laughed, then kissed her on the mouth. Her tongue touched his and Luke momentarily regretted not making love with Isabel the night before. But, at the time, he hadn’t wanted to. He hadn’t wanted sex in any way, shape or form since the funerals.
“Mmm.” His lips lifted and he smiled wryly down at her. “I might come back tonight after all.”
“Waste of time, handsome. I’m taking Rachel out to dinner and the theatre tonight, remember? I can’t put it off. I’ve already arranged everything.”
“I wouldn’t want you to put it off,” he told her. Rachel was an old school friend of Isabel’s from her boarding school days. She’d once been a top secretary at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but she hadn’t worked for some years. Nowadays, she spent twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, looking after her foster mother who had Alzheimer’s.
Luke could well imagine how much Rachel looked forward to the one night a month off Isabel organised for her. He’d met her once briefly, and had thought how tired and old she’d looked. Yet she was only a year older than Isabel.
“It’ll keep, won’t it?” Isabel added.
“Sure.” Luke shrugged, the need already fading. They’d never gone through one of those lust-driven stages where they’d just had to have each other, regardless of where they were, or what was going on around them. They’d become friends before they’d become lovers. Some engaged couples Luke knew couldn’t keep their hands off each other, even in public. He and Isabel were never like that.
Which perhaps explained why his father had taken Luke aside at his engagement party and had questioned him on whether he was completely happy with Isabel in bed. Luke had been taken aback at the time by his father’s grilling over their sex life, but he had assured him that everything was fine in the bedroom department.
Thinking of this instance, however, suddenly made Luke wonder if his father had been totally happy with his sex life. To all intents and purposes, Luke’s parents had seemed happy with each other. They were openly affectionate with each other. Always holding hands and hugging. But who knew what happened behind closed doors?
Luke imagined that a man dissatisfied with his sex life might be tempted to stray…
“I think you’d better get going, Luke,” Isabel said drily. “You’ve drifted off somewhere again.”
“Sorry.”
“You were thinking of your father, weren’t you?” Luke stared at her.
“You don’t have to look at me like that. I know what he meant to you. And I know how much you’ll miss him. Much more than your mother. Oh, I know you loved your mother too. How could you not? She was the nicest, sweetest lady. But your father was more to you than a parent. He was your best friend. And your hero. So go and talk to him for a while up at that old place on Lake Macquarie. He’ll be there, I’m sure. And he’ll listen to you, as he always did.”
Luke now wished he’d told Isabel the complete truth about Pretty Point. He hadn’t realised she had such sensitivity. She always seemed so pragmatic about things.
But it was too late now. She’d wonder why he hadn’t been honest with her right from the start. And their relationship might suffer.
But it was a valuable lesson learned. He vowed to always tell his fiancée the truth in future, no matter what.
CHAPTER TWO
WHEN the idea to go to Pretty Point for the weekend first popped into Celia’s head, she’d immediately rejected it. But the more she’d thought about it, the more she’d realised that Lionel’s love nest was the perfect getaway.
And, brother, did she need to get away.
The last two weeks had left her totally and utterly drained. She’d spent every evening and all the previous weekend over at Aunt Helen’s, either sitting with her almost catatonic mother, or arguing with her aunt over what should be done about her.
Celia wanted her mother to see a psychiatrist, and to get onto some medication for depression, but her sister disagreed.
“Jessica isn’t crazy,” Helen had stated firmly last night. “Just broken-hearted. All she needs is time, and some tender loving care and she’ll come good. You’ll be the one needing medication shortly if you keep worrying about her the way you are. Now, I don’t want to see hide nor hair of you this weekend, Celia. Go out with your friends. Or better still, go away somewhere. Anywhere.”
Celia lent back in the deck chair with a sigh and thought anywhere had never looked so good. What was it about a water view that relaxed nerves and soothed even the weariest soul?
She had to give to Lionel. He’d built his love nest on one superb spot.
He’d also had great taste in wine.
Celia took another sip of the excellent Chablis she’d found chilling in the fridge door and thought how lucky it was that her last appointment had cancelled that afternoon. She always tried to finish up early on a Friday but it was a real stroke of luck to finish at lunch-time. By two o’clock, she’d been packed and on her way to Pretty Point, with only a small detour necessary for some groceries.
And now here she was, mid-afternoon, with a lovely glass of wine in her hands, a million-dollar view to enjoy, and two days of blissful peace and solitude to look forward.
Celia kept on sipping the wine and gradually, the tension melted out of her knotted neck and shoulder muscles till she was leaning back, feeling deliciously mellow. Alcohol, she decided, was proving much more relaxing than all the head rotating exercises she’d been trying on herself every night this week. And infinitely more relaxing than Joanne’s solution.
“What you need, honey,” Celia’s fellow physio at the clinic had said yesterday, “is to get laid.”
Pig’s ear, she did.
Sex never relaxed Celia. Her only feelings afterwards were disappointment, disillusionment and dismay.
But that was just her, she’d finally accepted. Sex was widely accepted as a very pleasurable activity, as well as being touted as mother nature’s sleeping pill. She was the abnormal one.
Her mother had obviously been very partial to sex. With Lionel, anyway.
More than partial. She’d been possessed by it.
Celia wondered what it would be like to experience the sort of uncontrollable passion that turned an otherwise intelligent, independent woman into some kind of mindless sex slave. Had the pleasure of the moments spent with Lionel compensated for her mother’s pain afterwards? Had a weekend of sex and excitement with him been worth weeks of subsequent depression?
Celia had to assume her mother thought it had. Otherwise, why keep on doing it?
Maybe if she was ever swept up in a grande passion—or even a petite passion—Celia might understand her mother’s masochistic behaviour. As it was, from an objective, outsider’s point of view, such an all-consuming passion seemed nothing better than a slow-acting poison. One of those corrosive substances that ate away at one’s insides till there was nothing left but a dying shell.
Her
