Whereas I, she thought as she sat back on her heels, feel as if I’m in a state of limbo, despite having all this to do and think about, not to mention Christmas, not that far away, to plan for. Why can’t I just be happy, or if not that, content? Because every minute I’m away from Declan Holmes is extraordinarily hard to bear, she answered herself. If only I hadn’t been so righteous, so sure I couldn’t fall in love like this. How did it happen to me so quickly and completely? Is it the sex? This passionate attraction that I might even be confusing with love? Am I more like my mother than I ever dreamt possible?
Strangely enough, she got a letter from her mother the next morning, in reply to her letter telling her she was getting married.
‘Dear Arizona,’ she read. ‘Your news came as a bit of a shock. I had hoped that by now you would have forgiven me enough for all I put you through to have confided in me earlier about this second marriage, but I do hope with all my heart that you’ll be happy, darling. Is it a love match? You didn’t say so, in fact you said so little I don’t know what to think and all I can tell you is that you’re in my heart and my prayers constantly. Yes, I had heard of Declan Holmes, although not lately….’
Arizona stopped reading because tears were blurring her vision and she whispered, ‘Oh, Mum…’
She took the kids for a swim about a week later on a Thursday, a week or so during which she’d seen nothing of Declan. It was a searingly hot day, and the surf was delicious. But it was a tiring exercise nevertheless because Daisy was still a very novice swimmer, and even Sarah and Richard had to be watched all the time in the waves. They, however, were still full of energy after their swim and they bounded up the now safe cliff path and disappeared from view while she was still gathering together towels.
And knowing they could come to no harm, she lingered a little, slipping her togs off beneath her towel and putting her button-through dress on, then discarding the towel, shaking them all then simply standing staring out to sea with the bundle in her arms. Until she began to get hot again and with a strange little shrug turned towards the path. Declan was waiting for her at the top. Declan, casually dressed in jeans and a sports shirt, looking big, fit and entirely enigmatic.
She gasped and grabbed the handrail. ‘I didn’t hear the helicopter! I didn’t expect you…how long have you been here?’
He took his time answering as his blue gaze roamed over her, her wayward damp hair blowing about her face, her pretty floral dress with a heart-shaped neckline and its line of buttons down the front, her bare legs and feet and said finally, ‘I drove. I’ve been here for the last few minutes.’
‘Why didn’t you come down?’ she asked and wondered why she sounded, and felt, nervous.
‘You looked oddly deep in thought.’
‘I…’ She stopped and grimaced.
‘You also look tired,’ he added and took the towels from her.
‘I’m fine! Did you see the kids?’
‘Yes. I’ve given them a treat.’
‘Such as?’
‘Cloris is taking them into town for a movie and then a hamburger dinner.’
‘Declan!’ she protested. ‘It’s a school night.’
‘I can guarantee that once every Pancake Day, it won’t hurt them.’
‘I suppose not,’ she said ruefully. ‘It will be nice and peaceful for a while.’
‘That’s also what I thought,’ he murmured and took her hand.
But he didn’t seem to have any more to say to her, and they walked up to the house in silence, although hand in hand, and he simply dropped the towels on the kitchen floor and led her upstairs to the cool green bedroom where he not only closed the door but locked it.
‘Just in case they come back early,’ he said and crossed the carpet to stand in front of her. ‘May I?’ He looked at the top button of her dress then into her eyes. Arizona started and coloured.
‘What?’ he queried quietly.
‘I’ve just remembered I’ve got nothing on underneath,’ she said self-consciously and wondered what she could have been thinking of on the beach.
‘I know.’
‘How?’
‘I saw you change very modestly beneath your towel. There was no evidence of any underclothes, but I really don’t think it matters at this point. Do you, Arizona?’
She grimaced. ‘No. All the same, it was an odd thing to have done.’
‘As I mentioned, you did look oddly preoccupied.’ And there was a query in his blue eyes.
