her chair, then he went back to his own chair and sat down again. Their eyes met across the table. He was as flushed as she was and his eyes looked dark, smouldering like coals.
‘Doesn’t that feel better?’ asked Ted, seeming oblivious to the atmosphere between them.
Linzi nodded, her pulses drumming. The waiter arrived with her drink and the melon they had all ordered. It was very prettily arranged, thinly sliced, in a fan, with raspberries scattered around it, one slice of star fruit at the upper edge.
‘Isn’t that pretty?’ Linzi said huskily.
‘I don’t like my food pretty,’ Ted complained. ‘It makes me wonder if I’m supposed to eat it or frame it and hang it on the wall!’
Linzi pretended to laugh. She lowered her eyes to her plate, took a raspberry to pop into her mouth and under cover of eating it gave Ritchie a nervous, secret, sideways, look through her lashes. Had he noticed what just happened to her? She’d want to die if he had; oh, God, how humiliating. And she couldn’t even explain, she couldn’t tell him that it didn’t mean anything, it wasn’t personal, any man might have got the same reaction, that drumming pulse, the drowning sensuality which came from long-frustrated need. The heat grew in her face. Well, not any man! she hastily contradicted. It had never happened with any man before, after all; this was the first time in years she had felt that flashpoint of desire.
Why should it have come just now while Ritchie Calhoun was touching her? She didn’t even like him! He disturbed her, made her jumpy.
He had felt something, too—she was sure of that. Her intuition had picked up on the vibrations inside him, she had known when she looked into those darkened eyes of his. He had felt something...
Desire, she thought—why pretend you don’t know he felt it too? It was there between them, throbbing like a dynamo. A desire like nothing she had ever felt in her life before.
You’re married! she fiercely reminded herself, digging her nails into her palms. Whatever Barty has done to you, you are still his wife, and he loves you even when he acts as if he hates you. The pain made it easier to snap out of her mood.
Ritchie was frowning over a map he had got out of his briefcase. He hadn’t touched his food yet. A heavy lock of black hair fell forward over his eyes, and he brushed it impatiently back with one lean, tanned hand.
Linzi looked away, swallowing convulsively. She must stop this! Stop noticing everything he does! she told herself angrily.
Oh, Barty, what has happened to us? she thought in a swell of agony, remembering how passionately they had once made love. How merciful that you could never guess the future, that it was veiled from sight until it hit you.
She pushed her thin slices of melon around the plate, forced herself to eat, the cool fruit sliding down her parched throat, the perfect food for a day as hot as this one. Maybe it was the weather that was making her act so strangely, so unlike herself?
Ritchie began talking to Ted, flung the open map across the table between them, pointing, then picked up his fork and ate his own melon while Ted was studying the map.
‘Have you been up in a chopper yet?’ Ted asked her, and Linzi shook her head. ‘Well, come with us today,’ he suggested.
‘Good idea,’ Ritchie said. ‘It’s time you realised how vital the air dimension is to planning, Linzi. Seeing a site on a map or even on the ground you don’t get the full picture, but fly over it and you realise how much you miss until you’ve seen it from the air.’
‘I ought to get back to the office,’ she demurred.
‘Nonsense. Petal can hold the fort for an afternoon.’
The waiter brought their second course; Linzi ate some of her salad, trying to think of a way out of going up in the helicopter with them, but Ritchie was like a bulldozer once he had made up his mind. He wouldn’t be stopped or turned aside.
Half an hour later Linzi found herself crossing a mown field towards the waiting helicopter.
‘Up you get!’ Ritchie said, seizing her waist and lifting her up. Ted showed her how to belt herself into her seat, and gave her headphones to wear, to shut out the noise. Ritchie clambered in beside them, and the door closed. Linzi stared up at the whirling blades, her eyes blurred by the speed at which they went round. The machine began to lift and she looked down to see their black shadow flying across the ground below.
Ritchie tapped her shoulder, gesticulated downwards, mouthed, ‘Along this ridge, the line of poplars...that’s the route.’
The landscape flowed beneath them; fields, hills, trees in a fascinating pattern of light and shade, colour and contour. Linzi could have flown over it forever. She had never been so absorbed. Ritchie spread the map out on her lap, traced their route with his hand; she looked from the map to the landscape, connecting them, understanding their relationship, and deeply excited.
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