by Liz Fielding
He held her away from him and looked at her. ‘Come on. Downstairs. I’ll warm you some milk.’
Something in his eyes alerted her to the dangerous intimacy of being held by him like this, on her bed in the middle of the night. ‘No.’ She drew back a little. ‘I’ll be all right,’ she said, with an attempt at brightness, then spoiled the effect by shivering convulsively. Still, somewhere in the dark recesses of her mind, she was plunging down that endless cliff-face.
‘The minute you close your eyes, it’ll start all over again,’ he warned her. ‘Believe me. I know,’ he added with conviction. He looked around, took her wrap from behind the door and held it out for her. ‘You’ll have to wake up properly before you can go back to sleep.’
No need to throw back the quilt, she noticed dimly. It had fallen to the floor in her agitation, leaving her covered only by her brief two-piece sleepsuit, an oyster satin camisole and matching French knickers that left precious little to the imagination. She swung her legs to the floor and dived into the wrap, tying it firmly around her.
‘I’m sorry that I disturbed you,’ she muttered, keeping her eyes firmly diverted from the short silk dressing-gown tied carelessly about his waist, under which she was fairly certain he was naked.
‘I wasn’t asleep.’ He placed his hand firmly at her back and propelled her from the room and down the stairs. ‘Come on.’ She glanced at him as she opened the kitchen door.
‘Why can’t you sleep?’
He took a carton of milk from the refrigerator and poured it into a saucepan and set it to heat. ‘I said that I wasn’t asleep, not that I couldn’t.’
‘But…it’s three o’clock in the morning.’ Then bright colour spread across her cheeks. ‘Oh!’ She reached hurriedly for a mug to cover her confusion. Poppy had clearly welcomed him with open arms.
He took the mug from her. ‘I posted your letter.’
‘Then you read it?’
He didn’t answer. ‘You didn’t write to your parents. Won’t they worry too?’ he asked, carefully pouring out the milk and handing it to her.
She sipped, not wanting to discuss her relationship with her parents. ‘I don’t live at home. They don’t know where I am from day to day.’
‘You mentioned a sister? What about her?’
‘Jennie.’ She felt suddenly hollow with longing. ‘We’re identical twins.’
‘Identical… Lord help us, there are two of you?’
‘I’m afraid so.’ For just a moment her eyes responded to the unexpected smile. Then they clouded. ‘At least, we were identical.’
‘Were?’
‘I haven’t seen Jennie for nearly seven years. She ran away from home when she was seventeen.’
‘Ran away?’ He was clearly shocked. Angry, almost. ‘Why?’
Her lips tightened at his disapproval. What could he possibly know of such things, shut away in his private world? ‘It’s a common enough story,’ she told him, defences slamming up, but too late. ‘She got involved with a man my parents disapproved of. Then when she became pregnant he left her to face the music alone.’
‘But your parents? Were they so harsh?’ he demanded, and she glanced up to find herself the object of a pair of deeply questing eyes. It seemed oddly important to him.
‘No. They were never harsh with her.’ On the contrary. The only thing they had ever tried to deny her had driven her away. ‘They loved Jennie. They would have done anything for her. That’s why she ran. She knew how badly she had behaved,’ she replied, quickly dropping her lids to disguise the sharp sting of tears glistening in her eyes. She had seen her parents age while they had privately grieved for their beautiful daughter who, rather than bear their imagined reproach, had taken her wounded pride and disappeared without a trace. And she had been unable to comfort them. The mirror image of their lost child, they couldn’t stand to have her near them. And soon afterwards she too had left.
Now she had been given a chance to reunite them. All it had needed was a photograph of Chay Buchanan and she had blown it. Except that Nigel had given her another chance. If she could get a little gossip–a scrap of dirt… And there was something. She knew it. Tied up in the story of a dead wife, a motherless child and a writer who couldn’t stand publicity.
She stared into the mug. Why else was she here? His prisoner? Sitting in this silent, night-time kitchen, drinking warm milk and recovering from a nightmare with a man who she knew she should loathe? But didn’t. No matter how hard she tried. She stood up abruptly and crossed to the sink to rinse her mug. Well, she would just have to try harder. For Jennie’s sake.
