Shadows (29 page)

Rory met the waiter’s stare head-on.  “We are ’ere to stay.”

Melissa hid a weak laugh behind her hand.  The waiter smiled, and couples who had seen the earlier drama gave them a little round of applause.  Two glasses of wine appeared, and Rory lifted his and held it out.  Hastily Melissa groped for her own glass and clinked it against his.

“To us.”  Rory's mouth lifted in a crooked, one-sided smile.  “And tonight, they can stand around the bed and blasted well watch if they want while I show you exactly how much I love you.”

Melissa choked, coughed and grabbed for her napkin.

“It’s been a strange holiday.”  Melissa spooned up the last of her dessert.

Rory nodded.  “Stranger than I bargained for.”

“You couldn’t buy this kind of holiday.”

“Doubt if it would catch on.”

“This morning at breakfast you looked as if you were going to dump me at the airport.”  She snatched a swift glance at him.  “You still might, when I tell you about the dream I had last night.  It was weird, and I’m not sure that I remember all of it even now.  This morning I couldn’t remember a thing beyond the fact that I’d had a dream.  But over the day, bits have been coming back to me.  You’ll think I’m a basket case, but I should tell you.”

Rory listened as she told him about Pierre.  “So what does he want?”

“I’m not sure.  But he definitely wants something from us.”

Rory said nothing more.  Melissa walked quietly at his side back to the car, tired but relieved she’d told him everything now.  He was still with her, and said he loved her.

Rory linked his fingers together with hers across the cockpit of the Honda as Rory drove the little yellow car through the green, undulating countryside.  He frowned, and glanced across the cockpit of the car.  “I ought to take you back to London.”

“Oh no, please don’t.  I want to find out how it all ends.”

“But it isn’t safe.  Ghosts invading your dreams and talking to you?”  He shook his head.

“I’m staying.  Pierre will not harm me.”

“How can you be sure?”

“He’s a monk.  He cares about people.”

Rory wasn’t convinced, but he didn't try to persuade her to leave.  Instead he flirted with her.  His hand dropped from the steering wheel to Melissa’s knee and slid back her skirt so he could admire the smooth tanned skin of her thigh.  Aroused, laughing and restless, Melissa seized his hand and flung it away.  After the third rejection, he shot a glance sideways across the car, grinning from ear to ear.  “I want to do what they do in American movies.”

“Certainly not.”

“Please?  Pretty please?”  The hot wind streamed across the windscreen and blew the short dark hair back from his brow.  Dark glasses hid his eyes, and the curves and hollows of his face were accentuated by the bright sunlight.  His smile flashed white as he turned his head.

He was devilishly attractive, and before she melted entirely, she picked up his large hand and placed it firmly back on the steering wheel.  At the same moment a huge French juggernaut roared around the corner ahead of them, and only Rory’s swift wrench at the wheel prevented the Honda from being unceremoniously shoved into the field at the side of the road.

Stones and soil rattled like thunder along the bottom of the car and Melissa flinched away from the blast of hot rubber, brake dust and the thunderous roar of a large engine at full throttle inches from her ear.  The lorry vanished around the corner leaving a stink of diesel, a cloud of dust and a furious honking of the horn echoing back through the trees.

Rory steered off the verge and back onto the tarmac road.  “Phew.  That was close.”

“The stupid, stupid man.”  Melissa, shaking with fright and outrage, stared down the road after the French driver.  “He drove us off the road.  What if there’d been a stone wall, or a tree or a pond?  We’ve passed all those things in the last five minutes.”  She was still gripping Rory’s arm with both hands.

She let go.  He flexed his fingers, and looked down.  Small white indentations ringed his arm, and there was a bead of blood where her nails had driven too far.

“Sorry. Does it hurt?  That man was a maniac.”

“I’ll survive.  Forget him.  You know what French drivers are like.”

Lulled by Rory’s calmness and the peaceful drive home, the incident receded from her mind.  At the entrance to the drive Rory observed the mill as he unhooked the chain, but he said nothing, drove through and hooked it up again.  A tiny flutter of anticipation skimmed along her nerve endings.  So much had happened here, and two weeks of the holiday remained.  What would she do if a black-robed monk stood on the bolly to welcome her back?  Greet him as an old friend?  A very old friend.  Almost two hundred and fifty years old.

There was no one there, of course.  The sun shone peacefully on the red roof and the clearing was full of still air and chattering birdlife.  After the constant wind in her face in the open topped sports car, the air around the mill seemed very still and hot.

Rory climbed out, shut the car door and looked at the pool.  He turned to Melissa with lifted brows.  “The pool?”

She changed and settled at the pool side with a glass of wine and a book.  Melissa was amused and not a little excited when Rory sprawled naked on a pad beside the pool.  He was so close to the edge that she was tempted to roll him over into the cool turquoise water.

The sun gilded the skin of his back to mahogany and only the twin white mounds of his buttocks remained pale.  “Did you put some oil on yourself?”

A muttered grunt came from the dark head flat against the towel.

“I take it that’s a no.”  Melissa pretended resignation.  She grasped the bottle and rolled over toward him.  It was a careful balancing act, but she could just lean from her lounger and stroke suntan oil down the channel of his strong, powerful spine.  Leaning a little further, she spread the oil over his shoulder blades, the rounded point of his shoulder and the back of his neck.  She squeezed oil over her palm and, with her lips pressed together to suppress a giggle, slapped it down on one white mound.

