by Diana Fraser
“Sure.” She studied the brief menu. “I suggest the Goat Cheese and Prosciutto Ravioli to start and the John Dory for main course.” She snapped the menu shut. “If that’s okay with you?” She placed the order with the harried looking waitress, conscious all the while of his eyes on her, watching her every move.
He swirled his wine around in the glass but his eyes never strayed from hers. “Delicious.”
Instinctively she licked her lips, feeling the sensuous sibilance of the word skitter over her skin. Then he turned to ask the waitress for water—which should have already been on the table—and she watched as he flirted with her. Flirted! She glanced away, unable to watch. When he’d been young his charm had been more natural, less obvious. Now, he wielded it like a weapon. And, of course, it worked. Men loved him for his humor and warmth and women loved him for his complete and utter sexiness. Most women, anyway.
She turned back to him, intending to send him a black look but it froze as his gaze caught hers, his eyes caressing her as effectively as if he’d taken her into his arms and held her close. It was hot, encompassing and very, very intimate. Her rational thoughts shattered under the blast of gut-wrenching desire that had nothing to do with reason.
She shook her head. “Mac. Don’t do that.”
He raised his eyebrows. “What is it I’m doing, Susie?”
“It’s Susannah, and you’re flirting with me.”
“I think of you as Susie. And Susie you will stay. Why did you change your name?”
She flicked open the serviette and dropped it onto her lap. “Bad memories. I wanted to start fresh. Besides, Susannah suits me better.”
“It doesn’t suit the woman I know.”
“That woman doesn’t exist any longer, if she ever did.”
“You might be able to fool everyone else but I can see her. Even now. She’s there, hiding behind all that businesslike practicality. Do you want to know how I know for sure?”
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me anyway.”
“Because it’s Susie who wants to make quality wines, who doesn’t care about profit. No one called Susannah would ignore the balance sheet. It’s Susie who has the creative soul.”
The sun slipped over the horizon and the evening suddenly shifted into a soft twilight. Words floated, formed sentences and then disappeared before she could speak them. The waitress placed their food in front of them, covering the awkward silence. Then she left the table and the silence fell heavy again. She shook her head.
“You can’t deny it, Susie. I remember you, I remember everything.”
“Really? I can’t.” She took a mouthful of the ravioli and hoped the lie was convincing.
“I don’t believe you. What about that time we stayed out all night in the tree house at Glencoe?”
The memory of that night, engraved in her heart, flooded her senses. She focused on the salad, buying time. “What about it?” Her voice came out weaker than she’d wanted it to. “Do you like the ravioli?”
He nodded, but his attention wasn’t on the food, it was on her. “We spent a lot of time in that tree house.”
She took a deep breath and released the tension with a sigh as the memories grew stronger—filling her mind and flooding her with long-repressed feelings of happiness. “Tree house? It was bigger than some of the estate cottages.”
“Just as well, given the time we spent there.”
An unwilling smile slipped onto her lips. “I remember you with your hammer and nails. You couldn’t stop adding new platforms, building new walls.”
“So I did! I’d forgotten about that. I used to like building things. Haven’t done that in a long time.”
“No, I don’t suppose you have.”
“Times change but, you know, I’ve not forgotten those summer evenings that seemed to go on forever. Innocent times.”
She scraped her teeth over her lip and looked down and nodded, then swallowed and looked up at him. “They were good times. Apart from when I returned late and got into trouble with Dad.”
“You knew you would, and yet you stayed with me. Playing games, talking, or just watching the sun slowly set, keeping me company when I couldn’t go home and face my father. At least your father never gave you a hiding.”
“No, he’d never have done that. And yes, I stayed. Because that’s what you do with friends who need you.” The sudden darkness of subsequent memories clouded the happy memories. She frowned. “You don’t need me now.”
The long seconds of silence drew on too long. “Sure. I’m all grown up with no one to beat me up when I get home.”
“No one except yourself.”
“Oh, Susie. Always the wise one. Always the clever one who thought she could understand more about people than they could understand themselves.”
She ignored the sudden bitter tone. She’d hit a raw nerve. It gave her the confidence to ask him the question she needed to know the answer to ever since she’d seen him. “Mac, why are you here?” She didn’t know who was most surprised at her use of her old nickname for him. The sudden use of the intimate name jolted them both. His smile didn’t reappear.
“I’m looking to secure the future of this winery the best way I can.”
She frowned. “I don’t understand. Why would you want to do this? At best the profit from the winery would only keep you in pocket money for a few weeks. Why?”
“Because.” He sucked in a sharp breath and held it, his eyes narrowing on hers as if looking for some kind of answer.
“Why?” She repeated, more softly, shaking her head.
“Because… I owe you.”
“And it’s taken you ten long years for you to come to this momentous conclusion?”
“It took me ten long years to decide to go against your wishes. Also… I’m beginning a new… venture shall we say, next week which will tie up my time. I want to set things straight with you before I embark on it.”
“Setting things straight,” she repeated. “How? By paying me off?”
