rare thing. But this underground cavern’s always here. You’re the first person I’ve ever brought here.’
‘That sounds...momentous.’
‘I think it is,’ he said seriously. ‘Penny?’
‘Mmm?’ What else was a woman to say?
‘I’d like to kiss you.’
And suddenly she wasn’t cold at all. She was exceedingly warm.
Apart from her body.
‘I’m all for it,’ she told him. ‘Except that I can’t feel my toes and if I kiss you I might forget about them and I’ll get frostbite from the toes up.’
‘Ever the practical...’
‘Someone has to be,’ she told him and only she knew what a struggle it was to say it. ‘But I have a suggestion.’
‘Which is?’
‘That we swim back through that waterfall, we get ourselves dry and then we think about kissing.’
There was a moment’s pause. ‘You mean we have an agenda?’
‘I think it’s more than an agenda,’ she told him, and smiled and smiled. ‘Agendas can be changed. The time for agendas is past. Consider the kiss a promise.’
‘Then one for the road,’ he told her and he tugged her forward and kissed her, as long and as deeply as two people treading ice-cold water could manage.
And then they turned to the sheen of white water that marked the entrance to their tiny piece of paradise and swam right through.
Back to where the horses were waiting. Back to where their picnic was waiting.
Back to the promise of a kiss and so much more.
* * *
Matt produced a towel and insisted on drying her. He rubbed her body until she could feel her toes again, until her body was glowing pink, until the feel of his hands rubbing her dry started sending messages to her brain she had no hope of fighting.
Who’d want to fight?
Then he gathered her to him and he kissed her as she’d never been kissed before.
His skin was still damp, but out of the water the sun did the drying for him. And who was worried about a little damp? He felt almost naked and her tiny wisps of lace hardly seemed to exist.
She melted into him. His mouth claimed hers, her body moulded to his and the kiss lasted an eternity.
But of course it couldn’t.
‘Dammit, I should have...’ he said at last, putting her away from him with what seemed an almost superhuman effort.
‘So should I,’ she told him, knowing exactly what he was talking about. ‘I packed sandwiches, cream puffs, wine, chocolate. I can’t believe I forgot the After-Picnic essentials.’
‘It wouldn’t have been After-Picnic,’ he told her and tugged her forward again. This kiss was even better. Longer. Deeper.
This was a kiss that had a language all its own. It was a kiss that promised a future.
It was a kiss that sent her senses into some sort of orbit.
But finally sense prevailed—as did hunger. They attacked the picnic basket as if there was no tomorrow—indeed, for now it seemed as if tomorrow wasn’t on the horizon. And then they lay back on the moss and gazed up through the canopy at the sky above.
We might just as well have made love, Penny thought dreamily. She was held close in the crook of Matt’s arm. They hadn’t bothered dressing—with the warmth of the sun there was no need, and to put any barrier at all between them seemed wrong. She was warm, she was sated, the ride and the swim had made her sleepy...
‘Penny?’
‘Mmm?’ It was hard to get her voice to work.
‘How heartbroken are you about Brett?’
Brett. He seemed a million miles away. Part of another life.
If it hadn’t been for Felicity, she’d be married by now, she thought, and it was enough to wake her up completely. She shuddered.
Matt tugged her tighter. The warmth of him was insulation against pain, but then she thought: There’s no pain.
Humiliation, though, that was a different matter.
‘There’s no need to be jealous,’ she told him.
‘Hey, I’m not jealous.’ She could hear the smile in his voice. ‘I’ve got the girl. Whoever Brett’s holding now, he’s welcome. No one can match the woman I have in my arms.’
It took her breath away, even more than the icy water had. The statement was so immense...
And it was the truth. She heard it in his voice and part of her wanted to weep. Or sing. Or both.
Instead, she twisted herself up so she could kiss him again. He kissed her back but then tugged her close, held her tight and said again, ‘Talk about Brett.’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Because he’s important,’ he told her. ‘Because he made you run. Because your family’s important to you and I figure if they’re important to you then maybe I need to know about them. So Brett seems a way in.’
And there was a statement to take her breath away all over again. He wanted... No, he hadn’t said wanted... He needed to know about them.
He was talking of the future?
So tell him.
‘It was dumb,’ she told him. ‘I was dumb. I’m a people pleaser. My family’s nothing if not volatile and my father’s a bully. My half-sister’s an airhead but she also has a temper. My mum...’ She hesitated. ‘She might seem like an airhead too, but she’s not. Maybe underneath she’s like me. She tries to keep us all happy. But she won’t stand up to Dad. She never has. She just tries to smooth things over, to present the perfect appearance to the outside world. And somewhere along the line I learned to go along with her. Keep the peace. Make them happy.’
‘So... Brett?’
‘I was cooking in London,’ she told him. ‘I seldom went home—to be honest, as little as possible because Dad hates what I do and he gives me a hard time. But Mum rang me every night. Things seemed okay. But then Grandma died—Mum’s mother—and I hadn’t realized how much Mum needed her. Like she needs me. It’s weird but being needed seems to be hardwired into us. Grandma supported Mum any way she could, which gave Mum the strength to stay in an awful marriage. When Grandma died she fell apart.’ Penny sighed.
‘Anyway, I came home and Dad pushed and pushed me into the PR job and I was so scared for Mum that finally I said yes. And what a disaster. I must
