by Jessica Hart
‘I don’t see how.’
Simon propped himself up on one elbow so that he could look down at her. ‘We could kiss.’
He made the suggestion so casually that Clara wasn’t sure that she had heard properly.
The little breath that was left in her lungs leaked away. ‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’
‘Well, according to your theory it would make it even more romantic, wouldn’t it?’
‘It might,’ she agreed unevenly, and Simon’s teeth gleamed in the darkness as he smiled.
‘It worked in Paris in the rain.’
‘Hmm…that’s true.’
This was probably a big mistake. Hadn’t she spent the last two weeks talking herself out of being attracted to Simon? Didn’t she know that it could never work with him?
But wouldn’t it feel good? And shouldn’t it be her mission to convince him that romance was possible, even if it was just a kiss on a tropical beach in the dark?
Just one kiss. What harm could it do? Neither of them was committed to anyone else.
And it would feel so good…
‘If this evening is as enchanted as you say, it seems a waste not to make the most of it, don’t you think?’ Simon lifted her hair and smoothed it behind her ear, letting his fingers linger against her cheek, making her tremble with need.
‘Rude not to,’ she agreed raggedly.
‘We could think of it as a useful comparative exercise,’ he said, leaning over her. ‘Which is more romantic? To kiss in Paris when you’re soaked to the skin or on a tropical beach when one of you has spent the day groaning over a bucket?’
‘Ugh, don’t mention food poisoning,’ said Clara, but she was fingering the bottom of his shirt and made no effort to move away as Simon lowered his head.
‘The thing is, I’m a rational man,’ he said. ‘I can’t make a decision based on feelings. I need to test the empirical evidence before I make up my mind as to which is the more romantic place.’
Clara’s toes were curling in the sand and, without quite meaning to, she lifted her hands to his shoulders. ‘Good point,’ she said.
Very slowly, Simon lowered his head until his mouth was almost—almost touching hers. ‘So shall we test the hypothesis?’
‘I suppose so,’ she managed unsteadily. ‘Just in the interests of scientific research.’
‘Naturally,’ said Simon. She felt his mouth curve in a smile. It fitted hers perfectly, and she realised that she was smiling too.
At the back of her mind, a small, sensible part of Clara had retained just enough grip on reality to think uh-oh, perhaps this isn’t such a good idea after all, and was frantically waving a warning flag, but she frowned it down.
How could it not be a good idea when Simon was pressing her into the sand and his body was warm and wonderfully solid? When his competent hands were unwinding her sarong and his kisses swamped her with pleasure? When there was only the distant boom of surf against the reef and the lap of the lagoon on the shore and the warm darkness that wrapped itself around them like a caress?
When it really was an enchanted evening?
So Clara turned her mental back on that warning flag and kissed Simon back. She moved her hands down his flanks to slide them under his shirt, hissing in a breath at the feel of his bare skin. His back was broad and smooth and powerfully muscled beneath her palms, and she arched into the sand with a gasp as his lips travelled down the side of her neck to the curve of her shoulder in a trail of wicked pleasure.
How could this possibly be a bad idea? Clara abandoned herself without regret to the honeyed delight of feeling him, touching him, tasting him.
To the bone-melting pleasure that dissolved in its turn to a dizzying rush of heat.
To the insistent pulse of excitement as his hungry hands unlocked her, as his mouth drove her to the pitch of need and she clutched at him, loving his hard weight on her, fingering the bumps in his spine, smiling as he flexed in response.
‘This is madness,’ Simon mumbled against her throat.
‘I know.’ Her arms slid around his neck, pulled him closer. ‘Madness, I know.’
And then they sank back down into the glorious, giddy heat once more.
Mouths, hands. Touch, feel. Gasp, sigh.
Kiss. Kiss, kiss, kiss.
Time slowed and swirled. ‘We should stop,’ Simon muttered, not stopping.
The warning flag struggled to the top of Clara’s consciousness once more, waving exhaustedly. ‘Probably,’ she agreed reluctantly.
Simon drew a long steadying breath. Levering himself off her, he rolled back onto the sand beside her. For a while they lay there, letting their breathing quieten.
Having caught her attention at last, the sensible part of Clara’s mind was firmly back in charge. It had been a wonderful kiss, but she mustn’t read too much into it. Simon Valentine might kiss better than any other man she had ever kissed, but he was still a man who didn’t believe in love.
He might desire her now, on the beach, in the dark, skimpily dressed—he was a guy, after all—but she wasn’t the one he really wanted.
Clara made herself remember everything he’d told her about Astrid in Paris. I don’t want anyone else, he had said. Astrid was perfect for Simon, he had said so and, no matter how much he might resist the idea, Clara thought he probably did love Astrid. As much as he dared to, anyway.
