The Final Seduction(16)

'No, Shelley!' he put in fiercely. 'There are plenty of things you can  beat yourself up about-but that isn't one of them. Your mother's death  was premature, yes, but natural-the doctors all said so!'

'But I didn't come and see her for a year!' she moaned. 'And when I did  it was too late-she was lying in a coma and couldn't hear me!'

'You couldn't have predicted that would happen!' he argued. 'I went away  from home for three years, remember? Something similar could have  happened to me, but it didn't. You were just unlucky.'

'Yes.'

'Hey!' he said softly.

She looked up at him. 'What?'

'Your mother got over your defection, you know, Shelley.' His smile was  almost gentle. 'Mothers always do-once they realise they can't plot out  their children's lives for them.'

'You can't know that!'

'Yes, I can-because she told me.'

'Did she? Really?'

'Really,' he nodded.

'Oh.' Some of the burden lifted from her shoulders. 'I'm still sorry for  what happened,' she said simply. 'And for the way it happened.'

He gave a short laugh. 'Me, too.'

'I should have-'

'Shh.' He shook his head and the candlelight emphasised the honeyed  gleam which tipped each dark strand. 'We can't change anything by  wishing we'd behaved any differently. We just have to deal with what  really happened.'

'Oh, Drew!'

He looked at her thoughtfully. 'Eat your soup, Shelley,' was all he said.

He didn't say another thing as Shelley began to steadily eat her soup  with the air of someone who had only just realised what hunger meant.  Words would distract her, and she didn't need any more distractions, not  at the moment. Right now she needed to eat.

He didn't know what he had expected to feel about her. Over the years he  had anticipated many reactions when he saw her again. If he saw her  again. He had never been able to count on that, despite his own gut  feeling, despite what her mother had once said to him. His favourite  response to her had been one of complete indifference, but even in his  most furious moments of denial he had known that one was a non-starter.

His imagination had given her and the Italian at least one child  together. And an idyllic relationship-in the way that other people's  relationships always looked idyllic. Frustration and hurt pride had  subsided over the years, until they could be filed away as experience.  He had convinced himself that he was well rid of the bitch.

Yet life was never that simple. Something inside him had flared when he  had seen her today on the beach, her fingers bare of rings. So was that  simply lust? Fuelled by absence and the fact that he had never tasted  her body in the way which had haunted his dreams for as long as he could  remember?

'Oh, that was good!'

He watched as she finished the soup and put her spoon down, looking up  at him with a glowing face which made her look about sixteen years old.  Or seventeen …

'You haven't even touched yours,' she observed.
                       
       
           



       
'No.' He didn't want it. He had lost his appetite. Or rather he'd lost  that particular appetite. Another-sharper and much more intense-was  raging inside him like a wild storm right now. 'It's grown cold. I think  I'll skip.'

Shelley nodded and ate some bread, and he watched while the life and the colour came back into her cheeks.

'So tell me about Milmouth,' she said. Anything to distract him, to stop  him from staring at her like that. Because she was feeling the  strongest urge to push back her chair and grab him by the hand and pull  him to his feet and …  'Has it-er-changed at all?'

He smiled. 'What's this? Distraction technique?'

'It's called making conversation!' she snapped, thinking how perceptive he was.

As opposed to making love, he thought ruefully, before he remembered. If  he and Shelley did get physical, it would not be termed making love-not  by anybody's definition. Not now, and not after all that had happened.  It would be explosive, probably amazing, and certainly shattering-sex.  That was all.

'Well, we have a good general store now, which is trying-and largely  succeeding-to attract customers away from the big out-of-town stores.  And there are a lot of arty-crafty people moving in-'

'To Milmouth?' she asked, surprised.

'Uh-huh. There's now a craft shop in the old bakery, which holds  workshops in the winter months. You can make silver jewellery or learn  to paint. And there's a very good vegetarian restaurant-one of several  new restaurants which have opened up. The down-side is, of course, that  house prices are going up. But people seem to be opting out of  stress-filled city life.'