She coloured again but said, ‘There’s a lot to think about at the moment. The conservatory, the new colour schemes, the garden, Christmas—all those things.’
‘I wondered if you were missing me.’ He put out a hand and touched the top button then slipped it free of the buttonhole.
Arizona looked down as his fingers moved to the next button and it met the same fate. ‘Well, yes,’ she tried to say lightly. ‘It’s been a while, I guess.’ It had in fact been exactly a week and two days, she knew, almost to the hour.
He smiled, but not with his eyes, and she shivered suddenly as the last button gave way and her dress fell open. ‘Not too long?’ he said, making no move to touch her.
‘Declan…’ Her voice sounded strangely hoarse. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I don’t know. I—don’t know.’
‘No, nothing that this won’t cure,’ he said after an age and raised his hands to slide the dress further apart and cup her breasts.
She took an unsteady breath, and he moved his hands down to her waist and the curve of her hips, and the dress slipped off her shoulders so she was exposed, the whole slim, curved, salty length of her. And he studied her body minutely, as if renewing his acquaintance with it, studied the delicate ruffled pink of her areolae, the paler satin of her skin that the sun didn’t see, moving his hands again and drawing his fingers very lightly up the curve of her breasts then lingering slowly on a path down to her thighs.
‘Declan,’ she whispered, trembling finely not only with exquisite pleasure but some strange sense of unease, ‘don’t…’
‘Don’t you like it?’ he said looking into her eyes but never for a moment ceasing to move those fingers over her skin. She looked away and stood for a moment with her hands clenched into fists at her sides, her head bent, her dress caught only on her upper arms now. Then she raised her eyes to his and said honestly, ‘I’d prefer it if I didn’t feel like an object somehow.’
‘Then why don’t you tell me you were thinking of me on the beach, Arizona?’
Her lips parted and her eyes widened and she turned away, or tried to, but she stumbled, and he caught her wrist and steadied her, and brought her right back in front of him where she’d been, saying only with a cool smile chiselling his lips, ‘Arizona?’
‘All right, if that’s what you want to hear, I was,’ she answered tautly.
‘But not that happily?’
‘If you’re trying to make me say I missed you, yes, I did,’ she replied but tossed her hair in a suddenly defiant gesture.
‘And you take exception to that?’
‘What would be the point? And I suppose now you’re here I might as well make the best of you—is that what you’d also like me to say, Declan?’
‘In fact it was something else I had in mind,’ he murmured.
She blinked. ‘What?’
‘Oh, something along the lines of welcome home,’ he drawled. She opened her mouth to say that this was no more home to him than the moon, just a temporary stopping off place where there was a convenient bed and a bedmate, but stopped herself with her eyes darkening as if she’d received a blow because, of course, these conditions were as much her choice as his, or had been …
‘Welcome home then,’ she said in an oddly choked voice and brushed a tear away. ‘Sorry. I seem to be making a habit of saying that to you. But I didn’t expect you and I suppose I got a bit of a shock.’ She swallowed. ‘And I didn’t think yo
u were particularly welcoming, either, so perhaps we should—both start again?’
He released her wrist and she gathered her dress about her.
He watched her then said only one dry word. ‘How?’
She attempted to smile and attempted to be honest. ‘If you’d like to take me to bed I think I’d need to be held for a bit and possibly talked to, not for long, just a while. And I think you know,’ she said slowly, ‘that another habit I’ve acquired is to respond most favourably to you in bed—that hasn’t changed. When—’ her voice shook ‘—I don’t feel I’m being… when I’m…’ She stopped and swallowed again.
‘Being treated as an object,’ he supplied. ‘That’s what you said.’
‘Yes, well—yes.’
‘It would be strange if we had the same problem, wouldn’t it?’
She licked her lips. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh—’ he frowned faintly then shrugged. ‘One day you might work it out. In the meantime, of course, I’m quite happy to bow to your preferences.’ And without warning he picked her up and laid her on the bed, lay down beside her on his stomach with his chin propped on his hands, and said, ‘What shall we talk about?’