“By making sure you have everything you need to carry on, to make sure you can follow the dreams you used to talk about.”
“I had dreams once—the same as my father’s—and you shattered them. That’s so like you to think you can make my dreams come true now.” Her mind, usually so clear and focused, was a fog of suppressed memories and needs. She reached out for her glass but withdrew her hand when she saw how much it shook.
“It’s true.” He shrugged, almost regretfully. “I can. I know what you want for this winery. And I know how to get it for you.”
“And in return, all you want is what? Absolution?
“All?” He asked, his lips curling into a wry grin. “You make it sound as if it were a small thing.”
“Small, big. It makes no difference. It’s an impossible thing. The past happened, you can’t make it un-happen. You destroyed my world. You can’t remake it.”
“I can.”
His expression had changed, softened. Maybe it was the light? The twilight has thickened as the low mist that had been threatening all day, blew in from the sea. It filtered into the air all around them, softening the edges of the adobe building, muting the jagged thorns of the bougainvillea and, ironically, revealing the face of the boy she once knew.
“How can I trust you after what happened? What’s changed?”
“Me,” he said quietly.
And for one long moment, she slipped into a trust that she’d felt for him all those years ago. She shook her head, trying to rid it of the phantom feelings. She was imagining things. This was Mac, a man who’d made her destroy a part of herself, and had destroyed her family’s future and her trust in the process. She had too much to risk to let herself slide into a nostalgia that made her vulnerable.
“Really?” she said, unable to prevent the sarcasm creeping into her tone. “Really?” she repeated, stronger now. “You’ve changed, you say? And you think I should welcome this news with open arms, like it’s something I
’ve been waiting for my whole life?” The anger and bitterness grew with each word, as her voice grew louder. “You think I should meekly surrender because the charming, handsome James Mackenzie has turned up on my doorstep claiming he’s changed?”
“Look, if I could turn the clock back I would.”
“And what would you do, huh? Not accept the bet from your mate that you could take the virginity of the, what was it he called me, ‘the frigid ice queen?’” Her heart was thumping wildly, her control was fracturing with each word but she couldn’t stop now. Years of repressed anger spilled to the surface. “Not tell me to have that abortion, huh?”
“I didn’t tell you to, I suggested—”
“I think I know what you said. I was on the other end of the phone, remember? You couldn’t even be bothered to come back home to discuss it with me. But then you wouldn’t, would you? You had your girlfriend at uni to consider.” She pushed away her plate, unable to eat another mouthful.
He closed his eyes as if he’d been struck. His lips pressed together in an expression of something like regret.
“And then there was my father,” she continued. “His dreams of leasing Glencoe land for a winery, shattered when your mother forced us off the estate. He was distraught, otherwise he’d never have had that accident. No, Mac, it doesn’t work like that. I’ve not forgiven and I’ve not forgotten and I certainly don’t trust you.”
He also pushed away his half-eaten dinner. “So it would seem. But.” He turned to face her, the mist muting his glamour, revealing the shadows and subtleties, the changes ten years had wrought. “Trust isn’t required for me to make sure I’m satisfied with all aspects of my investment.”
“The winery’s in good shape. I’ll show you around tomorrow. There’s a ferry at five you can catch.” She looked around to discover that the cafe was nearly empty. She jumped up. “I… I have to go.”
He caught up to her on the edge of the verandah, his hand restraining her from descending the steps. She refused to look at him. Instead focusing on the gnarled olive trees, that emerged grotesque from the sea mist and the line of muslin-covered grapevines growing ever more indistinct. The silence deepened, moved somehow away from accusation, and sank into an unrelenting heaviness.
“I’m with you for a week. Get used to the idea. I’m going nowhere until that week is up. And that, Susie, is something you’re going to have to accept. Trust or not.”
“You’re being under-handed, Mac. You’re forcing me to be with you. Doesn’t sound like you’ve changed at all. You’re still coercing people in order to get what you want.”
“I do what I have to do.”
“The end has always justified the means with you hasn’t it? Back at Glencoe, you made me believe you were in love with me to win the bet. Here, now, you buy the winery in order to force your way into my world.”
“That’s not how it was. That’s not how it is.”
Grief welled up over what might have been and what she’d lost. She stepped away, shaking his arm off hers. “You must go, Mac, you must. I can’t do this.”
He didn’t move. “Ten years ago I left you, when I shouldn’t have done. I’m not going to make the same mistake again. I’ll leave at the end of the week and not before.”
She shivered as the mist thickened, casting a veil over the outside lights of the cafe. She felt she was drowning in a darkness from which it had taken her years to emerge. “And do I have any choice in this?”
“No,” he said lightly. “Unless you want to shoot Pete’s future down into flames, taking yours with it. No, you don’t. Now, you’ll walk home and I’ll walk beside you at a respectable distance. Okay?”
She nodded. It would have to be. He was right, she had no choice.
In front of them the darkness was punctuated by lamps whose dispersed halos lit the twists of the path that led down to the beach and her cottage.
