Barefoot Bride

by Jessica Hart

  ‘You won’t need shoes,’ Will had said when they’d got into the boat that morning, but Alice had refused to leave them behind in the car.

  ‘I feel more comfortable with shoes on,’ she had said. ‘You never know when you’re going to need them to run away.’

  ‘You won’t be able to run very far on the reef,’ Will had pointed out, but she’d only lifted her chin at him.

  ‘I’m keeping them on.’

  Alice would always want an escape-route planned, he realised as he watched her pause and look out across the translucent green of the lagoon to where the deep blue of the Indian Ocean frothed in bright white against the far reef. She would always want to be able to run away, just as she had run away from him before.

  She wouldn’t be here now if she didn’t have that ticket home, Will remembered. It would be foolish to let himself hope that she might stay. She wasn’t going to, and he had to accept that now. Consciously steadying his heart, he made himself think coolly and practically. He mustn’t be seduced by the sea and the sunlight and Alice’s smile. Sure, he could enjoy today, but he wouldn’t expect it to last. There were no for evers where Alice was concerned.

  When Lily woke up, she ran instantly down to join Alice at the water’s edge. Will watched them both, and tried not to mind that his daughter so obviously preferred Alice’s company to his. Tried not to worry, too, how she would manage when Alice was gone.

  He could see them bending down to examine things they found on the beach. Alice was crouching down, turning something in her hand and showing it to Lily, who took it and studied it carefully.

  And then it happened.

  ‘Daddy!’ she cried, running up the beach towards him. ‘Daddy, look!’

  It was a cowrie shell, small but perfect, with an unusual leopard pattern on its back, but Will hardly noticed it. He was overwhelmed by the fact that Lily had run to him, had called him Daddy, had wanted him to share in her pleasure, and his throat closed so tightly with emotion that it was hard to speak.

  ‘This is a great shell,’ he managed. ‘It’s an unusual one, too. You were very clever to find it.’

  ‘Alice found it,’ Lily admitted with reluctant honesty, and Will looked up to see Alice, who had followed more slowly up the beach. Their eyes met over Lily’s dark head, and she smiled at him, knowing exactly what Lily’s excited dash up the beach had meant to him.

  Will smiled back, pushing the future firmly out of his mind. He knew the day wouldn’t last for ever, but right then, with Lily’s intent face, the feel of the shell in his palm, and Alice smiling at him, it was enough.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WILL was thinking about that day out on the reef as he sat on the verandah with Alice and the hot air creaked with the pressure of the oncoming storm. He had done his best to keep his distance from her since then.

  Again and again, he had reminded himself that she would be leaving soon and that there was no point in noticing the curve of her mouth, or the line of her throat, or the sheen of her skin in the crushing heat. No point in remembering how she felt, how she tasted. No point in thinking about how sweet and exciting and right it had felt to make love to her.

  Not doing any of that was definitely the sensible thing to do. But it was hard.

  ‘Listen!’ Alice held up a hand suddenly, startling Will out of his thoughts.

  ‘What is it? Is it Lily?’ he asked, instantly anxious in case he had missed a cry.

  ‘It’s the insects.’

  Will looked at her puzzled. ‘What insects?’

  ‘Exactly. They’ve stopped.’

  And, sure enough, the deafening rasp, scratch and shrill of the insects, that was such a familiar backdrop to the evenings here that Will barely heard it any more, had paused and in its place was an uncanny silence.

  The next instant there was a rip of lightning in the distance, an almighty crack of thunder overhead, and a deluge of rain came crashing down onto the roof. One second there had been the hot, heavy, waiting silence, the next there was nothing but sound and fury and the pounding, thundering, hammering rain. It fell not in drops but as a solid mass, bouncing back in the air as it hit solid ground, and overwhelming the gutters so that it simply cascaded in a sheet over the edge of the verandah.

  Alice laughed with sheer delight. ‘I love it when it rains like this!’ she shouted to Will, but it was doubtful that he could hear her over the deafening roar of the rain.

