by Liz Fielding
Sexually sated, they had turned to food, cooking pasta naked at the stove, dripping sauce on their bodies as they ate, licking it off each other, abandoning food for a deeper hunger.
They’d talked about nothing, music, films, books; no family. They’d laughed, made love again and some days he thought they might still have been there but for that damned beach party, the crashing knock on the door that could only mean trouble.
There was no landline at the cabin and he didn’t have the number of her cell phone to let her know what had happened.
His one hope was that she knew who he was, would give him a chance to explain. But there had been no call. Never so much as a glimpse of the bright curls that were now tangled around his fingers. Of the woman he was holding so close that he could feel her heartbeat.
It was a kiss he never wanted to end because he had no idea what would come next and it was Eve who broke the connection. She pulled back to look at him and for a moment he saw everything he’d ever dreamed of in her eyes. Then, with the slightest shake of her head, she eased away.
His hand slipped from the curls to momentarily cup her cheek.
Her wrap, where he’d checked for a spider bite, had slipped down, exposing rather more than her shoulder. He longed to slide his hand around her breast, knowing that a touch to her nipple would bring a gasp to those sweet lips, bring her closer so that she would feel what he was feeling.
Instead, not taking his eyes from hers, he lifted her wrap back into place and took a step away.
For a moment neither of them moved, then Eve, having tightened her belt around her, got down on her knees and began to pick up the pieces of the broken teapot.
Which answered any question he cared to ask about her impetuosity.
It had been a hot kiss, the kind with only one destination, but, while her body had been with him, her brain was still engaged and, from the careless way she was picking up the broken china, she was angry. But not, he suspected, with him.
‘Leave it. You’ll cut yourself.’
She carried on and he joined her, picking up the smaller pieces and putting them into a saucer.
‘Where did you go...?’ He looked up. ‘I want to call you Red, but you aren’t red any more. Why have you covered up that gorgeous colour?’
‘Maybe this is my real colour.’
‘I think I would have noticed,’ he said, and regretted it the minute her cheeks flooded with colour.
She abandoned the broken china and sat down as if her legs were about to give way. ‘If we’re talking about vanishing tricks, where did you disappear to, Kit?’
Attack being the strongest form of defence? But it was a fair question and his would wait.
‘There was some trouble on the beach,’ he said, finishing the job of clearing up. ‘My brother and a couple of other boys turned up late and got into a fight over a girl.’ He placed the saucer on the table but remained on his feet. ‘By the time I arrived there was an ambulance and a cop car at the scene and my brother was being read his rights.’
‘Oh.’ Her shoulders sagged a little. ‘I’m sorry. That was my fault. If you’d been there—’
‘If there’s any blame to go around I think I’m second on that list. Right after Brad. He was lucky to get away with a black eye and community service.’
‘Community service?’
‘Brad and his friends had been drinking. They’d taken to their heels at the first sound of a siren. My idiot brother had been floored by a lucky punch. No one was prepared to give up names, including Brad.’
‘Sit down, for goodness’ sake, you’re giving me a crick in the neck.’ She waved impatiently at the seat beside her and, when he’d obeyed, said, ‘It must have been hard, being the younger brother of someone who was world famous at sixteen.’
‘He loved sailing, but he stopped when I was picked for the team.’
‘Was he good?’
‘We all learned to swim before we could walk and sail as soon as we could stand up in a boat.’
‘But he was always playing catch up.’
‘And I never slowed down to give him a chance.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t change the past, but he had the guts to change his future. He stopped being an ass, knuckled down to work. He knows the Merchant business inside out and it’s obvious that he’s been taking the strain for a while. He needed help and I should have been there.’
‘How is your dad? Really?’
‘His stroke was catastrophic. Not so much the loss of movement. That’s distressing enough but gradually coming back. Speech is taking longer, although on the upside he can’t tell me that he doesn’t need me.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
Eve reached out a hand to him in a sweet gesture of empathy. He desperately wanted to take it, hold it, but every instinct warned him her touch would be brief and quickly withdrawn.
‘It’s coming back, slowly,’ he said, ‘but he wasn’t making a lot of sense and the lawyers produced his written instructions that I was to act as CEO in the event that he was ever incapacitated.’
‘That’s tough. On both of you.’
‘Punishment may come late,’ he agreed, ‘but it comes.’
‘That’s how you see it? Not a statement of his trust in you?’
Kit stretched out his neck, easing out the tension, then shook his head.
‘My sister reminded me when I spoke to her today that it’s not all about me. He wrote the instruction right after Brad’s court hearing; a threat to make him get his act together and it worked. I assumed he’d torn it up long ago. Brad is convinced that when Dad recovers sufficiently to make his wishes known, he’ll choose me.’
‘If he does, it’s because he wants you home.’
He stared at her. She lifted her eyebrows, inviting him to think about it.
‘I... It’s not my life.’
