irritation at her defensiveness. Couldn’t this woman discuss anything without turning it into a fight?

  ‘I wasn’t saying you did anything wrong,’ he added carefully. ‘It’s just that somehow the sea and the wind have a way of magnifying the sun’s intensity. It can catch you out.’

  ‘Now he tells me,’ she muttered as she contorted her arm behind her head in order to reach her shoulder blades. ‘You couldn’t have mentioned that up on deck earlier?’

  Damien took a step forward. No way was she making this his fault.

  ‘I had no idea you’d burn so quickly and, if you remember, my attention was taken up with sailing a boat single-handed.’

  ‘Well, bully for you!’ she snapped, her face contorting as sore skin rubbed against sore skin when she tried to reach a spot in the centre of her back.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! Here… Let me.’

  And, without asking, he tugged the tube from her other hand and dumped some of the clear blue gel into his palm.

  She went very still, but flinched slightly as the chilly gel met the hot skin of her shoulders. Damien rubbed it in as gently as he could, using just the pads of his fingers, taking his time, making sure he didn’t miss even a spot. After a little while, Zoe let out a small whimper and he paused, hands millimetres above her skin.

  ‘Am I hurting you?’

  ‘N…no,’ she replied, her voice wavering somewhat.

  ‘Sure?’

  She nodded.

  Damien looked at the wide elasticated band that made up the bodice of Zoe’s garish dress. It rested just below her shoulder blades and prevented further progress.

  ‘Do you want me to do…’ he swallowed; all the saliva had drained out of his mouth, as if the tide had gone out there too ‘…lower down.’ He was sure her swimming costume—not that he’d been looking, of course—had dipped lower than that at the back.

  Zoe didn’t answer for a few seconds. ‘Erm…if you could.’

  He gently hooked the elastic with one of his non-gooey fingers and lifted it away and down, revealing more tomato-red skin beneath. ‘You did a really good job with that sunburn, didn’t you?’

  He saw her ribs move as she breathed out a little laugh. ‘Well, yes, that’s me. Never do anything by halves.’

  He smiled, even though she couldn’t see him. ‘I think I’ve worked that out for myself already.’

  He felt rather than heard the shallow chuckle that followed. And then he was quiet again, concentrating on fingers and skin, gel sliding over muscles.

  That was one thing Zoe had over skinny girls—she had a nice back. It dipped in invitingly in the middle, no ribs or bones protruding, and it was all curves and soft skin, no sharp contours. He let his fingers and palms gently skim each one.

  And then he realised that he’d run out of gel, and for the last minute or so he’d just been lost in following his eyes with his fingers. Exploring.

  He wasn’t supposed to be exploring. He was just supposed to be helping.

  He pulled his hands away and very gently replaced the gathered section of Zoe’s dress back where it
was supposed to be, ignoring the inviting drip of gel on the end of the tube that was just begging to be used up.

  She turned to face him, her hands at the front of her dress, where they’d clutched the fabric to keep it from sliding down. Her eyes were big and her lips slightly parted. It reminded him of how she’d looked in the moonlight the night before.

  Had that really been less than twenty-four hours ago? It felt more like a decade. At least he felt he’d aged that much since then.

  But thinking about the…incident…by the fountain made him realise he’d been remiss. There were things he should have said that he hadn’t.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said and, before he could continue, Zoe jumped in.

  ‘Don’t be. My back feels much better now.’

  ‘No,’ he said, thinking he really should take a step back, move away. ‘I meant about last night…About kissing you the way I did.’

  That left Zoe silent and blinking. Not a very common sight.

  ‘I…’ She fell silent again, looked down at her brightly painted toenails.

  ‘It wasn’t a very gentlemanly thing to do.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ she replied but, instead of her voice being hard and confrontational as he’d expected it to be, it was low and husky.

  ‘You had every right to slap me. I think I needed it.’ He puffed out some air and ran his hand through his hair. ‘Let’s just say that I wasn’t at my best that day, for a whole string of reasons I don’t really want to go into.’

  She didn’t say anything else, just searched his face with her eyes. He felt as if he was an interesting specimen on a microscope slide. She was looking at him as if she’d seen nothing quite like it before.

  ‘Thank you.’ Her voice was steady and low. ‘I’ve done plenty of things in the heat of the moment I’ve had to apologise for later, so I know what the genuine article is when it comes my way.’ Her lips curved into the barest of smiles and he saw the sparkle of something warm and soft and gentle in the backs of her eyes. ‘I appreciate that, Damien.’