The Final Seduction(5)

'And why Milmouth?' he asked, with interest.                       
       
           



       

She was grateful for the fact that her instinct had been correct-that  Drew wasn't judging her or her mother and finding them wanting.

'She wanted somewhere cheap to live, and couldn't face going back to Scotland with a baby and no father. And she loves the sea.'

He smiled. 'So do I, as a matter of fact. I never want to be away from the sea.'

'Me neither,' she said shyly, smiling back, realising that she had found her true-life hero.

But after that she rarely saw him-their lives diverged and the age-gap  was all wrong. Seven years could seem like a generation gap. She knew  that he had done well in his school exams, and knew that his teachers  had been disappointed when he became an apprentice carpenter. Everyone  thought that he'd go away to college.

'It's because he's good at making things,' his mother explained to  Shelley on the way back from the shops one day. 'Good with his hands.  And he likes the open air-says he doesn't want to be cooped up inside in  an office all day. Good luck to him, I say!'

Shelley saw him on the day he left school, with the best grades of his  year, and it took every bit of courage she possessed to go up to him and  congratulate him. 'I hear you're going to be a carpenter?'

He narrowed his blue eyes at her assessingly. 'What's the matter, Shelley-don't you think I'm aiming high enough?'

She shrugged her shoulders awkwardly. She was only eleven-so what did she know? 'It's not that,' she lied.

'Isn't it?'

'No. I just thought that you'd be-'

'A pilot?' he grinned. 'Or a doctor?'

'Maybe.'

'It's an insecure world, kitten-and people always need houses.'

'I guess they do.' And she blushed with pleasure to hear him call her 'kitten'.

Sometimes, when Shelley was up in her bedroom reading, she used to  glimpse him wandering home, stripped to the waist, all honed muscle and  bronzed perfection. And the words used to dance like hieroglyphics on  the page in front of her.

She was seventeen when he went travelling, originally for a year, but the wanderlust caught him and he was gone for much longer.

She remembered one of the last times she had seen him before he'd left.  She'd gone sunbathing further up the bay with a couple of  schoolfriends-hidden, they thought, by a large screen of rocks. Feeling  liberated and daring, they had removed their bikini tops. But Drew had  been out running along the beach, and had seen them. He had gone  absolutely ballistic, with Shelley in particular, and her friends had  teased her afterwards and said that must mean that he fancied her. And  she'd told them that of course he didn't fancy her, because he had  barely spoken to her again after that.

And suddenly he had gone.

Shelley had missed him. Missed him like mad. Sometimes she used to go  out with his sister Jennie, on Saturday nights. They would go to the  Smugglers pub or occasionally to one of the dances at the village hall,  or get the bus into Southchester. She'd look at every man and find him  wanting, by simple virtue of the fact that he wasn't Drew.

'Has your brother mentioned anything about coming home?' she asked Jennie casually one evening.

Jennie grinned. She was used to women asking her questions about her handsome big brother.

'Nope. Shall I write and say you were asking?'

'Just you dare!'

He came back three years later, just before Christmas-when the fairy  lights in the pubs twinkled like rainbow drops, reminding him of  everything he had missed about England.

Shelley was on her way home from her job as receptionist in Milmouth's  upmarket car showroom when she saw him, and had to bite back her  pleasure, because she didn't want to gush all over him like a silly  little girl.

'Hello, Drew,' she said softly. 'Jennie said you were coming home.'

'Is that really you, Shelley Turner?' he enquired, almost groaning when  he realised that this tousled-haired stunner from next door was even  more gorgeous than when he'd left. He hadn't thought that was possible.  But some time in the last three years she had developed the kind of  figure that drove men to sin, and her hair was a glossy sheet-the colour  of caramel. And he'd forgotten how delicate her skin was and how pale  the aquamarine of her eyes.

'Of course it's me!' she giggled. 'Who else did you think it was?'

'I'm not sure,' he answered slowly, his blue eyes looking dazzling in his tanned face. 'Are you going out tonight?'

