by Joanne Hill
A sea breeze buffeted his hair, and he absently reached up to push it back into place. His scent floated to her. Citrus. Masculine. Sexy.
He suddenly turned back and commented, “I’ll be busy until about eight so we’ll have dinner late.”
She took a sip of her drink, enjoying the slide of the fruity flavours on her hot throat and both relieved and pleased he hadn’t suggested they eat from room service in their own rooms. “It sounds fine. I’m looking forward to getting out and looking around.”
"I’ve hired a car for tomorrow. I’ll drive out to the packaging plant near Toowoomba and I should make it back by early afternoon.”
“So is the afternoon free, then?” she asked.
“It is.” He nodded but his face had become suddenly grim. “That should give us plenty of time to go and see some of ...” He squeezed his eyes shut and ground out, “SeaWorld.”
The afternoon meetings had proceeded as planned. The plants were being run smoothly, the managers were on the ball, but most of all, Daniel was relieved to find there were no whispers of trouble in the Christie empire. And those Queensland bosses would have had no hesitation in asking him straight if they’d heard a whisper about anything. Rumors about the two youngest members of the board. Or an unexpected marriage. He grimaced. Despite these more liberal times, the next question would have been, “When’s the baby due?” His rental car neared the hotel, and his mind skipped to Mel.
It had been a last minute decision to bring her along and if he was being honest, he’d regretted it as soon as he’d asked. This wasn’t a holiday for him. He’d brought Nora along in the past, but Nora was his PA. An exceptionally proficient personal assistant. Their work relationship had never veered away from the professionalism he prized in that role. Sure, he could easily allow himself to let his mind wander in that direction, but he’d be losing more than the few minutes of pleasure a romp between the sheets would give.
At the hotel, he handed the keys to the valet, and in his suite he showered, dressed casually, and called Mel’s room.
“I’ve made reservations for eight. I’ll come by at ten two,” he told her.
Mel’s voice was low, “I’m looking forward to it,” she said. The enthusiasm in her voice, mute as it was, had him on edge. He pushed it aside. Mel Green wouldn’t read anything in to this. And if she did, who was he to complain when she’d calmly told him she would be happy to see Sir Arthur. Would love to in fact. He couldn’t have asked for anything more, even though he was kicking himself he hadn’t realised it at the time. Any woman would have been justified in not keeping to the arrangement which mentioned nothing of seeing Sir Arthur regularly or walking his dog.
He switched on his laptop, and stared broodily out the window at the dusk. Mel was growing on him, too. Attraction was growing. Which was a nuisance at best, since she irritated him as much as she intrigued him. She wasted her time on making quilts when you could buy them, had chosen a career path that made him shudder, and there were times when she struck him as downright flaky, like this insistence on going to SeaWorld tomorrow.
He opened up the stock market website. But he was the one in control and that wasn’t going to change. And he appreciated that they had stipulated from the outset that sex was a “no go”. It made the whole thing easier when it came to break it up. Once you brought sex into the equation, the playing fields changed and he suspected that once that boundary had been crossed, Melinda Green was not someone you played around with and then discarded.
And when it came down to it, discard was what he would be doing when he faced the inevitable, and his grandfather passed on.
What he hadn’t told Mel was that Arthur’s body was slowing down. At times he needed pain relief. Daniel shut his eyes as a wave of grief swept through him. That’s why he’d brought this trip forward, so that over the next few weeks and months he would only be a short car ride away.
Because it was going to happen. They were prepared for it. And he knew he had given his grandfather hope that the family empire would survive, that heirs would be produced.
Beyond that, there was nothing more they could do.
He walked with Mel the short distance from the hotel down the main road to the restaurant. People were spilling out on to the sidewalk, drinks in hand and laughter in their voices.
The waiter showed them to their table, and as they took their seats, he noticed Mel wearing the gold pendant again.
He ordered a bottle of red wine, and when the waiter had left, Daniel commented, “That chain around your neck intrigues me.”
Her fingers automatically went up to it. “It’s sentimental value. My mother gave it to me on my thirteenth birthday.”
“Does it symbolise anything?”
“It’s of a patron saint my mother used to tell me the story of. Saint Maria Goretti.”
His eyebrows rose. “Your mother is Italian?”
“Her mother was Italian. Grandmother Sophia immigrated to Melbourne with the family when she was just a baby, during the immigration wave in the 1930s. But she married my grandfather, a fifth generation Aussie. Which apparently didn’t go down well with the rest of the family.”
The waiter came, and when he’d poured their wine, Mel added, “Mum’s real name is Elena but she always went by Ellie.”
He nodded, intrigued. “So what did this Maria Goretti do that your mother felt compelled to tell you?”
“You really want to hear it?” she asked doubtfully.
He leant back in his chair. “Of course.”
“Okay. Well, Maria was a girl from a poor Italian family around the turn of the century. One day an older boy tried to…” She waved her hand. “Have his way with her. But she refused and said she’d rather die than submit to him. He stabbed her and she later died.”
“Good grief,” Daniel muttered.
