should have—’
‘Should, could,’ she said, losing patience. ‘This life isn’t a rehearsal, Cleve. You don’t get to come back and do it better. We all have things we’d have done differently given the chance but if you spend your whole life looking back at your mistakes, you’ll never notice what’s in front of you.’
‘I know what’s in front of me.’
For a moment she’d thought he was going to say it was her, their baby, a future neither of them had ever expected, but he was not seeing her as he stood up.
‘I’ve got a roof to fix.’
How like a man to grab for something solid, something he could touch. She’d seen her father deal with messy, emotional things in just that way. It was as if fixing a broken engine, cutting the grass, repairing a bike gave him back control.
‘Be careful,’ she said, forcing herself to remain where she was as he waded through the pool, stepped up onto the sand. ‘If you fall off, I will blame myself.’
He turned to look back at her, his forehead buckled in a frown. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘You’re only here because of me, Cleve. You’re only fixing the roof because I blackmailed you into staying and because it’s human nature to blame oneself for things that go wrong. To analyse everything you said and did and how, if you’d acted differently, things would not have turned out the way they did.’
‘Is that it? Are you done lecturing me?’
‘That depends. How well have you been listening?’
‘Let’s see. You’re responsible for me being here. You’re responsible for me fixing the roof? How am I doing?’
‘You’re listening but is any of it sinking in?’
‘You want a demonstration?’ He held out his hand. ‘How’s this? If you’re responsible for me being on the roof, you’re going to have to come and watch.’
She thought what she needed to do was leave him alone to process what she’d said, give his brain a chance to work through it while his hands were busy setting the tiles.
‘If you’re on the roof and I’m on the ground, how will that help?’
‘Every time I look down I’ll see you sitting down there watching me and I’ll remember to be careful. Of course, if despite all that I do slip, I’ll expect you to break my fall.’
‘Idiot,’ she said, but tenderly because he’d got the message. She took his hand so that he could pull her up beside him. ‘I’m not going to be sitting around watching you.’ No matter how appealing the prospect. ‘I’m going to be working on the convertible. I can’t have you driving to your wedding with your knees under your chin.’
Cleve tightened his grip on Miranda’s hand as they crossed the beach to the freshwater shower that was no more than a pipe run down the cliff face from the garden above.
He might be an idiot, but at that moment he felt like the luckiest idiot in the world.
He’d just unloaded his mess of guilt on her because she had to know the worst of him. He owed her that. She’d been shocked but her reaction had been to take it to bits, clinically examine every part and respond with calm logic.
He felt like a misfiring engine that she’d taken apart, cleaned up and put back together.
He could never feel anything but guilt for what had happened to his marriage. He’d never loved Rachel the way she’d deserved to be loved but they’d managed until Miranda had joined Goldfinch. He’d explained why he’d had to give her a job, but sensed the danger and, while he’d never given her any reason to doubt his fidelity, the row that had followed Miranda’s arrival had been the beginning of the end.
He turned on the tap. Nothing happened.
‘Does this thing work?’ he asked.
‘It used to but I don’t suppose it’s been used in years. Maybe it’s rusted up?’
As he looked up, there was a warning clang, the shower head shot off, missing him by a hair’s breadth, and he let loose an expletive as a deluge of cold water hit skin warmed by the hot pool.
Andie, well out of harm’s way, burst out laughing.
‘You think that’s funny?’ Before she could answer he grabbed her and pulled her under the downpour so that she was the one gasping and a word he’d never heard her use before slipped from her sweet mouth.
He lifted his hand and wiped his wet thumb across it as if to erase the word, the mind-blowing image it evoked. She responded with a whimper that only intensified a reaction that the cold shower was doing nothing to cool.
There was a moment when the earth seemed to hold its breath, waiting, and then he lowered his mouth to hers, retracing the path of his thumb with his tongue, tasting the salt on her lips and then sweetness as her mouth opened to him. It was as if they had slipped back in time and she was responding with a hot, sweet, wholly innocent eagerness that had ripped the heart out of him and haunted him ever since.
He pushed down the straps of her costume, peeling it to her waist until the only thing between the softness of her breasts and his chest was a film of cold water. Deepening the kiss until the need to breathe forced them apart.
Her eyes were closed against the water running over her face, long wet lashes lying against her cheek. As he kissed them she shivered.
‘You’re cold.’
The drenching was all that was keeping him from exploding, but as he reached for the tap, turned it off, she raised her arms and, with her hand curled around his neck, she drew him back down to her and said, ‘Warm me.’
* * *
‘Are you warmer now?’
The sun had set and there was only the faintest glow in the horizon. They were lying entwined in each other’s arms and through the open window Andie could see Venus, bright in the west, and the faint pinpricks of stars lighting up as the sky darkened.
Warm. How could she begin to describe how warm she felt? This had been so different from that desperate night they’d spent together. While the sex had been intense, beyond anything she had ever experienced or could have imagined, it had been dark, shadowed and the emotion had provoked tears rather than laughter. Tears for loss. Tears she’d hidden—shed later when she was alone—for what might have been, for what never would be.
She’d never had any doubt that he knew who he was with, it had been her name on his lips when he’d spilled into her, but she’d blocked out the treacherous hope, aware that she was no more than a conduit from a painful past, a light in the tunnel to guide him to a new future. She had not looked or hoped for more.
Today that future seemed to be within their grasp and every move, every touch had been as if it were the very first time. New, a little bit scary, a shared discovery and he’d been with her every step of the way, tender at first, then responding to her urgent cries. There hadn’t just been the tears that Cleve had kissed away afterwards, but laughter too. And when they’d exhausted themselves he