She didn’t want to, but she couldn’t resist stealing glances at him every time they passed one of the solar lamps. The first light revealed a head bent, looking away from her, down to the path, as if lost in thought. Then, a few more paces later she glanced at him and briefly met his gaze. She could feel its heat even in the mist that robbed everything of color.
She stopped at the point where the path descended steeply down onto the beach. Below them stood her cottage, just above the sand. They were out of the reach of the lights and darkness slid all around them. There was only the sound of the cicadas, quieter now, in the trees behind them, and the sea surging up the beach and dragging the fine sand down again, into its depth.
“It’s small, but it’s home,” she said pointing down to the utilitarian 1940s cottage that had none of the decorative features of earlier colonial cottages.
“It suits you.”
“Small and featureless?”
“Susie.” He sighed. “Why do you insist on taking everything I say the wrong way. You know I don’t mean that. I mean it’s beautiful. Look at it. The porch, the chair facing the ocean—it’s a perfect retreat.”
“A retreat. Yes, I suppose it is.” She hadn’t thought of it in those terms before. She’d always prided herself on being a realist. But Mac was right. She’d made a place where she thought no one could get to her.
“How long have you lived here?”
“I moved to the island around eight years ago. What with Mum and Dad gone, and my brother traveling, I needed work and picking grapes was all I knew.”
“What about university?”
“Never happened. No money.”
“I’m sorry. You’d have done well.”
She chewed her lip, irritated. She refused to be pitied. She’d never been into self-pity. “I did well without it.”
He stepped back and looked around. “You’re right. You have.”
“Yes, I have. Pete could see what a work horse I was and so let me train up in the business. And I rent the house from the estate. I don’t earn much and the house is a bit of a wreck but I like it. It’s home.” She gave him a sweeping gaze—from his expensive leather shoes, to his stylish shirt and perfectly trimmed dark hair. “But I doubt you really think this is the height of perfection.”
He frowned and didn’t speak for a few moments. “It’s what you used to want, and you have it. That’s achievement in my book.”
There was something wistful in his words that touched her. “And do you have what you used to want, Mac?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you’ve followed your dreams, you’ve reached them, and now you’re wondering if you followed the right ones.”
She saw the barrier fall instantly. It was like a shiny veneer of protection. She understood. She knew all about protection.
“Ah, so wise. You think you know me so well. You think I’ve turned up here to appease my conscience, finding my dreams hollow. Well, Susie, you’re partly right and partly wrong. I’ve had a ball. And I’ll continue to have a ball. We only get one life and I’m playing it hard. But that doesn’t make me a total jerk. I’m here to make reparation and then I’ll be gone.” He stepped away from her, back to the path. “Goodnight, Susie.”
“Goodnight, Mac.
“Tomorrow morning. We’ll meet at nine.”
“Sure.”
She continued down the path to her cottage and, in the instant before she turned on the outside light, glanced up at him. He’d paused by a light, looking down at her. She flicked on the outside light—flooding the front steps, the rough marram grass and sand dunes around it—casting him into shadow. This was how it had to be—him on the outside.
CHAPTER THREE
Out of the corner of her eye Susie watched James enter the foyer. She continued to chat to an early-morning visitor to the winery. Eventually the visitor moved next door to the tasting area, leaving Susie and James alone. Susie walked over to where James was riffling through the visitor information brochures.
“Looking for something in particular?”
H
e flicked through the bundle of brochures in his hands. “I was looking to see what luxury lodges there were on the island.”
“There aren’t any. Didn’t you sleep well?” It was meant to have been a polite question but, for some reason, it sounded far too personal. James looked up at her with dark blue eyes that were full of innuendo.
“No, I didn’t.” He dropped the brochures onto the oversized oak table. They scattered untidily. “You?”
“Fine thanks. Never better.” Susie tried to cover her lie by immediately tidying up the brochures he’d displaced. But she doubted she’d succeeded, Mac had always been able to see straight through her.
“Is that right? Then what was your light doing on at four this morning?”
“And what were you doing spying on me?”
“I went for a very early morning walk. Thought if I couldn’t sleep I may as well enjoy the garden in the moonlight. The mist had cleared by then and I could see your cottage.”
She shrugged as she deposited the last of the brochures into the display rack, not wanting to look him in the eye, not wanting to give away even an inkling of her feelings during the night. Of how she lay awake, hot and wanting, and knowing that her body could never have what it craved. Not without risking everything she’d earned. James had to be out of bounds. “Probably dozed off with it on.”
“Yeah, right.” He came closer to her. “Want to know why I couldn’t sleep? Want to know what I was thinking of?”
“Not particularly.” She wanted to step away—his gaze was too penetrating, too personal and intrusive. She still refused to meet his eye. “But if you want to tell me then I’m sure I won’t be able to stop you.”
He reached out and touched her and she stilled immediately. His touch ignited a heat and a deep need for him to touch her again that shocked her. She tried to force herself to turn away but was rooted to the spot. Her body reacted despite what her mind told her to do. And her mind was quite clear. Run. Get out of there. Right now. She didn’t move.