Trusting a Stranger (15 page)

His arms reached all the way around her and his hands pawed greedily at her back.

Hayley wanted to ask him to stop. She wanted to ask if he was sure that she wanted to do this. Didn't he also think relationships were a mistake? Weren't they obviously just drawn together by circumstance?

But he raised one of his fingers and placed it against her lips before she could speak.

‘No questions,' he growled.

She bit his finger.

His eyes widened with surprised. Then she grinned at him, reached for his hand with her own and playfully pretended to kiss the finger better.

‘All right, no questions,' she agreed, sinking to his level.

He wrapped his arms around her again and raised her slightly before laying her down on the bunk and stretching out beside her. The train was still speeding through into the night and they swayed along with it as he peeled off her new green dress and drew a line of kisses down her belly.

‘I can't quite believe this. You are so beautiful.'

‘You keep saying that. You'll make me vain.'

‘It's true.'

‘You just want to get lucky,' she teased.

‘Well, that's true too,' he admitted.

Then he kissed lower. She scratched at his back and then cried out.

Of course she wanted to know if he might love her, if this might mean anything, but there was so much to be done first. There was love to be made and explored before they slept and in the new day there was a child to find and save.

They made love hungrily and came together in a wave of release. After those few moments, Hayley opened her eyes and realised she was looking at Ethan as he really was, without any of the anxiety that complicated his daily life. He looked calmer now, and relaxed.

Relaxed enough now to finally doze. Hayley looked down at him and smiled. He was beautiful, and, for a while, he was hers.

She eased into the crook of his arm and realised that the biggest question of all was something she had to ask herself. How on earth was she going to get back to normal, solitary life, after this?

Ethan woke first in the morning. His arms were still wrapped around Hayley's sleeping form. He smiled upwards at the top bunk, which had not needed to be made up after all.

She was thin and light in his arms and, close as they were, they hardly took up any more room in the narrow bunk than he would have, lying here on his own. He brushed a kiss against the warm silkiness of her hair. Was there any chance that a woman like Hayley Wolfe could be seriously interested in him?

He shook his head. Hayley had made it quite clear what she thought of commitment. She thought that ordinary relationships were too risky. She would never consider the only sort that he could offer. Tomasi after both of them. Risk of the most extreme kind.

She snored slightly. The sound was almost unbearably endearing. Ethan kissed her again.

Then he began, as carefully as possible, to disentangle his arms from hers, to pull away. The movement was physical but he was aware of a need to pull away emotionally as well — he was more than ever aware that he could not afford to allow a woman into his life. Right now, she was in danger from Tomasi as well, but there was every chance, once this business was settled, that he would be able to negotiate some kind of protection for Hayley. Let Katy keep in touch with her uncle, for instance — now that he had proved his interest in her safety, some continuing contact seemed possible — if he would let Hayley get back to her normal life. There would be no agreement that Tomasi would honour if he knew that Ethan and Hayley were involved.

Tomasi had made it his life's concern to hunt down everyone Ethan loved and to destroy them. Ethan could not allow anything to happen to Hayley the way it had happened to Pearl; the way it had happened to Erica.

She was so peaceful lying there. Ethan was glad she had said what she had said about distrusting marriage, about wanting her independence. Although her insistence that it was better to be on her own, away from the possibility of being hurt, had stung him, he had to admit that he would be feeling far more guilty now if she had not made such an admission.

There was no possibility of a future for them but at least, if they both knew that, they could make the most of the time that they would have together.

***

‘Does Katy look much like Erica?' asked Hayley when she was awake and the conductor had folded their bunks back .

She was sitting at the window brushing her hair and sipping at coffee he had brought back from the restaurant car.

‘A little bit,' said Ethan. ‘People say more like me. She has my colouring. You saw her on the video.'

‘Only very briefly.' Hayley took another long sip.

Ethan was watching her too closely. She wished he would look away — because she wanted to stare at him.

This was the man she had made love to last night. It had been so long since she had been with anyone that it seemed hard to believe. And yet her body was still thrilled with the memory of his intimate caresses.

‘That film was shot a few years ago,' she said.

‘She hasn't changed much,' Ethan told her. Mostly, she's just gotten bigger. She's still gorgeous.'

‘You sound like such a devoted father.'

Hayley had something she wanted to say to him, a confession she wanted to make, and she wasn't sure how best to direct the conversation. ‘

Ethan looked at her now and nodded.

‘I was raised by my father,' Hayley reminded him.

‘I'm glad to see that fathers on their own can do a good job,' Ethan said, smiling.

She could tell from the way his crossed leg was bouncing slightly that he was full of tension and anxiety for what the rest of the day might bring. She thought about what he must be thinking right now. That their night together had been wonderful but it was only a brief break from the life and death drama they were caught up in. Now, they had to get back to reality.

‘Did you always want to have children?' Hayley persisted.

He looked thoughtful. ‘I don't really know. I suppose if anyone asked me I would have said I expected to have them one day.'

‘I've always thought I wouldn't have children,' Hayley told him.

He was looking at her, far more closely now.

‘Yes?' he asked, clearly aware that she felt this was something important for her to say.

‘People say I'm a lot like my mother,' Hayley said.

‘You look like you don't think that's very complimentary.'

‘I don't know. She was pretty enough. I think. I don't remember very much about her. She smoked. One day she dropped me off to school and told me I was to take the bus home. I was happy about that. It felt like a big adventure. When I came home, the house was unlocked. She had left the front door open for me, you know.'

She paused for a moment. The memory was painful and hard to share.

‘And?' asked Ethan. His eyes were guarded but he asked the question gently, careful with his feelings. Hayley felt a surge of gratitude towards him for that.