Arizona sat bolt upright and said through her teeth, ‘I could hit you, Declan Holmes!’
‘Okay,’ he said obligingly and sat up, possessing himself of her fist, ‘but let me show you how. Most women go for the good old slap, whereas a punch in the mouth is probably doubly effective and doesn’t leave you with a ringing hand. But then again—’ he looked into her flashing eyes with the corners of his mouth twisting ‘—I think I’d rather be kissed.’ And he dropped her fist, pulled her into his arms, said into her hair, ‘For what it’s worth, Arizona, I’ve missed you and I’m sorry I’ve been gone for so long.’
‘Oh…’
‘I know,’ he agreed and buried his head in the curve of her shoulder some time later. ‘This certainly hasn’t changed.’ And she felt his long body shuddering on hers.
‘The really strange thing,’ Arizona said later when they were lying in each other’s arms beneath the sheet, and stopped.
‘Go on,’ he prompted.
‘No. It’s rather embarrassing.’
‘Look, you have to tell me now,’ he said with a crooked grin. ‘Or I’ll start imagining heaven knows what.’
‘Well, it’s this,’ she said ruefully and couldn’t stop herself from running her fingers through the thick dark hair that lay in his eyes. ‘I feel incredibly calm.’
He kissed her palm and said, amused, ‘It may be strange to you, but I can assure you it’s a great boost to my ego.’
‘I don’t believe that for one moment,’ Arizona said, equally amused.
‘Then you don’t know me as well as you think.’
She was silent for a long time, revelling in being nestled against him, in the calm and serenity that lay on her spirit like a balm, not able to care that this might be a very temporary state.
‘How long do you think this will last?’
‘This calm or the calm of having no kids pounding around the place?’
‘Well, both, I guess.’ She looked at him wryly. He kissed her brow and smoothed some strands of hair from her cheek. ‘This calm for a few days, because I’m staying down over the weekend. Kids calm, I regret to say, for another hour at the most, but you don’t have to get up—’
‘Yes, I will. A whole weekend,’ she added and bit her lip.
‘There’s a downside, unfortunately. I have to go to the States for about a fortnight on Monday.’
Arizona was silent then she moved against him and said, ‘Never mind.’ Her lips twisted mischievously. ‘I’ll make the most of my weekend.’
‘Good girl.’ He kissed her again.
If she was delighted to have him for the weekend, so were the kids, and supremely, so was Cloris. The weather held and they swam, rode together, not Cloris, but she was in her element cooking up magnificent meals, and on Sunday she packed a gourmet picnic lunch and they drove to Ben’s school, which was having an open day and a gymkhana.
Ben seemed happy and contented and rode Daintry well enough to be presented with a rosette. It was, for Arizona, a happy though different experience—the first time she was introduced, in this case to the headmaster, as Mrs. Declan Holmes, the first time she was out in public as such.
She said to Declan that night when they were alone in the green bedroom getting ready for bed, ‘Despite your fears, the press has shown no tendency to hound me. For which I’m duly grateful, but all the same.’
‘It’s funny you should say that, Arizona.’ He raised a wry eyebrow at her. ‘Because I was about to mention it to you.’
‘Oh?’
‘Mmm… It can’t remain a secret forever, so I thought it would be a good idea if we gave one interview when I get back, as unrevealing as possible, but enough to satisfy them and not have our marriage seen amidst all sorts of speculation.’
She stirred. She was sitting in bed against the pillows with her knees drawn up, watching him pack, taking pleasure in his economical movements and his brown body in a white T-shirt and shorts. She was wearing her ruby nightgown, her hair was brushed and shining and her beautiful diamond ring shone in the lamplight on her finger. ‘Here?’ she said.
‘No. In Sydney. Nor do I plan to mention Scawfell.’
Arizona twisted her ring.
