One Unforgettable Summer: The Summer They Never Forgot / The Surgeon's Family Miracle / A Bride by Summer. Sandra Steffen

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       CHAPTER TEN

      DESTINATION? SOMEWHERE THEY could have privacy. Purpose? To talk more freely about what had happened to each other in the twelve years since she’d left Dolphin Bay. And Sandy didn’t give a flying fig that the two bemused ladies Ben had ousted from Bay Books stood hands on hips and watched as she and Ben hastened away from the shop.

      Even just metres down the street she fell out of step with Ben and had to skip to catch up. He turned to wait for her, suppressed laughter still dancing around his mouth, and extended his hand for her to take.

      Sandy hesitated for only a second before she slid her fingers through his. Linked hands would make quite a statement to the good folk of Dolphin Bay. Anticipation and excitement throbbed through her as he tightened his warm, strong grip and pulled her closer. She smiled up at him, her breath catching in her throat at his answering smile.

      When she’d very first held hands with Ben the simple act had been a big deal for her. Most of her schoolfriends had already had sex with their boyfriends by the age of eighteen. Not her. She’d never met a boy she’d wanted to do more with than kiss. When she’d met Ben she’d still been debating the significance of hands held with just palms locked or, way sexier, with fingers entwined.

      And Ben?

      Back then he’d had no scars.

      ‘Where are we going?’ she asked, surprised when her voice came out edged with nervousness.

      ‘My place,’ he said. His voice didn’t sound nervous in the slightest.

      Did he live at the hotel? That would make sense. Maybe in an apartment as luxurious as the room where she was staying.

      ‘Do you remember my family’s old boathouse?’ he asked as he led her down the steps in front of the hotel.

      ‘Of course I do,’ she said, and she felt herself colour. Thirty years old and blushing at the memory of that ramshackle old boathouse. Dear heaven, she hoped he didn’t notice.

      On the sand outside the boathouse, in the shelter of Ben’s father’s beached dinghies, she and Ben had progressed from first base to not-ready-to-progress-further-than-third.

      She glanced quickly up at Ben. Oh, yes, he remembered too. The expression in those deep blue eyes made that loud and clear.

      She blushed a shade pinker and shivered at the memory of all that thwarted teen sexuality—and at the thought of how it might feel to finally do something about it if she and Ben got to that stage this time around.

      ‘I live in the boathouse,’ he said.

      ‘You live there?’ She didn’t know what else to say that would not come out sounding ill-mannered.

      Instead, she followed Ben across the sand in silence, wondering why a successful businessman would choose to live in something that was no more than a shack.

      But the structure that sat a short distance to the right of the hotel bore little resemblance to the down-at-heel structure of her memory. Like so much of Dolphin Bay, it had changed beyond recognition.

      ‘Wow! I’m impressed,’ she said.

      Ben’s remodelled boathouse home looked like something that could star on a postcard. Supported by piers on the edge of the bay, its dock led out into the water. Timber-panelled walls were weathered to a silvery grey in perfect harmony with the corrugated iron of the peaked roof. Window trim and carriage lamps had been picked out in a deep dusky blue. Big tubs of purple hydrangeas in glazed blue pots sat either side of the door.

      Ben leaned down to pluck a dead leaf from one of the plants without even seeming to realise he did it. She wouldn’t have taken him for a gardener—but then she knew so very little of what interests he might have developed in the years since they’d last been together at this rich-in-memories part of the beach.

      ‘The boathouse СКАЧАТЬ