Lovers Not Friends

by Helen Brooks

  She expected him to be waiting in the front garden for her when she left an hour later and had nerved herself for the inevitable confrontation, but as she stepped out of the small front door only green vegetation and gently waving trees greeted her troubled eyes. It was a beautiful day. She glanced up into the pure blue sky, washed clean of even the faintest trace of a cloud, as the breeze lifted her hair into a silky cloud round her cheeks, feeling the sun warm on her upturned face. Some wallflowers, their velvet petals bright and glowing, wafted their heady perfume into the thick warm air and a group of tiny sparrows flew by in a noisy game of tag. She was alive. She shut her eyes with the intensity of the thought. And for years yet she would be able to walk and talk and see normally, travel, explore the far corners of the world before it was too late.

  But she couldn’t have Blade. Suddenly all the rest seemed infinitely pointless, a dark grey cloud descending with abrupt coldness over the colour and warmth of the day before she forced the depression away with rock-like determination. After the first week, when she had wallowed in stunned shock and morbid self-pity, she had made a vow to herself as she clawed up through the blackness that had enveloped her since Sandra’s venom had poisoned the very air she breathed. No more indulgent self-pity, no more crying for the moon and no more tears. Well, the last part had been impossible to keep but the rest was up to her.

  ‘You’re no wimp,’ she told herself out loud as she walked quickly down the lane, the gently rustling branches overhead an arched canopy of green, ‘and you’re not going to waste an hour, a minute of precious time with pathetic whinging. OK?’ She continued, in fits and starts, to lecture herself all the way to the small restaurant and amazingly, by the time she served her first customer, the world was in place once more. And Blade was still around for the moment. She nodded to herself slowly. How she would cope once he left, really left, she didn’t know, but for the present he was here. She could hear his voice, catch a glimpse of him now and again and that had to be enough.

  The unusually warm weather for late May brought a host of tourists into the restaurant and the small dining-room was still packed at closing time. It was well after twelve before the last customer left and Amy was free to leave, and the effort to put one foot in front of the other was fast becoming impossible. The emotion of the morning coupled with sheer hard work had drained all her natural resources and she found herself dreading the short walk home. It was with a mixture of emotions then that she saw Blade’s car parked directly outside as she stepped out into the dark sleepy street.

  ‘Amy?’ His voice was soft and deep as he called through the open window before sliding out and coming to meet her. ‘You look all-in.’ As she looked at him it came to her, in a flood of self-awareness, that she had been desperately hoping he might meet her and the knowledge made her voice unnecessarily sharp as she stared up into his waiting face, his solid strength and male bulk poignantly attractive.

  ‘I thought we’d agreed you would leave me alone,’ she said tightly, dropping her eyes from his as she moved to turn away. ‘I don’t want you to meet me, Blade, you—’

  ‘Just a minute.’ All the tenderness had vanished and his voice was now as cold as ice. ‘I have something to tell you—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it.’ She didn’t know why she was behaving so badly, but found it impossible to stop. ‘How many times—’

  ‘Will you shut up, woman!’ He was shouting and he never shouted, she thought with a small detached part of her brain that seemed to be looking on as an interested spectator. ‘Give me strength …’ He raked back his shock of hair angrily and took a deep breath before he spoke again. ‘It’s Mrs Cox.’

  ‘Mrs Cox?’ she repeated vacantly. ‘I don’t understand?’

  ‘Apparently her sister has been taken ill; a neighbour phoned this afternoon. Bronchitis that turned into pneumonia and now there are further complications. She’s in a bad way, I understand.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ She stared at him helplessly. ‘But her sister’s all the family she’s got.’ Mrs Cox’s husband had died in the war before they had had any children, and she had preferred to live as a widow in the tiny village in which she had been born rather than join her sister and her elderly husband in Scotland. Since the death of her sister’s husband a few months before the two had become even closer, exchanging letters and phone calls nearly every day.

  ‘She left on the afternoon train,’ Blade continued more quietly, ‘and I promised her I’d keep an eye on the house—and you,’ he finished grimly. ‘Now get in the car and stop behaving like a bad actress in a third-rate movie.’

