That Special Touch

by Anne Beaumont

  'I won't, Daddy. I'm much too hungry.'

  They were driving through Corfu Town when he asked them both, 'Anywhere special you'd like to eat?'

  'Nowhere formal,' Elisa put in quickly, imagining the sort of hotels or restaurants Rafe normally dined in, 'we're all wearing shorts. Kanoni's just south of here. Why don't we take pot luck at a place we like the look of?'

  'It will be noisy and crowded. Kanoni's a trippers' paradise.'

  'It's also the most beautiful spot on the island, and it's still light enough to see the bay. Besides, I thought we were trippers ourselves today, and we've had a very quiet time so far. It also has the advantage of being close, and I'm hungry enough to eat a whole octopus.'

  'Me, too,' Penny chipped in.

  'Kanoni it is, then,' agreed Rafe amicably enough, and within a few minutes he had parked and they were walking along the front looking down at the beach with a causeway linking it to a beautiful monastery, and beyond, almost at the mouth of the bay, the enchanting tree-covered islet that helped to make the view so famous.

  'That's Mouse Island,' Elisa told Penny, 'a bit of a special place for you.'

  'Why?' Penny asked, staring at it.

  'According to legend, it was once the ship taking Odysseus home after the Trojan War, but Poseidon, the god of the sea, got cross and turned it to stone. Odysseus's wife was Penelope—your namesake. Because he'd been away so long, she was being forced to marry again. She said she would when she'd finished weaving a tapestry. Every night she unpicked the work she'd done that day, and so remained a faithful wife.'

  'I didn't know about the island, but Mummy told me the story of Penelope. She laughed, so I know it's funny.'

  'Funny?' Puzzled, Elisa glanced at Rafe and saw that he, like the legendary ship, had turned to stone. It was only then she realised where her eagerness to whet Penny's appetite for Greek mythology had led her. It was a cruel jest that Sheena, a faithless wife, had named her daughter Penelope, but to laugh in the child's face was crueller still.

  What Rafe must be thinking of her to rake this up she didn't dare imagine, but she sought desperately for some way to put it right. 'Funny?' she repeated. 'No, I don't think so. Mummy must have been laughing about something else. Adults sometimes do, you know. It's a beautiful story, and yours is a very special name.'

  'Even if it's shortened to Penny? She never did that.'

  'Specially if it's shortened to Penny,' Elisa told her, improvising wildly. 'That makes it friendly as well as special.'

  To her relief Penny accepted that without quibble, and beamed, 'So I have a special name and a special island. Can we go out to visit it one day?'

  'Sure.' She looked at Rafe. 'Tomorrow, on our way to your friends' barbecue?'

  'That's fine by me,' he replied, and Penny's smile widened as she skipped on ahead.

  'I'm sorry,' Elisa breathed to Rafe. 'I'll think before I open my big mouth in future.'

  'Don't,' he replied surprisingly. 'You seem to be doing more good by rattling the skeletons in the family cupboard than I've ever done by hiding them.'

  'You looked as if you'd like to murder me.'

  'I frequently do, but I'm learning to reserve judgement,' he told her, and smiled in a way that put more of a caress than a sting in his words.

  Elisa couldn't think of an answer, perhaps because her heart was thumping in the painful way that was becoming familiar whenever she thought that she and Rafe were sharing a special moment. Funny how a certain look or smile from him could mean so much more to her than an embrace from any other man.

  Her thoughts flew to Austyn. Was she including him? She couldn't decide or even concentrate on him just then. The image of him she had carried for so long in her mind kept blurring and re-forming into Rafe's face, and that was as it should be. She was beginning to let go at last of an impossible love for one that, hour by hour, was becoming altogether more promising.

  Her growing happiness would have made bread and cheese seem like the food of the gods, but they dined splendidly on shrimp soup, baked fish, green bean salad and cream-filled pastries. Penny drank the delicious local lemonade, and Rafe and Elisa a light white wine.