‘He won’t be around for ever, Kit.’ In the moonlight he saw her throat move as she swallowed, and her voice snagged a little as she said, ‘You’ve had a great career, won every trophy going. What’s left but to repeat yourself?’
His turn to swallow hard. ‘I’m not...’
‘What? Ready to play second fiddle to your brother?’
‘Not cut out to sit behind a desk and run a resort business.’
‘You’re not sitting behind a desk now,’ she pointed out. ‘Have you given any thought about what you’ll do when you retire from the sport?’
Retire? He wasn’t thirty. He had years ahead of him. As soon as his dad was well enough to listen to reason...
‘Why are we talking about this?’ he demanded. He wanted to talk about her. About them. About Nymba Lodge, for heaven’s sake!
‘This matters.’
She said it with a fervour that made him wonder just how much it had hurt her to be sent away from the home she loved to the bleakness of boarding school.
‘Boat design,’ he said. ‘Matt Grainger and I were talking about the three of us going into partnership.’ One day. When they were old. Except Matt would never be old... ‘There’s some land on the far side of the Merchant Resort site that is perfect for a studio, workshops, a yard.’
‘Three of you?’
‘Matt, Lucy and myself.’
Lucy...
‘She was in your crew as well.’
‘She’s as good a sailor as her brother. Matt’s death has shaken her badly but she’s started giving children sailing lessons at the Nantucket resort.’
‘She’s staying?’
Of course Lucy was staying. She hadn’t flown all the way from New Zealand for a five-minute talk about her brother. She was not just beautiful, she shared his passion for sailing; she was everything that Kit could possibly want.
‘Maybe the two of you should go ahead with the design business,’ she said, before he could answer. ‘
If you told your father what you are thinking of doing, showed him plans, began to set things in motion so that he could see a day when you’d be there—’
‘Slow down! That’s years away.’
‘Of course. I just thought...’
‘You’re making perfect sense and, yes, it matters but this, here and now, matters more. I looked for you, Eve, but I didn’t know who you were, what your circumstances were, so I was discreet. I didn’t want to cause trouble.’
‘I’m sorry I misjudged you. I should have left a note but I ran away. You couldn’t find me because I’d caught the early ferry back to the mainland and the first available flight back to London.’
‘Because of me?’
‘No, Kit, because of me. I was in a bad place. My mother had just died, no one knew what to say to me. My poor young cousins had their arms twisted to take me to that party.’
‘I could see that there was something, but I swear I never meant—’
‘I needed someone to hold me,’ she said, cutting off his words. ‘I’d never done anything like that before.’
‘Nobody in the history of the world has ever done anything like that before, Eve. It was unforgettable.’
Unforgettable? For a moment the word filled her head before she managed, ‘Maybe we were both in need of a hug that night.’
‘Is that all it was? If it meant so little why did you pretend not to know me this morning? Did I imagine that kiss?’
‘What did you expect me to say? Hi, Kit, remember me? We had a one-night stand about four years ago?’ She ignored his reference to that kiss. It would never have happened but for a spider. And a butterfly.
‘Is it Peter?’ he asked. ‘You seemed very close when you came back from the village.’
‘Did we?’
Eve did her best to ignore the little heart flutter at the suggestion that Kit might be just a little bit jealous. She’d seen him holding Lucy with a tenderness that came from the heart rather than driven by the loins.
He might have kissed her as if one of them were going to war, but that was down to an adrenaline rush. A response to something that had happened a long time ago.
The first time had been magical, and now she knew why he’d disappeared, she wasn’t going to destroy that memory with a mistake that they would both regret in the morning. Not when she still had to tell him about Hannah. Not when Lucy was waiting for him to start a new life with her.
‘What does he do?’ Kit asked.
‘He’s a lawyer in the Attorney General’s office.’
‘Still glamorous, then.’
‘Oh, yes. Handsome, clever and one day he will be rich,’ she agreed. ‘He has it all. He’s also thoughtful, kind, loves his family, adores his children—’
‘He has children?’
‘—and his lovely wife, Maria,’ she added, finally. ‘Peter might be a city lawyer, but the village will always be the home of his heart, which is why I know he’ll do what’s best for the Nymba Trust. That’s why you’re here,’ she reminded him. ‘To talk about the trust.’
‘I knew who you were, Eve,’ he said, ignoring her attempt to turn the conversation away from the past. ‘Not at first. You covered yourself up pretty well.’
‘Says the man who’s grown a beard.’
He rubbed his hand across his chin. ‘Maybe we’re both hiding.’
He was getting too close and she needed daylight, distance and to be wearing more than a bathrobe when she told him about Hannah. ‘I’m going to the village on Saturday for Mzee’s party,’ she said, rising to her feet, making it clear that it was time for him to go. ‘You can come with me if you think that will help.’
‘Thank you.’ He lifted a hand, as if for a goodbye touch.
She didn’t move. She didn’t dare risk even that.
‘Goodnight, Kit.’
He closed his hand, nodded as if he understood and walked away.