‘And she was gone,' Hayley said. ‘She just wasn't there. I looked for her for what felt like hours. I searched every room, I looked in ridiculous places like under the bed and inside wardrobes. Finally I went next door and asked my neighbour if she knew where my mother was. She took pity on me and rang my Dad. He came home from work early. He said her bag was missing, all her important papers and details. Eventually he had a message from her. She had gone off to India, I think. Maybe Sri Lanka. Somewhere like that. “To find herself” she said. And that's why I thought I'd never have children.'

‘It's a terrible story,' Ethan said. ‘It must have been terrible for you.'

Hayley smiled. ‘I had a feeling you'd understand,' she said. ‘It's something that I haven't always found easy to discuss.'

He hugged her.

‘You know in some ways the hardest thing was explaining the situation to my friends,' she said. ‘No one knew of a mother who had just walked off before. One of the girls in my class had a mother who died. Honestly, I think it was easier for her to talk about it. People understand death. I looked her up, I found her. It was years later. By then she was dead. Lung cancer. That's why I hate smoking.'

Hayley was quiet, suddenly, as she remembered that Ethan was bringing up a little girl whose mother had died. He might have quite a different perspective on this than she had.

‘It must have been terrible,' Ethan said. He looked out the window for a while.

She waited for him to continue the conversation in his own time.

‘You say this made you never want to have children?' he asked eventually. ‘Couldn't it have made you want even more to be part of a family?'

‘I'm too much like my mother. I wouldn't trust myself,' Hayley explained.

‘You think you'd be like her?' Ethan looked startled.

‘I don't know who else I could be like. She was the only mother I ever saw. And she couldn't cope with it. When things got difficult, she ran away.'

Ethan took a long moment to compose his thoughts. His legs, jean-clad, were stretched out in front of him.

‘You wouldn't do that though,' Ethan said.

Hayley turned sceptical eyes in his direction. ‘You seem very sure about that.'

‘I am sure,' he said. ‘I know we haven't known each other for very long, but it's been very intense.'

She nodded. She had to agree that this was very true.

‘Already I know a lot about you,' Ethan continued. ‘And one of the things I know is that you'd be just about the last person to run away from a situation just because it was difficult.'

Hayley was quiet now. She hadn't thought about her own situation like this before. It was a new idea to consider. Perhaps she wasn't as much like her mother as she had always feared.

Not that she could let this change her mind about decisions she had already made. If there was even the slightest chance that she could not manage mothering, then she had to keep away from it. Children were too precious and those dreams she had about one day having a family of her own were too dangerous to indulge. After her own damaged girlhood, she could never bear to be the person who might hurt a child.

***

It was only a short while before their train slowed as it approached the main station at Naples. Hayley pushed all of her clothes into a new bag and sat beside Ethan at the window.

‘Grotty city,' Hayley observed, wrinkling her nose.

‘Very few places are at their best near the central station,' Ethan reminded her.

He leaned forward suddenly and stabbed at the window with his finger.

‘Did you see that?'

‘What?'

‘In that taxi over there.'

They had entered a part of the city where the train lines and the road ran very close together and the train had slowed until it almost seemed that they were stuck in traffic. Hayley leaned forward and tried to follow the length of Ethan's finger as he pointed towards the queue of traffic.

There were many taxis in view. Hayley tried to guess which one he might mean but in the end shrugged helplessly.

‘That one,' Ethan said again. ‘That's Katy!'

He leaped to his feet and raced for the door. Hayley grabbed her bag and followed, zipping it up as she went.

Outside their compartment, she saw Ethan duck and weaved among the passengers, who were ready to disembark, and their various suitcases and travel gear as he bounded for the end of the carriage corridor.

Ethan reached the end and pulled roughly on the emergency brake.

‘Hey, what you doing?' demanded an elderly man nearby, in Italian.

‘Emergency,' Ethan replied between clenched teeth as he seized hold of the door handle and tried to pull it open.

‘Yeah I got an emergency too,' the man continued. Now he looked more resigned than angry. It was clearly too late to do anything about the situation. ‘An emergency called “I got to get home before my wife kills me”. Called “I don't want you doing anything to slow us down”.'

‘This train has to stop,' Ethan said.

‘You don't look like you're having a heart attack,' said one of the other passengers.

‘At least the door has to open!' Ethan insisted.

The train shuddered to a halt. Ethan pulled one more time on the door handle and it twisted open in his hand. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure that Hayley was with him and she nodded.

The conductor appeared from one of the nearby compartments. His hat was crooked.

‘Hey, what are you doing?' he demanded in English. He had remembered that much about his passengers.

‘I have to get off,' Ethan said.

Hayley thought it was worth waiting a moment to explain. ‘His daughter's been kidnapped. He thinks he's seen her,' she said.

‘Kidnapped!' the crowd around them divided into two camps, the cynical and the astonished.

Fortunately the conductor fell into the latter camp. He ducked back into his compartment as Ethan and Hayley jumped out the door and down the short distance to the rocky verge that ran beneath the tracks.

‘Signor! Signora!' the conductor called out behind them.

He held some sort of radio to his mouth and as Hayley stood and turned, the train began once again to move. He must have told the driver that the emergency was false, or over.

‘Your passports!' the conductor called, throwing the documents towards them as the train gathered speed.

The papers fell to the ground a few metres away and Hayley ran to pick them up. When she returned to Ethan he was scanning the passing traffic, still looking for the taxi.

‘You're sure it was her?' she asked.

It seemed a reasonable question. There were so many cars and most of them were quite difficult to see into. Not to mention that it would be an incredible coincidence to see Katy just about the first moment they entered Naples.