  The restaurant was neither noisy or crowded, as Rafe had predicted, and they sat by a window overlooking the sea. Daylight faded and the lights came on, turning the coastline into a mysterious and magical place. They talked and talked, Penny contributing more than her share so that Rafe's eyes often settled on her in wonder. Then he would look at Elisa and her toes would curl in her sandals and she'd wish she'd had time to put on a touch of eyeshadow and a trace of lipstick.

  They were treated as a family and it was easier to accept than object, and that gave her a lovely warm feeling. It seemed so right, so natural, the three of them dining together like this, the stormy incidents that had brought them together fading into no more than a half-forgotten memory. Like Austyn, she thought, but again he dropped out of her mind as though he no longer had a place there.

  Again, like herself, she had a feeling Rafe didn't want the day to end. They lingered over their wine until Penny lost her vivacity and her eyes began to droop. 'Bedtime,' Elisa said, so regretfully that she felt selfish, but Penny only smiled sleepily and said she had room for another pastry.

  'Not tonight,' Rafe told her firmly. He picked her up so naturally, and her head drooped on his shoulder so naturally, that it seemed incredible that only yesterday they had been treating each other with the polite formality of strangers.

  Penny was asleep by the time they reached the car. They wrapped her in a travel rug and Rafe peeled off his jumper to put under her head as they settled her on the rear seat. A wind had got up and the night air struck chill after the heat of the day. Elisa shivered as she strapped herself into the passenger seat.

  'Cold?' asked Rafe, looking at her as he switched on the engine.

  'Only my legs. I'm better off than you are. I've still got my sweater on.'

  'I'm all right.' He reached across and touched her thigh. Elisa froze for another reason, but he only said, 'Goose-pimples. The heater will soon cure those.'

  She was so piqued that he could touch her without any apparent effect that she wondered whether, in gaining his companionship, she hadn't lost something else that was equally vital to their relationship—at least the one she envisaged. She needed reassurance, and as he drove south along the coast road she fished for compliments in a roundabout way by saying, 'It was a lovely day, wasn't it?'

  'I'll never forget it.' Her hopes soared, then steadied as he added, 'It was the day I got my daughter back. You can't imagine what it meant, seeing her laugh, play with other children and, most of all, not stand on ceremony with me.'

  Of course, Elisa thought, seeing his daughter behave like a normal child would be much more important to him than discovering he could get on well with his temporary employee. There was nothing wrong with his priorities—it was hers that were out of perspective. She felt rueful, but it served her right for being so selfish.

  'All thanks to you,' Rafe went on, snatching a quick glance at her. 'You're a five-day wonder.'

  That made her laugh. 'Thanks very much! A five-day wonder is over by the sixth day.'

  'You know what I mean. You've been with us five days.' He snatched another glance at her. 'Still cold?'

  'As warm as toast, thanks.' She looked over her shoulder at Penny, saw she was still fast asleep, and closed her own eyes. She only meant it to be for a moment, but she drifted off to sleep herself.

  The journey home took little more than half an hour, and once, when he was driving through a resort where the nightlife was in full gear, Rafe had to stop because of a traffic hold-up. His eyes were drawn to Elisa, and he looked at her long and thoughtfully. There was enough light from a roadside taverna for him to see her face. It was turned towards him and, in sleep, it was as soft and defenceless as Penny's.

  Rafe looked back at the road, but the traffic still wasn't moving. Irresistibly, his eyes returned to Elisa,.
dwelling on the curve of her cheek, the dark sweep of her eyelashes, the droop of her full lips. Immeasurably moved, he bent to kiss her silken hair.

  It was the lightest of touches, but Elisa stirred, murmured his name and her hand came up to his cheek. He took it and kissed it and laid it gently back into her lap. She sighed and sank more deeply back into sleep. It was only then that he realised fully what he had done.

  He'd been so pleased it was his name she'd breathed, but now he wished it had been somebody else's. Austyn's, Rich's, it didn't really matter, because it would have broken the spell she could weave about him even in her sleep.

