by Lucy Gordon
His lips pressed into her forehead as his arms circled her waist, as though determined to keep the physcial bond between them as long as possible, so that his lips could move from her hair to her brow in one smooth motion.
She felt she could stay there for ever. Locked in his embrace.
He was her rock, the support she had been looking for all of her life.
This was the Ethan she had dreamt of.
His hands moved from her waist to her head and gently drew her back, away from him so that he could look into her face.
Her straggly hair. Her red eyes.
‘Perhaps I should learn to swim after all?’ She smiled. ‘Just in case you’re not here to rescue me.’
He said nothing. He stroked her hair back behind her ears as his eyes scanned her face, his thumbs brushing her cheeks, and he just breathed, breathed and looked into her face as though it was the most fascinating thing he had ever seen.
As though looking for something.
Whatever it was, he found it.
Ethan pressed both hands tight around her face and hair, took half a step forward, their eyes still locked. And he drew a deep breath.
As though by magic and some unspoken signal, Mari’s mouth opened just in time as Ethan kissed her harder than any other man had ever kissed her, the passion of the connection so intense, so forceful, Mari automatically flung her arms around his neck to stop herself from falling backwards, the power of this man’s body concentrated, focused into one single connection between two mouths.
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think of anything except kissing him back, pressure for pressure, movement for movement, her hot panting breath fighting to keep up with his.
He moved position, sliding his mouth across her lips, lifting her face with his thumbs and locking it to his.
Something in the back of her brain registered that there was movement and female voices in the corridor and, as the curtain twitched, Ethan broke the kiss. And she opened her eyes.
His eyes were wild, carnivorous. Full of passion and love. And questions.
Neither of them said anything but just stood there, her arms still wrapped around his neck, his hands now pressed into her back, then slowly, slowly, he started to breathe and the fire in his eyes calmed as he drew her closer, pressing her head into his shoulder, one of his hands moving up and down her back, the other still at her waist.
Mari closed her eyes for a second, revelling in the heat of the sensation, listening to their breathing, feeling his heart still thumping hard under his chest.
And she knew. If they had been alone in this room she would not have stopped kissing him.
She wanted to feel his touch on her skin. She wanted him to show her how much he cared about her in the most intimate way.
And if this was any indication of the passion this man could feel, he wanted the same. He wanted her just as much as she wanted him.
Which meant only one thing.
She was in serious trouble.
CHAPTER NINE
MARI spread the bundles of photographs out across the sofa and tried to make some sense of the collection. It had been her father’s idea to give Mari a grown-up camera for her twelfth birthday, and it had immediately become one of her trademarks. Whenever she left the house, the stiff brown leather camera case came with her, stuffed into pockets, satchels and school bags with a spare roll of film, just in case.
In fact people used to joke that Mari was always the one at the back of the room taking the photographs of other people enjoying themselves while she looked on. She never thought that funny or odd, just a fact of life that was all part and parcel of being the academic one. The quiet one. Not a bit like her brother or younger sister.
She hadn’t minded really. It gave her a reason to be there and not have to talk. And here were the prints to prove it. Her parents, her extended family, so many Christmases and birthdays—it was all there, including some lovely ones of her mother which she set aside to scan for her own album.
Mari quickly sorted through the last bundle, selecting group shots of Ethan and his parents at a prize-giving, a summer party, and what looked like the end of the Regatta dance.
Her fingers lingered over two photos of Kit and Ethan from some junior yacht club event. Gangly, awkward limbs and wide smiles. But it was their energy and passion for life which beamed out at her from the photograph. They were both so young and happy and bursting with enthusiasm with a brilliant future ahead of them.
Ethan had come a long way and had realised his dreams. While Kit had had his snatched away from him in an instant. Just like Peter almost had.
Mari closed her eyes for a second and pressed the photograph against her chest. Ethan had saved Peter’s life last night and the horror of that moment when she had seen Peter in the water was captured forever in her mind; had been there every time she had drifted in and out of sleep.
It shouldn’t matter that Peter was shy and quiet, and that she saw a little of herself in him too, but it did. He had been brave enough to take a boat out on the water alone—but there was no way that he could have seen the heavy tree trunk which was lying almost submerged, just under the waterline. Until it was too late.
Her eyes pricked with tears. She had tried not to compare Peter’s accident with what had happened to Kit, but it was impossible. She had been there last night and had seen how confused and disorientated Peter had been. Alone and in shock, he’d been too bewildered to help himself in those few crucial minutes in the icy water and his heavy clothes had dragged him down.
And just for a second she had an insight into how Ethan must have felt that day at the regatta when the wave had hit their boat. Only last night Ethan had dived into the water to try and save Peter, instead of being thrown into the water. Ethan the man had taken control, while Ethan the boy would have been just as confused and shocked as Peter had been.
Why had she not seen that before? Ethan was blaming himself for an accident that had not been his fault. And that was just wrong.
Just as she had been wrong about a lot of things.
Wiping away a tear from the corner of her eye, Mari put down her photo albums and settled on the couch with her feet tucked under her, the unheated room quite chilly now the light was fading.