‘Leave it,’ he instructed, coming behind her and taking it. For a moment his long, strong fingers entwined with hers, a gentle gesture that for once appeared to offer no threat. She glanced up at him over her shoulder, about to protest that she was quite capable of doing it herself, but as their eyes met the words died in her throat. His look was fathoms deep and for a moment neither of them moved.
‘I think I’d better go back to bed,’ she said quickly, and wondered if that breathless little sound had really come from her. ‘Thank you…for coming to…’ She hesitated, unable to think of a word that would exactly cover the circumstances.
‘To what?’
‘To help,’ she offered, with a little lift of the chin.
‘Any time, Sophie. In fact, it’s getting to be quite a habit.’
‘A habit!’ She repeated her words out loud as she lay in her bed. Anyone would think she was her own personal disaster area.
Despite his instruction to sleep, for a long time Sophie lay wakeful in the dark, forcing herself to remember just what had driven her over the edge of that cliff in a boiling red haze of rage. Making herself hate him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAY’S hand on her shoulder brought Sophie instantly awake, and she opened her eyes to find his dark tousled head above her. ‘It’s time to get up,’ he said abruptly.
The light was pearl-soft. It was still very early and she was certain it was only a moment since she had closed her eyes. She groaned, remembering Tom’s eagerness that she ride with him. ‘What time is it?’
‘You don’t want to know that.’
‘It’s that early?’
‘It’ll be worth it,’ he said crisply, as if he too regretted the closeness of their late-night tryst; as if he had also spent the intervening hours reminding himself just what had brought them together.
She struggled to sit up. ‘Is that a promise?’ she asked, smothering a yawn.
‘You have my absolute guarantee. But you have just five minutes to get ready if you want to catch the sunrise from the ridge.’
‘Five minutes?’ She regarded him with rather less than amusement. ‘As long as that? I could be ready for a party in five minutes.’
‘Now, that I would pay to see,’ he said, as she swung her feet to the floor, then Sophie blushed wide awake as she realised that she was freely offering him more of an eyeful than was entirely sensible in the circumstances. She made a grab for the cover and quickly hauled it up to her chin.
‘What about Tom?’ she asked sharply. ‘Is he up?’
‘He’s downstairs having breakfast. We’ll see you down at the stables. In five minutes.’
The second the door closed behind him she dashed to the bathroom to splash her face with cold water to finish the job of waking up. Then, pulling a soft cream shirt and a comfortable pair of dark red trousers from the wardrobe, she dressed quickly. It had not been an idle boast when she had said she could be ready for anything in five minutes. She had spent a year as a junior photographer on a provincial newspaper, where she had rapidly learned that if you didn’t move fast, you didn’t get your picture.
Chay straightened from adjusting Tom’s stirrups as she hurried into the stable-yard and turned away to fetch a hard hat for her. ‘Here.’ He jammed it on her head. ‘If you come off, it’s like hitting concrete.’ He fastened the hat beneath her chin, apparently unaware that
his fingers were an exquisite torture against her neck. Or maybe he wasn’t. Something seemed to happen to her skin whenever he touched it. It seemed to spark under his touch, come alive. Something he could hardly fail to be aware of. So much for her middle-of-the-night determination to keep a safe yard of distance between them.
The moment he had finished she turned away to make a fuss of Rowan, using the excuse of getting acquainted with the horse to cover the need to get her breathing back under control.
‘Come on, Sophie, up you get,’ he said impatiently, and she turned and placed her foot in his linked hands. He threw her up into the saddle, then adjusted the stirrups for her. She gathered in the reins and murmured a few crooning words in Rowan’s ear as she walked her around the yard. Chay gave her a long hard look, then, apparently satisfied that she knew what she was doing, he mounted the huge bay gelding. ‘Lead on, Tom,’ he said.
Tom trotted confidently off, and Sophie watched with considerable admiration. ‘I thought he only got Melly a day or two ago?’ she asked.
