‘Oh. You mean real men bake bread!’
‘Exactly!’ Oh, but this was bliss! The banter. The easy camaraderie. Just this weird feeling that she could trust this man to the ends of the earth.
Not that she would get the chance, given that she was leaving the country in the blink of an eye.
‘Well, that sorts out my nagging doubts about my gender,’ Rafael returned without skipping a beat. ‘I’m a mouse.’
Amy laughed and marvelled that someone could be so tuned in to her quirky sense of humour! And later on, she marvelled that a man could have such physical stamina and then, close on the heels of that thought, that he could arouse her so quickly, so thoroughly and so often that she just couldn’t seem to get enough of him!
Of course, she cautioned herself the following day, as they explored more nooks and crannies along the coast, this was just a holiday romance. In fact, not even a romance as such. More of a fling. A fling without guilt or conscience.
In fact, as they enjoyed dinner her way, which meant jeans for him at a busy pizza bar that served the biggest pizzas she had ever seen, she told herself firmly that it was just as well their little dalliance was destined to be short-lived because it helpfully removed all those silly happy-ever-after romantic notions.
She could enjoy his company without looking for more. Looking for more was boring, she decided. The harder you looked for a future, the greater the chance that you were missing out on the present. And the present, two days later, was another trip to Manhattan, which was even more fantastic than the first because this time they were lovers. No arguments, no bristling, just the corny business of holding hands and thirstily fishing for information. And yet again he had managed to nab James’s company apartment, which was very handy to say the least.
It was only as her departure day became more than just round the corner that certain frightening home truths began to creep beneath her convenient layer of self-assurances.
The first self-assurance to go was that what she felt was only skin deep. It wasn’t.
The second was that leaving would be a blessing because it would eliminate pointless dreams. It wasn’t and it didn’t.
And then there was the small matter of just enjoying the moment. As her penultimate day drew to a close, she found that she just couldn’t enjoy the moment when she knew full well that there were no more moments to come.
She had been fed on a diet of amazing and now, as she stared down the road to a future of mediocres, she realised that she was greedy. She wanted more.
He had cooked for her. At his house. Nothing fancy but she got the feeling that it was something he seldom did, which made it special. It also made her wonder whether there might just be a slim chance that she actually meant something to him.
It hadn’t escaped her notice as the days had passed by that he had never, not once, not even in the heat of the moment when men, supposedly, said all sorts of rash things, talked about a future for them. She wasn’t asking him to bring out his diary and fix a date for two month’s time. She wasn’t asking him to start selling off his valuables so that he could spend the money on flights across the Atlantic. On the other hand he had not once mentioned even the slightest possibility that one day he might just decide to visit London.
Even after she had exhaustively dangled all the wonderful things there were for him to see there, all the fabulous places to visit. All the historical sights, some of which she fabricated as her knowledge of history was a little thin.#p#分页标题#e#
‘Don’t you ever…hmm…’ Amy aimed for the casual approach ‘…have the urge to leave this place?’
‘This place being…’ Rafael knew where the conversation was leading. Well, sooner or later it was going to happen because, however different she was from the women he had known, she wasn’t so different that she would be immune to the same desire to build a relationship.
And the conversation was surely bound to happen at a moment like this, when they had finished making love and were enjoying the pleasurable warmth of its aftermath. He shifted so that he could look at her and she curved round so that she could remain lying in the crook of his arm while being able to see his face. She wanted to search it for clues although she was pretty sure she would find none there.
‘This house. I mean, it’s a very nice house, but still…don’t you ever want to go gardening somewhere else? The world is full of big, challenging gardens, after all.’
‘This is a very big garden.’
‘I know it’s big, Rafael, but you must know it like the back of your hand. The trees, the plants, the rose bushes…’