And Clara wasn’t playing second best again. She wasn’t going to be a substitute, a temporary replacement, until the one he really wanted became available. She had been there with Matt, and she wasn’t going there again. It had hurt too much.
So she would treat it lightly, the way she had learnt to do. It was easier that way.
‘So what did you decide?’ she asked Simon.
‘Decide?’ He sounded distracted.
‘Is the beach more romantic than Paris?’
A tiny, tiny pause. ‘It’s definitely more convenient. It’s dark and dry and we’re lying down for a start, so yes, I vote for the tropical paradise.’
His voice was back to its normal astringency by then, but his hand found Clara’s in the darkness, and her throat tightened at the intimacy of their entangled fingers.
‘It’s easy to get carried away in the dark,’ she agreed after a moment. ‘I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist the romance of it all.’
‘Is it romance or is it physical attraction?’
‘It’s probably a bit of both,’ said Clara, hearing the wariness in his voice. ‘But you don’t need to panic. I’m not talking about love. I’m talking about the way a place like this helps you let down your barriers.’
It was true, thought Simon. He had lowered his guard, but was that because of the darkness and heat and the scents of the tropical night, or was it because of Clara herself?
I’m a rational man, he had told her, but reason had evaporated the moment his mouth had touched hers and he had succumbed to the wild sweetness. The world had swung round them, but there at its centre, holding everything steady, had been Clara.
Now he lay, his fingers entwined with hers, and felt the earth turning beneath them, and he felt exposed and vulnerable and yet as if everything was in its right place.
‘I know you don
’t do love,’ said Clara.
That was true, too.
Simon wondered what he was feeling now. Desire, certainly, but beyond that, something new, something disturbing, was coiling around his heart. Something that made him shift uneasily on the sand.
‘I don’t like feeling out of control.’
‘I know you don’t. And you don’t need to worry,’ she told him, sounding remarkably cheerful, Simon couldn’t help noticing.
How could she kiss like that, and then bounce straight back to normal? It wasn’t natural. Wasn’t her blood still pounding? Wasn’t her body still clenched with desire?
‘I’m not falling in love with someone who can’t love me back completely,’ she said. ‘So we both know where we are.’
He ought to be glad she was so businesslike about it. He was glad. It was just… Well, Simon didn’t know what it was. He just knew he felt edgy and faintly aggrieved, and how irrational was that?
I’m a rational man. Hah!
Disentangling her fingers, Clara sat up and tried to wrap her sarong around her once more. The sarong he had unwound so efficiently so that he could smooth his hand down her thigh and stroke the inside of her knee.
Simon wrenched his mind back on track and sat up as well, resting his wrists on his bent knees.
The sarong was hopelessly twisted, and Clara had given up. She was brushing sand off herself instead.
‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I know it’s Astrid you want, so there’s no danger of either of us misinterpreting what just happened.’ She glanced at him, trying to gauge his reaction. ‘That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it.’
If Clara the great romantic could be casual about a kiss that had shaken him to his core, he certainly could!
‘I enjoyed it too,’ he said.
‘Perhaps we should test the hypothesis again in Scotland,’ Clara suggested tentatively.
‘Scotland?’
‘That’s going to be the last segment of the programme. We’ll have done Paris, and a tropical paradise. An isolated cottage in the Highlands is another kind of romantic place, and it’ll be the perfect contrast to the other two.’
‘Aren’t the Highlands cold and wet and plagued with midges? What’s romantic about that?’
‘There won’t be any midges when we go,’ said Clara firmly, omitting the cold and wet issue. ‘It’ll be wonderful.’
‘When have you been to the Highlands?’
‘Never, as it happens, but I know I’m going to love it. It’ll be elemental.’ She hugged herself at the thought. ‘Wild hills, the mist on the heather, the rain lashing at the windows…’
Simon sighed, but actually he was feeling better. More himself. This was Clara in normal, exasperatingly illogical mode, and he could deal with that much better than he could with the Clara whose softness and warmth made his mind reel.
‘What is it with you and rain? Didn’t we have enough rain in Paris?’
‘It’ll be different in Scotland. You expect it there.’
Above their heads, the palms rustled in the breeze and somewhere in the darkness there was a thud as a coconut dropped into the sand.
Bizarre to be having a conversation about hills and cold and rain on this tropical beach. Scotland was another world—a world where things would be back to normal, Simon hoped. Where he would be back in control. Where there would be no warmth and languid nights to seduce him into lowering his guard once more.
‘When are we going up there?’ he asked.
‘The end of March, if that works for you,’ said Clara, head bent over her knees as she combed the sand from her hair with her fingers.
‘And you think we should have another kiss there?’