'And coming to Milmouth?' she asked in surprise.

'Why not? And speaking of opting out-did you know that Geoff sold the car showroom?'

Shelley shook her head. 'I wasn't really in Geoff's good books when I left. What's he doing now?'

'Would you believe he's bought an organic farm?'

'Geoff?' Shelley giggled. 'Very trendy!'

'And very successful, apparently.' He looked at the way the candlelight  flickered over her face. It was odd, this slotting into relaxed  ways-feeling comfortable sitting at a table with her. Finding that  talking to her was still as easy as a summer's morning. Surely it  shouldn't still feel like that?

'So Milmouth's the place to be?'

He nodded. 'Easy to see why-it's an exquisite location, right by the sea, and it's relatively inexpensive.'

'Those are precisely the reasons I'm here myself,' she agreed pensively.

'Oh, Shelley!' he mocked. 'Didn't I even enter into the equation?'

'Yes! And nearly put me off coming back at all,' she told him truthfully, wondering why that should cause him to smile.

He joined in with the food once the fish arrived, but drank only coffee  while Shelley ploughed her way through a portion of chocolate mousse and  cream.

'Wow! When you break a resolution you really go for it, don't you?' he remarked softly.

She searched his face for hidden meanings, but there were none and she  realised that the evening had passed in a pleasant blur. Apart from that  bit at the beginning, they hadn't really gone in for recrimination and  heavy analysis. Thank the Lord. She didn't think she could have taken  it-it would have been too much coming on top of everything else.

'Like some coffee?'

Shelley yawned. To be honest the food had provided a distraction as well  as filling the gaping hole of hunger. It had been easier to put her  head down and plough through the soup and that delicious fish than to  have to meet that ocean-blue gaze head-on. And now she had eaten so much  that she felt she must have gained at least ten pounds! She felt that  her legs would barely be able to carry her back upstairs.

Which was good. She wanted to hit that pillow and just crash out. It was  not on her agenda to lie awake half the night tossing and turning,  unable to get Drew's face out of her mind.

He saw her flagging and was infuriated by the sudden surge of  protectiveness which washed over him. He guessed that old habits died  hard. He would do the same for any woman who looked ready to drop, he  told himself. 'You look like you're ready for bed,' he murmured.

It was perhaps unfortunate that the way he said it made it sound full of  sexual intent, and that a well-preserved woman in her forties who was  passing their table on the way to the powder room heard him. She must  have done. Why else did she ogle him, before raising her eyebrows  slightly and passing Shelley a look of shrugging envy?                       
       
           



       

Shelley bristled at the implication. 'I suppose you think that for the  price of a discounted meal in a fancy restaurant I'm just going to fall  straight into bed with you, do you, Drew?'

Her voice carried more than she had intended, or perhaps there was just a  natural lull in the general low-pitched hubbub of the dining room.  Whatever the reasons, the room grew silent and she could feel the eyes  of every person in the place-bar the few people who were too polite to  turn their heads-looking at them.

He studied her from across the table with eyes which were chilly now.  'That isn't my usual modus operandi, no. But maybe it's yours. After  all, isn't that precisely what happened all those years ago? Only he got  away without even having to buy you a meal!'

She glared at him, not caring about the interested faces of the other  diners as she began to fumble around in her handbag. 'I should never  have agreed to eat with you! Or did you think that saying you wanted us  to be equals gave you the go-ahead to just sit there insulting me?' She  pulled out her purse and caught the waiter's eye, trying to calm her  rage as he hurried over to their table. 'Can we have the bill, please?'

'Now what do you think you're doing?' growled Drew.

'What does it look like? I'm paying my share of the bill, of course!'  She extracted a couple of crisp notes. 'That way no one owes anyone  anything! And certainly not in the bed stakes! Got that?'