And she was good. He had seen what she could do because, although he had been desperate to find a way to keep seeing her despite the fact that there was an ocean between them, he hadn’t been so besotted that he hadn’t checked out her work before he offered her the job. If it hadn’t been good enough he would have found another way, but it had turned out to be unnecessary. It had been easy to check too, because when they first met she had mentioned the names of a few publications that used her photos. They were nature magazines and a couple of local newspapers whose back numbers were available online. He had found them by searching the Internet and it had only taken him a few minutes to be impressed by the quality of her work. Now, watching her watch the pelicans, he could see why she was so good.
Her focus had another benefit too. It meant he could study her undisturbed, something that made him feel less like the stalker he had felt himself to be earlier. It hadn’t been intentional, well not consciously anyway. He had always planned to visit the pelicans this morning, to check on their behavior in case they were preparing to migrate back to their nesting grounds. He had wanted to be sure Claire saw them before they went so she could get a few good shots that could be used on the company’s promotional literature. It had never been his intention to take her with him today, so his glance towards her balcony as he tied up the dinghy had been no more than curiosity, a wish to see if the drapes were drawn back or whether she was still asleep. What he had seen, however, had arrested his hands midway through securing the dinghy to the pier, and he had had to grab hold of one of the wooden stanchions to stop the current sweeping him out into the bay again.
Claire had been standing on her balcony, leaning forward, one hand shading her eyes against the early morning brightness of a burgeoning sun that was sparking mahogany highlights in her cloud of black hair. Hair that was corkscrewing into a tangle of curls in front of him right now thanks to the salty dampness that still had to be burned out of the atmosphere.
It hadn’t been her curls that had grabbed his attention though. It had been the outline of her body that had mesmerized him. She had been wearing a T-shirt that barely skimmed the top of her thighs, and the pale shape of her long legs and bare feet were visible through the balcony railings, as were the soft curves that pushed against the soft cotton of her T-shirt. She was obviously totally unaware she was on public view, and in a way she was right because probably nobody else would have noticed her tucked away at the top of the apartment building, no one except him. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her, however. Instead, hoping that she wouldn’t notice him, he had tied up and then stayed in the dinghy, just watching her, until she had suddenly moved away and disappeared through the half open drapes.
It was only then that he remembered what he had come for and had clambered up onto the pier and jogged down the road to collect his supplies. When he returned she was on the beach. Fully dressed now, and wearing sturdy trainers, she was trawling the tideline, pausing every now and then to poke at something with her toe or to pick it up for closer examination. Unable to stop himself he had stayed where he was, rucksack hooked over one shoulder, watching as she came slowly towards him.
By the time she reached the pier, however, commonsense had taken hold and he had clambered down into the dinghy. He couldn’t hang around like a heartsick schoolboy forever. He had a job to do so the sooner he pushed his feelings for her into the background and got on with it the better. There would be plenty of time later to worry about what he was going to do about the flip his heart gave every time he saw her. She needed time to settle into her job before he could risk making a move. Until then he had to keep his distance, just be a work colleague, because from her reaction to him so far it was obvious that was exactly how she saw him.
Then she had stopped to look at the view at a point just above where his dinghy was moored, and all his good intentions had fled.
* * *
“They are stunning! I so wish I had brought my camera,” Claire broke into his thoughts as she shifted round to look at him.
He smiled at her, ignoring the effect her cool gray gaze had on his blood pressure. “In that case I’d better give you a crash course in dinghy management so that you can come out here any time you want. How are your boating skills?”
“Non existent! I told you, I was just the lock keeper.”
He slid sideways to make room for her. “Well it’s time you learnt then. You can take us back in.”
Claire shook her head. This was becoming surreal. One moment she was a librarian putting in her hours at a city library, her only light relief the regular visits from local schoolchildren. The next she was watching pelicans squabble over pieces of fish while the early morning sun warmed her back, and while the man of her dreams stuffed the remains of their picnic back into his rucksack and talked casually about handing her the controls of his boat.
“I…are you sure about this?”
He nodded as he patted the seat beside him. “Come over here and I’ll take you through it.”
She clambered across to the stern, sat beside him, and watched carefully while he showed her how to lower the outboard motor back into the water and pull the throttle sufficiently hard to fire it up.
“Now your turn,” he leaned back so that she could reach the tiller more easily, and then delivered a steady stream of encouragement as she tried to copy him. She was successful at her third attempt, and soon they were heading back towards the pier while the white pelicans patrolled the reeds behind them.
Claire felt her confidence grow as the dinghy responded to her lightest touch. Less than three months ago she would have laughed if anyone had told her she would be sailing across a small inlet in the Gulf of Mexico amongst dolphins and pelicans, instead of trudging to work through the cold winds and rain that were inevitable in January in northern Europe. Yet, somehow, it already felt like the most natural thing in the world. Exhilarated she turned to Daniel with a wide smile. A smile that faltered as their eyes met.
Feeling as if her heart was about to burst out of her body, she started to turn away. As she did so she saw the dolphins again.
