The Older Man (28 page)

Perhaps he had debated it, but he must have changed his mind. Next time she looked, he was sitting down again, with an air of contained patience.

She was tiring, and even in the tropical water, her skin was turning a little chilly. She swam in slowly, and walked up the beach, flinging herself face down on the towel, her head turned away from Grant.

“You’re turning blue,” he commented. “You should have come out earlier.”

She didn’t answer him, and he said, “Still hating me, Rennie?”

“I don’t hate you.”

She felt him lie down beside her, lounging on one elbow. His hand pushed aside her wet hair. “Still … indifferent?” he whispered, his lips close to her ear.

Gritting her teeth, she said, “Yes!”

His teeth gently nipped her earlobe, then his lips were nuzzling the little hollow behind it.

A shiver of pleasure danced down her spine. She drew in her breath sharply and sat up, glaring at him.

He hadn’t moved except to lie back on his elbows, appraising her. “You’re looking great,” he said. And when her mouth twisted and she instinctively turned her scarred cheek away from his gaze he added harshly, “That doesn’t count. You’re beautiful, Rennie. This place has helped you, hasn’t it?”

Rennie nodded. Ethan had been right. The island sun, and its tranquillity, had been good for her, body and soul. Her pale skin had acquired a faint golden tinge. The scars on her body had become almost invisible, the superficial cuts on her left hand had completely healed and there was only a fine white line on her right hand and a continuing stiffness in her index and middle fingers as a legacy of the assault. She was careful not to let her face burn, using a complete sun block. The scar tissue there was tender, though not as fiery to look at as it had been.

She had also a new, hard-won serenity. Nothing was going to hurt her as she had been hurt in this last year, she had decided. Never again. Certainly not this man whose presence threatened to shatter that resolution to bits.

She lay back again, closing her eyes, determined to ignore him. The waves lapped at the beach, the sound advancing and receding with each wash of the water.

“How about taking me sightseeing?” Grant said.

“What?” she asked suspiciously, opening her eyes.

“I’d like to see the place, now that I’m here. Ethan has a deadline to meet with his latest software programme, and Celeste is trying hard not to seem too busy but I can see she’s in the throes of creation. Besides — ” he paused, then went on, ” — I don’t think Ethan has quite got over a faint, unfounded suspicion of me. I detect a definite coolness at the idea of his wife showing me round. That leaves you. I believe you know the island pretty well by now.”

His reasoning was pretty transparent. “You won’t see much by car,” she told him. “I use a bicycle.” That wouldn’t appeal to him, she thought. “And you don’t need a guide.”

“Scared, Rennie?” he taunted.

“Not of you!”

Something flickered sharply in his eyes. “You’ve no reason to be. But you’re frightened to be alone with me.”

“I’m not frightened. But after yesterday I’d be fool to give you another chance to — “

“Kiss you? Make you admit that this indifference of yours isn’t real?”

“It’s real,” Rennie said flatly.

“Pardon me,” he said with exquisite politeness. “But after yesterday I find that hard to believe.” He sat up, watching her.

“I told you — “

“Oh, spare me!” he snapped, making a sweeping gesture with his hand. “I’m not without experience, Rennie. You were way too angry to be brought round by a bit of lovemaking, to reach the pitch that we did just because I’m ‘good at kissing’. That was me, the whole me, that you responded to, it was no impersonal animal mechanism. The sex was a trigger, but it came out of something much more complex. Something elemental, real. And we both know it.”

Rennie looked away from him. She wished that he had not come to Sheerwind. Before, she had been convinced that she had reached calm waters after the storms and passions that had racked her life since meeting him. Now he had flung her into turmoil again. She was confused and angry and he was right when he said she wasn’t indifferent. But if what she felt now was love, then it was a very peculiar kind of love. It was painful and violent and stark. It scared her, and she didn’t want any part of it.

Grant said, “I promise I won’t touch. Do you think you can handle being with me under those conditions? If you’re really as indifferent as you say, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

His voice held a jeering note. Perhaps he knew that even now she’d not be able to resist a dare.

“All right,” she snapped. She knew that whatever it cost him, Grant would always keep a promise.

