by Liz Fielding
‘She met her passengers, both of whom had flown with her before and knew her well. She flew them to Leeds for a meeting. They both said she was totally focused as always. She had lunch in the airport cafeteria. Soup of the day, carrot and coriander, with a roll. She chatted to one of the ground crew, asked about his granddaughter—’
‘How do you know all this?’ he demanded.
‘It was reported in detail in the local paper.’ Every word was engraved on her memory. She’d wanted to be there for him but she and other pilots had had to keep Goldfinch ticking over, deliver the cargoes, put on a bright face for the regulars who hadn’t deserted them. ‘She wasn’t in a “state”, Cleve. At least not the kind of state you’re talking about. If she was distracted it was because, like you, she was free and imagining a new future.’
‘What future?’ he demanded. ‘The father of her baby never stood up to be counted. He just disappeared into the woodwork.’
‘What would you have done, Cleve?’ She held up a finger to stop his protest. ‘I know you’d never have had an affair with a married woman, but if you’d been in his position, what would you have done?’
He remained silent, a muscle working in his jaw.
‘Isn’t it possible that he kept his grief to himself because, like you, he chose to protect the woman he loved?’
‘You see the good in everyone.’
Not entirely. She thought Rachel should have been honest with Cleve but that was easy to say. She’d struggled with how to break the news of her own pregnancy and, as a result, he’d found out in the same brutal way…
‘I see the good in you,’ she said. ‘You feel you were let off scot-free and that has fed your guilt. Instead of letting go, moving on, you’ve been brooding on that last confrontation, blaming yourself. Her death was a tragedy, grief is natural, but you were not to blame.’
‘I should have—’
‘Should, could,’ she said, losing patience. ‘This life isn’t a rehearsal, Cleve. You don’t get to come back and do it better. We all have things we’d have done differently given the chance but if you spend your whole life looking back at your mistakes, you’ll never notice what’s in front of you.’
‘I know what’s in front of me.’
For a moment she’d thought he was going to say it was her, their baby, a future neither of them had ever expected, but he was not seeing her as he stood up.
‘I’ve got a roof to fix.’
How like a man to grab for something solid, something he could touch. She’d seen her father deal with messy, emotional things in just that way. It was as if fixing a broken engine, cutting the grass, repairing a bike gave him back control.
‘Be careful,’ she said, forcing herself to remain where she was as he waded through the pool, stepped up onto the sand. ‘If you fall off, I will blame myself.’
He turned to look back at her, his forehead buckled in a frown. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘You’re only here because of me, Cleve. You’re only fixing the roof because I blackmailed you into staying and because it’s human nature to blame oneself for things that go wrong. To analyse everything you said and did and how, if you’d acted differently, things would not have turned out the way they did.’
‘Is that it? Are you done lecturing me?’
‘That depends. How well have you been listening?’
‘Let’s see. You’re responsible for me being here. You’re responsible for me fixing the roof? How am I doing?’
‘You’re listening but is any of it sinking in?’
‘You want a demonstration?’ He held out his hand. ‘How’s this? If you’re responsible for me being on the roof, you’re going to have to come and watch.’
She thought what she needed to do was leave him alone to process what she’d said, give his brain a chance to work through it while his hands were busy setting the tiles.
‘If you’re on the roof and I’m on the ground, how will that help?’
‘Every time I look down I’ll see you sitting down there watching me and I’ll remember to be careful. Of course, if despite all that I do slip, I’ll expect you to break my fall.’
‘Idiot,’ she said, but tenderly because he’d got the message. She took his hand so that he could pull her up beside him. ‘I’m not going to be sitting around watching you.’ No matter how appealing the prospect. ‘I’m going to be working on the convertible. I can’t have you driving to your wedding with your knees under your chin.’
Cleve tightened his grip on Miranda’s hand as they crossed the beach to the freshwater shower that was no more than a pipe run down the cliff face from the garden above.
He might be an idiot, but at that moment he felt like the luckiest idiot in the world.
He’d just unloaded his mess of guilt on her because she had to know the worst of him. He owed her that. She’d been shocked but her reaction had been to take it to bits, clinically examine every part and respond with calm logic.
He felt like a misfiring engine that she’d taken apart, cleaned up and put back together.
He could never feel anything but guilt for what had happened to his marriage. He’d never loved Rachel the way she’d deserved to be loved but they’d managed until Miranda had joined Goldfinch. He’d explained why he’d had to give her a job, but sensed the danger and, while he’d never given her any reason to doubt his fidelity, the row that had followed Miranda’s arrival had been the beginning of the end.
He turned on the tap. Nothing happened.
‘Does this thing work?’ he asked.
‘It used to but I don’t suppose it’s been used in years. Maybe it’s rusted up?’
As he looked up, there was a warning clang, the shower head shot off, missing him by a hair’s breadth, and he let loose an expletive as a deluge of cold water hit skin warmed by the hot pool.
Andie, well out of harm’s way, burst out laughing.
‘You think that’s funny?’ Before she could answer he grabbed her and pulled her under the downpour so that she was the one gasping and a word he’d never heard her use before slipped from her sweet mouth.
