by Kate Hardy
And the sex…The sex was remarkable. He was forceful, considerate, inventive and utterly irresistible.
When he looked at her, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and one touch was enough to reduce her to instant meltdown.
After a life of carefully made choices, Rose was not equipped to defend herself against the overwhelming force of what she felt.
Anyway, she didn’t want to. She wanted to be reckless.
She wanted to have his arms around her as they sat on the beach and watched the sun set. She wanted him to close that bedroom door and move towards her, every muscle in his body alert with the same hunger she felt for him. She wanted to cling to her dreams that her perfect love would be returned.
Which, on the last night of their stay, brought her to the very delicate matter of how, exactly, she might find out what his intentions towards her were.
‘Tonight’s meal was fantastic,’ she said, which was the most roundabout route she could think to discuss the fact that their holiday was now at an end. ‘In fact, the food over here has been exquisite. Such flavours. I love the multi-ethnic cuisine.’ Thinking that she was beginning to sound a little like a restaurant critic, she bit back the temptation to carry the theme through.
‘You’re gabbling, Rose. Lie back and enjoy the stars and the sound of the sea.’
Rose obediently lay down next to him on the wide beach towel provided courtesy of the hotel, which seemed to know that sun loungers were not to everyone’s taste. Especially, she thought, late at night when you wanted to be physically close to someone. Like now.
She tried to submerge herself in the ambience but her thoughts were whirring around in her head and she finally said, casually, ‘Bit of a change, all this, isn’t it? From London, I mean…’
‘Huge change.’
‘Be strange to go back tomorrow.’
‘Very strange.’ He sounded faintly surprised at that admission. ‘But reality’s never further than a stone’s throw away.’
‘I thought that was rats.’
‘In my line of work, the two are often interlinked.’
Rose could feel him grinning in the dark but she didn’t want to relax and enjoy his sense of humour, as she had done for the past few days. She wanted to pry beneath the surface and find out what happened next in their chapter, because she was sure that there would be a next.
‘Will you miss…being here?’ With me?
‘All good things come to an end.’ Nick shrugged, his hand, under her neck, hanging, almost touching her breast. ‘That’s just the way it is.’
‘Which…’ Rose decided to take the bull by the horns because they could sit around talking in metaphors all night and get nowhere ‘…leaves us where?’
Well, Nick thought with disappointment, it had to happen eventually. The bubble had to burst. He had idiotically thought that Rose, who was in a league of her own, would be the exception to the rule, the one woman who didn’t start questioning the future and trying, thereby, to pin him down to promises of ever afters he had no intention of making.
‘Well, I think we can safely say that your stint working for me is now over. Shy of a week or so, but we’ve accomplished what we set out to do, wouldn’t you agree? You must be looking forward to getting back to your old routine. Are you?’
‘Yes, of course I am.’ In truth, she had barely missed her old job and was certainly not looking forward to returning to the grindstone having sampled the excitement of working for Nick, where every day brought new challenges. However, she wasn’t a fool. She might have abandoned common sense, she might have dared to hope that her flight of fancy would bring her the result she wanted, but she could read nuances as well as the next person. Better. Over the years her ingrained sensitivity had fine-tuned her antennae and her antennae were now telling her that he was backing away from giving her a direct answer for a reason and there could only be one reason. Whatever he felt for her, it wasn’t love. It wasn’t even enough to give her any kind of commitment. The man who had always walked away from relationships of any depth was walking away now and Rose felt as though her lifeblood were draining out of her system.
What had she been thinking? That the way his eyes darkened when he saw her naked counted as love? Or that the easy way they talked and laughed and touched really meant something?
Inside she was hurting so much that she suddenly couldn’t bear the feel of his arm around her. Outside, though, she controlled her voice and schooled her expression even though he couldn’t see her face and made sure to sound as calm as she could as she started to chat about what had been happening in her old job, updates from her friends whom she had barely seen over the past few months.
‘Naturally, this doesn’t have to mean the end of…what we have,’ Nick murmured, and Rose could feel him turn towards her. What, she wanted to ask, exactly do we have? For him, yet another pointless relationship based on satisfying sex and for her…more heartbreak, more involvement, more misery in the end.
‘Oh, I think it should, really…’
‘You don’t mean that.’ Nick turned completely towards her and tilted her head so that he could kiss the side of her neck and Rose shrugged him off and sat up.
‘I do.’ She looked over her shoulder at him. Moonlight becomes him…wasn’t there a song that went like that? He was just wearing an old tee shirt and a pair of faded jeans, but she knew every inch of his perfect body now, knew the lazy strength and muscular body encased in the casual clothing. She wondered how she could ever have thought that he might actually fall in love with her, the way she had fallen in love with him.
Would he return to England and be embarrassed to be seen with her? He had told her often enough that he loved her curves, found them incredibly sexy, that stick-thin, in comparison, was a turn-off. But that was here, where everything had been in a state of unreal suspension. She would bet her newly refurbished house that the minute they stepped back onto English soil stick-thin would suddenly be desirable because stick-thin represented the sort of model type he needed hanging on his arm.
