‘She knew,’ Abbey breathed. ‘Did you see? She knew we were here all the time. She let us watch.’
‘Yeah, well, she must have known we were doctors.’ Ryan smiled but he felt a bit emotional all the same. In truth, he felt very emotional.
It was all too much. This place. This woman. His friend…
It was bringing his childhood back again fast. How many October and November nights had he and Abbey hunted along this beach, searching for just what they had seen tonight? They’d never found a breeding turtle, but they’d always been sure they would.
‘Just one more night,’ Abbey had pleaded over and over again when Ryan had tried palming her off with homework commitments or somesuch. But the breeding season was short and Ryan had never tried hard to think of reasons he shouldn’t come. He’d longed to find one as much as Abbey had. They’d crept out when their respective mothers had thought they’d been long in bed, and if Abbey’s mother had suspected the reason her daughter wore dark shadows under her eyes for most of the turtle-breeding months she’d never let on she knew.
And then Ryan had gone.
‘But we’ve never even found a turtle yet,’ Abbey had wailed when Ryan had told her he was going.
She’d put the pain aside with her heartache for Ryan, and she’d stopped searching. Somehow it hadn’t seemed important to find a turtle when Ryan hadn’t been here to share it with her.
But now Ryan was back-and they’d found their turtle.
Abbey turned to face him, and found him watching her, and the wonder in her heart was reflected in his eyes.
‘Abbey…’
‘Did you ever see anything so beautiful?’ she breathed, and Ryan’s hands came out to take hers.
‘No, Abbey, I never have.’
And suddenly he wasn’t talking about the turtle.
And Abbey wasn’t thinking about the turtle.
There was only the linking of their hands.
There was only what was between them.
Ryan.
Her friend.
Her love.
And then there was nothing between them any more. Nothing. Not even distance. Somehow the length of their arms which had been there was gone. Somehow Ryan’s head was bending and Abbey’s was tilting upwards to meet him. To welcome him. To taste him and to know this man who was a part of her already. Whom she already knew in every way but this.
And then his lips were claiming hers and Abbey’s mouth was opening beneath his to acknowledge his claim. This was so right. So… so meant. Like the turtle they’d been looking for since childhood and had finally found. They’d known they would find her. And maybe… maybe Abbey had always known this was her place. Here was her home. Ryan’s arms were where she was meant to be. Like the turtle, this was a miracle searched for and found.
Ryan…
Ryan’s hands were falling to her waist. Somehow they were no longer sitting, but settling deeper into their sandy hollow so their bodies were cocooned against each other. The sand, warm from the heat of a day of tropical sun, welcomed and embraced them. Above them were the moon and the stars and the night sky. And holding them all together was her Ryan.
Ryan…
Abbey returned his kiss, gently at first but then with increasing fierceness-possessiveness. Ryan was hers. Hers! What right had he had to go away and leave her all those years ago? What right had he to marry Felicity?
The thought of Felicity flashed into Abbey’s mind but she shoved it away as her hands wound themselves around Ryan’s broad shoulders and her breasts pushed against his chest. Dear God, she wanted him. Ryan…
Felicity.
The thought flashed back again. Abbey shoved it away with everything she possessed-but the thought wouldn’t go.
It wouldn’t
Felicity.
And Ryan felt it.
Wondering, Ryan drew back a little in the moonlight.
‘Abbey?’ he said, and his voice was a husky murmur, laced with desire. ‘Love?’
‘Felicity,’ she said flatly.
Silence.
Abbey pushed Ryan back and rolled sideways in the sand. She stood, uncertain, refusing to look at Ryan. Refusing to look at her love.
‘T-take me home, Ryan,’ she said softly. ‘I think… we must both have been mad. You’re engaged to Felicity, remember? ’
Deny it, her heart was screaming, but Ryan didn’t. Instead, he stood and looked gravely down at her. When he spoke again his voice was harsh and bleak.
‘As you say. We’ve both run mad. Gone troppo has meaning after all.’
And that was that. End of evening.
‘Help me hide the turtle tracks before we go,’ Abbey managed, staring out to sea. Concentrating on anything but the pain in her heart.
There was something else to concentrate on. The eggs must be protected. There were all sorts of predators who’d see the turtle’s furrow before the tide came back in. The best disguise was simply to make more furrows-so it looked like the sand had been disturbed by a party of revellers rather than one solitary turtle. And put plenty of human scents around to deflect interest
Ryan nodded. Like Abbey, he was searching for something to say. Something to do that didn’t touch the jumble of his emotions. He left Abbey and retrieved a huge piece of dried seaweed. Silently he started raking it back and forth across the sand.
For a long moment Abbey watched him, and then silently started to do the same.
There were shadows haunting Ryan, she thought bleakly, and one of those shadows was her. She could feel Ryan’s desire. But she knew… Well, Abbey knew his mother and she knew Felicity. She knew what she was up against.
Finally they finished and made their way back to the car.
‘There are a group of turtle-watchers in town,’ Abbey managed as they settled back in the car for the drive home.
Her voice was flat and desolate. She was no longer excited about the turtle. She just wanted to get home. Get to the sanctuary of her pillows so she could hide her head and have a good howl. ‘I’ll let them know where the eggs are. They’ll work out the gestation period and set up a watch when they’re due.’
If they could, the turtle-watchers would try to be here when the eggs hatched. The journey from the nest to the sea was the most hazardous the turtles would face. Often almost all the tiny hatchlings were eaten by gulls and other predators before they reached the water.
‘I’d love to be here when they hatch,’ Abbey added.
Silence.
‘If I can I’ll send you a photograph,’ Abbey offered, and Ryan’s gut clenched into an almost unbearable ache.
She’d send him a photograph to put on the wall in his office. So he could remember this night always.
He couldn’t bear it.
Felicity was on the telephone when Ryan arrived back at his father’s farm. She greeted him with a cool smile, a lift of her eyebrows and a wave to the coffee-pot.
Ryan obliged. He made her coffee and then sat and waited for his love to finish speaking to New York.
His love?
His future.
He should be working, too, he told himself. He was running so far behind. And tonight… tonight he’d spent the whole night watching a turtle. What a waste!
Yeah?
If he told her, Felicity would agree it was a waste. His colleagues back in New York would think it was a waste.
Or maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they’d be as jealous as hell.
‘What’s the time in New York?’ he asked when Felicity finally finished her phone call. She was typing furiously into her lap-top computer and clearly had no time for small talk.
‘About eleven mid-morning. What kept you? Did you find your suicide, then?’ It was only half a question. When Felicity worked she committed herself absolutely. It was one of the things Ryan admired about her. She had a brilliant mind, a brilliant body and…
And?
He gave himself a mental shake. What the hell was he thinking of? There was no ‘and’. Felicity was everything he needed in a woman.