Wildfire. Sandra Field

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СКАЧАТЬ to her head. Nor, even with his artist’s trained eye, could he discern details of her face: she was too far away, and the sun shone too brightly on her features. What he received was an impression of both motion and emotion, of vivid life intensely embodied. She was a creature of the moment, this woman. Most certainly she was no lake spirit. That was too ethereal a designation by far. She was a woman of flesh and blood who was, he would be willing to bet, as much in love with life as he himself was in love with the wilderness.

      As she rolled over on to her back with easy grace and began splashing away from him, her breasts hidden in the spray and then exposed to the sun, their pink tips shining wetly, he admitted to himself what the second thing was. He desired her. Instantly and unequivocally, as he had not desired a woman for a long time. If he were to obey his instincts he would drive the canoe around the rocks, scoop her up and then make love to her with a passion he’d thought he had lost.

      Sure, Simon, a voice jeered in his ear. Canoes aren’t designed for lovemaking. Both of you would end up in the lake. Anyway, a woman as vital as that one might want to choose her partner herself. Assuming she hasn’t already got one. Get real, as Jim would say.

      The woman rolled over on to her stomach, her spine a long, entrancing curve. But her mood had changed from play to work. For nearly fifteen minutes she swam back and forth parallel to the shore with a businesslike crawl, all her movements supple and strong. Then, diving again, she headed towards the shore.

      Simon had sat as still as a statue for the entire fifteen minutes. He now brought the canoe round so as not to lose sight of her. Part of him was ashamed that he should watch her like any peeping Tom; particularly when in such a setting she could not possibly be expecting anyone within miles of her. Intuitively he was sure she would not have played so artlessly in the water had she suspected human eyes were on her. But he could not help himself. Formidable as his will-power could be, and he knew just how formidable better than any other human being, it was not strong enough to make him drag his eyes away from her.

      His mouth dry, he watched her get to her feet, the water waist-deep, waves caressing her hips. Her hair reached halfway down her back. Tossing her head, she flicked it back, before wading to the small sand beach at the furthest point of the cove.

      She moved beautifully, with an unselfconscious grace that brought a lump to his throat. When she reached the sand, she stooped to pick up a bright red towel that was lying there. But instead of walking towards the trees she turned briefly to face the lake, the towel hanging from one hand like an ancient banner of war. Throwing back her head, she gave a delicious peal of laughter, in which was all her joy in the freshness of morning and the pleasure of her solitary swim.

      The sound struck Simon to the heart, for in it was a quality that he had ground to dust in his own soul during the last ten years. He felt involuntary tears prick at the back of his eyes, and furiously willed them back. The woman had wrapped the towel around her body and was loping up the sand towards a venerable pine tree that overhung the beach. For the first time he saw, tucked among the tree-trunks, a weathered cabin with a wide veranda and a stone chimney. Even as he watched, she disappeared among the trees in a flutter of scarlet. A few moments later he heard a screen door bang shut.

      Simon let out his breath in a long sigh. His emotions were in chaos, a chaos he had no wish to analyse. He needed to get out of here. He needed to go back to Jim’s cabin, to the world that was sane and normal and known. As he picked up his paddle, he briefly looked down into the water to check for rocks, and saw in its mirror his own face. It looked no different from the way it usually did; somehow he would have expected the last few minutes to have marked it in some way.

      His hair was thick and unruly, blacker than the surface of the lake, while his eyes, in startling contrast, were as blue as a summer sky. His will-power, which had driven him for so many years, was matched by the hard line of his jaw and the uncompromising jut of his nose, features that gave his face character rather than conventional good looks. That he was attractive to women he had long known and never really understood. His eye for detail failed him when it came to his own countenance: he was blind to the hint of sensuality in his mouth, to all the shadings of emotion that his eyes could express, to the thickness of his dark lashes which contrasted so intriguingly with the strength in his cheekbones.

      He might not understand why women gravitated to him. He did know that there had never been a woman he had chosen to pursue who had not gone willingly to his bed. Willingly and soon. This he had come to take for granted. What it had meant was that he had slept with very few women in the last number of years, because what was easy and available was not always what was desired.

      Scowling down at his face, Simon plunged the paddle into the water so that the reflection disappeared in a swirl of ripples. He brought the canoe around with a couple of strong sweeps, then began stroking back down the lake as though all the demons of the underworld were after him, digging his blade into the water so hard that his wake was marked by miniature black whirlpools.

      He had been in danger of being sucked into such a whirlpool, he thought savagely, navigating the channel into the next lake with less than his usual caution. So he had seen a naked woman swimming in a lake. So what? He had seen naked women before. Seen them, painted them, made love to some of them. There was no reason for him suddenly to be feeling as though he was the only man in a world newly created, and she the one woman fashioned for his delight. No reason for him to feel as though all the warmth of the sun had fallen into his lap, like a gift of the gods. No reason at all. He was thirty-five years old, experienced and wise in the ways of the world. He was not sixteen.

      As though mocking him, his inner eye presented him with a graphic image of the woman’s sensuous play in the water, of her pleasure-drenched smile and her water-streaked breasts. It was an image that made nonsense of reason in a way that both infuriated and frightened him. Apart from anything else, he had no idea who she was. Perhaps she was a visitor who would be gone from here by the weekend. Perhaps she was happily married. Perhaps he would never see her again. And even if he did, would he recognise her?

      Only if she’s naked, the little voice sneered in his ear.

      Go away, he growled. This is ridiculous! It makes no difference whether she’s from Vancouver with a husband and ten children or from Halifax with a live-in boyfriend. He, Simon, had not come to Canada to get involved with a woman. He had come to get acquainted with his brother; and to break away from a city that had been stifling him. This unknown woman was nothing to him. Nothing!

      Driven by his own thoughts, and despite the headwind that had sprung up, Simon made it back to Jim’s cabin in record time. Physical action, as always, had made him feel better. Grinning ruefully to himself as he felt the twinges in his shoulder muscles, he tied the canoe to the dock. Then he strode up the path to the deck, took the steps in two quick leaps, and pulled open the screen door. It slammed shut behind him with a sound that struck into his memory: just so had another door on another cabin slammed shut half an hour ago.

      Determined not to allow that aberrant turmoil of emotion to seize him again, equally determined not to ask a single question about the woman who lived in the cabin on Maynard’s Lake, he said, ‘Mmm...smells good.’

      Jim was frying bacon in a cast-iron pan on the gas stove; his cabin, for all its rustic air, had all the modern conveniences. Turning over a rasher with a fork, he said casually, ‘You must have gone quite a way...see anything interesting?’

      Jim was all that Simon was not, and in a group of people they would never have been taken for brothers. Ten years younger, four inches shorter, tow-haired where Simon had black hair, Jim had a sunny smile and an open nature, as far from the man of secrets that was his elder brother as a man could be. Jim was like a tabby cat stretched out in a patch of sunlight on the floor, purring in contentment; whereas Simon was like a wildcat, wary, deep-hidden in the shadows of the forest.

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