Yes, well, that was the thing about trusting someone with your secrets; it was supposed to be a two-way deal but his moment of weakness had passed and he was already regretting this excursion into her past. Why complicate something as simple as sex?
‘I have no parents.’ He drained his coffee, screwed the top back on the flask and put it back in her bag. ‘Did you ever tell them the truth?’ he asked before she could push him for details. ‘About the job?’
She shook her head.
‘Maybe you should,’ he advised. Clearly she was harbouring the guilt.
‘They’d be devastated. And now, after all that horrible stuff in the paper, all those between-the-lines insinuations that I’m mentally unstable, they’re out of their minds worried again.’
Her eyes were shining, but the tears were more of anger than anything else, he was certain. Was that how it was? Love? This complicated mishmash of guilt, anxiety, the desperate need not to hurt, to protect? Add in passion, sacrifice, the world well lost and you were well and truly stuffed... Or maybe blessed beyond measure.
Natasha blinked back the threatening tears and he put his arm around her, drew her close. There was a moment of stiffness, resistance and then she melted against him. ‘My mother is desperate for me to go with them on the annual trek to Cornwall so that she can look after me,’ she said. ‘Heal me with sea air, walks on the beach, evening games of Scrabble.’
‘Instead, you’re playing hide the sausage in the woods with a disreputable sculptor who’s going to put your naked body on display for the entire world to see,’ he said.
She snorted, buried her face into his shoulder and suddenly, sitting there, his arm around her, both of them shaking with laughter, felt like a perfect moment.
Above them the swallows swooped just above head height, the scent of roses was drifting on a warm breeze and the temptation to stay there, looking out over the heat-hazed valley, almost overwhelmed him.
SEVEN
‘Darius?’
He stirred and Natasha lifted her head, looked up at him. ‘I’m sorry I shouted at you.’
‘I’m not.’ Tears of pain and laughter had clumped her eyelashes together. He used the pad of his thumb to wipe away one that had spilled over, kissed lips that were raised in what felt like an invitation. ‘You can tell your family from me that they don’t have a thing to worry about. You are strong in every way and I’m really glad you’re on my side.’
Really glad as he kissed her again and, lost in the sweetness of her mouth, for once in his life not thinking about an exit strategy. It should be scaring the wits out of him, but the connection between them had an honesty that overrode any fear of commitment. Natasha needed him on her side to re-establish her career, didn’t know that security guard from Adam and yet she had instantly empathised with him and she hadn’t hesitated to give it to him with both barrels when she thought he was wrong. How many women in her situation would have done that?
When he was with her, he had no sense of losing himself, but of becoming something greater.
Blessed.
It was Natasha who moved.
‘Enough of this maudlin self-pity,’ she said. ‘I’ve got work to do.’