'Just try and stop me! It's my birthday tomorrow,' she confided. 'And a whole gang of us are meeting up in the Smugglers.'                       
       
           



       

'Your birthday?' He frowned as alarm bells rang loudly in his brain. 'How old are you?'

She was slightly disappointed that he couldn't remember, but clever enough not to show it. 'I'll be twenty.'

'Wow! You'll be twenty? Well, isn't that just dandy!' His grin showed his relief. 'Mind if I join you?'

Mind? She would have spent all her birthday money on a red carpet if it  hadn't looked so obvious! 'No, I don't mind at all,' she answered  coolly.



He gave her a boab nut he'd picked up on his travels, with a piece of  glittery tinsel tied round it, and sat beside her in the pub, and  Shelley didn't want to talk to anyone else but him.

'So did you miss me, little girl?' he quizzed.

She had not yet learnt guile. 'Yes.' But something told her not to let him know how much. 'And I'm a big girl now.'

'So I see.' A pulse began to work in his temple. 'So I see.' To her  surprise, he trailed a finger along her cheek and gently tucked a stray  strand of hair behind her ear, then frowned. 'Since when did you start  wearing mascara?'

She blinked at him, perplexed. 'But I'm not.'

'You mean your lashes have always been that long?' he teased. 'And that dark?'

She laughed. 'I think so! Have you only just noticed, Drew?'

'Mmm. Right this very moment.' He looked terribly thoughtful, and  suddenly leaned across and kissed her softly on the lips, in front of  the whole pub-and that was that. They became an overnight item. Drew and  Shelley. Shelley and Drew. As inseparable as eggs and bacon or peaches  and cream.

Drew worked hard for his money. He took a regular job at the boatyard  and any other job which came his way-and plenty did. Craftsmen of his  calibre were rare enough but coupled with youthful vigour and  dedication-well, it seemed that everyone wanted a piece of him. Once a  week he went on day release to college and night-times he studied for  higher certificates in construction and building.

And the only person who seemed to be missing out was his girlfriend …

'Oh, Drew!' Shelley sighed, one day, when he'd snatched a moment to eat  his lunchtime sandwiches with her, sitting side by side on the sea wall.  'You're always working!'

'Listen, kitten, the money's good and it's money we need if we want any kind of future together.'

'But I never see you any more!'

'You'll see as much of me as you like once we have a place of our own,'  he promised, and kissed the tips of her fingers, one by one. 'And guess  what?'

'What?'

'The coastguard's cottage is still on the market!' He could barely contain his excitement.

'What, that old place?' Shelley elongated her mouth into a grimace. 'I'm  not surprised! They probably can't give it away. You'd need to  virtually knock it down and start again to make it habitable!'

'But I can do that,' he shrugged modestly. 'That's what I'm training for. That and making you happy.'

'You do,' she pouted, so that he would kiss her.

And when he'd kissed her so that she could barely catch her breath he grinned and said, 'Want to get married?'

'Oh, yes, please!'

'Soon?'

'How soon?'

'Very soon!' he groaned.

He even asked her mother's permission, and Shelley couldn't ever  remember seeing her mother look so happy and relieved. Glad that Shelley  would have the emotional security she had always longed for.

He bought her a tiny diamond ring which twinkled discreetly on her finger when she held it up to the light.

'It's very small,' someone remarked nastily.

'No, it's perfect,' she disagreed fiercely. 'And you're just jealous!'

They decided that they would get married just as soon as they had saved  up enough money to buy the coastguard's cottage and everything was  nearly perfect.

But they never made love. Not all the way.

Behind the wooden huts on the windswept beach, their kisses grew wilder,  their caresses more frantic-but Drew always calmed things down, made  them stop. Shelley felt churned up and bewildered.

She knew that there had been women on his travels. Nothing he'd said,  but little things he'd let slip. Sometimes a letter would arrive from  some far-off destination and he would scour the envelope and toss it  into the bin unread. Once, she saw a postcard from a woman called Angie,  the contents of which were graphic enough to make her feel sick.