by Liz Fielding
‘Father died when I was nine, in a car accident, and Mother didn’t know we were doing it. At least, not at first, and when she found out she just laughed. It proved we were strong and gutsy. She liked that. Matt took his dare-devil madness from her. And, anyway, it had become a sort of ritual, the first thing we did when we came back every year.’
‘But surely you weren’t still doing it?’ she asked. The very thought of a world-renowned novelist risking his life in such a manner was surreal.
‘No. I hadn’t been to Malta in three or four years. But Matt was living here then. Running a wind-surfing club in summer, painting in the winter.’ He glanced across at her. ‘Those panels in the bedroom are his.’
‘They are very beautiful,’ she said quietly.
He searched her face, saw that she meant it and nodded. ‘I’d won some literary prize that year and the whole world wanted me. I’d been doing the lecture circuit—the States, Australia, the Far East. I don’t know how many thousands of miles I covered. I wrote to ask Matt if I could come for a couple of months before starting the new book.’ He caught her questioning look and shrugged. ‘A courtesy. We bought the lease jointly from Mother when she decided the tower was too much to cope with, but it was Matt’s home. When I arrived he was in a really stupid mood. On a sort of high. I should have recognised the symptoms; he was always like that when he had a secret.’ He paused. ‘I’d been travelling for the best part of twenty-four hours and all I wanted was to crash out, but Matt had other ideas. I had hardly stepped over the threshold before he threw down the challenge to “do the cliff”.
‘I told him to forget it. Neither of us had climbed the thing in five years, and I was certainly in no shape to attempt it. But he wouldn’t let it rest. He said I wouldn’t do it because I knew he could beat me. I told him to consider it a fact.’
Sophie felt her heart turn over with pity. She knew what it was like to be the one always following in her brilliant sister’s footsteps. ‘He must have been very jealous of you,’ she said, with feeling.
‘I don’t think I had realised how much until then. The stupid thing was that I had always envied him his ability to paint. I had offered to arrange an exhibition… but he reckoned his pictures would only sell as curiosities because he was my brother. He was wrong.’
He was quiet for a long time and Sophie said nothing, remembering her own dogged determination to copy everything her sister did, and Jennie cruelly leading her into dangers she had been ill-equipped to deal with. She had broken her leg the year they were sixteen, putting her horse to an impossibly high fence that Jennie had cleared with ease. She had spent months with her leg in plaster, coming to terms with the truth that it could just as easily have been her neck. She had grown up that summer, and when her sister had gone on to play new and even more dangerous games she had finally been able to resist the temptation to play follow-my-leader. But she had always blamed herself for not being there when her sister had needed her.
‘Did you climb it with him?’ she asked eventually, to blot out unhappy thoughts of her own.
He too seemed to come back from a long distance inside his head. ‘No. The fact that I simply didn’t care was like waving a red rag in front of a bull. He was determined to show me. And he was good. He was fit from wind-surfing all summer. The only exercise I’d had was flapping my mouth. Then, just before the ledge, he seemed to get stuck, and shouted for me to come and give him a hand.’ Chay’s skin was a sickly grey. ‘I…I thought he was just fooling. Trying to get me on to the cliff-face so that he could race on and beat me. By the time I realised and tried to reach him it was too late. I just wasn’t fast enough…’
He stood up abruptly and crossed to the edge, and stared down into the abyss. Feeling slightly sick, Sophie watched him. Then, to her relief, he turned away and walked back to the horses and freed the reins. She felt bitter shame at the horror he must have felt when he saw her perched upon the ledge. She wanted to say how sorry she was, but his expression did not invite the unburdening of her own guilt.
But there was something. ‘Chay?’ she said, as they made their way down the hill.
‘What is it?’
‘Does Tom know how…?’ She stopped as something clicked in her brain.
‘How Matt died?’ he finished for her. ‘No,’ he said, then, as he saw her brow furrowed in deep concentration, he frowned. ‘I’ll tell him what happened when he’s old enough to understand.’
‘He’s very headstrong. I’m not sure you’ve time to let him grow up. I believe you should tell him as soon as possible,’ she advised.