The past few days had been unsettling; her mind felt giddy and out of control. As though she was spinning round and round on a carousel, unable to get off even though it was making her feel dizzy and shaking and unable to hold back her feelings and emotions.
And right at the centre of that carousel was Ethan. Somehow he was able to strip away all of the carefully constructed barriers which she had created around her heart. He had always had that power and the intensity of how she felt about him scared her. And thrilled her beyond measure.
She exhaled slowly. Tasks. Work. That was the answer. She had to focus on working through these photographs as a leaving present.
Leaving? Last night at the hospital had felt like the start of something. Not the end.
Mari sat up straighter on the sofa and blinked to clear her head.
She had just opened the first album when there was a knock on the kitchen door and a loud, ‘Hello,’ in a man’s voice—Ethan’s voice.
‘In here,’ she called out, trying to sound casual and failing miserably, probably due to the thumping of her heart and the lump in her throat.
He stuck his head around the door and smiled.
The sight of his face hit her in the bottom of her gut like a punch, leaving her breathless and dizzy. The blood rushed to her head. Hot. Thumping. Her heart racing with delight at seeing him again.
‘You left your laptop bag in my boat yesterday!’
She had to laugh at that. Just when she’d thought he might be here to offer his undying love and beg her to run away with him to the sunshine, and all Ethan wanted was to return her bag—the bag she usually carried everywhere with her, but somehow she had totally forgotten about it in the rush to get Peter and Ethan as
hore.
‘Yes, I suppose I did. Can you leave it in the hall? Thank you.’
‘No problem.’ He looked at the albums on the sofa. ‘What have you got there?’
Mari took the plunge and gestured him over with one hand.
As he collapsed down onto the sofa next to her and stretched out his long denim-clad legs, she passed him the first volume.
To her delight, he extended one of his arms along the back of the sofa and she felt instantly warmer and somehow safer inside that embrace.
‘I’ve decided that you need some personal photos in that splendid house of yours from your wicked and evil past. I’m sure your parents would love to have a record of Swanhaven through the ages,’ she lied confidently. ‘So, if you’ve got a minute, I could use the help.’
‘Now why didn’t I think about that? Of course I need personal photographs. Great idea.’ Ethan started flicking through the pages before yelling out a, ‘Wow!’
Mari practically leapt back in recoil. ‘What?’
She leant sideways to look at the page Ethan was holding out as though it was toxic.
‘Well, just look at that,’ Mari whispered, not daring to look at Ethan in case she burst out laughing. ‘Mr Chandler at his first Regatta dance. How old were you then? Fourteen?’
‘Fourteen and a half and, boy, I had forgotten those hipster trousers! Maybe I thought sparkly was cool back then.’ He pretended to shiver in horror.
‘What about the matching skirts Mum made for Rosa and me? She was going through a phase of dressing us both up in identical outfits back then. Rosa hated it.’
Ethan chuckled. ‘I remember. It caused chaos. Same clothes, same hair, same bag. It was like having double vision until you opened your mouth.’
His fingers played with the back of her hair, lifting strands above the collar of the hand-knit sweater she had borrowed from Rosa. ‘I love what you’ve done with your hair. Elegant and stylish. It suits you.’
Mari felt her neck flush scarlet and pressed her lips together to stifle a giggle. ‘Thank you.’ Then she quickly changed the subject by pointing to a group photo. ‘The high school science fair.’ Mari shook her head. ‘I had forgotten about that.’
‘Your model was the San Andreas Fault system. Complete with a working friction model of the fault and photo displays.’
Mari turned around and stared, only too aware that her mouth had dropped slightly open in shock as Ethan continued, ‘You had tectonic plates and ocean fissures, and could have been filmed for a TV documentary.’
‘I can’t believe that you remembered that,’ Mari whispered, shaking her head. ‘That has to be twelve years ago. It was the very last week at school before the summer holiday and Kit was so annoyed when you turned up with your parents while we were still trapped in the classroom.’
‘I recall everything about that science fair. It changed my life.’
‘What do you mean? Changed your life? You developed a passion for geological faults which made you turn to a life on the ocean wave?’ Mari replied with a suppressed chuckle, suddenly concerned that this blast from the past was taking her to places she did not want to go after all. And it had nothing to do with models of geological fault systems.
Only Ethan didn’t laugh, but focused on the photo in his hand.
‘I looked at that model and the photo display, and then I looked around and saw you, just sitting at the back of the classroom with your head in a book. Oblivious to everyone else. All alone. Contained. And that’s when I knew.’
He looked up at her and their eyes locked.
‘Every other person in the class had done the minimum amount of work they’d needed to create a model to get the praise. The marks, the points, whatever. Not you. You didn’t need me or Kit or Rosa or anyone else to validate you as a person. You spent the time making it perfect because that was who you were and the standards you set for yourself were so high—and so demanding that no boy was ever going to come up to those standards. I just wasn’t good enough for you. Intellectually or as a person. It was a blow.’
Mari looked into his face and saw the kind of pain she had never seen before. No joking. This was real. ‘I don’t understand. All I can remember is that you teased me for days about how long I had spent working on it indoors, while I could have been outside at the beach with the rest of the family You were always making cutting remarks about me having my head in a book.’
