Then maybe it was the room. Or me. My hands seemed to be trembling a little. My foundations were rocking. I couldn’t quite believe that Nick Morgan, of all people, considered me pretty or understand why he’d chosen this moment to say it.Washe concussed?
Taking a deep steadying breath, I squeezed some antiseptic cream onto the wound and tried not to think about the fact that I was touching him, rubbing his lovely smooth skin in small slow hypnotic circles. About how easy it would be to stop rubbing and start caressing him with the whole of my hand, in larger circles that spread across the entire width of his shoulders and lower. About the hot heavy beat that was beginning to drum between my legs and how warm I was growing.
What would he think if I actually did it? I wondered, struggling to contain the urge to act on the impulses rising up inside me. What would he do? Would he leap away in horror or would he let me carry on? And if he didn’t recoil in disgust, how far would he allow me to go? Could I run my fingers through his hair? Slide my hands around to his chest and press a kiss to the side of his neck?
Through the sluggish fog clouding my brain I heard him release a ragged breath, sensed something in his body give, as if a wave of defeat had washed over him, and saw him drop his head, chin to chest. ‘Enough.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve had enough. I can’t take this any more.’
‘OK.’ The fog pulverised, I whipped my hands off him, appalled by the suspicion that he thought I’d been groping him against his will. ‘Sorry.’
‘No. I don’t mean the rubbing. You can carry on with that.’
My heart thudded. ‘Then what do you mean?’
For the longest of moments he didn’t reply. He sighed deeply again and shuddered, and then he said, ‘Do you really want to know why I’ve kept my distance from you all these years?’
His voice was low. Gravelly. It skated over my nerve-endings and sent shivers down my spine, but at least it pulled me out of fantasy land and back to reality. The part of me that feared the shame of what he might reveal wanted to yell, ‘No!’ and retreat, but I located and clung onto the braver part of me, which was done with the antagonism and longed to correct whatever was wrong.
‘I really do.’
‘Do you remember what you were wearing the afternoon of your party by the pool?’
I picked up a cloth and frowned, the heat and the chaos swirling around inside me dissipating a little. What did that have to do with anything? ‘No.’
‘A pink bikini with tiny red strawberries all over it,’ he said gruffly. ‘A sheer white sarong tied at the waist. Your hair was held off your face with a pair of sunglasses and you were wearing a gold chain around your right ankle.’
My heart knocked against my ribs. ‘That’s a lot of detail.’
‘I can recall all of it.’
‘I’m not surprised.’ The events of the afternoon had turned a relationship that hadn’t even been a relationship into over a decade of icy hostility. I could recall quite a bit of it too. ‘It was a memorable afternoon. Although not really in a good way.’
‘I hadn’t seen you for a while,’ he said, the words slightly muffled by his chest. ‘You’d grown up, and suddenly you were the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. I was dazzled. Instantly bowled over with lust. It knocked me for six, and I was still floundering when you sidled up to me and demanded I entertain you and your friends as if you owned me. Then you cut me down and it should have killed the attraction stone dead, but unfortunately it didn’t. And that made me far more angry than your insult. How could I so badly want someone who thought so little of me? It made no sense. I had to stay away from you. For my own peace of mind. And since the attraction didn’t fade, as I’d hoped, and you clearly didn’t feel it too, I had to keep on staying away.’
He stopped and the silence that followed his words was immense and deafening. I was stunned. Speechless. Still wiping my fingers on the cloth even though the remnants of cream had to have been long since removed. I didn’t know which bit to process first. The length of his speech? The fact that he’d once lusted after me and the implication that maybe he continued to do so? Or his misguided belief that I’d never found him attractive?
The shock of what he’d just said was too much to comprehend. Too huge. Only one of those clamouring questions could I even begin to address. However he’d felt about me before, he couldn’t be attracted to me now. It was impossible. All evidence suggested the opposite.
And yet...
A montage of recent images and memories—from the afternoon I’d shown up here, then yesterday evening and this morning—broke through the dam of denial and flooded my head, suddenly pelting me with doubt.
What if the abruptness with which he’d dropped my hand after he’d helped me off the boat the day I arrived suggested the contact had had the same electrifying impact on him as it had on me? What if he’d frequently run his darkening gaze over me not to find something of which to disapprove but because he’d been unable to resist the temptation to check me out? Could the deterioration of his mood at supper last night have been a result of the battle he claimed to wage on the attraction he felt for me? And when he’d said half an hour ago we’d get through the storm by ‘sitting it out’, was the reason I’d got the impression he was envisaging something else entirely because he had been? And was that something the two of us in here whipping up a storm of our own?
Could I have been so blinded by my own hang-ups that I’d misread the evidence? It was entirely possible, I realised dazedly. To all those questions and suppositions, the answer could well be yes.
‘Yesterday afternoon,’ I said, suddenly desperate for confirmation one way or another. ‘When I was talking about marine conservation, you were looking at my mouth.’
‘I wanted it on mine,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I wanted it on me everywhere. I thought taking a cold shower while you were out on your walk would fix it, but it didn’t. I thought thinking of you as a sister would help. But that didn’t work either. I’ve never felt frustration like it. And the worst of it is, you are and have always been utterly oblivious.’
‘But you go for leggy blondes,’ I somehow managed, dizzy with shock and lust and who knew what else.
‘Only to try and cure myself of an absurd fixation with a pint-sized brunette.’
‘Five foot five isn’t that short.’