  Caught up in the elemental excitement of the downpour, she jumped to her feet. The sheer power of it was awe-inspiring, almost frightening, but exhilarating at the same time. Alice could feel the raw energy of it surging around the verandah, pushing and pulling at her, making her blood pound.

  Normally she hated feeling so out of control, but a tropical downpour was different. She knew it wouldn’t last very long, but while it did she could feel wild and reckless, the way she would never allow herself to be the rest of the time.

  She looked at Will, who had got to his feet too, moved by the same restless excitement generated by the breaking of the pressure that had been pressing down on them for the last few days. He was watching the rain, his intelligent face alive with interest, the stern mouth curling upwards into an almost-smile, and, as her eyes rested on him, Alice was gripped by a hunger to touch him once more, to feel his hard hands against her skin, to abandon herself to the electricity in the air.

  Instinctively, she took a step towards him, just at the moment when the force of the rain finally succeeded in dislodging part of the roof and poured through a hole directly onto her head. If Alice had stayed where she was, the water would have splashed harmlessly onto the verandah, but as it was she was drenched instantly.

  It felt as if someone had tipped a bucket over her, and she gasped with the shock of it before she started to laugh again. It was like standing under a waterfall, the water cool and indescribably refreshing after the suffocating heat, and as it was too late to get dry Alice closed her eyes and tipped her face up to the cascading water.

  In seconds her dress was clinging to her, and her shoes-her favourite jewelled kitten-heels-were probably ruined, but right then Alice didn’t care. Pulling the clip from her hair, she shook it free and let the rain plaster it to her head as it ran in rivulets over her face and down her throat.

  Will had been unable not to laugh at the sight of her ambushed by the leak in the roof, but as he watched her close her eyes and turn her face up to the water, as he watched the fine fabric of her dress stick to her breasts and hips, as he watched the rain sliding over skin, his smile faded at the extraordinary sensuality of the scene, and his body tightened.

  As if sensing his reaction, Alice opened her eyes. Her lashes were wet and spiky, and she had to blink against the water running over her face, but her gaze was dark and steady.

  There was no need for either of them to say anything. They both knew that the careful defences they had built over the last couple of weeks were no match for the downpour. For tonight, the rules, their hopes and their fears, meant nothing. There was only the two of them, the crackle of electricity, and the drumming rain. When Will reached for her, Alice reached out at the same time and tugged him under the rain still pouring through the hole in the roof.

  They kissed with the water spilling around them, trickling from his skin onto hers, and from hers to his, their bodies pressing so close that it couldn’t find a way between them. They kissed and kissed and kissed again, hard, hungry kisses that fed on the power of the downpour and on the spiralling excitement that spun and surged as they touched each other with increasing urgency. Their hands moved instinctively over each other, clutching, clasping, sliding, shifting, finding long-remembered secret places, rediscovering the feel and the taste and the touch of each other.

  ‘Will…’ Alice pressed her lips to his throat in fevered kisses, revelling in the feel of his body, in the wonderful, familiar smell of his skin, arching and shuddering with pleasure at the touch of his hands, the taste of his mouth, Ho
w could she have told herself that she had forgotten how it felt? ‘Will…’ she gasped, inarticulate with need.

  ‘What?’ he murmured raggedly against her throat. They might as well have been naked already. Their clothes were plastered to their wet bodies, and should have felt cold and clammy, but the heat of their beating blood was keeping them warm. Will wouldn’t have been surprised to see steam rising.

  Alice didn’t know what she wanted to say, didn’t know how to tell him how she felt. Her mind was reeling with pleasure, and all she could think about was the clamour of her body, the desire that was running rampant, unstoppable, out of control…

  ‘Tell me what you want, Alice,’ Will whispered, and then lifted his head so that he could look down into her face, his own streaked with water now too.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Alice helplessly.

