to abuse her physically, or hurt and betray her because she couldn’t satisfy him; no other man was going to turn from her to someone else, as Paul had done.
Not even Gray had known, as she wept in his arms, that she cried not just for Paul himself but for the betrayal of their love and her own failure to prove herself a woman. And he would never know it.
The village was in sight now, and she automatically tensed her muscles, glancing at her watch. Gone six o’clock, but Gray would probably still be at the boat-yard. She would go there first, rather than the cottage.
Gray lived there alone now and had done for several years. The shock of losing her son had led to Paul’s mother’s death, and Paul’s father, Gray’s uncle, had died two years later from a heart attack. Now only Gray was left.
The boat-yard was on the far side of the village, right down on the bank of the estuary. It had been in Gray’s family for about a hundred years.
As she parked her VW and climbed out of it, Gray emerged from his office and came towards her. Tall, with forbiddingly broad shoulders and a shock of night-black hair, he was a commandingly masculine man. Densely blue eyes studied her and, shockingly, Stephanie momentarily recognised in them the age-old appraisal of a man looking at a woman.
Gray moved and the appraisal was gone, leaving her to suspect that she must have imagined it.
The late afternoon breeze coming off the estuary flattened the silky curve of her skirt against her hip and the long line of her legs. She lifted a hand to push her hair back off her face and heard Gray growl, ‘You’re getting too thin. What have you been doing to yourself?’
‘I’m not thin, just fashionably slim!’ she protested.
He was wearing an old pair of jeans that clung to his body like a second skin. Hastily averting her eyes from the powerful muscles of his thighs, she was tensely aware of his eyes narrowing.
‘What’s wrong? You’re as skittish as a dinghy without a tiller.’
His fingers closed over her arm, drawing her towards him. She could smell the familiar male scent of his body, and felt an almost uncontrollable urge to cling to him and let him stand between her and her pain.
‘You know coming down here always affects me like this.’
Instead of comforting her as he normally did, he released her almost abruptly.
‘After ten years?’ There was something almost sardonic about the way he said it. ‘That’s one hell of a long time to grieve, Steph.’
Before she could comment, the office door opened and a stunning blonde came out. Dressed in tight white jeans and a brief silky top, she swayed provocatively towards them.
‘I’ve still got a few things to do down here.’ Gray glanced towards the blonde. ‘I’ll take you up to the cottage and join you there later.’
Stephanie always stayed at the cottage when she visited Gray. The village had no hotel, and besides, where else should she stay? But now some contrariness made her glance across at the blonde walking towards them, her mouth curling slightly as she asked, ‘Are you sure you want me to stay with you, Gray? I don’t want to be in the way.’
She saw his mouth tighten. ‘Well now, that’s quite a question. What made you ask it, I wonder?’
For some reason she had annoyed him. Conscious of the blonde watching them, Stephanie took a deep breath.
‘Nothing at all. I just wondered if your girlfriend might object?’
‘Girlfriend?’ His dark head swivelled to look at the blonde. She smiled back, teasingly. She was older than Stephanie had first imagined, and she was wearing a wedding ring, but that meant nothing these days.
‘Carla won’t mind. She knows that we’re old friends.’
As though to prove the point he called over casually to the blonde, ‘I’m just taking Stephanie back to the cottage. I won’t be long.’
Stephanie had to run to keep up with his long-legged stride as he walked towards her VW. Watching him fold himself inside reminded her of how tall and broad he was, the play of hard muscles beneath his skin alienly male.
She just wasn’t used to being this close to a man … any man, she told herself as she drove the car towards the cottage; that was why she was so conscious of Gray’s masculinity.
‘I’ve put you in the far bedroom,’ he told her laconically as he opened the cottage door. ‘I’ll leave you to get yourself settled in. I’ll be back in half an hour. I’ve just got one or two things to finish off.’
‘Half an hour. I’m sure Carla would be very flattered if she heard that.’
Suddenly conscious of how waspish and acid she sounded, Stephanie turned away from him. What was the matter with her? Gray had had girlfriends before. He was one of the most eligible men on the estuary. Physically, he was everything a woman could want in a man; he was also kind and gentle. Strange that at thirty-four-odd he should still be unmarried, and stranger still that she had never questioned his lack of a wife before.
‘Oh, I’m sure I could think of a way to make amends.’ He said it so softly that the words shivered across her skin, the look in his eyes as she turned to stare at him making her own widen with shocked pain.
Gray was her friend. He knew how much she loathed anything that had the slightest sexual connotation, and yet here he was deliberately making her aware of his sexuality, of the very masculine side of him that he had previously held in check.
Before she could protest he said bleakly, ‘Don’t provoke me, Steph, I’m not in the mood for it.’
As he turned away from her she recognised that she was not the only one who had lost weight; he too was slightly thinner, his profile carved in slightly harder lines. Was something wrong? Was that why he wanted to see her? Was that why he was acting so oddly? From the time of Paul’s death he had been her friend, he had supported and protected her, and she had come to lean on him, to trust him, as she knew she could never trust anyone else, but now …
He paused at the door and turned towards her.
‘Not everyone’s like you, Steph,’ he told her harshly. ‘We haven’t all abdicated from the human race, and the needs and emotions that go with being human.’
Stephanie recoiled as though he had hit her. In all the years they had been friends, Gray had never once spoken to her like that. Never once looked at her the way he was looking at her right now, with his mouth twisted and his eyes hard and accusing.
‘Gray …’ Panic filled her voice and her eyes. What was happening to them? She was losing him … losing his friendship … she could sense it, feel it almost …
‘I’ll see you later.’
He was gone before she could object. Numbly she stared at the closed door. What was happening? A tiny frisson of fear trembled through her. She wandered uneasily round the small sitting-room. The cottage was very old, the rooms low-ceilinged and beamed. She sat down in one of the chintz-covered chairs and stared unseeingly into the empty fireplace. The horse brasses, collected by Gray’s mother, shone against the buttermilk-coloured walls, the