‘They might know about me, anyway.’
‘Because of Pete? They probably will, but they’ll be working for me, you see.’
‘I see.’
‘Don’t look so concerned, it’s the best way, I promise you. I’ve also upped the security here.’
Arizona blinked. ‘It must be very unobtrusive.’
‘It is. Did you never suspect—’ he grinned at her ‘—your new gardener?’
‘No.’
‘Well, now you know. You get on well with him, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do,’ she said slowly, thinking of the tough, weather-beaten man in his late forties she’d quite come to like. ‘But why couldn’t you have told me?’
‘I didn’t want you to feel—hemmed in or whatever. And resent him in consequence. Now that you do know, though, he’s here to protect your privacy and the kids’, as well as your persons and the property. By the way—’ he dug down into his bag and brought out a parcel ‘—I forgot to give you these.’
Arizona, who was frowning anyway, frowned at the parcel he placed in her lap, but didn’t open it as she said slowly, ‘He must be very versatile.’
‘He is. We were in the Navy at the same time, and I had the opportunity to save his life once. He’s been rather devoted ever since. He’s also been at a bit of a loose end ever since he got out. He’s a loner, no wife or kids, so this job, so he tells me, suits him down to the ground.’
‘Oh,’ She still didn’t start to open the parcel.
‘What are you thinking?’
She registered the slight change in the tone of his voice and wondered whether to tell him that what she resented was not being taken into his confidence, being treated like a child, in fact, then decided against it. She looked up with a brief smile instead, and said, ‘I’m thinking that you’re managing my—our—life very competently.’ And tore the brown paper to gasp at what she saw. A photo of them on their wedding day in a beautiful silver frame.
‘Oh, it’s lovely.’ She lifted it to the light and studied herself in the dress of his choosing, unsmiling but looking oddly uplifted whilst he was looking at her enigmatically.
‘Glad you like it.’ He took it from her and put it on the bedside table. ‘There’s a smaller one, too, which I thought we might give to Cloris.’ He lifted the other one out.
‘She’ll be thrilled,’ Arizona said wryly then sobered suddenly. ‘Are there any more prints?’
‘Yes. Why?’ He handed her a photo envelope.
‘I thought I might send one to my mother.’
‘Have you heard from her?’
‘Yes.’ She hesitated. ‘It occurred to me I should stop—feuding with her.’
‘Why not?’ he said as he so often did. He added, ‘What brought that on?’ And sat down on the side of the bed.
Arizona shrugged and avoided looking at him. ‘Nothing special, but it’s been a long time, and she is my mother, I guess.’
The silence stretched until she was forced to look into his eyes and was slightly disturbed to see the narrow, rather intent look she was on the receiving end of. So she said, ‘Will you send one to your father?’
He continued to look at her narrowly for a few moments more then said, ‘I hadn’t thought of it, no. But why don’t you ask your mother to come down and stay for a while?’
‘Oh, she wouldn’t do that,’ Arizona said hastily. ‘But this is a start, I guess.’
‘I guess,’ he repeated. Then he seemed almost deliberately to change tack as he picked up the silver-framed photo again. ‘Remember what happened later, on this day?’
Arizona thought of the walled pool garden in Sydney and swallowed unexpectedly. ‘Quite accurately, as it happens,’ she said huskily.
‘Well, I was wondering if you would consider taking your beautiful nightgown off for me now, and while I’m not suggesting we seek a pool or anything like that, we could try to recreate other aspects of that—happening.’
A faint flush rose to her cheeks, but her eyes were grey and steady as they held his, although her voice was not quite steady as she said, ‘I would…like to do that, Declan,’ And did it.
He remained as still as a statue as her hair sank about her shoulders and the lamplight played on her breasts, then he took her in his arms in an oddly convulsive movement and his voice was curiously unsteady as he said, ‘Arizona, I wonder if you know what you really do to me?’
Married for Real (Harlequin Presents) Page 12