  ‘Well, how was I to know?’ she protested weakly as she slid into the luxurious interior that smelt of leather and subtly expensive aftershave. ‘I thought after this morning—’ She stopped abruptly and turned to meet his eyes that had turned stony.

  ‘You thought after this morning I would press my supposed advantage?’ he finished tightly. ‘Charming, really charming, Amy. What I ever did to deserve you I’ll never know.’

  They were home in three minutes, and as Blade drew up outside Mrs Cox’s cottage he was out of the car before she had even loosened her seatbelt. ‘Go in and check everything’s all right. I’ll wait here,’ he said with bitter cool contempt. ‘I’ll be round as normal in the morning, so if you want to do the princess-in-an-ivory-tower act you’d better get your breakfast early. Mrs Cox gave me a key, incidentally, so there’s no need to leave doors open.’

  ‘Right.’ She opened her mouth to say more and then shut it as the full force of his glittering gaze swept over her face. Now was not the time to apologise. That much she could see.

  She could feel his eyes burning into her back as she walked to the front door, and after switching on the lights and making sure everything was as it should be she raised her hand once to him as he sat glowering in the car, whereupon he screeched off immediately in a cloud of dust and burning tyres.

  ‘Oh, damn …’ She sat down weakly on the hall chair as her legs began to tremble with a mixture of exhaustion and reaction. ‘Damn, damn, damn …’

  The next morning she packed herself a picnic brunch and left the house very early, her eyes red-rimmed with lack of sleep. She had to be at the restaurant at just after one as usual but the walk she had planned should bring her within yards of the doorstep, and she needed to get away into the swelling countryside beyond the village where the air was heavy with the sweetness of fresh green grass and heather in full bloom.

  She ate her meal in the shade of an enormous oak tree surrounded by the smell of thyme and wild garlic, leaning back against the huge old trunk as she watched the silvery flowing river in front of her cascading over great rocky shelves and massive slabs of stone.

  She ached for Blade, longed for him, with a fierce primitive desire that had no reason or logic in its fire. She wanted to live with him, share those odd private moments with him, have his babies … The thought brought her bolt upright from the dreamy trance she had slipped into as she watched the flowing water in its timeless motion.

  Have his babies? For a second she actually put her hand to her heart at the intense physical pain that had shot through her. Children? She stood up quickly, brushing the last of the crumbs from her skirt with a shaking hand.

  She would never feel new life growing and moving inside her, know the joy of seeing a tiny little screwed-up face bellowing for milk and then settling with rapt enjoyment at her breast as a hungry little mouth sucked its fill, never know—

  ‘Stop it!’ The sound of her voice echoed out over the water like a lost soul.

  ‘There’ll be no morning sickness, no stretch marks, no waddling.’ She gazed up into the green branches overhead, the leaves a thick blanket that filtered the sunlight with complete effectiveness. ‘And no growing old, no arthritis, no grey hair.’

  What was she doing? She gazed round her suddenly. Talking to herself as though she were crazy! This solitude wasn’t such a good idea after all. It gave her too muc
h time to think.

  Work provided its normal therapy but she found herself peering out of the door as eleven came and went, half hoping and half fearing to see Blade’s car in the street outside. But it was empty.

  When she left, fifteen minutes later, she didn’t notice a tall dark figure detach itself from the shadows and silently follow her at a discreet distance, remaining carefully in the background until she had reached the safety of the cottage and the lights were burning to announce it was occupied. Blade stood outside for some time in the velvet darkness, his face unreadable and his hands thrust deep into his jeans pockets before turning in one savage movement and striding back the way he had come.

  And within a few minutes the lights in the cottage went out.

  Although Amy had been conscious of Blade about the place—the continuing improvement to the garden, a stock of his favourite beer in Mrs Cox’s small fridge—she hadn’t actually met him face to face since the evening Mrs Cox had left. He had resumed the routine of working in the large back garden until she left at lunchtime and she had been equally careful to stay out of his way, so when she awoke on the following Sunday morning to the delicious smell of roast beef permeating the small cottage she assumed Mrs Cox had returned during the night and hurried downstairs without even bothering to pull a robe over her thin silk nightie.

