CHAPTER TEN
JOSS popped in to check on Charlotte before he went home, and found her weeping into her pillows.
‘He’s just weak,’ she sobbed. ‘I didn’t see it before. But he’s a fool. Thinking I’d do something to ruin our future, dashing here in his stupid speedboat in this weather, thinking Amy wouldn’t find out…’ She took a deep breath. ‘You know, I really did think he was doing this for Amy’s sake. I thought he was committed, and it was too late for him to draw back. I was even sympathetic. But now… I just don’t know any more. And I loved that speedboat as much as he did!’
Whew! It seemed Malcolm had blotted his copybook in more ways than one. If Malcolm wanted a long-term relationship with this lady, he had a few bridges to build, Joss decided. As it was, he’d gone from having a relationship with two women to being very close to having a relationship with neither.
Amy was looking as bleak as Charlotte.
They drove home in the dark together but there seemed little to say. There was a constraint between them that was growing worse all the time.
He should have kept his oar out of her affairs. She was looking like she’d lost her world.
What was it with the creep? What did Malcolm have that Joss didn’t?
The thought brought him up sharply. For heaven’s sake, was he jealous?
Jealous of a guy with two relationships?
No. He was jealous of a guy who’d had Amy’s heart in the palm of his hand.
His leg hurt. All of him hurt. All of him ached, and it wasn’t just physical. He ached for Amy. He ached for the impossibility of the whole damned set-up.
He ached.
Back at the house, Bertram greeted them with the joy of one who’d been abandoned for at least a month.
He needed a run.
‘I’ll take him to the beach,’ Amy told him. ‘You put yourself to bed. Your leg must hurt.’
It didn’t hurt so much any more. Not if it meant not going to the beach with Amy.
This was his last night here. Tomorrow the ferry would be operating and he’d be out of here.
‘I’ll come.’
‘Your leg…’
‘My leg can drop off for all I care. I’ll come.’
So they walked, slowly in deference to Joss’s stitched leg. He’d have gone faster but she deliberately held back. She was wearing faded jeans and a big sloppy sweater. Some time during the day her braid had started to work free and she hadn’t had time to rebraid it. She looked like part of the landscape, he thought. A sea witch. Lifting her face to the sea. Drinking it in.
She looked free.
She was anything but free.
The dog ran in crazy circles around them, the circles growing larger and larger as he revelled in this, his last night on the beach. Tomorrow Bertram would be back in his hospital apartment, Joss thought ruefully, limited to two long runs a day. After the freedom of the seashore it’d seem like a prison.
Sydney would seem like a prison.
He put a hand down and suddenly Amy’s hand was in his. It was almost an unconscious gesture on his part-to take her hand-but when he’d done it, it felt good.
It felt great!
She felt like his woman.
She loved Malcolm?
‘He’s a rat,’ he growled, and he felt rather than saw her surprise.
‘I know.’
‘You won’t take him back.’
‘No. I won’t take him back.’ She was speaking as if from a distance-as if speaking to herself. ‘I never should have got engaged to him in the first place.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I didn’t love him.’
There. The thing had been said. It was out in the open, to be faced by the pair of them.
‘But still you agreed to marry him,’ he said cautiously and she nodded. She kicked a ball of sand before her and it shattered into a thousand grains and blew away on the wind. The weather was clearing by the moment. Joss was wearing her father’s overcoat but he hardly needed it.
The moonlight was on their faces. The salt spray was gentle. It was their night.
‘I just can’t handle it,’ she said tightly. ‘I know I’m doing a great job here, I’m keeping all these people happy. Just…what about me? That was why I got engaged to Malcolm. So I could have a life-any life-apart from the nursing home.’ She kicked another lump of sand but this time it didn’t dislodge and she almost tripped. ‘Damn,’ she said, and he knew she wasn’t speaking about the sand.
‘Take me out to your rock,’ he said on impulse, and she hesitated. ‘Go on.’ His hand was still in hers. ‘It’s my last night here.’
‘It’s my special place.’
‘Share it with me.’
‘You don’t want…’
But he was propelling her forward. ‘I want.’
‘You’ll get your feet wet.’
‘Heroes don’t mind wet feet,’ he told her. ‘Not when in pursuit of fair maidens.’
She stared at him for a long, long moment, and then, without a word, she turned and led him out across the rocks.
And when they reached it, he turned her and took her firmly into his arms.
There were so many things between them. There were so many obstacles. But for now, for this moment, they fell away as if they didn’t exist.
The dangers, the pain and the confusion slipped away. Joss held Amy in his arms and once again the thought flooded his mind. This was his woman. Here was his home.
She smelled like the sea. His lips were on her hair and the sea spray was a fine mist, damp against his mouth. Her figure was a lovely curving softness against his chest. The fabric of her ancient sweater was as lovely as silk to him. He gloried in the softness against his hands as he felt the pliant contours of her body, and he felt his body surge in recognition of a longing he hardly recognised.
He’d wanted women before, he thought, wondering, but not like this.
She was his.
She had to be his. His need was so strong it was almost primeval, a surge of something as old as man itself. Here was his mate. Half of his whole. He held her tighter, savouring the moment, waiting for her face to turn up to him as he knew it must, for her lips to find his…
Waiting to claim her.
This was impossible. She was a captive in this place. She couldn’t leave, and he couldn’t stay.
But how could he leave her? All this time he’d been fighting against a commitment he didn’t understand. He’d thought his father a fool for allowing himself to love, but love wasn’t something you chose.
Love was here.
Love was now.
She was pulling back-just a little-just enough to see his face in the moonlight. What she saw seemed to satisfy her.
‘Joss,’ she said, and it was enough.
His mouth lowered to hers and he claimed her.
His woman.
And Amy…
This was an impossibility. This man… He had no place in her life. She was trapped here and tomorrow he’d be gone.
But tonight…
Tonight she held him close. She was twenty-eight years old, she’d been engaged to someone else for the last two years, it was six years before she could leave this place…
All of those things were as nothing on this night.
For tonight there was only Joss.
‘I love you,’ she whispered against his chest, so low that Joss could hardly hear against the sound of wind and waves. It didn’t matter. She didn’t want him to hear. It wasn’t a declaration to him. It was a declaration to herself.
Tomorrow the loss and the loneliness would begin. Tonight there was Joss.
She lifted her face to his and she linked her hands behind his head and pulled him down to her.
‘Joss,’ she whispered, and after that she couldn’t whisper a thing. For a very long time.
Afterwards, Joss could never remember how they made it to the house. Making love on the beach wasn’t an option. Maybe in midsummer-but not when the sand was still soaked from two weeks of storms and the wind was still chill. No. He wanted this woman in the comfort of a bed.