  But she did know. She wanted him. She wanted more of him, all of him. She wanted him closer, harder, inside her. She wanted him completely-but the very strength of her need was beginning to alarm her, while a small voice of reason inside her was insinuating itself into the wild recklessness that had gripped her, telling her to be careful, reminding her about the past and the future, about the risk of abandoning herself utterly to the moment.

  Oh, how she wanted to, though!

  ‘I want…’ she began unsteadily, and then swallowed. ‘I want to pretend that this is all there is,’ she told him at last.

  ‘This is all there is,’ said Will. ‘This is all that matters.’ And, taking her hand, he led her inside and out of the rain.

  Alice lay next to Will and let her pounding blood slow, her breathing steady. Her entire body was still thrumming with satisfaction, and she felt heady and boneless. It was impossible to regret what had happened, even now the wildness and the excitement of the night had dissipated. Their bodies had remembered each other with a heart-stopping clarity, their senses snarling and tangling and tantalizing, surrendering together to the soaring rhythm of love until they’d shattered with release.

  It had been wonderful. She could hardly pretend otherwise when the glory was still beating through her veins and shimmering out to the very tips of her toes. And it hadn’t been wrong. They were both single, both free, both responsible adults. No one was going to be hurt by what they had done.

  But…

  Why did it feel as if that huge ‘but’ was hovering, just waiting to be acknowledged?

  Alice turned her head on the pillow to look at Will. He was lying on his back, and she could see his chest rising and falling unevenly as his breathing returned to normal. Outside it was still raining, although not with the ferocity of earlier, and the sound was comforting rather than exhilarating. If it had rained like this earlier, would they have still ended up in bed?

  Perhaps. Probably, even. If Alice was going to be honest, she would have to admit that she had been finding it harder and harder to resist the tug of attraction as the days had passed. She’d only had to look at him reading a story to Lily, or at the helm of the boat, his hair lifting in the breeze and his eyes full of sunlight, or lifting a glass to his lips, and her mouth would dry and her stomach would clench. She could say what she liked about being friends, but the old chemistry was still there, and they both knew it.

  So, yes, perhaps tonight had been inevitable, but what now? They couldn’t just go back to the careful way they had been before, but what other choice did they have? A tiny sigh escaped Alice as she stared up at the ceiling. She should have made it clear to Will that it had just been the storm, and that she wasn’t expecting anything to change just because they had made love tonight.

  ‘You know, you don’t need to fret.’ Will’s voice came unexpectedly out of the darkness, making Alice jump.

  ‘I’m not fretting!’

  ‘Yes, you are.’ Will rolled so that he could prop himself up on one elbow and look down at where she lay, her bare skin luminous in the faint light and her hair still wet and tangled on the pillow. ‘I know you, Alice. You’re planning your escape route right now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked uneasily.

  ‘You always look for a way out before there’s any chance that you might end up committing yourself.’

  ‘That’s rubbish!’ she scoffed, but not quite as convincingly as she would have liked. Will certainly wasn’t fooled.

  ‘Is it? Don’t try and tell me you weren’t lying there trying to work out how soon you could tell me that you only wanted this for tonight, that it didn’t mean anything to you and that it wasn’t meant to be for ever.’

  ‘What did you think it was?’ retorted Alice, glad that he had found the words for her.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking at all.’ Will’s wry smile gleamed in the darkness. ‘I can’t say I regret it, though. It wasn’t something either of us planned, but I think it was something we both wanted-or are you going to deny that?’

  ‘No, I’m not going to deny it,’ she said in a low voice. ‘There’s always been a special chemistry between us.’

  ‘I know that. You don’t need to worry, Alice.’ Will reached out and lifted a lock of her wet hair, rubbing it gently between his fingers. ‘You don’t need to explain or make excuses. I know you’re leaving, so you don’t have to think of a way out. Let’s just leave tonight as an itch that we both scratched.’

  It ought to have made Alice feel better, but somehow it didn’t. She knew that Will was right, and that he was giving her exactly what she needed, but she didn’t want to be an itch.

