'Words,' he bit out. 'Just words on paper, a lot of legal babble. Whatever the law says, the truth is we're still connected, Nadine; there's a chain binding us and it hasn't broken.' He put his hand on her thigh and she jumped, stiffening tensely.
'Don't!'
Sean was watching her, his hard mouth curling in sardonic comment on her reaction. 'Yes. You feel it. I feel it. Whether I'm touching you or not, whether I'm even with you or not, we're still connected, still linked.' His voice dropped, deepened, murmuring huskily. 'We're one flesh, Nadine. I'm only just beginning to understand what that means...'
'Stop it!' she cried out fiercely, shaking. 'I am not sleeping with you! Leave me alone!'
She meant to dive back into the water but Sean moved faster. One minute she was sitting on the edge of the raft, poised to leap into the blue Caribbean, the next her shoulders were pinned to the wood; and she was looking up at Sean as he knelt above her, his knees clamping her waist.
Nadine was speechless, her heart crashing against her ribs. His dark head blotted out the world, riveted her dazed eyes.
'I want to try again, Nadine,' he said, and she couldn't breathe. 'We had something special. Didn't we? It went wrong, I'm not even sure why, and I don't think you are. It was perfect, yet it all fell apart without rhyme or reason; we kept having those terrible quarrels and they poisoned everything. You said just now that it's finished between us, but you know you were lying. It isn't over, far from it. There's still something very powerful between us, and I want a last chance to get it all back, whatever we had. OK, it may be too late to retrieve what we had in the beginning, but maybe we can build something new on the ruins.'
He stopped, gave a short, wrenched sigh and looked down into her hazel eyes, his mouth shakily half smiling. 'Will you try again, Nadine?'
Nadine stared back at him, trying to think; her body, her senses, her heart, clamouring hungrily for him, fighting on his side, as they always had from the moment she met him. Her mind was confused and uncertain. She couldn't deny that their sexual chemistry was as potent as ever, but sex was only one part of a relationship between a man and a woman. What about the rest? She couldn't bear to get locked into that bitter private war again.
She looked away, biting her hp, stared into the shimmering, halcyon blue sky. What was she to do?
CHAPTER FIVE
'SAY something, Nadine!' Sean's voice grated with tension and she gave a long sigh.
'I need time to think! You can't just come out with something like that out of the blue and expect me to give an off-the-cuff answer. Give me time to think about it!'
'How much time do you need?'
'I don't know! As long as it takes for me to work out what I want...'
'You know what you want,' he said thickly, and her pulses went crazy at the way he was looking at her. 'We both want the same thing. I don't know about you, but I'm going out of my mind with frustration.'
So was she, especially at this moment, with him kneeling over her, his thighs warm against her, his hands restlessly shifting on her arms as though they wanted to wander elsewhere. Sean had a dynamic sexuality: he was the most intensely male man she had ever known, his masculinity like the heat of the sun, the crash of the waves, a natural force of which you could never be unaware and which you couldn't fight.
'Our marriage turned into a war!' she cried out in something approaching desperation. 'I don't know if I can stand the strain of trying again...'
'I'm not asking you to marry me again,' Sean said quickly, and she looked at him in confusion, bewildered.
'What? You just said...you wanted to try again...'
He shrugged, his face wry. 'We've tried marriage and, as you say, it didn't work; we ended up at each other's throats. Why don't we just have an affair?'
Nadine was dumbstruck. She stared at him, her mouth open, her hazel eyes huge.
Sean began to laugh, wicked amusement in his voice. 'Your face, darling! You look quite shocked!'
'Not shocked,' she muttered. 'Just...taken aback...'
'Why? It won't be the first affair you've ever had, will it? Queen Victoria died a long time ago. We're both adults, and you can't tell me you've been sleeping alone since we split up!'
Her eyes slid away; she flushed, and heard his sudden rough intake of breath.
'Tell me the truth, Nadine,' he broke out, his voice harsh. 'Have you slept with anyone else? What about Colbert?'
She flared up then, glaring at him. 'How many times do I have to tell you? Jamie and I never had an affair, either while I was married to you or after we split up! I told you that a hundred times—but you wouldn't believe me. I don't suppose there's any point in telling you again, but for the last time: Jamie's a friend, I'm fond of him, but that's all there is to it. Basically we're colleagues who work well together, and respect each other.'
Sean was watching her narrowly, his face pale and set. 'He's mad about you, Nadine! I've seen the way he looks at you and..
'Oh, stop it!' she yelled, close to breaking point. 'You say you want to try again, but even before we start you're harping on the same old theme—what's the point?' She gave him a violent push aad Sean went sprawling backwards, tumbled into the ocean with a loud splash and sank like a stone.