  His face was grim as he drove on. He thought he'd been prepared to pay any price for Penny being freed from her nameless and nebulous fears, but that hadn't included becoming entrapped himself—not by a girl who, for all her apparent guilelessness, rang the warning bell that Sheena had planted so deeply in his brain.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Carefully as Rafe drove along the rutted track to the villa, not wanting to jolt his passengers too roughly from their sleep, there were some bumps he couldn't avoid. Elisa stirred without opening her eyes. She was trying to hold on to a dream, a very beautiful dream, in which Rafe had kissed her head and her hand as a lover might, making her feel treasured and desired.

  Another bump, and wakefulness could no longer be denied. The dream receded but some of its magic remained, keeping her eyes closed and curving her lips into a smile. She was deeply conscious of Rafe beside her, the only part of reality she wanted to encourage.

  The car stopped and the engine cut. She knew he was looking down at her and she lay passively, hoping the dream would repeat itself and the magic would last for ever. It was wishful thinking, of course. Rafe switched on the interior light and she had to open her eyes.

  'Sorry to be such a sleepyhead,' she said, the huskiness of her voice having nothing to do with drowsiness. She couldn't quite define his expression, but she thought there was a certain tautness around his mouth, the mouth that had been so gentle and caressing in her dreams.

  'I wonder if we'll ever stop saying sorry to each other?' he replied, as though the words had been forced from him. Elisa nearly choked. Not because of the roughness with which he spoke, but because she was reminded of a line from an old film: 'Love is never having to say you're sorry.'

  Would they ever be like that, she and Rafe? She was in love with him, or something so very much like it that she could no longer tell the difference. She didn't even want to. She wasn't thinking of the future, as she had with Austyn. She was grasping every passing minute and trying to make a lifetime out of it. That was the effect Rafe had on her. Immediate. Urgent.

  She sighed.

  It was the softest of sounds, but it shattered the defences Rafe had been shoring up against her during the past half-hour of automatic driving and intensive thought. He knew it would be a colossal blunder to kiss her again, but the only thing that stopped him was Penny sitting up and asking dazedly, 'Where are we, Daddy?'

  'Home.' Part of him was glad for the interruption, part was sorry. Now he'd never know whether Elisa wanted him to kiss her, was inviting him to. It was years since he'd been uncertain about a woman, and that was a challenge all by itself...

  'Must I wake up or can I go back to sleep?' Penny asked.

  The plaintive voice galvanised them both into action. They jumped out of the car, and, while Elisa unlocked the front door and went ahead switching on the lights, Rafe carried Penny up to her room. Her eyes were open, but her curly head rested against his shoulder and her little arms were round his neck.

  It was confirmation that she'd become his own little girl again. Trusting, loving and unafraid. Rafe looked at the shapely, graceful figure of Elisa walking ahead of him, and wondered if gratitude for this little miracle was the real reason why he couldn't sustain any hostility towards her.

  When he put Penny down in her bedroom, he knelt down and kissed her on the cheek. 'I'll give you a piggyback ride up tomorrow if you're awake enough, just as I used to when you were tiny.'

  Penny's sleepy eyes opened wider. 'I don't remember. Was that before you got cross with me and sent me away?'

  Elisa was turning back the covers on the bed, but she looked round. Her eyes met Rafe's, then he ruffled Penny's hair and asked gently, 'Who put that nonsense into your head?'

  'It's not nonsense, it's --' Penny stopped suddenly. Her head drooped. She leaned it against Rafe's shoulder and went on, 'I'm tired, Daddy. I want to go to bed.'

  Elisa was afraid he would press more questions on her before she was ready to answer, and she leaned forward and gripped his other shoulder warningly.

  He looked up at her, his eyes icy with anger. She frowned and shook her head, and, after a fraught moment when the issue hung in balance, he nodded. When he spoke again to Penny it was lightly, as though he'd forgotten the question he was burning to know the answer to. 'Of course you're tired, but before you go to sleep I want you to know I never got cross with you and sent you away. I wanted to keep you very much, but so did Mummy and she won. Now you're back with me for good, which was what I always wanted, so neither of us have got anything to worry about. All right?'

  Penny's head nodded on his shoulder.

  'Good,' Rafe told her. 'If you want to talk about it some more any time, just let me know, and I'll explain it all.' He lifted her face and kissed her cheek. 'Now, off to bed with you before you fall asleep on your feet.'