‘Don’t you see? That was why I teased you. I was so attracted to you but I knew that you were so far out of my league that it was a joke. You weren’t responsible for my massive inferiority complex. I was.’
‘You liked me? I mean, you really liked me? I had no clue.’
Ethan chuckled and found something fascinating to look at in the hollow below Mari’s ear. ‘I made sure that you didn’t. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the big fight we had at your birthday, I probably would never had summoned up the courage to even try and kiss you. Until that moment I thought that you hated me. You’d closed down on me, and I didn’t know how to reach you.’
Mari blew out. Hard.
‘I didn’t hate you, Ethan. I hated what Kit’s death had done to my life and my family. They were destroyed. Nothing was ever going to be the same again. And when my dad didn’t turn up on my birthday after I had waited all day? I was clever enough to know that the happy life I had known was finished. Over. For good.’
Mari swallowed down hard and blinked away tears before she gave Ethan a half smile. ‘You came out to the beach and then followed me to the house. You were a convenient target. And I am so sorry for all of the horrible things that I said to you. I was so unfair. Can you forgive me?’
Ethan reached forward and gathered Mari into his arms, his chin pressed onto the top of her hair, and she sucked in deep breaths against his chest.
‘There’s nothing to forgive. I blamed myself for wanting to be with you and hold you even though I felt responsible for breaking up your wonderful family. I felt guilty that I kissed you and didn’t know what to do about it the next day, so I left. Even though I knew in my heart that you would probably hate me for it.’
‘Why? Why did you want me to hate you?’
Mari lifted her head so that she could look into Ethan’s eyes.
‘Oh, that’s easy. I felt that I didn’t deserve anything better. To see you cry, to hear your pain and suffering … that was so hard. I couldn’t deal with it. I didn’t know how.’
‘Oh, Ethan. We were both grieving, I can see that, but why are you telling me this now?’
He shrugged. ‘I thought you ought to know that I have never been more grateful that Kit chose me to be his friend and I had the privilege of knowing you and your family. That’s all.’
She looked at him and then broke into a smile.
‘You were a good team. No doubt about that. Kit loved the time he spent with you on the water.’
‘We were the best. Nobody got close. Ethan Chandler and Kit Chance. How many times was that read out at the award ceremonies?’
‘Damn right.’
Mari glanced up at him and realised that his eyes had never left her face. He wasn’t looking at the photographs any more. Just her.
‘I was looking for photos of Kit. We haven’t really talked about him, have we?’
Her throat was suddenly dry and tight.
Ethan tilted his head. ‘There’s no need to. He’s there in every conversation we ever had. Your family blamed me for his death, and I understand that completely and would probably feel the same in your shoes. I was in the boat, and I should have been able to save him. And I couldn’t. There’s not a week goes by, even now, when I don’t see someone who reminds me of Kit. That never goes away.’
‘No. It doesn’t. We know that you tried to save him that day. But we’re not fools. We all knew that Kit was so headstrong and so determined to beat you. He took too many risks and my dad … my dad let him do it. He was the parent and he was in the boat that day when you misjudged
the wave and it caught the boat. And Kit …’
Ethan’s reply was a long intake of breath, followed by a sharp nod.
‘Kit went over and hit his head on the side of your dad’s boat when it came alongside.
And it killed him. You can say it, Mari. We both lost a wonderful friend that day. And your dad lost his son. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry that he died. More than I can say. Seeing you again also brought it home to me that I’ve not been very fair with my own parents. Kit was having fun that day, while I chose to put myself into the most dangerous waters on the planet. And that’s not fair on them, or on anyone who cares about me. It’s a hard life when you turn your back on those you love.’
Mari closed the covers of the photo album and pressed her fingers hard against the cover. ‘You’re right. You are selfish. But you know what you want and you go for it. And I respect that. But everything has changed, Ethan. You, Rosa and especially me. I’m not the sweet little daddy’s girl I was back then. And Kit has gone and won’t be coming back. I suppose there has to be a time when we decide to move forward, or stay trapped in the past.’
Her voice let her down, the burning tears she had held back pricking the back of her eyes.
‘Then come to the Valentine dance with me tonight. As my date.’
Mari’s head shot up and she blinked away tears of astonishment. ‘You’re asking me out on a date? You? Ethan Chandler, yachtsman extraordinaire?’
‘How about Ethan, an old family friend? Does that make it easier to say yes? Because I would really like it if you did say yes. Please. Take a risk, Mari. Take a risk on enjoying yourself. What do you say? I thought that I didn’t deserve a chance of happiness when Kit had his chances taken away from him. Maybe I was wrong about that. And I would like to find out more.’
And, without waiting for her answer, his hands came up to cup her chin and he pressed his full warm lips onto hers in a kiss so tender that she wanted it to go on for ever.
Her eyes were still closed when he slid his hands away. ‘I’ll pick you up at eight.’ Then he gave her nose a gentle tap and, without waiting for her reply, he walked out of the door, leaving Mari sitting in silence, her heart thumping and a wide grin on her face. Only then did she dare to breathe.