  Sitting up, she pushed her damp hair away from her face and reached down for the sheet that had slipped unheeded to the floor much earlier. ‘Is that it?’ she asked almost sharply as she wrapped it around her.

  ‘What more can it be?’

  ‘Well…there’s still three weeks or so until I go,’ she found herself saying.

  There was a pause. ‘What are you suggesting, Alice?’ he asked, and it was impossible to tell from his voice what he was thinking. ‘That we keep scratching that itch?’

  ‘If that’s how you want to think of it.’ Alice bit her lip and pulled more of the sheet onto the bed. ‘You were right about the way out. There’s no point in pretending that I’m not leaving in three weeks’ time, so I’m not making any promises. I wouldn’t want you to think that I’m talking about for ever.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Will, at his most dry. ‘I learnt a long time ago never to think of you and for ever in the same sentence.’

  ‘Then, if we both know that, why not make the most of it?’

  Part of Alice was rearing up in alarm at her insistence, and warning her that nothing good could come of getting involved with Will again. It was all very well to talk about scratching an itch, but, once you had given in to the need, it was almost impossible to stop. It was madness to think that she could sleep with him for three weeks and then calmly walk away. Better to leave things as they were, as Will himself had suggested, and treat tonight as a one-off. She had a nice house and a life to go back to in London. That was enough, wasn’t it?

  But another, more reckless, part had her in its grip tonight. Why not? it was asking. How long was it since she had felt that gorgeously, fabulously good, that relaxed, that sexy? What was the point of not doing it again, when they had another three weeks or more to get through? They both knew where they were. They had no expectations of each other. And it had been great. Did she really want that to be the last time?

  No, she didn’t.

  ‘It would be fun,’ she coaxed, realising at that moment that it was a very long time since she had let herself simply have fun. Ten years, in fact.

  Will was silent for a moment. ‘I don’t want to fall in love with you again, Alice,’ he said.

  ‘We won’t fall in love,’ she said. ‘We’ve been there, and we know it doesn’t work. That doesn’t mean we can’t have a good time together.’

  ‘So you just want me for my body?’ said Will, but Alice was sure she could hear a smile in his voice.

 
; ‘We-el…’ She let the sheet fall and slid back down beside him, letting her hand drift tantalisingly over his flat stomach, and scratching him very, very lightly with her nails. ‘If the itch is there, we might as well scratch it, don’t you think?’

  The downward drift of her fingers was making it hard for Will to think clearly. ‘So we’ll have the next few weeks and then say goodbye?’ he managed.

  Alice’s hand paused for just a second. ‘Then we’ll say goodbye,’ she agreed.

  Will knew that he was probably making a mistake but right then, with her fingers teasing him and her lips against his throat, and her body warm and soft and close, he didn’t care. Moving swiftly, he pinned her beneath him and put his hands on either side of her face. ‘All right,’ he said as he bent to kiss her. ‘Three weeks. Let’s make them good ones.’

  It didn’t work, of course. They had about a week when they both resolutely closed their minds to the future, and thought only about the days with Lily and the long, hot nights together. It was easy to fall into their old ways, talking, laughing, arguing, making love…And inevitable, Will thought, that he should start wishing that it could go on for ever.

  Knowing that, it made him increasingly tense and irritable. He was angry with Alice for her dogged refusal to consider taking a risk on the unknown, angrier with himself for agreeing to the one situation that he had most wanted to avoid.

  Because of course he had fallen in love with Alice again. The truth was that he had probably never fallen out of love with her, and it wasn’t helping matters to have her there whenever he went home, as combative, challenging and stimulating as ever, as warm and responsive every night. Every time Will looked at her, his heart seemed to stop, and the knowledge that he would have to let her go gnawed relentlessly at him.

  Three weeks, that was all they had. After the heady delight of that first week, Will did his best to distance himself from her. But how could he when she was there in his bed, when she lay warm against him all night, and her very nearness made his head reel?