A muted howl came from the towel and every muscle in that splendid back tightened and then relaxed beneath her fascinated gaze.  His head moved fractionally and one eye regarded her suspiciously.  “What are you doing?”

Enjoying herself, Melissa grinned.  “I’m putting suntan oil on your back.”

“Huh.”

She hadn't felt this mischievous in years, but she did now.  Rory trustingly laid his head on his crossed forearms as she smoothed the oil over and around and observed a distinct change in the state of the muscles beneath her hands.  Before she was quite ready for it, a strong hand shot out and grabbed her wrist.  Balanced on one elbow, one eye closed, he glared at her.  “What’re you trying to do?”

“I told you.  Apply suntan oil to the unprotected bits—”

“You’ve been doing that for quite long enough.”

Melissa pouted and raised her brows.  “I’m only trying to make amends for upsetting you so much this morning.”  She shot a swift, penitent glance up under her lashes.

He hid his laughter and tightened his grip of her wrist.  She resisted but found she was slowly being drawn from the lounger.  “Rory.  I’ll fall.”

The corded muscles, the tension and the width of his shoulders all let her understand it was inevitable.  She tumbled from the lounger and landed in his arms.

He buried his face between her neck and shoulder, and his hands relieved her of her bikini top.  “Rory.  What if—”

The flimsy piece of cloth flicked through the air to land on the corner of the lounger.  Melissa made a grab for it, and missed.

“What if someone calls?”  He settled one palm where the cloth had been.  “Relax.  No one will come—except us, perhaps—and you know you can’t see anything of the mill from the lane or the road.”

The sunlight shot through his blue eyes and turned them sapphire.  Melissa smothered a giggle, and then gasped as his hand moved, over and over, soothing and exciting at the same time.  Her skin erupted beneath his thumb into a tight, sharp apex that ached for more.

She needed this, and let herself relax in his arms.  Relief and joy bloomed at the thought he still loved her, that the night of romance had not been a lie.  His tongue followed his hand, and Melissa let her head arch back.  How wonderful to know that this man loved her.  Her gasp was lost in the rumble of sound from deep in his throat.

The heat and the sunlight, the wine and the song of the crickets and birds coalesced into a single ribbon of pleasure that rippled through the summer afternoon.  Rory seemed to need the reassurance of her as much as she needed him.  She became a creature of sensation, dimly aware of the pool on her left, fully bound up in Rory’s needs.  Answering them, she found the joy that lovers know, the confidence that she was the one for him.

A joining of hearts and minds as well as bodies.  A long and complicated joust, that suffered within it a subtle variation of pressures that excited and fed her longings.  Tumultuous, and yet there was space for the small gestures that convey love.  She couldn't open her eyes into the direct glare of the sun, and yet she wouldn't have traded places with anyone on the planet.  The pad jerked underneath her, scratched across the tiles, and a shadow crossed her face.

“You can open your eyes now.”  Rory’s mouth teased hers, and then retreated.

Melissa opened her eyes on bright blue sky, focused on the lean suntanned smiling face and stayed there, absorbing the slow, oh so delightfully slow rhythmic movements of his body.  Her head rolled to the right and she stiffened in shock.  “Rory.”

The pad jutted out over the pool.  Beneath her was turquoise water.  Melissa jerked up and flung both arms round his shoulders.

“I won’t let you fall.”

Mad as it seemed, she trusted him completely.  Her weight combined with his would keep her firmly anchored.  She forgot about it, and concentrated on the slow, subtle movements that gave her such pleasure.  Sweat ran down his temple and splashed onto her shoulder.  “Sorry.”

Melissa’s hands flattened against the warm tiles, moved and found his flanks.  She breathed in the damp greenness of the trees, the coolness of the pool at her side, the hot, gritty smell of earth and dust, the heady, exotic smell of aftershave heightened and changed by Rory’s own essence surging from every pore of his body.

The rest of the evening was as ferociously hot as the day had been, and the breeze died away completely.  It was an effort to walk from the shade of the bolly to the kitchen and back with a dish of grapes.  Rory, flushed from sunshine and the heat of the barbecue, cooked prawns, dropped them into boiled linguini and swirled a pesto sauce over the combination.

Melissa licked her fingers in appreciation, and smiled lazily across the table.  “That was wonderful.  What a gorgeous, gorgeous day this has been.”

The weather changed as the evening drew on.  Clouds raced across the sky.  The warm breeze returned, became a wind that roared through the treetops, whipped paper napkins into the air and whirled them across the flagstones.  Melissa recaptured them and the second time stuffed them into her pocket so they couldn’t fly off again.

Rory stared around at the darkening sky.  “We might be wise to take everything indoors.  It looks as if there’s going to be a storm.”

Melissa stood in the middle of the patio, smoothed back her hair with both hands and looked toward the west.  “Oh, my goodness, yes.  Look at the way those clouds are racing in.  Quick.  We’ll never get it all inside in time.”

Rory hauled the big umbrella out of the table socket, furled it and carried it into the mill room while Melissa grabbed the oversized cushions from the wicker chairs.  She could barely see over the unwieldy pile and jammed herself in the doorway, giggling until Rory pulled her through and guided her to the bed where she let them all drop.

She went back for the rest.  In the short space of time she had been inside, the wind had grown stronger and colder.  Rory loaded plates and glasses onto the tray.  Large dark circles splattered his red polo shirt and Melissa gasped as cold rain hit her bare shoulders.  “What about the barbie?”