‘You’re a twin?’
‘Yep. And proud of it. Kirsty fell for the local doctor and they married last year. She now has two little stepdaughters and is fast becoming a local.’
‘But you want to go home?’
‘My life is in the States. It’s time to get on with it. You either get on with life or you die,’ she said simply. ‘I was a mess for a while, but I’ve come out the other side.’
‘So why are you afraid of me?’
‘I’m not afraid.’
‘I think you are.’
‘Rose needs a swim,’ she said, almost angrily. ‘It’s too good a day to mess with by talking about what’s past.’
‘I agree,’ he told her. ‘I could use a swim, too.’
‘The wave end is better for swimming,’ she told him. ‘Rose and I use the end without waves.’
‘Different ends. Now, how did I know you were going to say that?’
‘Just swim,’ she snapped. ‘Enough with the psychoanalysis. This might be the last time I swim in this place and I intend to enjoy it.’
Susie spent the next hour in the shallows and she was aware of Hamish every single minute. She took Rosie up to her knees in water, then sat with the little girl on her lap while the wavelets washed over them. Rosie splashed and cooed and giggled and Susie giggled with her-but still she watched Hamish.
He was a strong swimmer, she decided. He used a clean, efficient stroke that said he’d been properly trained and he wasn’t out of practice. He took no chances in an unknown environment, not going deeper than chest depth but stroking strongly from one end of the cove to the other and back again. When he wearied of swimming he bodysurfed, catching the white breakers with an ease that said he’d done this, too.
He was glorying in the water, in the sun and in the day just as much as she was, she thought. She watched his lithe body slicing through the water with something akin to jealousy. He looked free. He was free to live in this place if he wanted.
He didn’t want. He intended to make money from it and leave.
Finally Rose started wearying. She curled into her mother’s lap and snuggled and Susie struggled upright and carried her daughter up the beach to dry her off and give her lunch. She fed Rose and gave her a bottle.
While she fed her daughter Hamish still didn’t come near. Instead he threw driftwood over and over into the waves for Boris. Boris would take as much of this as anyone would give him, and Hamish gave him a lot, but as Rose snuggled down and closed her eyes in satisfied sleep, Hamish came jogging up the beach to join them.
He looked fantastic, Susie thought. Wide shoulders tapering to narrow hips, not an ounce of spare flesh on him, his tanned skin coated in a fine mist of sand, his black curls flopping forward making him look almost endearing…
Cut it out! she told herself urgently. Get your hormones back where they belong.
‘There are sandwiches here,’ she managed. ‘Rose and I have eaten. Would you like some?’
‘Food!’ He fell to his knees like a man who hadn’t seen food for a week and as he bit into her sandwiches Susie had another of those…moments. Watching him enjoy the food she’d prepared… There was nothing sexy about it at all, she told herself crossly, but she knew that she lied.
‘You swim well,’ she told him, and if she sounded stiff and formal there wasn’t a blind thing she could do about it.
‘I was raised in California,’ he told her. ‘I’m an original beach bum. I’ve never seen a beach as good as this, though.’
‘You’re still tanned.’
‘I have a penthouse with a sunroof. And a heated pool.’
Oh, of course.
‘You’re just a paddler?’ he asked, polite as well.
She thought, Drat him. How dared he put her in this state of she didn’t know what?
‘I like swimming.’
‘You weren’t swimming,’ he pointed out, and she flushed.
‘Right, like I can swim when I have an attached fourteen-month-old.’
‘You’d like to swim?’ he asked, and she bit back another angry retort.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Rose is asleep. You could swim now.’
‘I don’t like leaving Rose on the beach by herself.’
‘She’s not by herself,’ he said gently. ‘She’s with me.’
So she was. Her baby was soundly asleep. She wouldn’t wake for a couple of hours. Hamish was offering her freedom, and she’d really, really like a swim.
But something was holding her back. Not distrust, exactly. More…
She couldn’t put a finger on it.
‘You can trust me,’ he said, forcing her to try.
‘I know.’
‘You’ll be able to see her all the time you’re swimming. Go on, Susie, you know you’d love to.’
She would.
‘What’s stopping you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Swim,’ he told her. ‘Or I’ll lift you up and hurl you into the waves with my bare hands.’
‘I’d like to see you try.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ he confessed. ‘I might have inherited a title, but Big Bad Sir Brian Blipping Villagers On the Head is a far cry from a wimpish stockbroker who values his back.’
It was only Hamish who was making her nervous. Swimming didn’t.
Susie did this often, whenever Kirsty brought her twins over. They’d take turns to play childminder while the other took off into deep water and gloried in the freedom the water allowed.
It did allow freedom. The car accident that had killed Rory had damaged Susie’s spine. Slowly, slowly she was recovering from the damage it had caused but she wasn’t free to walk and run as she’d like. Stiffness and residual pain held her back.
But in the water…
She’d always been better than Kirsty in the water. She’d captained her junior-high waterpolo team. She’d been selected to play for the state, and only the fact that her life had got busy had stopped her going further. But for Susie swimming was an extension of breathing.