  ‘Good morning.’ Blade turned from his task of preparing fresh vegetables at the kitchen sink, his eyes narrowing at her scanty attire, and raised one large hand in mocking salute. ‘And mine has improved considerably in the last ten seconds.’

  ‘I thought you were Mrs Cox.’ The heat that began in her face rapidly covered her whole body as she stood transfixed in the doorway. What did she look like? Whatever it was, Blade obviously approved if the wicked light in his eyes was anything to go by. ‘And you shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Says who?’ He leant back against the sink, letting his eyes run over her from head to toe with slow thoroughness before turning back to his self-imposed task with a lazy shrug of his big shoulders. ‘There’s a bottle of wine in the fridge if you want to open it.’

  ‘Me?’ Her voice was an outraged squeak of protest. ‘Like this?’

  ‘I’m not complaining.’ There was a throb in the deep voice that told her he was finding this present situation highly amusing. ‘But I can wait a few minutes if you want to change into something—less comfortable? But, please.’ He turned again and this time the look in his eyes made her whole body tingle with sensual awareness. ‘Not on my account.’

  ‘But you shouldn’t even be here. What if Mrs Cox—’

  ‘Amy.’ Her name was a cool rebuke. ‘Go and get changed, sweetheart, before my more basic instincts take over. It’s been three months, and the sight of you like that is more than I can take right now.’

  ‘And three weeks and two days.’ She didn’t know why she said it, but he became very still as she spoke. ‘I do know, Blade.’

  ‘Sure you do.’ He moved across to her, looking down into her face for a long moment before turning her gently round and pushing her towards the steep narrow stairs. ‘And for the record Mrs Cox knows I’m here. I’ve phoned her a couple of times to see how her sister was and so on.’

  ‘Have you?’ She turned at the top of the stairs, unaware that the shaft of sunlight streaming in through the high narrow window made the silk transparent. ‘And how is she?’

  ‘As comfortable as can be expected in the circumstances,’ he said drily, ‘which is more than can be said for me, incidentally. For crying out loud go and get something on that beautiful body before I come up there with you.’

  ‘I’m going.’ She sped into the bedroom with her heart thudding and her knees weak. Why had he come? Why had he come? She had been doing so well. Admittedly she couldn’t eat or sleep but that would get better in time. And the tears were always a blink away, but that was only to be expected. All things considered she had been doing well, she had.

  She dressed carefully for optimum neutrality in a big baggy T-shirt that came to just above her knees and cotton leggings in jade-green, brushing her hair vigorously before tying it into a high ponytail on the top of her head. Make-up? No. She shook her head at herself in the mirror. No make-up. No come-on. Definitely no come-on. It appeared he was cooking lunch. Fine. She would eat it politely, make some small talk and then indicate it was time for him to leave. No problem.

  Her thoughts mocked her as she entered the kitchen again to find the back door open on to the garden, the scent of dog roses and wall-flowers competing with roast beef. ‘I’m out here.’ Blade’s voice called to her lazily. ‘Come and see the transformation and offer suitable homage.’

  It was true. The back garden had been transformed in just over a week from an overgrown, if colourful, jungle into a delightful cottage garden in which mature cherry, apple and plum trees competed with flowering bushes and neat flowerbeds hosting a mass of perfumed blooms round a central lawn that was neatly mown. ‘The lawn’s still a bit patchy, but the grass seed will see to that in time,’ Blade said laconically as she didn’t speak. The sight of him stretched out on a long low sunbed almost naked had temporarily robbed her of coherent thought. ‘Come and have a glass of wine, it’s all ready. The sunbeds are a little gift to Mrs Cox, by the way.’ He eyed her lazily. ‘I thought we might as well use them today with the weather so hot.’

  ‘Fine.’ She perched on the edge of hers as though she were afraid it was going to bite her, accepting the glass of wine Blade offered with a stiff little nod of thanks. He was clad only in brief bathing trunks, his muscular tanned body stretched out to the golden rays of the sun with supreme disregard for her blood pressure.

