Again things were moving too fast for her and she closed up. 'No. I slap faces,' she said distantly and half sat up to look over the rocks. No sign of anyone else taking to .the water and the rubber outboard dinghy still rocked emptily where it had been lowered beside the yacht.
'Did he hurt you very much?'
'Who?' She tensed. Max gentle was Max devious.
'Your husband.'
She caught her breath and speared him with dark accusing eyes. 'Why are you always asking questions?'
'I'm interested. If I'm curious I ask questions. It's normal. So is answering them.'
Quite. And she would have to get over her almost pathological reluctance to talk about Simon some time. But now? With Max? It could lead to all kinds of complications. However she knew from experience that evasions only whetted Max's appetite for information.
'I just don't happen to think it matters any more,' she said with almost complete truth.
'But it does if it affects your attitude to me, to men in general. What was he like?'
'If he had lived he would have been a great painter,' she stated non-committally.
'I meant as a man,' he said, adding to her ruffled profile. 'I'm not your enemy, Sarah.'
No, nor friend neither.
'He was very—' she hesitated, how to put it into words that said not too much, but not too little? 'He was very . . . possessive.' It was a relief to say it, to relinquish another stubbornly held piece of the past. Easy, too, once said.
'Did you resent that?'
'Not at first. I was very young when we married, but it became very wearing. And painful, for both of us,' she told the rocks, the sea, the sky . . . the world.
'Jealousy is often indivisible from love, I believe,' came the remark, challenging in its very neutrality.
'He wasn't just jealous,' she turned on him fiercely, 'he was obsessive. He expected me to live through him, for him—'
'Aaah,' his sigh filled the silence as she broke off and he lay back, his hands under his head, with a ripple of glistening muscle across his chest. Sarah looked at his closed eyes, the slight smile on the sensual mouth.
'Why do you say it in that tone of voice?' she asked.
'Because it explains a lot,' he said without opening his eyes.
'What?' Sarah demanded, goaded by his reticence, for once able to appreciate how irritating he had found her reserve in the past.
'Why you're so scared of involvement. Why you're so wary of men. Why you back off at the slightest sign of interest.'
'I didn't back off at Julie's party,' she said, feeling defensive without knowing why.
'Only because you were curious,' he said lazily. 'Did you think I didn't know that? I'd hurt you and you wondered what it would be like to be kissed better.' One eye opened, catching her out in a flush. 'I hope I managed to satisfy your curiosity.'
'Adequately,' retorted Sarah curtly and he grinned.
'You must practise these put-downs in private.' He could read her like a book, it seemed. Both eyes now fixed brightly on her as she plucked a blade of grass and studied it.
'How was he killed?'
She was used to the abruptness by now, and had discovered that an abrupt reply was the best answer.
'A plane crash.' There was an instant's stillness, then he sat up again.
'I'm sorry.'