Now she walked stiffly into the water, stood for one lovely, lingering, anticipatory moment-and then knifed forward into an oncoming wave.
Gorgeous. Just gorgeous. The moment she was through the breaker she felt her other life kick in, the life she’d known before the accident, before Rory’s death, before motherhood. She was a girl again, free, her body whole and healthy and ready for whatever the day should bring.
It almost gave her the courage to face the future.
She turned to the beach and Hamish was watching. Even from here she could see that he was tense. He was sitting on the sand with Boris beside him. His arm was draped over the dog. Rosie was curled up close by, sound asleep in the shade, but Hamish was still in the sun. He should be lying on the sun-warmed sand and snoozing, she thought, but he was bolt upright, watching.
He was playing lifeguard, she thought suddenly, recognising his tension for what it was. If she got into trouble he’d be down here in a minute, surging to her rescue.
She waved. He waved back but the tension didn’t ease.
She grinned-and then the smile died.
She liked it, she realised. She liked it a lot that he was playing lifeguard for her.
Who’d play lifeguard for her when she went back to the States?
You won’t need a lifeguard, she told herself fiercely. You’ll be fine. Don’t even think that you might still need someone. You’ve been depressed before and you’re not getting depressed again.
She turned to face the other end of the cove. She put her head down-and she swam.
Hamish watched as Susie limped down to the shoreline and was…astonished. She was beautiful, he thought. Gorgeous.
But she was also damaged. She was wearing a bikini that showed off every lovely curve, but it also revealed a wide, jagged scar across the small of her back. Was this the back injury that caused her limp?
She’d lost a husband. She was raising a baby on her own.
He was kicking her out of her castle.
Something inside his gut clenched as he watched her walk into the waves. Emotional decisions were not appropriate here, he told himself fiercely. This castle was worth a small fortune-no, a large fortune-and to keep a woman and a baby here in perpetuity was ridiculous. The lawyers had told him she’d been well provided for, and she’d reiterated that herself. She could go back to America and get on with whatever life she’d had before she’d met this Rory character and been dragged into this make-believe fantasy of titles and castles and…emotion.
He continued to watch as she stood, thigh deep in the waves, seeming to simply soak in the sun. She gazed about her as if taking in the sheer beauty of the cove, though she must have seen it so many times.
She stilled, then knifed forward into the oncoming wave and he forgot about the beauty of the cove.
She simply disappeared. Her dive into the wave produced nary a splash. Her body became a streamlined torpedo, slicing down and under, and it was as if she’d never been there.
She didn’t surface.
He was standing up, startling Boris who’d had his ears resting on his knees. Boris barked, expecting adventure, but Hamish had his eyes shaded. He was moving forward, trying to see…
She surfaced finally fifty yards from where she’d gone under. One breath, a slight turn and then down under again, and he was searching once more.
Where…where…?
Twenty yards this time, only twenty yards and she was moving along the cove rather than out to sea. Another breath, hardly perceptible-the break of her head above water could hardly be seen-and then under again, swift and sure, like a sleek young seal, surfacing to breathe but all economy of effort underwater.
He’d never seen anything like it. He thought he was a good swimmer, but she was magnificent.
He’d run a few steps in those first panicked seconds and Boris was bouncing around his legs, barking, expecting excitement. He lifted a piece of driftwood and threw it into the shallows, pretending to any unseen onlooker that he’d stood specifically to do this. That he hadn’t panicked. That the sight of Susie moving with such economy of action-with such beauty-didn’t have the power to move him.
Only, of course, it did have the power to move him. He felt…
He didn’t know how he felt.
Boris came streaming back up the beach, hauling his driftwood for another throw. The stick was laid at his feet and the big dog shook, sending a spray of sand and sea, hauling Hamish’s thoughts back to reality. To at least some semblance of normality.
‘I’m going back to babysitting,’ he told Boris. ‘I’m not watching.’
Boris put his head on the side and gazed at him in mute enquiry.
‘Well, I’m hardly a lifesaver,’ he muttered, sitting on the beach, hugging the dog and staring out to sea. ‘She can swim better than I can. There’s nothing I can do for your mistress, boy, except sit with her sleeping baby and give her a few more moments’ freedom.’
She waved from behind the breakers and he waved back.
Freedom…
She was glorying in her freedom, he thought, and suddenly he remembered his office back in Manhattan. It was a magnificent office. He had plate-glass windows that looked all the way to the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.
There was still plate glass between him and the sea.
‘It’s just because you’ve never had a holiday that you’re thinking like this,’ he told himself, suddenly angry. ‘Get over it. Cut it out with the emotion, Douglas. You know where that gets you, and you don’t want to go there.’
He lay back on the sand and closed his eyes.
Then he half opened one. Then he shrugged and sat up.
He’d just watch.
It had been a fabulous swim.
Susie came out of the water laughing with delight, pleasure and sheer wellbeing. OK, she was leaving this place, but its memories would stay with her for ever and one of them was this day. She shook herself like Boris, holding her hands out and wiggling her whole body so a spray of water went everywhere. Boris, who’d bounded down the beach to meet her, backed off as the water hit him, and she laughed with delight at her neat reversal of roles.