  ‘Look’s like we’re gonna have a blazing June,’ Blade drawled slowly after a few tense moments had crept by in absolute silence. ‘Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in a bikini or something? It must be seventy-five degrees out here.’

  ‘No thank you, I’m fine.’ Oh, listen to me, she thought desperately. What did fine mean?

  ‘Fine?’ It was as though he had picked up her waveband. ‘You don’t look fine, Amy.’ He sat up suddenly, the rippling of hard compact muscles and firm flesh causing her ears to sing as the blood pounded madly through every vein. ‘You’ve lost even more weight.’ It was a very definite admonition and she flushed angrily as she lowered her eyes to the wine glass in her hand, taking a long sip of the glowing liquid that tasted of mellow, ripe fruit and warm golden days. ‘And you seem quite exhausted.’

  ‘We’re busy at the restaurant,’ she said quickly, her voice defensive, ‘what do you expect?’

  ‘I expect you to relax when you get the chance,’ he answered mildly, even as the searching intensity of his glance belied the soft tone. ‘Now we are two grown adults, Amy, not a couple of nervous fourteen-year-old virgins trying to resist the urge to experiment. Go and change and have an hour’s therapy in the sun before lunch.’

  ‘But you just told me to get dressed,’ she argued aggressively, her eyes angry. ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘Well, now I’m telling you to get undressed.’ He studied her for a moment as she still didn’t move. ‘It’s an order, not a suggestion, Amy, and for crying out loud don’t turn everything into a major confrontation.’

  ‘I don’t!’ She met his gaze head on, her eyes hurt.

  ‘You damn well do.’ He lay back on the lounger again, his big powerful frame stretching like a sleek dangerous animal relaxing before the kill. ‘I’m not going to jump on you if you display a little of that gorgeous body, if that’s what’s worrying you.’ His voice was insultingly light and the derisive laughter that followed brought her head snapping upwards and her body tensing in protest. ‘You may imagine you are irresistible, but I assure you you’ll be perfectly safe.’

  ‘Too true I will,’ Amy snapped back violently through gritted teeth. ‘I shall make sure of that.’

  ‘Well, there’s no problem then, is there?’ he drawled with unforgivable amusement at the easy way he ha
d provoked her into doing exactly what he wanted. ‘You’ve made it quite clear, by word of mouth and actions, that you no longer find my ardour welcome. So be it.’ He took a long sip of wine before lying back and shutting his eyes against the mid-day glare. ‘I’m devastated of course,’ he continued with dry sarcasm, ‘but I might just manage to survive. Now if you’d like to go and change after finishing that glass of wine, I’ll have another ready when you come down and we can have an hour ignoring each other before lunch. OK?’

  ‘You really are the most manipulating, conniving, scheming—’

  ‘True, true.’ He waved a languid hand in her direction. ‘But don’t waste all that precious energy that you seem in such short supply of by taxing your brain unnecessarily, my little firecracker.’

  He didn’t open his eyes when she returned to the garden, this time clad in a one-piece swimming costume that seemed a little more circumspect than the very brief bikini she had bought in the Caribbean on her honeymoon and which Blade loved. She lowered herself gingerly on to the sun-lounger, reaching out for the glass of wine and drinking half of it before she realised what she had done. Nearly two glasses on an empty stomach and it was potent stuff. She felt the effects making her head swim a little. Blade only bought the best, and this particular wine was nectar. Another little ploy? she thought balefully as she glanced across at the big male body at her side. Probably. This wasn’t Blade Forbes, devoted husband any longer, this was Blade Forbes, adversary, and she had better remember it.

  But he did look good. She found she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the broad muscled shoulders and powerful chest, the dark, curling body hair causing her lower stomach to tighten in response as her eyes followed its progress down into the hidden contours of his groin. He really was film star material.

  The thought sparked memory of a little forgotten incident on their honeymoon when she had heard a young teenager gabbling excitedly to her friend as Blade and herself had walked down the gangplank of Blade’s friends’ fabulous yacht in the South of France.