“Good,” he said, and unexpectedly got up. “I’ll see about getting myself a bicycle.”

She watched him plunge into the water, then gathered up her towel and returned to the house.

He got a bicycle from somewhere. It was new and shiny and looked rugged enough to cope with any terrain. Rennie climbed onto Janice’s old ten-speed and led the way, determined to make him regret his challenge. She’d been cycling now for weeks, but she remembered the first couple of days of aching muscles and a sore seat. Grant probably hadn’t ridden a bike since childhood.

She took him to the township first, to see the small museum and the little shops that sold souvenirs to the summer tourists. Then to one of the more popular beaches near Conneston, where families and holidaymakers crowded the sand. She knew he’d have preferred somewhere quieter, but he didn’t complain. The following day they toured the ring road that swept around the island, climbing sometimes around steep little hills, then sweeping down to the ocean’s edge. She kept up a running commentary on every landmark, regurgitating all she had learned about Sheerwind from Ethan and from a history of the island written by his neighbour. Grant had asked for a tour guide, she thought, and a tour guide was what he was going to get.

“We have to stop here,” she said, as they reached a headland looking down over a reef endlessly attacked by white-edged breakers. “It’s the Sheerwind memorial.”

“Oh, I must see that,” Grant said solemnly as they left their bikes and walked along a narrow path to the cliff edge.

Rennie ignored the faint sarcasm, gazing at the ocean. A deep band of silver glitter on the horizon, and starpoints glistening off lazy waves as they entered the bay below.

Here stood the memorial to the first, involuntary settlers, survivors of a convict ship wrecked there in the nineteenth century.

“The island was named after it,” she told him as he studied the plaque commemorating the wreck of the Sheerwind.

He nodded. “That much I know.” They had seen some relics of the wreck in the museum the previous day.

“A convict, Tatty Connors — after a good deal of bloodshed — eventually appropriated all the four women survivors for himself. One of the ship’s crew was a black ex-slave — his descendants still live here. Before the wreck the island was uninhabited, but since the nineteenth century, all kinds of people have settled here — Europeans and Pacific Islanders, a few Chinese, and they all intermarried and picked up aspects of one another’s culture.”

“You know a lot about the place for someone who’s been here only a short time,” he said.

“I’m a fast learner.” The phrase woke an echo in her mind, and she saw the sudden smile in his eyes that meant he’d remembered, too. Pushing that aside she asked innocently, “Am I boring you?”

The smile deepened. He knew perfectly well what she was up to. “Not at all,” he told her smoothly. “I’m fascinated by all this esoteric knowledge you’ve stored up.” He added, “You could never bore me, Rennie.”

She opened her mouth to say something tart, like, what about when you thought I was infatuated with you? He’d done his best then to make her feel a nuisance and a bore. But she didn’t want to open that subject again.

She remounted her bicycle and said, “I’ll show you Tatty’s cottage.”

“I can’t wait,” she hear him mutter as he followed. So far he had shown no sign of tiring.

The ruined cottage was surrounded by weeds and regenerating bush. “It’s haunted,” Rennie said.

“Of course it would be,” Grant remarked tranquilly.

“An old drunk who had slept the night there was found dead in the morning.” She dredged her memory for several other stories of about the unexpected deaths of several people who had tried to remove stones from the cottage for building. “No one touches it now,” she finished.

“I’m not surprised.”

Having exhausted her small store of knowledge about the place she turned reluctantly back to the road. Grant was much fitter than she’d expected.

“Where to next?” he enquired interestedly.

Surreptiously Rennie eased aching shoulders. She wouldn’t have minded a swim to refresh herself and a long laze on a quiet beach afterwards, but that would have been admitting defeat. She forced herself to wax ecstatic about the view from The Camel, a double-humped hill that looked over almost the entire island.

He asked with every sign of enthusiasm, “Will we be able to go there today? Or aren’t you up to it? I don’t want to tire you, Rennie.”

Of course she was up to it, she told him loftily.