He lifted his hand and wiped his wet thumb across it as if to erase the word, the mind-blowing image it evoked. She responded with a whimper that only intensified a reaction that the cold shower was doing nothing to cool.
There was a moment when the earth seemed to hold its breath, waiting, and then he lowered his mouth to hers, retracing the path of his thumb with his tongue, tasting the salt on her lips and then sweetness as her mouth opened to him. It was as if they had slipped back in time and she was responding with a hot, sweet, wholly innocent eagerness that had ripped the heart out of him and haunted him ever since.
He pushed down the straps of her costume, peeling it to her waist until the only thing between the softness of her breasts and his chest was a film of cold water. Deepening the kiss until the need to breathe forced them apart.
Her eyes were closed against the water running over her face, long wet lashes lying against her cheek. As he kissed them she shivered.
‘You’re cold.’
The drenching was all that was keeping him from exploding, but as he reached for the tap, turned it off, she raised her arms and, with her hand curled around his neck, she drew him back down to her and said, ‘Warm me.’
*
‘Are you warmer now?’
The sun had set and there was only the faintest glow in the horizon. They were lying entwined in each other’s arms and through the open window Andie could see Venus, bright in the west, and the faint pinpricks of stars lighting up as the sky darkened.
Warm. How could she begin to describe how warm she felt? This had been so different from that desperate night they’d spent together. While the sex had been intense, beyond anything she had ever experienced or could have imagined, it had been dark, shadowed and the emotion had provoked tears rather than laughter. Tears for loss. Tears she’d hidden—shed later when she was alone—for what might
have been, for what never would be.
She’d never had any doubt that he knew who he was with, it had been her name on his lips when he’d spilled into her, but she’d blocked out the treacherous hope, aware that she was no more than a conduit from a painful past, a light in the tunnel to guide him to a new future. She had not looked or hoped for more.
Today that future seemed to be within their grasp and every move, every touch had been as if it were the very first time. New, a little bit scary, a shared discovery and he’d been with her every step of the way, tender at first, then responding to her urgent cries. There hadn’t just been the tears that Cleve had kissed away afterwards, but laughter too. And when they’d exhausted themselves he was still with her, not just in his body but in his head.
‘Much.’ He’d warmed her body and soul. ‘It’s a shame you missed a bit or I’d have recommended you for the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.’
‘Missed a bit?’ The words were little more than a growl, but he was laughing, looking every bit as deliciously dangerous as the younger Cleve who’d whisked her into a dark corner of an aircraft hangar and kissed her senseless with her father not more than ten feet away. It had been heart-pounding stuff then and her heart was pounding now. ‘There isn’t an inch of you that I haven’t warmed.’
Ignoring the heat shimmering across her skin, she smiled right back as she said, ‘Then there must be a draught because there’s a spot behind my right knee that’s quite—’
The word chilly was lost in the depths of a pillow as he flipped her over and began to warm up the back of her knee with his mouth, his tongue and then, just to make sure, he warmed her all over again.
*
Cleve, warm for the first time in as long as he could remember, lay spooned around Miranda, his hand on her belly, imagining their child growing there. Her eyes were closed but she covered his hand with her own, tucking it closer against her, and he kissed her shoulder.
‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked.
She raised her lashes, looking out of the window at the sea and the lights of the fishing boats that had put out from the harbour below them. ‘I was wondering why we never did this before.’
That was so not what he was expecting that it took him a moment to gather his thoughts, come up with an answer that filled the gaps.
‘I wanted it so much,’ she said, ‘and but for Posy blundering in…’ She sighed. ‘Why couldn’t she have chosen to throw up in some other part of the garden?’
That had been his first reaction too.
‘Maybe your guardian angel guided her to you.’
She frowned. ‘Guardian angel?’
‘There would have been tears after bedtime.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you telling me that you had a girl at every airfield?’
‘Not every airfield.’
None of them like her and all of them history after a night that had shown him something new, unknown, that had changed him. Until then he hadn’t taken anything too seriously. After that night he’d known what he wanted and it hadn’t just been an air courier and taxi service. He’d wanted the world to lay at her feet.
‘Where could it have gone? You were off to university at the end of that summer. I was struggling to build a business. I didn’t have time to get seriously involved.’
‘I wasn’t looking for serious,’ she said, turning to him. ‘I was looking for a hot man who would—’
He put his hand over her mouth knowing only too well what she’d wanted. He’d spent too much time wondering what would have happened if he’d stepped over the line that night. How different their lives might have been.
‘It wasn’t our time,’ he said, lowering his mouth to hers to stop her talking about it. ‘This is our time.’
*
‘It’s at moments like this that you wish there was a telephone so that you could call out for a takeaway.’
Andie stirred, eased limbs aching from so much unaccustomed exercise. ‘What would you call out for?’
‘Anything with sufficient calories to replace those I’ve used in the last couple of hours. Something hot and spicy.’