‘She’s not his first pony. His grandmother put him on a Shetland as soon as he could stand. Her own career as a three-day-eventer was cut short by an accident, but she’s determined to have a Buchanan in the Olympic team. Since Matt and I refused to co-operate, she’s turned her attention to Tom.’
‘With some success, apparently.’
‘We’ll see. I was pretty keen until I reached my teens, but once I bought my first motorbike…’ He shrugged.
She glanced at him, trying to imagine what he must have looked like astride a bike in close-fitting black leathers. Dangerous. ‘And Matt?’ she asked quickly.
‘Once Matt discovered that girls love to be around horses he did spend an awful lot of time at the stables.’ He grinned unexpectedly. ‘But I’m afraid not very much of it was on a horse.’
‘What…? Oh!’
He laughed as she blushed, then reached across and caught her arm. ‘There, look.’ As they crested the ridge and came alongside Tom the sun was rising, dripping gold, from the fairy-tale blue of the sea. They sat and watched in silence as the dark rocks and barren landscape turned to butter and honey about them.
‘I think,’ she murmured at last, ‘that was the most beautiful sunrise I’ve ever seen.’ But then everything seemed more focused since she had met Chay Buchanan. New-washed and crystal-bright.
The bay moved restlessly and they began to move on, walking the horses along the ridgeway path. ‘You say that as if you’d seen the sun rise a hundred times. Do you make a habit of getting up before dawn?’ Chay asked.
‘I’ve been up before dawn working every day since I came to Malta. It goes with the job. Sunrises over power stations, over sea-fronts, over municipal buildings, hotels–especially hotels, because there are fewer people about. I even took a photograph of that new hotel your company built…’ Even as the words left her mouth she knew she had made a mistake.
‘You have been busy,’ he said, with just a touch of acid. ‘What a pity you couldn’t bring your camera with you today. You could have added “Sunrise over Chay Buchanan” to complete your portfolio.’ Underlying the even tone there was steel in his voice, and suddenly the beauty of the morning turned to ashes.
‘There’s not enough light for a portrait,’ she responded miserably. ‘I hate using flash for faces.’
‘I’m sure you could have forced yourself.’
‘Whether I could have or not is surely all rather academic? You are not about to sit still while I take a photograph of you, at sunrise or any other time. Are you?’
‘No, I’m not. But I very much doubt that you’ve forgotten why you’re here. You’re just biding your time, hoping that I will.’
He turned the bay gelding on to a path already taken by Tom, who hadn’t been interested enough in the sunrise to linger. ‘Stay close,’ he warned, as he spurred the horse into a brisk canter.
Sophie almost laughed out loud. Did he really think she was crazy enough to try and escape on horseback? The hills were mined with old rabbit-warrens. One careless footstep and he would be forced to come to her aid yet again. Twice was more than enough.
She followed at a sedate trot, unwilling to risk life and limb on the unknown path, but as she approached a fork in the track Chay was waiting for her. Perfectly still, horse and man as one, looking out to sea. Only a playful breeze whipped up a lock of dark hair and winnowed the bay’s mane to betray that the pair were not some lost heroic statue. Then he turned and the illusion evaporated.
‘If you want me close, you’ll have to slow down,’ she said, trotting up alongside him.
‘I thought you could ride,’ he said witheringly. But he kept his impatient mount at walking pace as they waded, knee-deep at times, in acres of narcissus and euphorbia and blue borage. The next hour passed, it seemed to Sophie, with the speed of light, as he pointed out landmarks, including another tower, abandoned and crumbling, on a distant headland, built, he told her, by the knights to guard against the marauding galleys of their enemies.
Tom, who had trotted ahead most of the way, had dismounted and was waiting impatiently for them at the cliff-top path.
When he saw him, Chay swore softly and, tossing his reins to Sophie, swung from the saddle and strode across to the boy.
‘Come away from there,’ he commanded.