‘Do you? And do you suggest I include the part where I was too stupid to see that Matt was in trouble until it was too late to help?’ he demanded harshly.
Her heart almost broke for him. Impulsively she reached across to touch his hand. ‘Don’t blame yourself for what happened. Matt knew the risk.’ So had Jennie. The words jumped into her brain. Jennie had chosen to live dangerously. She could come home any time she wanted to. All it took was courage.
‘Matt never considered the risk in anything,’ he said coldly. Then he turned to her, and she flinched at the chill in his eyes. ‘And I seem to be developing the same careless habit. The longer I keep you here, the more you learn about me, my family.’
‘Then perhaps you should let me go right now.’
‘No. After next weekend it won’t matter. You’ll stay until then.’
She was still washing up the breakfast things when there was a ring at the doorbell.
Chay answered it and came back with an attractive woman, somewhere in her late thirties. ‘Here you are, Gian, this is Sophie,’ Chay introduced her. ‘You can see for yourself that I’m not working her to death.’
‘Chay!’ Gian protested. ‘I never said—’
‘Gian is Paul Manduca’s wife, Sophie. I believe he’s sent her to check up on me.’
‘What utter nonsense,’ she retorted, taking Sophie’s hastily wiped hand. ‘How are you? Quite recovered from your fall, I hope?’ Sophie was aware that Chay was extracting a certain sardonic amusement from the way Gian was sizing her up, trying to work out precisely what their relationship was.
‘I’m fine now, thank you,’ Sophie reassured the woman. ‘I could leave any time,’ she added pointedly.
‘But I understood that you were staying for a while?’
‘You understood correctly, Gian,’ Chay intervened smoothly.
‘I’m so glad. Theresa is wonderful, of course, but getting on. She was Maria’s nurse, you know.’ She looked quickly at Chay, clearly afraid that she had said something indiscreet. But there was no reaction beyond a slight tightening of his jaw that only the closest watcher would have detected. ‘Tom needs someone younger around him. And that’s the reason for my call.’ She turned to Chay. ‘I do wish you would get a telephone installed, Chay, it would make invitations so much easier.’
Chay’s expression suggested that he was not impressed by this argument. ‘You can always call me at my office.’
‘But you’re not at your office, Chay,’ she pointed out, and turned back to Sophie. ‘I’m taking the children out this afternoon for a treat before the school holidays end, and I wondered if you and Tom would like to join us? I know how busy Chay always is. At least—’ she glanced a little shyly at him ‘–he is usually busy. But since he’s not working today, maybe you have something else planned?’ She arched a dark questioning brow.
‘No, nothing at all.’ Sophie studiously avoided Chay’s eyes, certain they would contain a warning. ‘And I’m sure Tom would love to have some other children to play with,’ she said. ‘Where are you thinking of going?’
‘Nothing too exciting. A boat trip round the harbour, perhaps, and then ices in Sliema.’
‘If you’d like a boat trip, Gian, why don’t you let me take you out? I’m sure we could find somewhere more entertaining than a tourist trip around the habour,’ Chay intervened.
Gian turned to him in surprise. �
�Oh, but, Chay, the children love it, and besides, you will be so bored with just women and children for company,’ she protested.
‘Nonsense. I can’t think of any company more charming. Sophie will make us a picnic and well go over to Comino and swim in the lagoon. What do you say, Sophie?’
She chose to ignore his infuriatingly smug expression at having checked any opportunity to stray from his control with such ease. ‘That sounds like fun,’ she agreed. ‘I haven’t had a chance to swim in the blue lagoon.’ She smiled with her teeth. ‘Only take photographs.’
‘You have a camera?’ Gian asked with interest. ‘Will you bring it and take some photographs of the children for us?’ She pulled a face. ‘I’m hopeless. I always manage to cut off the important bits whenever I try.’
‘Sophie’s camera is out of action, Gian.’
‘Oh, what a pity,’ Gian said, then brightened. ‘It doesn’t matter, I’ll bring mine along.’
Aware of Chay’s eyes narrowing dangerously, Sophie quickly moved on to the subject of the picnic. ‘Now, is there anything your children don’t like to eat?’ she asked.