‘You’re a long way from an Indian takeaway. I’m afraid if your run took it out of you then the food of choice is going to have to be pasta.’
‘My run?’ He rolled onto his side and, propped on his elbow, he looked down at her. ‘I have only one thing to say to you, Miranda Marlowe.’
‘Just one?’ He looked so delicious that she would have reached up, hooked her hand around his neck and pulled him down so that she could kiss him if she’d had the energy. ‘And what is that, Cleve Finch?’
‘Walk to the bathroom and say that.’
She laughed. ‘You win,’ she said, surrendering without hesitation. ‘The downside of that is that you’re going to have to carry me.’
He leaned over and kissed her. ‘It would be my pleasure.’
*
The cooker was of the old-fashioned solid kind and it had survived both fire and the attack from the extinguisher. Between the stuff she’d picked up from the supermarket when she arrived and the things Cleve had bought in the village, the fridge yielded the basics for a decent tomato sauce.
Cleve put on a pan of water to boil for the pasta and then they chopped and sliced, making it up as they went along.
Once, when she realised that he’d stopped, she looked up and he was just looking at her.
‘Problem?’
‘What?’ He seemed to come from a long way away. ‘I was just wondering if you’re okay with garlic.’
‘We don’t have any garlic.’
‘Don’t we?’ He looked down at the table. ‘Olives. I meant olives.’
‘Olives are fine, but we’ll add them at the end.’
‘Okay. You’re in charge.’
‘Oh, no,’ she said, removing the seeds from a large tomato and chopping it up. ‘This is an equal opportunities supper. If it’s rubbish, you’re taking half the blame.’
Oh, sugar… That hadn’t come out quite the way she’d meant it, but when she looked up he was grinning.
‘Onions, tomatoes, what could go wrong?’
‘Not a thing.’ She put heat under a pan, added a glug of olive oil then, when it was warm, piled in the chopped onions and gave them a shake.
Cleve searched the drawers for a corkscrew and opened a bottle of red wine he’d bought while they were out.
‘Can I get you something to drink?’
‘I brought a bottle of elderflower pressé with me. It’s in the fridge.’
He poured her a glass of the cordial, poured himself a glass of wine while Andie added the tomatoes to the pan and gave it a stir.
‘Do you enjoy cooking?’ he asked.
She took a sip of her drink. ‘I think it’s a little bit late to be interviewing me for housewife skills.’
‘I’m not marrying a housekeeper, but I’ve just realised how little I know about you.’
‘Excuse me?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve known me for years.’
‘I know what kind of person you are. Generous, kind, thoughtful, focused. I would, I have trusted you with my life in the air and I know you have a natural flair for design. Whatever you did to the tail of the Mayfly has certainly improved the fuel efficiency.’
‘My father has never forgiven you for giving me a job,’ she said.
‘Is that what he told you?’
‘He told me that in a recession no one would take a risk on a newly qualified “girl pilot”.’
‘Please tell me he didn’t say “girl pilot”?’
‘No,’ she admitted, ‘but he might as well have. I wrote hundreds of application letters, filled in dozens of forms but I never got a single interview. His fake sympathy made me so mad that I told him that you’d promised me a job if I got my CPL and I was going to fly down and see you.’
‘Oh? And what did he say about that?’
‘That times were tough and I shouldn’t
rely on a spur-of-the-moment promise given three years before and no doubt forgotten as quickly.’
‘So, despite the promise, I was the last person you approached for a job?’
‘I thought he might have been right. It was the kind of thing a man might say…’
‘When he wants to get into the pants of a pretty girl?’
‘Maybe,’ she admitted, with the faintest hint of a blush. ‘And I knew it was my last chance so I made him a promise that if you’d forgotten, or if you didn’t have a job for me, I’d give up my dream of flying and join the design team.’
‘It’s just as well I did have an opening for a new pilot.’
‘You didn’t. Not really.’ She looked at him. ‘It didn’t take me long to realise that you could have managed very well without me.’
‘Business began to pick up right after that. By then you were familiar with all the aircraft and fully integrated with the team. It was one of my better decisions.’
‘Maybe, but that’s what I know about you, Cleve. You are a man who keeps his word.’
His mouth was dry and he took another sip of wine. ‘We’re talking about you.’
‘Me? What you see is what you get. I’m scared of spiders. I don’t like frills or shopping for clothes, although I’m going to have to make an effort now that I don’t have a uniform to hide in.’
‘You look good in pink.’
‘Pink?’ She frowned. ‘I can’t remember the last time I wore pink.’ At least…
‘You wore a pale pink dress to your eighteenth birthday party.’ It had been made of something soft that floated when she’d spun around. ‘And you love daisies.’
‘Daisies?’
He dumped a couple of handfuls of pasta into the water. ‘I wanted to send you flowers when I was in Cyprus but couldn’t think what would send the right message.’
‘Tricky,’ she agreed.
‘It would have helped if I’d known what the message was, but you always walk around the airfield and pick a bunch of dog daisies when they’re in flower.’ He stirred the pasta. ‘If I’d remembered that maybe you’d have told me about the baby.’
