By Marriage Divided

by Lindsay Armstrong

  She carried a navy raffia holdall and she’d also brought a small cool-box although he’d told her he would provide the picnic. She wasn’t sure whether it was in the spirit of wanting to make a contribution or just wanting to be independent, but she’d made a carrot cake, packed some fruit and cheese, a bottle of soft drink and a flask of Blue Mountain coffee.

  At three minutes past ten the now-familiar dark green Range Rover drew up outside her building and Angus Keir got out wearing buff shorts and a lime-green polo shirt.

  They met on the pavement and it struck Domenica that he had a habit of looking her over unsmilingly—as he did for a long, curiously tense little moment. Then a glimmer of a smile twisted his lips and he put out his hand.

  She shook it and said gravely, ‘Does this mean I pass muster?’

  He kept hold of her hand. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes, Domenica. And even the weather, which I was sure was going to obey your caution that fate wouldn’t always be on my side, has come good.’

  She laughed, genuinely, and couldn’t repress the warm little trill that ran through her although she said teasingly, ‘You’re not too bad yourself, Angus. Have you found us a deserted beach?’

  It wasn’t quite deserted but being a weekday helped. And the beach was a golden curve of sand backed by green cliffs, the sun was hot and the surf was magnificent.

  After their swim, Angus set up an umbrella and shook out a blanket beside a small, rocky headland. And he set out lunch. Cold chicken, crusty rolls, a Greek salad with creamy feta cheese and plump black olives glistening beneath a tangy dressing. There was also an avocado salsa made with tomatoes, chillies, onion and basil. The plates were white melamine, the cutlery had brightly coloured acrylic handles, and the glasses had pewter stems. He also produced napkins printed with sailing ships and a pottery cooler for the wine.

  Domenica sat on her towel in her sleek iris-blue one-piece swimsuit, and watched these preparations as she squeezed and combed her hair. ‘Very impressive, for a bachelor,’ she murmured and reached for her sun cream.

  He grimaced. ‘I can’t take the credit. My housekeeper did it all.’

  She smiled. ‘So, if it had been left to you, what would you have done to keep the hunger pangs at bay?’

  He raked his dark, wet hair out of his eyes and squinted around. ‘Hopped in the car and found the nearest hamburger or hot-dog stall.’

  Domenica burst out laughing. ‘I wouldn’t have minded, you know! I’ve never been known to say no to a hamburger.’

  Angus looked down at his repast ruefully. ‘Now you tell me. Mrs Bush will be heartbroken.’

  ‘No, she won’t, I promise I’ll do her meal full justice. I also adore cold chicken and the salad and salsa look divine.’

  He sat down and reached for the wine—they’d slaked their thirst with Domenica’s barley water as soon as they’d come out of the water. He was wearing a pair of navy board shorts with a red trim and droplets glistened on the bronzed width of his shoulders. There was a sprinkling of dark hairs down his chest and on his legs, and even in repose his body was powerful.

  She said, to take her mind off it, ‘You swim surprisingly well for a boy who didn’t see the sea until he was seventeen.’

  He pulled the cork from the bottle with a corkscrew and replied mildly, ‘There are dams and creeks in the outback, Domenica. It’s just not the same as the sea.’

  ‘Of course.’ She looked uncomfortable.

  ‘So do you, incidentally—swim well.’ He poured two glasses of wine.

  She was silent as she accepted hers and sipped it.

  ‘Have I said something wrong?’ he asked after a few minutes.

  ‘No.’ She shrugged. ‘I just seem to keep putting my foot into things.’

  His grey eyes narrowed on her and his lips twitched. ‘Why don’t we take another tack, then? Let’s not try to make conversation or keep things merely pleasant between us.’

  She blinked. ‘Is that what you think I’m trying to do?’

  He put his glass down and dished up some chicken and salad for her, and he didn’t respond in kind, just glinted a keen little glance her way.