‘But I wanted to show Sophie,’ he said, his high voice carrying to her on the breeze. ‘I wanted to tell her that this is where you and Uncle Matt used to race one another up the cliff. See,’ he said. ‘It’s almost exactly where she was stuck.’ And he pointed, too excited to see the shock whiten his father’s face. He turned away from the edge and ran across to Sophie. ‘Uncle Matt and Papa used to race each other up the cliff-face at the beginning of every summer holidays. Grandma told me. Come and look.’ He tugged at her hand.
Grandma, Sophie thought privately, as she slipped from the saddle, must have been mad. The boy clearly couldn’t wait to try it for himself. ‘They must have been a lot older than you,’ she observed, forcing her voice to remain calm, even though her entire body seemed to be trembling at the thought of him climbing down that dreadful rockface.
‘Papa was ten and Uncle Matt was nine,’ he said proudly.
‘You’ve a few years before you try, then,’ she said, trying to keep her voice a great deal calmer than she was feeling at the thought of his small, infinitely fragile body being battered against those rocks. ‘Even Uncle Matt waited until he was nine,’ she reminded him.
But his face was set in a dangerously truculent expression at the thought of waiting. ‘I’m going to do it before then,’ he said, with determination.
Sophie glanced across at Chay, who was rigid with shock as he stared at the boy. ‘I think you’d better go back to the stables, Tom,’ she said quickly. Twany will help you with Melly.’ She gave him a leg up and watched for a moment as he trotted down the hill. Then she tethered the two horses to a nearby bush and walked across to Chay.
‘I had no idea he knew. She must have told him when she was over here for Easter. It explains the sudden interest…’ He sank on to a rock. ‘I cannot believe that my mother could be so stupid. To fill his head with such rubbish.’
‘He seems to set a lot of store by what his Uncle Matt did,’ Sophie said carefully, as she lowered herself beside him.
‘My mother is always telling Tom stories about the things Matt used to get up to, and heaven knows there’s plenty to tell. But this…’ He turned to her. ‘How could she?’
‘Because she missed him.’ Her parents talked about Jennie all the time. Not how clever she was, or how pretty, but the crazy things she had done. The endless times they had been called to school to listen to the Head’s complaints about her wildness. The hours they had waited for the police to find them when Jennie had insisted they must prove themselves by spending the night in a deserted house… As if, by recalling the times when it had all turned out happily, they might make it happen again. She shook the thou
ght away. ‘What happened to him, Chay?’
‘He…fell.’
‘Fell?’ She stared at him in growing horror as she followed his blank stare. ‘Down there?’
His face was bleak as he stared out at the sea. ‘It was the best part of seven years ago. The twenty-seventh of October.’
‘What was he doing on the cliff?’ she asked. ‘The pair of you must surely have grown out of such craziness by then?’
‘Must we?’ he replied tersely. Then, realising that this was hardly an explanation, he shrugged. ‘We’d been coming to Malta for the summer holidays for as long as I can remember. Dad was in the Navy, based here in Malta at one time. He bought a long lease on the tower and did it up as a holiday base. “Doing the cliff” became a part of the holiday. A nightmare to overcome before you could enjoy the weeks of freedom.’
‘I don’t understand…’
‘You can get to the bottom of the cliff from the beach, if you climb over a few rocks and don’t mind getting a bit wet. There’s a cave there and one day we’d been exploring it. When it was time to go back Matt challenged me to climb out. I told him he was mad, but Matt said I was just scared, and set off on his own. I was older, responsible for him, so I couldn’t let him go on his own.’ His mouth tightened. ‘And I was damned if I was going to let him beat me.’ He glanced at her with a little start, almost as if he had forgotten she was there and he was talking to himself. ‘I should have done, of course. Then it would all have been over.’
‘And he would have crowed all summer,’ she said, her warm grey eyes deep with understanding
‘It shouldn’t have mattered, Sophie.’
‘When you’re ten years old, Chay, you don’t know that.’
He stared at her with something like surprise that she should understand. ‘I suppose not. Anyway, that was the start of it. Stupid, dangerous, intensely competitive. Looking back, I’m amazed that neither of us had been killed, or at the very least seriously hurt, before.’
‘Why didn’t your parents stop you?’ Sophie asked in amazement.