They were both slightly sweaty by the time they made it to the top, but Grant still hadn’t flagged. As they parked their bicycles against a handy tree Rennie began to wonder rather bitterly what it would take to tire him. The breeze on the lookout point was welcome. She pushed windblown hair out of her eyes and turned to walk the few yards to the best view, trying to breathe normally.

Grant stood close to her. “Sure you’re all right?” he said, concern in his voice.

“Yes, of course.” She kept her voice casual, her eyes on the sweep of green countryside with the town in the distance and the blue sea washing white-sand shores.

She was chagrined that when he suggested they head for home, taking it easy, she knew without doubt it was for her sake, not his. At dinner he told Ethan and Celeste that he’d seen most of the island, and with laughter in his eyes added, “Rennie was a superb guide. She’s missed her vocation.”

Grimly she stayed up until their hosts were ready for bed, and then thankfully followed them upstairs. But spite of being dead tired, she was unable to sleep that night. The air was warm and heavy, and the perfume of night-scented flowers wafted in through the open window. An insect chirped intermittently nearby, a bird called once, clear and fluting, and the insistent sound of the waves on the shore came clearly from the beach.

The sound seemed to beckon her, and eventually she gave into it. Pulling off her nightshirt she shrugged a short robe over her naked body, took her small torch and, ignoring the ache in her calves, legacy of the long day’s cycling, quietly went down the stairs and let herself out of the house.

When she reached the sand she switched off the torch and put it in her pocket. The moon came out from behind a smoky cloud, and lit the water with a pale glitter.

She scuffed along the sand for a little way, then was drawn irresistibly to the water’s edge, standing with her feet sinking slightly into the wet softness as a ruffle of white curled about her ankles. The water was warm and caressing. On impulse she stripped off the robe and flung it onto the dry sand a few yards distant, then walked into the water until it reached her thighs before flinging herself down. Coolness folded around her; she stroked slowly forward, then turned on her back and floated, looking at the high round moon.

The water gradually warmed on her skin, and she kept afloat by the smallest movements, glancing at the shore to make sure she didn’t lose her bearings.

Once she thought she saw a moving shadow on the sand, and her heart missed a beat. She turned quickly with a silvery splash, but could see nothing but the white sliver of sand and the dark trees beyond.

When she finally came ashore and pulled on the robe over her damp skin, she felt relaxed and clearheaded. Until she had almost reached the trees and the path, and saw the pale blur of a face a few yards further along, deep in the shadow of the trees, and the man standing there.

Rennie gave a choked scream even as she turned and fled back along the sand, stumbling in its softness.

“Rennie!” A hand touched her shoulder, but she jerked away, sobbing with panic. Her robe slipped and she tore herself away, but tripped backwards over a piece of driftwood and went plunging onto the sand.

Before she could recover, he was on his knees beside her, gripping her arms as she tried to get up, to fight him. “Rennie, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to frighten you like this!

Her breath caught, she went suddenly still. “Grant? Oh, Grant!”

She swayed forward into his arms, and he pulled her tightly to him, stroking her hair as she took deep, shuddering breaths, saying again, “I’m sorry, my darling. I didn’t realise you wouldn’t know me in the dark. It wasn’t me you were running from this time, was it?”

Rennie shook her head. “I thought — Kevin. I know it’s stupid but — “

“Not stupid at all,” he said. “Did you come down here to get away from the nightmares?”

Too shocked to ask how he knew about that, she said, “No. I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me too. I was here when you came down, but you obviously wanted to be alone.”

“You watched.” She lifted her head from his shoulder.

He didn’t answer for a moment. “I didn’t know you were going to go for a nude swim. Once you were in, I — thought it safer if someone was about.”

“You could have gone back to the house when you saw me come out.”

A longer pause. “I couldn’t bring myself to.”

She had stopped shaking. “The upright lawyer as Peeping Tom?” Her brave attempt at flippancy was marred by the tremor in her voice.

He said gruffly, “Are you angry?”

Rennie shook her head. He was embarrassed, more so than she, and she felt a strange welling of tenderness. “Not now.” She reached up and touched his cheek.

“Rennie?” His voice was low. He moved so that he sat on the sand, holding her against him, and she leaned into him. “Rennie,” he said on a different note.