  She took her plate and thanked him, then sighed suddenly. ‘I don’t seem to know where to start. I was going to ask you if you’ve stayed at Lidcombe Peace but even that is fraught with innuendo.’

  ‘I’m moving in the weekend after next.’

  ‘So—you’re going to live there? Full-time, I mean?’

  ‘Why should that surprise you?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she confessed and waved the chicken leg she was eating with her fingers. ‘For such a consummate businessman, I thought you’d prefer to live in the city, I guess.’

  ‘I’ll still have a place in the city and I’ll still spend most of the week in town but, forgive me—’ he looked at her humorously ‘—those acres of Lidcombe Peace are crying out to be made some use of. So I’m going to improve the pastures and breed stud cattle, amongst other things. Which means new fencing, dams, et cetera. I also plan to keep a few horses and I may branch out into alpaca farming. Do you ride, by the way?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said enthusiastically.

  He paused and looked down at his plate, then went on thoughtfully, ‘You see, these days, you can virtually run a business at the touch of a button. And Lidcombe Peace, for someone like me, who was brought up to huge distances, is only a stone’s throw from my headquarters anyway. But I’ve reached the stage in my life when I need something else to do as well as make money.’

  ‘I’m…’ Domenica studied him seriously ‘…happy to hear that!’

  He looked up at last, wryly. ‘The money bit?’

  ‘No.’ She waved her drumstick again. ‘My Lidcombe grandmother did run cattle there and, while my father did love the place, she always used to bemoan the fact that he let that side of things slide. I think she’d be delighted to hear your plans for it. So, there’s still something of the land in your blood, Angus?’

  ‘Apparently,’ he murmured. ‘There were two things I did well: rounding up sheep on horseback and understanding the mechanics of car motors.’

  ‘That’s not quite what I heard—’ Domenica stopped and frowned. ‘Yet you couldn’t start my car three and a half weeks ago?’

  ‘Well…’ he finished his lunch and put his knife and fork together ‘…as a matter of fact I could have, temporarily.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you?’ Her expression was haughty.

  He looked humble but utterly falsely so—if you were beginning to get to know the different glints in his eyes. ‘Sorry, ma’am—’

  Domenica clicked her tongue frustratedly. ‘Don’t start that again!’ she warned.

  ‘I thought it might have been the other way around but,’ he said hastily, ‘had you, for any reason, had to stop the motor on your way back, you may have still been in the same spot. Although that wasn’t my main reason.’

  A look of utter exasperation chased across Domenica’s face.

  ‘I wanted to have lunch with you, that’s all,’ he said simply.

  ‘As in all’s fair in love and war—I mean, does that explain why you’re looking particularly smug at the moment, Angus Keir?’ she queried ominously.

  ‘Well—’ he scanned her from head to toe ‘—put it this way, you look like a particularly lovely although rather stern mermaid at the moment, who is quite capable, however, of luring me to my—undoing.’

  She relaxed unwittingly, she just couldn’t help herself, although she said, ‘That kind of talk will get you nowhere!’

  ‘Would you come down and spend a weekend at Lidcombe Peace with me, Domenica?’

  She stilled utterly; her breathing even seemed to suspend itself for a fleeting second.

  ‘Would it be that painful?’ he queried. ‘To see it as your grandmother wanted it to be?’

  ‘Would that be your only motive in asking me, Angus?’ she responded at last.

  ‘No. I could dine you and wine you, n
ot to mention dance with you until the cows come home or even bring you to the beach…’ he looked around ‘…but with a project that’s dear to your heart, with horses to ride and a wonderful place to do it, we could get to know each other in a different, less superficial way.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE tide was going out, leaving a silver tracery on the sand, and the surf was gentler. Some expectant seagulls were hovering for titbits and squabbling amongst themselves as they jockeyed for positions. Domenica watched their red legs and beady eyes and felt the heat of the day, almost like a cloak, on her skin. The beach was now deserted except for one lone fisherman and even he was packing up to go home.

  Siesta time, she thought, except for ever-hungry seagulls, and with an effort raised her gaze to Angus Keir’s.