Noticing them at the same time and realizing that they were swimming towards the dinghy, Daniel quickly took the tiller and slowed the engine until they were barely moving. Then they sat, side-by-side, watching, as a small group of dolphins frolicked across their stern. It wasn’t until they had finally become no more than sleek shadows speeding away across the bay that Claire remembered to breathe.
Daniel chuckled as he opened up the throttle. “Over to you again if you’re not too dolphin struck!”
She grinned at him as she took the tiller. “I can’t believe I’ll ever become blasé about them.”
“Oh you will, believe me.”
He pulled his gaze away from the mesmerizing effect of her wide, gray eyes. Eyes that were so thickly fringed with black lashes that they could be an advertisement for mascara, except that her face was scrubbed clean of makeup, reliant only on its own natural color and the flush the early morning sun had brought to her cheeks.
With an inward sigh he took his arm away from where it had rested behind her while they watched the dolphins, and shifted himself to the middle of the dinghy. For one brief moment, out there at the edges of the bay, he had thought that maybe she was attracted to him after all. There had been something in her eyes when she looked at him, something that had made his heart beat just that little bit faster, and then the dolphins had disturbed them. For the very first time in his life he wished they had, just for once, kept their acrobatics to themselves instead of showing off all around the boat.
Chapter Nine
For the next hour and a half Claire’s morning was far more mundane as she showered and changed, unpacked her clothes, and generally familiarized herself with the apartment.
When she had returned from her unplanned boat trip she had been surprised to find that it was still only eight-thirty.
“I feel as if I’ve been up for hour
s already,” she told Daniel as she deftly avoided his steadying hand and made a grab for the ladder as soon as he secured the dinghy.
“See you later,” he called as he pulled the painter free and circled round at speed until he was pointing towards the open bay. Then he was gone in a splutter of noise that set the gulls in motion and rocked the sea into waves that slapped against the stanchions of the pier.
Claire watched him speeding across the bay for several minutes before she walked slowly back to her apartment, forcing herself to concentrate on the white pelicans and the dolphins so she didn’t have to think about Daniel. It didn’t work though. By the time she was in the shower the memory of his proximity returned with such a vengeance that she could recall, with a disturbing clarity, the way the early morning dampness lifted the ends of his hair into a tousle of half curls; the way his brown eyes glinted gold in the soft rays of the early morning sunshine, the way his strong fingers guided the boat, and then, later, directed her own hands on the tiller.
Determinedly she turned the faucet of the shower to cold and spent the next two minutes under a blast of water that left her breathless. Then, her skin rosy, and her hair dripping around her shoulders, she stepped from the shower and rubbed herself dry with the huge fluffy towel Beth had left hanging on the bath rail. She wasn’t going to think about Daniel any more.
* * *
Beth arrived on the dot of ten. She greeted Claire with a wide smile and a bag of cookies.
“I thought these would wash down well with a mug of coffee,” she said.
Claire returned her smile as she invited her into the apartment. Beth was small, with delicate features, tousled brown hair, and wide blue eyes. A baggy T-shirt over a pair of cotton cut-offs hid the pregnant curve of her stomach so effectively that she looked more like a carefree teenager than a mother-to-be. She saw Claire’s gaze go instinctively to her midriff, however, and she laughed.
“I guess Daniel told you,” she said.
He has a nice wife who is recently pregnant, Claire remembered Daniel’s exact words and, even worse, she remembered exactly where they had been standing when he said them. They had been in the foyer of the hotel where they’d first met, and he’d been explaining why his brother had set up their date. A flush of embarrassment washed over her face as she nodded. At the same time she wondered why she had ever thought signing up to a dating agency was a good idea.
Beth plumped herself down into an armchair, placed the bag of cookies onto the coffee table, and grinned at her.
“Carl is a jerk,” she said conversationally. Then she added, “he’s my jerk and I love him. He’s still a jerk though!”
“I…you know then…how Daniel and I met, I mean?”
“’Fraid so! Daniel didn’t try to keep his voice down when he was bawling Carl out for interfering in his life.”
She gave a peal of laughter when she saw Claire’s stricken expression. “Hey don’t look so tragic. Nobody over here is looking for any love interest between you two. We know Daniel invited you to join him for a meal because he felt he owed you one thanks to Carl. We know, too, that when you got talking he discovered you were looking for a new job and realized he could offer you one that would suit you exactly.”
“That’s about it,” Claire agreed.
She didn’t know why Daniel hadn’t gone into more detail, such as how he had tracked her down at work and infiltrated her family circle, how he had persisted with the job offer until he’d worn her down, but she was very grateful he hadn’t.
Although she still didn’t understand why he wanted her when it would have been easier to find someone suitable in America, she had given up trying to make sense of it. If he thought she was just what his organization needed and was prepared to smooth every obstacle in her path so that she could move continents, then she was just going to make the most of the experience. She decided to put a lighthearted slant on the whole episode for Beth’s benefit; a public joke that would counter any lingering suspicion she and Daniel were in anyway interested in one another.