  Penny hugged him without saying anything, then he stood up, ruffled her hair affectionately and left the room. It didn't take Elisa long to get her into bed. Penny was too tired to want a bedtime story, but Elisa sat by her bed until she was certain her sleep was sound.

  Then she showered and changed into her jeans and black jumper, brushing her towel-dried hair and looking at her face thoughtfully in the mirror. After a while she discovered she'd been staring at herself without seeing anything, her mind hopping from the problem of Penny to the problem of Rafe, until they became inextricably mixed.

  She sighed again, realised that was becoming a habit and pulled herself together. Her hand hovered over her make-up and fell to her side. She didn't want Rafe to think she was making herself especially attractive for him. After what Penny had said, he could do without that kind of distraction. More's the pity, her selfish side said, but that was understandable because she was aching to comfort him. Not that he was the sort of man who would appreciate comfort.

  He was more likely to scorn it—and yet sometimes she sensed he was reaching out for her in a way that wasn't physical. Or was she getting dreams and wishful thinking mixed up with reality again, as she had when she'd woken in the car? She didn't know, but she had to make a conscious effort to smother another useless sigh.

  When she went downstairs, there was no sign of Rafe. The beachbags were in the hall, so he'd unpacked the car. She carried them into the kitchen and sorted them out. She slung the peg-bag over her shoulder, picked up the towels and went out to the patio at the back. She didn't bother to switch on the patio lights, there was enough coming from the windows and the open door.

  She shook the sand out of the first towel before hanging it up, and Rafe said, 'Thanks.'

  Elisa spun round. He was sitting at a table just outside the stream of light, and he was brushing sand off himself. 'Sorry,' she said, 'I didn't know you were there.'

  'That's all right. I like sand in my brandy.'

  'I'll get you another,' she offered.

  'I can get it.' The chair scraped as he stood up. 'You're not my nanny.'

  He walked past her and into the house. She felt snubbed, and she didn't like it any more than he had earlier in the day. The trouble with wearing your heart on your sleeve, she thought, is that it gets knocked about a lot. But she wasn't sorry she'd disturbed him. Sitting out here brooding all by himself wasn't good for him. Then she wondered what made her think she knew best for him when she didn't even know what was best for herself.

  There was an
other sigh to be smothered, then she pegged out the towels and went back into the kitchen. She made a fresh pot of coffee, and while it was perking she thrust the forgotten letter from Barbara into the back pocket of her jeans and started rinsing the salt and sand from the swimsuits.

  A hand came over her shoulder and held a balloon glass with a generous measure of brandy in it in front of her eyes. Elisa froze. He had come up noiselessly, and he was so close she only had to lean back to be in his arms. 'Peace offering,' he said, his voice so close to her ear she could feel his breath, and something within her curled up with ecstasy. 'I did an Elisa—snapped the wrong head off. Sorry.'

  That word again. Sorry. Love is... she recalled again, but then it all changed and became: Love is feeling like this just because he's being nice to me. There was a cloth on the draining-board. She wiped her hands without a word, took the glass and turned to him.

  Rafe stepped back, but not very far, and raised his glass. 'Friends?' he asked, smiling at her.

  'Friends.' If she was a little breathless, it was because he could be so charming, and his closeness was playing havoc with her senses, as usual. They both drank, watching each other. Elisa's eyes watered. She blinked rapidly and confessed, 'I'm not used to drinking straight spirits.'

  'Don't expect me to put lemonade in it. I wouldn't even dream of doing that to ouzo.'

  'You're not much good at humouring the peasants, are you? Would you shout at me if I said I liked it in coffee?'

  'Anything to stop you pulling faces.' Rafe moved away, which saddened her heart but helped her breathing. She watching him pour her a coffee just as she liked it, black with one sugar. He must have been watching her more closely than she'd realised. As he added the brandy to the coffee, he went on, 'Stop fussing around that sink and come into the sitting-room. I've got a good fire going.'

  Elisa turned hurriedly back to her rinsing. 'Be with you in a couple of sees.'

  'Now,' he said, 'I want to talk to you. That can wait until morning.'