  ‘You don’t think your real motivation could be to make you feel like the lord of the manor at the same time as you set out to seduce me in my old home?’ she asked.

  ‘Seduce you?’ he said sceptically. ‘How? By force?’

  ‘How would I know if that’s not how you like to get your kicks, Angus?’ she answered tautly. ‘But—’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ he interposed, with a scathing look of condemnation in his eyes. ‘You’d have read about it in the paper. I’d be in jail if that’s how my tastes ran.’

  She gestured frustratedly, and with an undercurrent of embarrassment she couldn’t quite hide. ‘Even so—all right! That may have been uncalled for,’ she conceded, ‘but, apart from anything else, why do a man and a woman spend a weekend together? And don’t you think it would reawaken some memories I’d prefer to forget—going back to Lidcombe Peace?’

  ‘Not if you’re the realist you claim you are, Domenica. But I have to doubt that assessment of yourself on at least two fronts now. This persistent wish to dissociate your mind from what your body tells me being one of them.’

  She got to her knees and put her hands on her hips. ‘Do you know why I came today?’

  ‘I can guess,’ he drawled, stretching his legs out and propping his head negligently on one elbow. ‘To pat me on the head because you felt a little sorry for an underprivileged boy who got tears in his eyes at the sight of the sea but, principally, to prove how unaffected you could be by the physical, sensuous reaction we share towards one another.’

  She gasped.

  ‘And yes—’ he sat up and captured her outraged blue gaze ‘—I think I would enjoy being lord of the manor at Lidcombe Peace, but only because I’ve never before encountered the purely patronizing manner you display so effectively, Domenica Harris.’

  She shot to her feet, closing her mouth with a click, then opened it, but before she could marshal her thoughts he stood up outside the circle of the umbrella and pulled her into his arms.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said barely audibly as she was momentarily stunned into offering no resistance, ‘we haven’t been mentally circling every damn thing about each other from the time we took our clothes off.’

  The tide of colour that poured into her cheeks told its own tale.

  He smiled but not amusedly. ‘And don’t tell me it doesn’t feel good for both of us, to be in each other’s arms like this instead of torturing ourselves with the mental images of it.’

  Every sane, rational ethic she possessed told Domenica to deny this charge. She even started to say that, far from being in each other’s arms, she was in his arms but not by choice. Then it occurred to her she was no prisoner and the only reason she couldn’t simply walk away was because some strange fascination within her refused to let her.

  The same thing, only muted, that had warmed her when she’d first laid eyes upon him, tall, dark and good to look upon in his shorts and lime-green shirt, this morning. The same fascination that had flared up between them two nights ago was lighting her senses once again, only now she had less than her little black dress to shield her. And he had less to hide how streamlined and strong he was, how brown and essentially masculine.

  But why so spellbinding? she found herself wondering wildly. So unlike what any man had ever done to her before. So that her heart was racing as his hands moved up from her waist towards her breasts beneath her swimsuit, her pulses were hammering but with the next thought springing to mind being—this will do it! Surely no man could touch her like this against her will without—what?

  Drawing a response from her that was instinctive and even made her gasp with delight, she discovered. Because those strong, nice hands were also wise and gentle, she found. And they could dispense sensations that washed through her like waves of pure pleasure. Then he took his hands away and pulled her into his arms again, and she heard him say her name unevenly into her hair. One word, she marvelled, but it made it feel like the most natural thing in the world, when his lips sought hers then, to surrender to his kiss with undisguised rapture.

  A clap of thunder finally drew them apart, then the odd raindrop but stinging like a missile, started to fall on them, and for a moment they could both only stare upwards at the black storm-tossed clouds above them in genuine disbelief.

  Until he stepped back from her and said wryly, ‘I rest my case.’

  She closed her eyes briefly and turned away from him. But before either of them could add anything it started to pour and lightning flashed across the clouds in brilliant zigzags.