He would always run true to form and she had been a fool to have thought otherwise. He was, and always had been, out of her league.
Rose stood up and dusted herself down. He, of course, was still lying on the towel, hands behind his head, probably, she thought, convinced that he could talk her round. Maybe for a few more romps in the hay back in England, where he would keep her hidden away and out of sight.
‘This has been great.’ She gesticulated vaguely around her. ‘The scenery, the atmosphere, the romance of being out of England and in the hot sun. Now it’s finishing…’
‘You asked what was going to become of us.’ Nick sat up. ‘That implies that you consider us an item.’
‘I meant in connection with work,’ she lied. ‘I thought it would be awkward being stuck in each other’s company, pretending that nothing had happened between us.’
‘Stuck in each other’s company?’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. What I meant was…’ Now he was standing up, which instantly made her feel a lot less assured. ‘Look, this has been brilliant. I never thought…well, my first impressions of you weren’t all that flattering but I’ve enjoyed every minute of being here with you. We had fun, didn’t we?’
Nick couldn’t quite believe his ears. Shouldn’t he be the one giving the Dear John lecture? Shouldn’t he be the one doing the letting down slowly and gently?
Anyway, whoever said that it had to end just yet? Sure, he didn’t want a strings-attached relationship. Never had, probably never would. Which didn’t mean that they couldn’t continue enjoying each other until time did its thing and they both decided to move on.
‘Sure, it’s been fun.’ He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans and stared at her. That sexy body…that light, infectious laughter…Well, this was her choice and the right one, really. ‘And I’m glad you’re…so calm about this…’
‘What did you e
xpect?’ Rose asked lightly. ‘Tears and histrionics?’
Nick shrugged and began walking back to their rooms. This was most definitely not how he had expected to spend his last night in Borneo. ‘Maybe nothing so extreme,’ he grated as she fell in step with him. ‘You’re not the tears and histrionics kind of girl, are you?’
Certainly not in public and definitely not when she’d made a complete idiot of herself.
‘Not really.’
‘And I’m glad about that.’ He stopped and Rose continued walking for a few steps before turning around to look at him. ‘I wouldn’t want to have hurt you in any way. You know me, Rose.’ He laughed softly although something inside him felt slightly sick. Probably, he figured, because he had had the rug pulled very neatly from under his feet. Well, everyone needed a shake-up now and again and he was no exception. It hurt because the feeling was so damned alien to him. ‘I can’t give promises of commitment and settling down.’
‘And I wouldn’t want them,’ she said quickly. ‘Certainly not from you. We clicked in bed, but there’s so much more to relationships than just clicking in the sack.’
Nick wasn’t sure he much liked that, but he gave her a brief nod, which could have been agreement or simply acknowledgement of what she was trying to say.
‘But, and I never thought that I would say this, I’m grateful to you, and not just because you bailed me out of a financial mess. I’m looking forward to going back to my old job, but you’ve given me the confidence to think about new pastures, not to rely on just doing the same thing day in and day out and thinking that it’s fine because I know the routine.’
‘Glad to be of service,’ Nick told her coolly.
‘Course, I’ll make sure that I have all the written reports ready for you by next Monday.’
‘No need.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m no longer convinced that I’ll be siting Borneo for my hotel.’
‘Why not?’ Rose asked, astounded at his U-turn. ‘It’s an amazing island. And you’ve put in so much time in getting to know it.’
‘Yes, it’s an amazing island and if tourism is to kick in, then I would rather not be the one to introduce it. It’s easy for a unique place like this to lose its innocence because of rampant commercialism.’ And besides, he thought angrily, Borneo would forever remind him of her. They had spent some pretty intense days together and she had imprinted too much of it with her stamp. How could he ever walk along this stretch of beach again without thinking about her? And that wouldn’t do. He had let his guard down, allowed her to get under his skin, and let this, he thought, be a lesson to him.
She was delivering some heartfelt speech about tasteful and controlled tourism and the benefits to a local community and he sliced through her ramblings with dismissive ease, pleased to have her reduced to silence.
‘You make some valid points, but my decision is made.’ Churlish would be to make a big deal of the fact that she had, like it or not, ended their relationship. Churlish, in other words, would be to allow his ego to be involved. On the other hand, he could be as relieved as she appeared to be that the whole thing was over and, honestly, he was. Good while it lasted but all good things came to an end and it was best to part company on good terms. The ideal scenario when it came to the opposite sex, if he thought about it.
‘So…’ he injected some warmth into his voice as they began to stroll back to the hotel complex ‘…all packed?’
‘Check.’
‘Including those ridiculous souvenirs you insisted on buying at the market a couple of days ago?’
‘They weren’t ridiculous. You’ll be sorry you didn’t invest in a couple yourself when you get back to England and realise that they would have looked very fetching on your walls.’ She kept her voice as light as she could, but now the bantering that had led her to think of what they had as something special hurt beyond endurance.
‘Name two places where colourful masks would have blended in.’
‘You mean against the stark white walls and expensive abstracts?’
