Page 51 of One Forbidden Night In Paradise (Hot Winter Escapes)

She nodded. ‘He drank every night. I’d lie awake at night worrying about where he could be, terrified something had happened to him, imagining all these awful scenarios. But at the same time I’d dread him coming back. He’d just sit there and cry.’ There was a tight twist to the corner of her mouth. ‘I was tired and stressed all the time, and I was missing school so that I could look after him.’

He saw her bite down on the inside of her lip. ‘And then one of my teachers asked me to stay behind. She told me that they were worried about me. About my grades, and I think I’d been waiting for someone to tell me that because I went home and I packed my stuff. I waited until he got back from the pub and I knew he was safe and then I left.’

Her eyes skidded away towards the window.

‘I didn’t go and see him for a couple of weeks. I was ashamed and I thought he’d be angry but then one day, about three weeks after I moved out, I was coming back from school and he came out of this pub.’

She was still staring across the room, but she was blinking now, trying to keep the tears back.

‘It wasn’t one he went to regularly, and I didn’t recognise him at first. He looked so thin and his face was all red and blotchy, and he had this terrible cough.’

For years now he had fought to keep his own pain at bay but, listening to Jemima work to get each word out, he wished he could take her distress and make it his burden.

‘I was scared that he was going to have a go at me, but he didn’t. He asked me about school, and Mum, and he told me that he didn’t blame her or me for leaving.’ Her voice looped higher. ‘He said he’d heard me leave but that he hadn’t tried to stop me because he had nothing to make me stay. It was the last time I saw him alive.’

Her face quivered and then she was crying, pressing her hand against her mouth to stifle her sobs. He got to his feet and was beside her in two strides, pulling her against him. He felt her stiffen and then her body seemed to lose shape and he lifted her onto his lap and let her cry against his shoulder.

‘I should have stayed with him.

He stroked her face. ‘You were a child.’

‘I left him.’ Tears were spilling down her cheeks. ‘He had no one in his life but me, and I knew that, and I still left him.’

‘Say you’d stayed? Then what?’

‘He’d be alive. I would have been there to let him in.’ She cried again then and he held her close. Finally as the sky began to lighten, he got to his feet and carried her upstairs and laid her on the bed, peeled off her clothes and his and then pulled the covers around them both.

She fell asleep almost immediately, curling her body around his just as she had so many times before. Why then did it feel different? Was it the way her head was resting on his chest? Or the jerkiness of her breathing?

His heart contracted. It wasn’t anything Jemima was doing. It was him. He was the reason it felt different. Because despite his believing that it wasn’t possible for him to love again, the impossible had happened. He had fallen in love with Jemima. Fallen in love with the woman at the harbour who had asked for his help in that ridiculously over-polite tone and then turned to quicksilver in his hands back on his boat. The same woman who had shucked open the hard shell he had built around himself, letting the light in on the darkness he’d held so close for so long.

He breathed out shakily. She had made love not just possible but inescapable, necessary. And now that he knew that, he wanted to tell her how he felt. Tell her that things were different. Roar his love from the Manhattan rooftops. This love that had given his life a meaning it had lost when Frida died. A love that would outlive this holiday. A for-ever kind of love. The kind that needed and deserved to be witnessed and sanctioned.

But having told her that part of his life was over, how could he persuade her that he had changed his mind? More importantly, having agreed that this was a holiday fling, how could he persuade Jemima to change hers?

CHAPTER TEN

BREATHINGOUTSLOWLY, Jemima gazed up at the ceiling of the sauna, blinking hard. They had woken late, reaching for each other in the midday sun, and as he’d slid into her body she had been intensely grateful for the heat that rushed through her, a heat that blotted out everything but the pleasures of the flesh, his and hers.

Maybe that was why when he’d suggested that they have a swim and take a sauna she had so readily agreed. But this was a different heat and unfortunately it didn’t seem to be offering the same level of oblivion.

It was too late to take back her words, but she doubted she could even have done that at the time. Something had happened when she saw that woman at the club. It had tapped into her memory, pressed against some invisible crack and within seconds, the crack had widened and everything she had tried so hard to hold in had started spilling out, and that was that.

She glanced up through her lashes to where Chase lay on his back at a right angle to her. That he was keeping his distance a little was hardly surprising. It was a lot to deal with, and she still wasn’t entirely sure why she had felt so compelled to tell him everything.

Not quite everything. She hadn’t told him how much she was dreading the end of their affair or how impossible it would be to live without him.

There was a tiny, almost inaudible beep. ‘That’s fifteen minutes.’ Her pulse jerked forward as his deep voice filled the room.

The sauna was one hundred and eighty metres above ground and it had a triple-glazed high efficiency annealed window that allowed you to stare at the Empire State Building while you relaxed. The fact that she had barely looked at the view said a lot about the man who had just rolled languidly onto his side to face her.

Not just his looks. It was how he had acted in the early hours of this morning. It was fair to say that nothing had ever meant more to her than his calm, measured attention and lack of judgement, except perhaps how he had pulled her into his arms and held her, his body warm and solid against hers.

‘You don’t have to get into the pool now. I know you can stay in longer than me,’ she said quickly.

‘No, I’m hot enough.’ But as he held the door open for her, he caught her hand.

‘Let’s skip the pool. I have a better idea.’ As she hesitated, he smiled down at her, just a slight, teasing curve of his lips. ‘Come with me. I think you’ll like it. Here, put this on—’ he handed her a robe and some flip-flops ‘—and these. You can’t go in barefoot.’

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