‘I don’t remember being read to as a child, if that means anything,’ he said abruptly. ‘But there were plenty of other explanations for that—my mother always scurrying around, frantically making sure we had everything just so for her husband, so that he wouldn’t lose his temper when he got home, tired out from work and found that everything wasn’t perfect—or, rather, he was tired out from his mistress as my mother found out on the day he left—’He came to a dead stop in the sand, stiffening, and Kate thought he was angry at having said more than he had meant to and was about to storm off, but then she saw he was watching Prince, who had rushed into the chilly sea to snap at the small rush of waves generated by the wake of a passing launch, and was now heading back towards them at a rolling clip.
‘No, Prince—!’he ordered sternly, dropping her hand and stepping forward as the floppy ears started to rotate, but it was too late and the dog’s whole body went into violent convulsions, the shaggy wool letting fly a hail of cold sea water mixed with gritty sand that made Kate shriek.
‘Damn dog!’ cursed Drake, mopping down his spattered chest with the corner of his shirt.
‘He was only doing what comes naturally.’ Prince’s inherent instability had toppled him backwards into a heap on the sand and Kate started forward to help him up. ‘Oh, you poor—’
Drake flung up a barring arm. ‘Don’t—you’ll hurt his pride,’ and they watched the dog roll over and bounce up as if falling over had been his intention all along.
Kate looked at him wryly. ‘Don’t tell me—it’s a guy thing!’ She brushed at the grainy wet spots on her dress and took off her hat to shake it out.
‘You look as if you have freckles,’ said Drake, running his thumb across her bare collar-bone, smearing a row of dots. He bent and put his mout
h where his thumb had been, his tongue dipping into the sensitive crease between her collar-bone and slender throat. ‘Mmm, you taste much saltier than usual.’
‘What are you doing?’ Kate shivered, pushing his head away, his dark hair silking against her palm.
‘Trying to help you clean up,’ he said innocently, his eyes anything but innocent. ‘Why don’t you come up to the house and I’ll dry you off properly?’
She had been so absorbed in their conversation she hadn’t realised that they had walked all the way back.
‘Thank you, but I have a perfectly adequate towel at my place,’ she said, clutching her hat to her breasts.
The sultry look in his eyes kindled into wicked amusement. ‘I wasn’t thinking of using a towel.’
She gave him a haughty look. ‘I know, and, as I said, I can look after myself. You need to get back to work and I—I—have things to do.’ He had said he was taking a short break and she didn’t want to give him any further excuse to accuse her of being disruptive to his writing routine. She knew from his own description of his methods that he worked in sustained bursts of intense concentration. It was important that he know she knew the difference between her presence being distracting and being destructive. Then he might even start to see that she could be a positive, supportive element in his working life…
‘What things?’ Strong legs planted in the sand, arms akimbo, bright shirt flaring around his gorgeous bare torso, he was an almost irresistible temptation. She firmly beat it down. For all she knew, this seductive teasing might merely be a test on his part, to see how much of his attention she intended to demand.
‘Just…things. Female things,’ she added cunningly—words to make most men blanch and run.
He didn’t budge, his eyes on her hands, nervously scrunching her hat. ‘Are you afraid of me, Kate?’ he murmured, half curious, half taunting.
She decided on the truth. ‘Yes,’ she said, shaking her hair back behind her ears and replacing her slightly crumpled hat, like a warrior putting on a defensive helmet. ‘I don’t know you—’
He was en garde even before she had fully unsheathed her words. ‘You know me well enough to make love to,’ he pointed out.
‘I—it’s different here…you’re different,’ she said, trying to marshal all the things she wanted to say in the right order.
‘I thought you said you wanted something “different”,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Have you changed your mind again?’
‘Yes, I mean no—’
His patience snapped. ‘Well, when you do decide to make up your mind, let me know!’
This time he did stump off, and she thought he might disappear into himself again for another few days, but to her surprise and subdued delight, the next afternoon when she went walking at roughly the same time he appeared again, and the next…each time a little earlier in her walk until by the end of the week they were setting off together.
Walking and talking was certainly much more productive than sitting and talking, the relaxed surroundings and lack of watchful eyes making Kate realise how proscribed their lives had become in the city.
Most of their talk was idle and unthreatening, but inevitably they touched on weightier subjects and Kate began to amass more pieces of the puzzle that made up Drake Daniels. Like the fact that when he had shed the name of Richardson he had also sloughed off his Christian name, Michael, and had deliberately chosen a name that had no connection with either his father or his mother—one that was sufficiently different to satisfy his hunger to be unique, to be more than the nobody his parents had reduced him to by their destructive indifference.
Drake had been a defiantly swashbuckling name to his younger self, he admitted wryly, and Daniels had been the name of the only adult whom he had respected, a high-school English teacher who had seen a special spark in the troubled youth that no one else had bothered to nurture, and whom he had attempted to encourage, challenge and inspire in the short time that they had shared a classroom, advising him to travel as far and widely as he could to expand his human experience for his future writings.
They occasionally met other people on their strolls, who either casually greeted Drake by name or failed to recognise him at all, and Kate learned that the ebb and flow of tourists at Oyster Beach dictated his puzzling annual schedule—summers for travel and research and roughly drafting out ideas, the rest of the year fitting in periods of intensive writing at Oyster Beach in a way that avoided both school and public holiday breaks.
One afternoon at low tide, after they had walked in the other direction to the mouth of the tidal estuary, they came across three shrieking little boys digging trenches in the wet sand near the waterline.
‘They don’t look old enough to be out here on their own,’ said Kate, estimating them to be no more than five, one of them a toddler still in nappies. She glanced up at Drake, who was staring broodingly at the sandy trio. ‘And don’t tell me things are done differently here in the country.’