She peered up at him through her hair. ‘Just for comparative purposes, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘And if you’re not back with Astrid,’ she added.
‘Of course,’ he said again, distracted by the sweet curve of the nape of her neck. He made himself look away. If it was anything like the kiss they’d just shared, it would be worth all that lashing rain. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’
* * *
‘When you said it was isolated, you really meant it.’
Simon rested his arms on the steering wheel and peered through the windscreen at the whitewashed cottage lit by the beam of his headlights.
They had been driving along a bumpy track in the pitch-dark for what seemed like hours. The last sign of human habitation was miles behind them, and it was a long time since either of them had been able to get a signal on their mobile phones.
And it was starting to snow.
Excellent.
When Simon turned off the engine, all that could be heard was the keen of the wind screaming down from the mountains that were shrouded in the snowy darkness. It buffeted the car, making it rock slightly. The prospect of getting out into it and fighting their way to the dark cottage was uninviting, to say the least.
Clara eyed the cottage doubtfully. ‘It looked nicer on the Internet.’
‘The snow is a nice touch.’ Simon allowed sarcasm to lace his voice. It had been a very long drive. ‘You’ve certainly covered a range of weather in this programme of yours.’
‘Well, getting snowed in is always romantic.’ Clara slid a glance at Simon, wondering if it would be pushing things too far to sing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, and deciding against it after one look at the set of his jaw.
‘It’s a pity it’s not Christmas,’ she said instead. ‘That really would have been romantic.’
Simon was looking sceptical. ‘We just need the others to arrive,’ she said, trying to cheer him up. Ted, Peter and Steve were driving up in a van loaded with equipment and the food Clara had bought the day before. ‘I did a big shop so there’ll be lots of nice things to eat. We’ll make a fire. It’ll be cosy.’
‘You’re doing Julie Andrews again,’ he said sourly. ‘Stop it.’
Simon had elected to drive his own car north, obviously not trusting Clara’s driving, in spite of the fact that her wrist was out of its cast at last. She had to admit that it was more comfortable than a hired car, and certainly than the van would have been.
He was a good driver, fast and competent, his hands very steady on the steering wheel, but it had still been a very long drive. Clara had entertained herself—and Simon, she had thought—with a repertoire of all the songs from the musicals she knew until he had told her that he would put her in the boot if he had to hear one more.
‘That damn tune about the lonely goatherd is in my head now,’ he growled.
‘You should sing along,’ said Clara. ‘That’ll let it out of your head.’
One look from Simon was enough to tell her what he thought of that suggestion.
Fine. She wouldn’t sing then. After a while, without really being aware of it, she began humming under her breath.
‘Stop buzzing!’ said Simon, exasperated. ‘Why can’t you just sit quietly and look at the scenery?’
‘I don’t like silence.’ Clara hunched a sullen shoulder.
It had been nearly a month since that kiss on St Bonaventure, and she had done her best to put it out of her mind, but she couldn’t help rememb
ering that they had agreed to kiss again in Scotland.
Just as a light-hearted test.
I’ll look forward to it, Simon had said. Every time Clara thought of it, which was more often than she wanted, anticipation shivered down her spine and clenched her entrails.
It was madness, they had agreed on that beach, and it still was. This was the last time she and Simon would meet. Once the filming was over, their lives would go their separate ways for good. Ted would edit her out of the film, so they wouldn’t even stay together digitally. How symbolic was that?
She and Simon had nothing whatsoever in common, Clara knew that, but still she couldn’t stop the excitement buzzing under her skin when she thought about him, and the moment she had seen him again it was as if a light had been switched on inside her.
CHAPTER NINE
It didn't make sense. Yes, he was a fantastic kisser, but he was also cross, critical and infuriatingly unromantic. He didn’t sing, couldn’t dance. He was her very own Captain von Trapp, in fact.
Which made Astrid the Baroness.
Who, let’s face it, had much nicer frocks and in reality would have made him a much more suitable wife than a guitar-strumming nun.
Clara suppressed a sigh. ‘I suppose Astrid behaves perfectly in the car?’
‘At least she can sit still for more than a minute at a time, and doesn’t subject me to the complete works of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Rodgers and Hammerstein!’
Clara didn’t normally like long car journeys, which did indeed involve too much sitting still for her liking, but she hadn’t been bored. How could she be bored when being with Simon made her feel so alive? Every one of her senses was on high alert, and she was intensely aware of the beating of her own heart.
Of the smell of the leather seats and the smoothness of the glossy wood trim, of the length of Simon’s thigh, and the dashboard lights which threw a muted glow over his features, catching the line of his nose and the set of his mouth in a way that dried the breath in Clara’s throat whenever she looked at it.