“The story goes that she forgave the boy on her death bed, but years later she appeared to him in a dream, and he repented his ways.” She smiled wryly. “I guess my mother figured I’d need to learn forgiveness at some point in my life.” She sipped her wine. “I think it’s because she had to several times in her own life.”
Daniel narrowed his gaze. “Forgiveness sounds a very honorable characteristic, but it’s hardly practical.” His brothers, for example, were growing less and less forgivable in his book as the days went by, simply because they didn’t have the decency to come back to Australia to visit Arthur. That was disgraceful
“That’s an interesting attitude, but I disagree. I think it’s the most practical thing in the world to be able to do.”
“Practical? How so?”
“Because you need to do it for your own sanity. I’m not saying it’s easy, no way is it an easy thing to do but if you don’t put whatever it is behind you, you might just end up being consumed by it. It could wreck your life.”
“If somebody has wronged me, why on earth should I forgive them?”
“Because if you don’t, they still hold power over you. They’ve moved on, they don’t care about you anymore. But you haven’t moved on.”
“Sounds like you’ve got your counselors hat on again, Melinda.”
She acknowledged that with a nod to her head. “Maybe I have. But forgiving is all about the person who has been wronged able to let go of the experience and get on with their life.” She leant forward. Her eyes were fiery. He hadn’t seen that fire in her before. A sudden jolt of awareness ripped through him.
She went on, “If somebody did a terrible thing to you, and nearly ruined your life, do you think that person actually cares about you? Of course they don’t. They don’t give a crap. They wouldn’t have done it in the first place if they cared. Yet you, the victim in all this, you live the rest of your life hating them with so much passion and energy, resenting them, and everything you do is clouded by that experience and you know what that means?”
He could guess but he said, “No. What does it mean?”
She tapped her fist on the tab
le. “They have this power over you. They are still winning. And they are always still winning, unless you can let it go.” A shadow passed over her eyes and he knew she was thinking about her ex fiancé again.
She went on, “So if they don’t care, and you’re getting twisted up over it, who is the one suffering? Them? Or you? It doesn’t leave you a lot of choices.”
He drummed his fingers on the table top. “I can think of a very sweet choice, Mel. It’s called revenge.”
Her hand went up to the pendant automatically. “It can backfire very easily. Or make it a whole new ballgame.”
He inclined his head, mesmerized by the way she ran her forefinger around the pendant. “Not always. And it serves a purpose.”
She was thoughtful a minute. “Are you saying there’s somebody you’d seek revenge on?”
“No. There isn’t.” Her hand dropped away. “I would never get to the stage where I allowed anyone to do something that would result in my feeling the need to seek revenge.” He found himself grinning at the serious contemplation on her face. “Does that answer your question, counselor?”
“No. But considering I am here with you, and we have this bizarre arrangement, I can see that you probably don’t get into situations where it becomes an issue. You’re always one step ahead. Which is just being clever.”
He glanced again at the pendant. “So your mother believed that by wearing that pendant it would protect you from deviant behavior?”
Mel shrugged. “Actually, I think it was more a reminder that we need to be strong, just like Maria. She wasn’t very old, she was barely a teen I think, but she stood up for what she believed in, even when her life was being threatened. You have to be a pretty tough character to do that. Most of us would fold in no time.”
He watched her closely. “I’ve never met your mother but she sounds interesting. I like the idea that some traditions get passed down. We should invite her over for dinner sometime.” He managed a smile. “After all, she is my mother-in-law.”
Mel’s eyebrows rose sharply. “I don’t think that’s a good idea at all. She thinks I’m a live-in housekeeper. How would I explain inviting her over for dinner with my boss?”
“I’ll figure it out. But I’d like to meet her. You seem very close to her, and you visit her a lot. Yet you don’t talk about her much.”
“I guess that’s because… I don’t want to confuse her. By meeting you.”
The waiter appeared, and handed them their menus. Daniel cleared his throat and flipped it open. “How hungry are you?”
“Starving,” she admitted. “I had coffee and a muffin at a café down the road but that was it. I’ve been saving my appetite.”
“Good decision,” he murmured, as he scanned the menu. “Choosing is going to be difficult.”
He watched her as she deliberated over the choices. Her hair was straight today. She must have straightened it after her shower and it fell around her face, sleek and glistening. She absently reached up to push some strands behind her ears and he noticed she had small silver earrings in her lobes. She turned the page.
He focused quickly back on the menu. If he was going to sit here all evening admiring his wife, then he was going to find himself in big trouble.
But the fact was…He glanced up again. When he’d first met Mel he had considered her plain. Average. Not the type of woman he would look twice at. Tonight, however, he’d been stunned to see just how beautiful she looked. She had transformed herself into a woman any man would be intensely aware of. Gone were the jeans and t-shirts, and in their place a sleeveless bold pink dress that draped across her body as if it had been designed just for her.
“Decision made. I’ll have the seared tuna.” She set the menu down.
“No appetizer?”
She shook her head. “I’m planning on dessert.” She beckoned to a couple at a neighbouring table who had just had a mouth-watering chocolate concoction delivered to them.