Eve waited until she heard the click of the gate before she released a long, shaky breath.
Ever since she’d arrived in Nantucket she’d felt as if she’d been holding her breath. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Finally, it had.
When he’d turned up with the tea tray and it had seemed that his arrival had nothing to do with the past, she’d felt just a little bit peeved.
He hadn’t recognised her? Really?
She’d put on a few pounds and had rather more to show in the boob department than before she’d given birth to Hannah, but had she changed that much?
The hair colour had been to stop her standing out in the street, and this morning she’d been able to hide behind her hat and dark glasses, but up close did it make that much difference?
No one she’d ever met in Nantucket—and they had all been at her grandmother’s funeral—had been fooled.
And neither had he but if it hadn’t been for a spider, and the momentary madness of a tattoo party, they might still be walking around the elephant in the room.
Whatever the truth of the matter, her mind was now clear.
Her grandmother’s cottage needed a lot of work before it could be put on the holiday rental market, which meant staying in Nantucket for the summer. But Mary, like her mother, was urging her to stay on and she’d already had a call from the head of the local high school—no doubt prompted by Mary or Martha—inviting her to come and see him.
Her father was in Sumatra and her British grandparents had decamped to the warmth of Spain; she had no family in England.
Nantucket was where her mother had grown up, where they had spent a few precious holidays together. There was family she was growing increasingly fond of, cousins for Hannah and, despite having kept a profile so low that she was practically invisible, the island was beginning to feel very much like home.
Kit might or might not stay on the island, but it was her future and that meant telling him that he had a daughter.
Tonight there had been too much emotion, too much going on. Added to that was the fact that he would almost certainly be home before her, and she didn’t know how he would react to the news that he had a daughter.
The Merchants were a powerful local family and it had to be wiser to wait until she was back in Nantucket and had the chance to consult a lawyer before she told him about Hannah. After that he could decide whether he wanted to be a part of her life.
Her decision made, she picked up her laptop but, as she had a video call with her baby, chatting away, telling her everything that she’d been doing in an accent that was rapidly taking on a local twang, she wondered what it would be like to do that with Kit beside her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
KIT SHOWERED, BUT HIS body clock was still off balance. He pulled on a bathrobe and leaned against the rail of his deck.
Somewhere below him on the riverbank, a creature grunted but his gaze was drawn to where Eve’s sky suite was located. It had been carefully placed so that it was impossible for him to make out more than the faintest glow from the solar lights of the walkway but, amongst the other noises of the night, he thought he heard her laughing.
Was she calling home? Or talking to the faithful Peter Ngei?
He barely had time to wonder before his own phone, kept strictly on silent at the lodge, vibrated in his pocket.
‘Brad...’
‘I’m sorry I missed you this morning. How are things going?’
‘Not particularly well. The man who actually runs the trust expected Dad and wasn’t too pleased to get second best.’
‘Wow, that must have stung.’
‘Fortunately,’ he continued, ignoring the jibe, ‘our auction winner, Genevieve Bliss, used to live here. She knows everyone, speaks the language and she’s taking me with her to a village party on Saturday. I’ll do my best to make a good impression.’
‘You know what, Kit? Right now, I don’t ca
re what you do, I just want Dad back, talking, even if he is giving me a hard time.’
‘Maybe you should tell him that.’
‘I did, but he wants to hear it from you.’
Kit expected Brad to end the call, but he didn’t and, after a moment, he said, ‘Laura told me that you took Lucy down to the boathouse this morning. How did that go?’
‘Oh, yes. We were talking and she offered to run a class for beginners. Kids. She seems keen.’
‘She needs to get back on the water, and the youngsters will be in good hands.’ More silence. Clearly Brad had something he wanted to get off his chest, so he kept talking. ‘When you have a moment, could you get that information on that piece of land I told you about before I left?’
‘Why?’ he asked, suspiciously.
‘It’s not urgent. I was just thinking about the future. Setting up a yacht design partnership.’
‘Wasn’t that something you were planning to do with Matt Grainger? Are you thinking of going ahead on your own?’
‘With Matt and Lucy. I was thinking of asking Lucy if she’d be interested in just the two of us going ahead. She always had such great ideas and she doesn’t have much to keep her in New Zealand.’
‘You and Lucy?’ he said.
‘Is that a problem?
Brad’s parting two words, one unprintable, one in the affirmative, suggested that it was. It had been a day of ups and downs, but Kit was grinning as he video-called his mother and asked her to put her tablet in front of his father so that he could talk to him.
* * *
It was still dark when Eve, late, swallowed a mouthful of coffee before going outside to where the balloon was being inflated.
‘Did you oversleep, Eve?’
Kit. Of course he’d be there. He was everywhere.
There was no reason why he should have told her he was coming on this trip and she pushed away the thought that he had decided to come because of her. It was the last thing she wanted.
‘It’s still dark,’ she hissed under her breath as one or two of the other passengers glanced their way. ‘In no way can I be said to have overslept.’