  With one accord, they packed up as best they could, gathered everything they could possibly carry and stumbled through the sand to the path that led to the car park. And it was like two drowned rats that they eventually and breathlessly slammed themselves into the comfortable front seats of the Range Rover as the storm continued to rage.

  ‘Oh, I’m making puddles all over your seat!’ Domenica groaned as she pushed her dripping hair out of her eyes and shivered.

  ‘They’ll dry. Here.’ He reached across to the back seat and produced a lightweight, zip-front jacket lined with checked flannel. ‘All the towels, the blanket, everything else, are soaked.’

  ‘Thanks, but what about you?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’ll warm up—did you say you’d brought some coffee? That’s the one thing Mrs Bush didn’t think of.’

  ‘Yes! And some carrot cake.’ Domenica shrugged into his jacket and twisted around to look over the back of her seat, then knelt up on it. ‘I can reach it easier than you may be able to.’ Five minutes later she handed him a cup of still-steaming coffee and a piece of carrot cake on a paper plate.

  When she had her own coffee and cake, she settled back and said humorously, ‘We should have known. It poured yesterday and that stormy, summer heat was really building up!’

  He balanced his cup on the dashboard and ate some cake before he said, ‘Yes. Listen, I think you should rest your case too, Domenica.’

  ‘Angus—’ she hesitated ‘—I—’

  ‘What I mean is—you’re charged with nothing more than I am. It happened because neither of us could help it. But if you don’t care to admit anything else, even to yourself, I think you should admit that.’

  ‘All right, I do,’ she said after a long pause during which the storm started to abate. ‘But there’s not much more I want to—think about at this stage.’

  He put his arm along the back of her seat and studied her with detached interest. ‘Do you want me to come to dinner with your mother Friday week?’

  Domenica flinched inwardly because she could sense the change of atmosphere. While the tension might be slackening outside as the storm swept out to sea, tension was gathering and threading the air with pointed little barbs within the Range Rover.

  Perhaps she had initiated it, she reflected, but he had come back with a counter-punch that had activated all her old doubts, all her instinctive wariness of this man. And brought all her mother’s problems to the fore again.

  She looked across at him at last. His dark hair was flattened to his head and hanging in his eyes. The little star-shaped scar at the end of one eyebrow seemed to stand out more, perhaps because he was cold. Bu
t his grey eyes were shockingly indifferent as they roamed her still-damp skin and the way her amazing eyelashes were clumped together with droplets of moisture, then it came to rest on her mouth.

  I am not going to be steamrollered into bed by this man! She didn’t say it but she thought it. I am not going to be swamped by a tidal wave of sensuality although I can’t deny it exists between us. I am going to get my mother’s affairs sorted out before I go any further down this road, Angus Keir. It’s the only way I might be able to…get things into a proper perspective….

  Then she muttered, ‘What the hell?’ and said it all word for word.

  A weak ray of sunlight lit the interior of the car as she finished speaking.

  She blinked, then blinked again because, instead of the cynical disdain she’d been expecting, his eyes had started to dance in that disconcerting way they sometimes had.

  ‘You’re not—going to shoot me down in flames?’ Her expression was incredulous.

  ‘I always admire a fighter, even when I’m the one on the ropes,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t let it fool you into a false sense of security, however, Domenica. Because I don’t intend to give up. So. Dinner with you and your mother on Friday or not? I can always take her to dinner on her own if you like.’

  ‘No,’ she said rapidly, then breathed heavily and could have shot him for the undisguised amusement in his eyes now.

  To make matters worse he added, ‘If you’re really afraid of what I might put her up to, I agree, you’d be better off being there.’

  She clenched her teeth. ‘All right.’

  He reached for the key and started the Range Rover. ‘Then let me get you home.’ He swung the wheel and drove out of the car park. But he looked at her as he stopped to check the traffic before turning onto the road. ‘Was it all a penance today, though?’

  ‘It was,’ she swallowed then said with gloomy honesty, ‘one of the nicer days I’ve spent for a while, for the most part.’