She looked up the beach and Hamish was watching her. She switched back. She’d had her time out.
Back to being the castle relic.
She walked up the beach and he rose to meet her, holding out her towel. She hesitated for a moment, just because the gesture seemed curiously intimate.
Which was dumb. It meant nothing. How many times had Kirsty done the same thing? She took the towel and retired behind it, enveloping her whole face so she didn’t have to look at him.
‘Best beach in the world,’ he said softly, and she let her towel drop to her shoulders and tried to smile.
‘It is.’
‘You’ll hate leaving it.’
‘I will. But I’ve had it for over a year. It’s time for someone else to enjoy it.’ Her smile became a little more determined. ‘Or many someones. All the people who’ll come to your hotel.’
‘It’s the sensible thing to do, to sell it.’
‘It is.’
‘You will be all right?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she told him, determined. ‘Thank you for looking after Rose.’
‘I’ve never babysat before.’
‘Never?’
‘No.’
‘No family?’
‘No brothers or sisters. An older cousin who was a creep.’
‘I think that’d be awful,’ she said. ‘Being an only kid. Being a twin was wonderful.’
He thought about that, and looked down at her sleeping baby. Another only kid? ‘Rose…’
‘I’ll surround her with kids,’ she said, determined. How was she going to do that? She didn’t have a clue.
She was going home to juggle baby, career, life.
She was not going to let it get her down.
‘Your sister’s here?’
‘Yes.’
‘She has kids.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why don’t you stay here?’
‘And be dependent on Kirsty for the rest of my life? No, thanks very much.’
‘Independence can be hard.’
‘I suspect you’re a master of it,’ she said. ‘I’m just learning but I’ll manage.’
‘Susie…’ he began-and then paused as the sound of a motor cut the stillness. He turned to watch a dinghy putt-putt around the cove. It was a simple, two-person craft with a small motor that would have been dangerous on a day that was any less calm than this. But it was calm and the two people in the boat looked inordinately pleased with themselves. A middle-aged couple-the man in a loud Hawaiian shirt and the woman in a swimsuit that had even more gardenias on than her husband’s shirt-were heading straight for them.
As they came within earshot the man stood up in the boat, rocked precariously and yelled.
‘Ahoy. Can we land on this beach? Are there rocks?’
‘No rocks,’ Susie yelled back, relieved her tete-a-tete was over.
They cruised towards the shore, a bit too fast. Neither got out of the boat until it hit sand. Then they sat in the rocking boat, removed their sandals with care and put their toes into the water as if expecting piranhas.
No piranhas.
‘Ooh, it’s lovely, Albert,’ the lady said. ‘It’s not too cold at all.’ She turned to them and beamed a welcome. ‘Hi.’
They were Americans. The place was starting to be overrun with Americans, Susie thought. ‘Hi,’ she replied, while Hamish said nothing at all.
‘We just wanted to take your picture,’ the woman told her, beaming still. ‘That’s right, isn’t it, Albert? We brought the boat round from Dolphin Bay harbour and I saw you through the fieldglasses with your baby asleep and your puppy, and you all look beautiful. I bet that dog’s got dingo in him, I said. And I said to Albert, I’d like to take their picture, because you remind
me so much of what we were at that age. And now life’s an adventure and it’s wonderful but I just thought…seeing you two…’ Her beam faded a little. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she asked, suddenly anxious that she might have offended the natives. ‘If you give me your name and address I’ll send you a copy. Albert is a lovely photographer.’
Albert looked bashful, but combined beam and bashful very nicely.
‘We’re only in Australia for a week,’ the woman went on. ‘For five of those days Albert has a conference but I said I wasn’t going home before I’d met some real Australians. So I got a pin and closed my eyes and stuck it in a map of places we could get to from Sydney and here we are. And I know you aren’t aboriginal or anything, but you so look like you belong. Anyway, can we take your picture?’
‘Um,’ Susie said with a sideways glance at the silent Hamish. ‘What do you think…luv?’
He grinned. Her drawl had been an attempt to sound Australian but she hadn’t quite managed it.
‘Geez, darl, I dunno why not,’ he drawled, and his accent was so much better than hers that she almost laughed out loud. ‘We could do with one of them photo thingies to show the kiddies when they grow up.’
She choked. Albert suddenly looked suspicious.
‘They might already have a camera, Honey.’
‘We’d be very pleased to have our picture taken,’ Susie said. This was such a glorious morning, she was determined that everyone could enjoy it. She glared at Hamish. ‘What my…what he meant was that’d it’d be an honour to have a picture taken by an American.’
‘That’s all right, then,’ Honey said, obviously thinking the same thing. ‘Can you cuddle? I don’t suppose you want to pick the baby up?’
‘She’s just gone to sleep,’ Susie said. Enough was enough. But then she grinned and leaned down, hoisted the wet and sand-coated dog up and thrust him into Hamish’s arms. ‘There you go, darl,’ she said. ‘You cuddle the dingo.’
The Heir’s Chosen Bride Page 6