‘Very little,’ Gian assured her with feeling, and, after a few moments discussing arrangements for the afternoon, she left.
‘Don’t get any smart ideas about taking a photograph of me or Tom,’ Chay warned as Sophie returned to the kitchen, having seen the other woman to her car.
‘I’m fresh out of smart ideas,’ she snapped, ‘or I wouldn’t be here.’
‘Maybe. But, just in case, I shall take the films to have them developed.’
‘Whatever you say,’ she agreed sweetly. ‘I’m sure Gian will appreciate the gesture,’ Then, rather more tartly, she added, ‘I do hope you’re getting a good discount for bulk.’ She didn’t wait for his reply, but turned her attention to the preparation of the picnic, slamming the food angrily upon the table.
‘Are you cross with me, Sophie?’ Tom asked.
She had been so wound up with temper that she hadn’t noticed Tom’s huge eyes. ‘Oh, Tom. No, darling.’ She put her arm around him and hugged him. ‘Come and help me get the picnic ready.’ And a few minutes later she breathed a huge sigh of relief as she heard the front door close behind Chay as he left for the yacht club to fetch the boat.
Chay was already down at the boat, packing away the food when Gian arrived with her children just after two o’clock, and she was not alone.
‘Sophie, this is Cesare. My little brother. He flew in this morning so I brought him along. I hope you don’t mind.’
Gian’s brother was hardly little. He didn’t quite have the stature or maturity of Chay, but he had the ‘knock ’em dead’ good looks of so many young Italian men. And he clearly knew it. He immediately stepped forward and took Sophie’s hand very tenderly in his.
‘Sophie,’ he murmured, dripping Latin charm. ‘What a beautiful name.’
Sophie caught her lower lip between her teeth in an effort to stifle a giggle. ‘Of course I don’t mind, Gian,’ she said. But she wondered what Chay’s reaction would be.
‘I thought he would be company for Chay,’ Gian added, looking around. ‘Where is he?’
‘Down at the boat. We’d better join him.’
Tom led the way, leaping down steps that had been hewn from the living rock to the small jetty that lay adjacent to a delightfully sheltered curve of beach nestling beneath the tower. Gian followed, leading her youngest by the hand, and Cesare insisted upon taking Sophie’s arm and helping her down.
As he swung the children aboard, Chay’s impassive gaze followed them along the jetty and Sophie profoundly wished that Cesare would stop treating her like a piece of precious china.
‘Cesare,’ Chay acknowledged the man briefly. ‘Good to see you. Will you get the rope?’
‘Scusi…’ he murmured, as with the utmost reluctance he surrendered her hand to go to the front of the boat.
Chay hadn’t given any indication as to the type of boat he owned, but if Sophie had had the time to wonder about it, she would have assumed something sleek and expensive, rather like the car he had driven away in earlier in the day. Certainly not the workmanlike vessel that was tied up alongside the jetty. A decommissioned Navy patrol boat, it hardly came into the usual category of rich men’s toys.
‘Not quite what you were expecting?’ he asked, apparently able to read her mind with disconcerting ease and amused at what he found there.
‘On the contrary,’ she snapped back. ‘It’s fast and dangerous. Exactly like its owner.’
He held out his band to help her and she had little choice but to lean briefly on him as she jumped down, but as she tried to withdraw her fingers his hand closed fast around them. ‘I’m very glad you realise that, Sophie Nash,’ he murmured, so softly that only she could hear. ‘It would be a mistake to underestimate me. Or to think you have found a champion.’ His eyes strayed to the figure impatiently holding the rope at the fore.
She raised her brows a fraction. She hadn’t thought of Cesare as a champion. He caught her look. ‘I’m not fooled by those innocent grey eyes of yours, Sophie. But Cesare might be. He doesn’t know you the way I do.’
‘You don’t know me, Chay.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that. Help Gian to fasten these, will you?’ he said, thrusting a pile of orange lifejackets at her, and retired to the wheelhouse. ‘Let her go, Cesare,’ he called.
Gian’s children, slightly in awe of Chay, were quiet on the journey, but the moment they were set free to splash in the warm, turquoise-blue water they forgot their shyness and the noise-level rose dramatically.