“It was actually very funny. Daniel’s face was a picture. He was so angry with his brother, and so embarrassed for me, that I…well I got the giggles!”
“Let me guess. That would be at about the same time Daniel had a sense of humour bypass!”
Claire grinned at her, and soon they were both convulsed with laughter. It was only later, when they’d finished their coffee and were about to leave the apartment that Beth put a slight damper on the morning.
“Carl is still far too pleased with himself,” she said. “Daniel has been looking for the right person to join the team for ages, so the fact he landed you as a result of being set up on a date is a plus as far as my dear husband is concerned.”
And that’s about it, thought Claire gloomily as she followed Beth along the wooden walkway and down the stairs. I’m the right person for the team. There’s nothing more to it than that, so the sooner I accept it, the better.
* * *
The weather was too good for her to feel gloomy for long, however. By the time they reached the street she was being warmed by the sun, while overhead the sky was a glorious unbroken blue. As they walked along Beth pointed out landmarks, giving her a potted history of some of the residents of Dolphin Key along the way.
“Scott and Daniel will tell you more than you want to know about the nature reserve, and the birds and wildlife, but they won’t ever get around to telling you about the things that really matter,” she said, as they passed more shops and galleries than Claire had expected in such a small place. There also seemed to be far too many restaurants for a population of less than a thousand people. She guessed it was because Dolphin Key was primarily a tourist resort.
Beth interrupted her thoughts. “Here is our one and only supermarket. If it doesn’t have what you want today, it will by tomorrow as long as you know the right people to ask. Come on in and I’ll introduce you to Carol.”
Carol, who was whippet thin, and who wore her dark hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, looked both upset and worried when she saw Beth. “You haven’t come in for Mr Marchant’s order have you? I phoned the supplier yesterday and he promised to send it but it wasn’t on the delivery van this morning.”
“Then he’ll have to wait like the rest of us!” Beth was unsympathetic.
“That’s all very well for you to say. You don’t have to phone him up and tell him. Last time it arrived late he spent five minutes bawling me out.” The other woman seemed close to tears.
“Well if he does it again just cut the call!”
“I can’t do that!” She seemed genuinely horrified at the suggestion.
“Yeah, you can, and if he doesn’t like it then he’ll have to find another way to buy his smelly cigars. He’s a cranky old man who enjoys upsetting everyone. If more people stood up to him, then perhaps he’d start to be a bit nicer all round.”
She turned to Claire with an apologetic smile. “As you’ve probably realized by now, my dear father-in-law isn’t my most favourite person. He lost his sight a few years back and he’s been taking it out on everyone else ever since, including Carol, whose family has been looking after the Marchants for years.”
Carol forgot her own worries and gave Claire a wide smile. “I guess you’re the person who’s joining Daniel’s conservation company.”
“She is. And, luckily for her, she won’t have to have anything to do with the old man because, unlike poor Daniel, she’s not working in the family business as well.”
* * *
Claire left a grocery order with Carol and promised to tell her if she ever wanted anything that wasn’t stocked on the overflowing shelves. Then they left her to chase up her late orders and walked slowly up the main street while Beth ticked off the other establishments she thought might be useful.
“There’s the post office,” she said, pointing. “It closes twelve ‘til two and it’s not open weekends. The one and only bank is next door. And that blue bui
lding is the bookshop. Only go in there if you have an hour or more to spare because Tom Cook, who runs it, doesn’t let anyone out until he’s told them his life story! And just across the street is the hairdresser. Not that you’re going to need to go there very often,” she added as she looked admiringly at Claire’s thick black hair.”
Laughing at Beth’s description of what was to be her home for at least the next six months, Claire finally managed to ask the question that had been intriguing her ever since they left the supermarket.
“Is Mr Marchant senior really that bad?”
“Worse!” Beth’s reply was swift and to the point. “His mother is a love though, or at least she was until recently. Now she’s just depressed. I think she’s so worn down by the old fiend’s bullying she’s sort of given up.”
“And what about the rest of the family?”
“Oh they’ve all escaped. Well the twins have because they are away at college for most of the year, and Sarah is married and lives in Texas. And as my father-in-law has made it very clear Carl and I are not welcome, we never visit, so that just leaves Daniel.”
“How does he cope?”
Beth gave her a sharp look. “You’ll find out soon enough. In the meantime, we’ve arrived.”
Not sure whether she had been reprimanded for being too nosey, or whether Beth had merely lost interest in the conversation, Claire followed her along a path that meandered in a haphazard fashion across half an acre of rough grass. It ended at a low wooden building set amongst trees and shrubs. Painted a soft green, it merged with the foliage surrounding it. The door stood wide, and all the windows were open.
“Here we are at last!” Beth announced to what appeared to be an empty office. Her words were greeted by a moment’s silence followed by a series of bumps and thumps, and then a loud oath as a man crawled out from beneath a desk. He rubbed his head and stood up. He was dressed in dark shorts and a green T-shirt bearing the company logo.
Reluctant Date Page 7