Rose heard herself conducting this perfectly normal conversation from a distance, almost as though she were hovering over herself, watchful and detached.
When they were finally standing outside their rooms, she smiled at him, gratefully, she hoped, and stuck out her hand, which he pointedly ignored.
‘That’s a bit ridiculous,’ he drawled. ‘Yes, we’ve both reached the same conclusion that this was a holiday fling best left on the island, but I think shaking hands is slightly ludicrous.’ He bent and kissed her on the mouth, but this was a fond, farewell kiss, devoid of the urgency and hunger she had become accustomed to, and it hurt like hell.
It did, however, set the tone for the next day, during which they were affable, polite and very, very busy. Flights, work that Nick suddenly remembered needed to be done and books that Rose decided should have been read.
She could already feel the mantle of England settling back over her long before the plane finally touched down at Heathrow.
She had feverishly wondered how they would actually part company when the moment arrived, but in all events it was an anticlimax. Nick spotted someone he knew and, before she could brace herself for the hellishness of the final goodbye, he was kissing her fondly on the cheek and excusing himself. Would she be okay to handle a taxi back herself? Just a couple of things he wanted to talk to Ed Duggins about…take care of yourself…hope the house lives up to expectations…The usual platitudes, but his mind was already somewhere else. He had moved on.
Rose went directly to her house. She had been there almost every day to supervise the work in progress and had left her painter and decorator in charge of replastering and wallpapering over the mess made by the builders.
At any rate, that was exciting. She was delivered to her door in a black cab and, once inside the house, wandered around taking in the changes, and there were a fair few of those. Terry had done an excellent job. Everywhere looked new and smelt new.
And it was all paid for. She told herself that she should be over the moon, but as it turned out the only thing she had to smile about was her phone call to her sister.
Lily was coming home. Just for a couple of weeks because the leading man had apparently done something unfortunate to his ankle. Filming would skirt around him, but her scenes were already shot.
Her voice down the other end of the phone was like a tonic and Rose couldn’t help herself. For once she wasn’t the one holding everything together. And for once Lily was the strong half, soothing, reassuring, safe in her own area of expertise—namely men.
‘Don’t worry, Rosie. I’m coming home and everything’s gonna be fine. Wait and see.’
Somewhere in middle America, Lily smiled to herself as she hung up the phone—Rose needed her and that felt good, and, even better, she was going to make sure that everything really was all right for her sister.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘NOW that you’ve been back nearly two weeks, I think it’s time we went out and had a good time. I’m heading back to America next Wednesday and I can’t bear the thought of leaving you alone here when you’re so miserable.’
Rose looked at her sister and tried to imagine whether she was capable of ever having a good time again. Not a word from Nick since they had returned to England. Not a phone call, not a message left on the answering machine, nothing. It was as though she had never existed in his eyes.
For Lily’s sake, she had played down her feelings, but her talents as an actor must have been less successful than she had thought because here was her sister now, looking at her worriedly, in fact the way she had looked at Lily many a time in the past. The shoe was very securely on the other foot.
‘I’m not miserable, Lily. I’m tired. And, besides, I haven’t got time to have a good time.’ Rose looked at her sister over the rim of her mug.
‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘Sure it does. I mean, I’ve only been back at
my old job a few days and you wouldn’t believe the stack of work that was waiting for me. A lovely little collection of jobs no one else wanted to do.’ Every single one of which was utterly boring, she was tempted to add, but didn’t because she was determined, after her initial confession and shameful blubbing down the phone, not to make a fuss. She had lost her head and had her moment of madness and now was time to pick up the pieces and not wallow in a tide of self-pity. At least, not in public.
‘But it’s a Saturday, Rose.’ Lily sighed dramatically.
‘Don’t worry about me, I want you to go out and have fun. As you said, Lily, you’ll be heading back in a few days. You want to catch up with all your fans before you go.’ Rose smiled at her sister. The phone had not stopped ringing since Lily had arrived back. Friends wanting to meet up and, according to Lily, who had developed a healthy streak of cynicism since working in America, not-nearly-friends who wanted to rub shoulders with someone in the movie business.
‘No. You and I are going to go out tonight. Nice little jazz club in the West End. You can get your glad rags on and I’ll ask a couple of people I met when I was in America who are over here as well. We’ll make it a cosy evening.’ Lily was not about to take no for an answer. She had promised herself that she would make sure that Rose was just fine by the time she returned to America and she wasn’t about to jettison that goal. She gave her a coaxing but implacable smile.
Several hours later and Rose wasn’t sure whether to be amused or alarmed by her sister’s newly acquired ability to chivvy.
Chivvied from shop to shop because retail therapy was, apparently, the best form of therapy. Then from shop to beauty parlour where Rose’s short nails were turned into works of art with pearly pink nail polish. Then onward from the beauty parlour to the hairdresser’s, conveniently and suspiciously pre-booked, where her naturally curly hair underwent some weird metamorphosis and emerged a fabulous tumble of windblown curls rather than her usual unkempt, unmanageable mess. And brilliantly gold, thanks to some clever mixing of dyes. Lots of highlights everywhere.