The children swam for a while in the brilliant water, only Gian’s little two-year-old needing armbands. When they had had enough they flopped on to the beach, and Gian produced sun-block and proceeded to cover her children with it. Sophie followed suit, rubbing some of her own on to Tom’s shoulders, despite his squirming protestations that he didn’t like it.
‘Be still, Tom,’ Sophie warned him. ‘You don’t want to burn.’
‘It’s goopy,’ Tom answered, pulling a face. ‘You don’t have cream on your back.’
‘Of course I do,’ she replied firmly.
Cesare dropped to his knees beside her. ‘May I do this for you?’ he said. ‘Your skin is so fair. You must be careful not to burn.’
About to say that she had covered herself with sun-block before leaving the house, she caught Chay’s warning look.
‘Thank you, Cesare,’ she said, handing him the bottle with a smile. ‘If you could just rub a little on my back.’ And she lifted the heavy weight of her hair and twisted it and held it to her crown, her arms provocatively raised.
Gian called, and Tom took his chance to escape and play with the other children, leaving her to suffer the tender ministrations of Cesare, under Chay’s menacing eye.
‘The straps, cara…’ he murmured apologetically, as he smoothed the cream into her shoulders. ‘They are…in the way.’ She wondered just how many times he had used that helpless little boy technique to ease down a bathing suit that was ‘in the way’.
‘It’s all right,’ she said quickly.
‘Nonsense,’ Chay intervened, throwing a dark shadow between herself and the sun. ‘You must protect yourself properly. Here. Give it to me.’ Cesare hesitated for a moment, then reluctantly surrendered the sun-block to the imperious hand. ‘Your sister needs a little help,’ he said, and Cesare was effectively dismissed. He turned and walked stiffly away and Sophie felt rather sorry for him.
‘That was unkind,’ Sophie chided.
‘No, it wasn’t. You were being unkind.’ And she gasped as he jerked down the soft wide straps of her swimsuit to leave her shoulders quite naked. Then his long, sensitive fingers began to smooth the cool cream into the nape of her neck.
For the past four days, whenever she had been in his company, she had been aware of her body in a way that was new and rather frightening. It was as if the air between them was a conductor, carrying a t
iny current of electricity from him to charge her skin and make it tingle.
Now his touch, gentle as a butterfly’s kiss, concentrated that charge, and her eyes closed tight and her hands curled into clenched little fists as she fought back the urgent need to complain when his hands moved away from their teasing caress of the skin at her nape. Then the flat of his palm stroked a broad path across her shoulders, before sliding down her back to coat her warm skin with the cream, and she was unable to prevent a gentle sigh escaping her lips.
‘Back done,’ he said, and she twisted around on the warm sand to face him.
‘Thank you,’ she offered, a little unsteadily, reaching for her cream.
But he refused to surrender it. ‘I haven’t finished.’ She watched, mesmerised, as he tipped the cream on to his fingers. Then he reached out, and in one fluid movement smoothed it into her throat and down the gentle rise of her breasts until the top of her swimsuit brought him to a halt. For a moment she thought he wouldn’t stop there, would simply push the soft fabric away to reveal the tight buds thrusting eagerly against her suit. And the warmth she felt was nothing to do with the sun. It came from deep inside her, forcing her to acknowledge that she wanted him to do that more than anything else in the world.
‘Chay.’ She murmured his name, closing her eyes, quite lost to shame. It was madness to let him touch her like this. But a quite delightful madness.
‘Now it’s my turn,’ he said, and her eyes snapped wide open as the derisory edge to his voice brought her back from the brink…
‘You don’t need sun-block,’ she said quickly, her voice not quite her own. ‘You’re too dark to burn.’
‘It doesn’t do to be careless,’ he reminded her softly, taking her hand and squeezing cream into the palm. ‘Shoulders first, I think, don’t you? Make a thorough job of it—I want Cesare to be quite sure that you’re unavailable.’
And he presented her with his straight, well-muscled back and waited. It was agony. She wanted to touch him, stroke him, smooth her hands over his skin. But she was angry too. After a moment he turned his head.