He closed his menu as the waiter arrived and when they’d ordered, he asked, “So besides the café, what else have you seen?”
“I walked along the beach. Took off my shoes and waded through the surf. It was surprisingly warm. Quite a few people were having a swim.”
“Not tempted to go for a dip yourself?”
Her eyebrows arched. “Not unless I want to be arrested for swimming nude in a public place.”
Wrong question to ask. Now he pictured her in the water, her hair around her shoulders, rising from the sea, water skimming off that beautiful straight hair, down her neck, over that pendant to her breasts, as she rose and rose out of the water…
He drained his glass.
“How many businesses do you have up here?” she asked suddenly and he could have kissed her with relief. He leant back in his chair, and gripped his glass of wine like a lifeline. “We’ve got two plants in this area,” he began.
After dinner, they ordered desserts. Mel, the chocolate, Daniel a lemon meringue pudding.
They’d decided to forgo coffee and look for a place along the strip when they left. The hour was late but the night still felt young. Which surprised him considering the early start they’d had.
He eyed her dessert and said, “Sure you can handle that?”
“Are you kidding?” She took a spoon and dug into the chocolate mixture, lifted it to her lips and tasted.
“Oh. My. Gosh.” She closed her eyes with pleasure in a way that made him momentarily forget he was in a public place. “This is divine.”
He quickly took a taste of his own.
“Verdict?” she prompted as she dug into hers again. Fascinated, he couldn’t take his eyes of her mouth, off her tongue as she licked off some cream, of the movement of her jaw, her throat as she swallowed. “So. What do you think?”
“Not bad.” His throat hurt to speak.
Her eyes widened. ”Not bad?”
“It’s good. But I wouldn’t close my eyes in ecstasy over it. Unless…” He pushed the plate towards her. “You want to try for yourself. Give it the once over and see if it comes up to the standard of the chocolate.”
“I never thought you’d ask.”
He bit back a smile as she wiped her spoon on the serviette, and dug in. He went still as he watched her. She brought the spoon to her mouth, closed her lips and then she looked straight at him.
Her eyes widened, and his gaze slipped to her lips as she closed her mouth around the spoon. Warmth flared to life inside him, and the pull of attraction thundered through him, intensifying as she stared back, bewildered. A mirror to what he felt. Slowly she swallowed.
She set the spoon back down, and as if in slow motion, she reached for her glass, raised it to her lips, took a long drink of wine.
His throat constricted and he had to drag the words out. “What was the verdict?” Surprisingly, his voice was even.
“The verdict was…” Her voice had a husky edge to it. “That this is really good. Just the right amount of citrus and sweetness. And now.” She pushed her plate to him and met his stare. “Now you have to try mine.”
He dug into the chocolate then looked straight at her. Slowly, he took the spoon to his mouth. Her cheeks flushed scarlet.
He tasted, swallowed.
Around them, the laughter and music seemed to have stopped, and the only sound he could hear was his own breathing.
Finally, she asked, her voice low. “So what did you think?”
That this was Mel. Patchwork Mel. A woman he had felt secure marrying because she offered no visible reason to be tempted.
“I agree. The chocolate is definitely the dessert loaded with sin.” He pushed the plate back. He needed to clear his mind. “But I’ll stick with the lemon.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Daniel survived SeaWorld. In fact, Mel thought as she glanced at him next to her in the taxi, he may even have enjoyed some of it. Right now, though, he was staring moodily out the window, his sunglasses on his head. She said, “You can admit it now.”
He glanced around. “Admit what?”
“That maybe you enjoyed yourself, just a little.”
He nodded, his eyebrows knit together. “Surprisingly, I did. And from the screaming on that first ride, I gather you did.”
“Both terrified and exhilarated. I’m glad I got to go.”
He shook away her thanks, was even, she thought, a little embarrassed by it. “Reality will hit us before much longer. Once we’re back home, life will return to how it’s meant to be.”
She looked away. “It feels like we’ve been away forever.”
At the hotel, a doorman opened their doors and as they climbed out, Daniel hesitated. “Mel?”
She grabbed her tote with her souvenirs and glanced up. “Yes?”
“I’ve got something on this evening. I might be tied up.”
“You mentioned you had a meeting.” They walked through the doors which closed with a gentle whoosh behind them.
“It could take longer than I planned. It’s best we don’t catch up for dinner.”
He checked his phone and when he looked up, she said, “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “Order in room service. Watch TV. You go on up. I need to confirm our check out time for tomorrow.” He gestured to the reception desk. “I requested a late check out.”
Why did she have the feeling he was trying to get rid of her. They’d both had a good time. Hadn’t they?
“Sure.” She tightened her grip on her bag, suddenly wanting, needing, to be out of here. She felt oddly humiliated, as if she’d just been told to go to her room, and she didn’t understand why. She was about to step to the elevator bank when she stopped and turned. He was watching her strangely, the taut planes of his cheekbones pronounced.
She said, “What is the plan for tomorrow morning.”
“We fly out of Coolangatta airport after lunch. I have meetings all morning which is I why I requested a late checkout. So be ready to leave around one-thirty.”