Single Dads Collection. Lynne Marshall
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Название: Single Dads Collection
Автор: Lynne Marshall
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Короткие любовные романы
Серия: Mills & Boon e-Book Collections
isbn: 9780008900625
isbn:
Bad idea.
It had been a happy day, though. They pulled the boat onto a tiny coral island, where they could wade into the warm water and watch the fish dart around their ankles, flashing silver in the sunlight. Will taught Lily how to snorkel while Alice sat under a solitary leaning palm and unpacked the picnic they had brought.
Afterwards, Lily dozed off in the shade, and Will watched Alice wandering along the shore. The set of her head on that straight spine was so familiar it made Will ache. Her loose white-linen trousers were rolled up to her knees, her face shadowed by the brim of her hat, a pair of delicate sandals dangling from her hand.
‘You won’t need shoes,’ Will had said when they’d got into the boat that morning, but Alice had refused to leave them behind in the car.
‘I feel more comfortable with shoes on,’ she had said. ‘You never know when you’re going to need them to run away.’
‘You won’t be able to run very far on the reef,’ Will had pointed out, but she’d only lifted her chin at him.
‘I’m keeping them on.’
Alice would always want an escape-route planned, he realised as he watched her pause and look out across the translucent green of the lagoon to where the deep blue of the Indian Ocean frothed in bright white against the far reef. She would always want to be able to run away, just as she had run away from him before.
She wouldn’t be here now if she didn’t have that ticket home, Will remembered. It would be foolish to let himself hope that she might stay. She wasn’t going to, and he had to accept that now. Consciously steadying his heart, he made himself think coolly and practically. He mustn’t be seduced by the sea and the sunlight and Alice’s smile. Sure, he could enjoy today, but he wouldn’t expect it to last. There were no for evers where Alice was concerned.
When Lily woke up, she ran instantly down to join Alice at the water’s edge. Will watched them both, and tried not to mind that his daughter so obviously preferred Alice’s company to his. Tried not to worry, too, how she would manage when Alice was gone.
He could see them bending down to examine things they found on the beach. Alice was crouching down, turning something in her hand and showing it to Lily, who took it and studied it carefully.
And then it happened.
‘Daddy!’ she cried, running up the beach towards him. ‘Daddy, look!’
It was a cowrie shell, small but perfect, with an unusual leopard pattern on its back, but Will hardly noticed it. He was overwhelmed by the fact that Lily had run to him, had called him Daddy, had wanted him to share in her pleasure, and his throat closed so tightly with emotion that it was hard to speak.
‘This is a great shell,’ he managed. ‘It’s an unusual one, too. You were very clever to find it.’
‘Alice found it,’ Lily admitted with reluctant honesty, and Will looked up to see Alice, who had followed more slowly up the beach. Their eyes met over Lily’s dark head, and she smiled at him, knowing exactly what Lily’s excited dash up the beach had meant to him.
Will smiled back, pushing the future firmly out of his mind. He knew the day wouldn’t last for ever, but right then, with Lily’s intent face, the feel of the shell in his palm, and Alice smiling at him, it was enough.
WILL was thinking about that day out on the reef as he sat on the verandah with Alice and the hot air creaked with the pressure of the oncoming storm. He had done his best to keep his distance from her since then.
Again and again, he had reminded himself that she would be leaving soon and that there was no point in noticing the curve of her mouth, or the line of her throat, or the sheen of her skin in the crushing heat. No point in remembering how she felt, how she tasted. No point in thinking about how sweet and exciting and right it had felt to make love to her.
Not doing any of that was definitely the sensible thing to do. But it was hard.
‘Listen!’ Alice held up a hand suddenly, startling Will out of his thoughts.
‘What is it? Is it Lily?’ he asked, instantly anxious in case he had missed a cry.
‘It’s the insects.’
Will looked at her puzzled. ‘What insects?’
‘Exactly. They’ve stopped.’
And, sure enough, the deafening rasp, scratch and shrill of the insects, that was such a familiar backdrop to the evenings here that Will barely heard it any more, had paused and in its place was an uncanny silence.
The next instant there was a rip of lightning in the distance, an almighty crack of thunder overhead, and a deluge of rain came crashing down onto the roof. One second there had been the hot, heavy, waiting silence, the next there was nothing but sound and fury and the pounding, thundering, hammering rain. It fell not in drops but as a solid mass, bouncing back in the air as it hit solid ground, and overwhelming the gutters so that it simply cascaded in a sheet over the edge of the verandah.
Alice laughed with sheer delight. ‘I love it when it rains like this!’ she shouted to Will, but it was doubtful that he could hear her over the deafening roar of the rain.
Caught up in the elemental excitement of the downpour, she jumped to her feet. The sheer power of it was awe-inspiring, almost frightening, but exhilarating at the same time. Alice could feel the raw energy of it surging around the verandah, pushing and pulling at her, making her blood pound.
Normally she hated feeling so out of control, but a tropical downpour was different. She knew it wouldn’t last very long, but while it did she could feel wild and reckless, the way she would never allow herself to be the rest of the time.
She looked at Will, who had got to his feet too, moved by the same restless excitement generated by the breaking of the pressure that had been pressing down on them for the last few days. He was watching the rain, his intelligent face alive with interest, the stern mouth curling upwards into an almost-smile, and, as her eyes rested on him, Alice was gripped by a hunger to touch him once more, to feel his hard hands against her skin, to abandon herself to the electricity in the air.
Instinctively, she took a step towards him, just at the moment when the force of the rain finally succeeded in dislodging part of the roof and poured through a hole directly onto her head. If Alice had stayed where she was, the water would have splashed harmlessly onto the verandah, but as it was she was drenched instantly.
It felt as if someone had tipped a bucket over her, and she gasped with the shock of it before she started to laugh again. It was like standing under a waterfall, the water cool and indescribably refreshing after the suffocating heat, and as it was too late to get dry Alice closed her eyes and tipped her face up to the cascading water.
In seconds her dress was clinging to her, and her shoes—her favourite jewelled kitten-heels—were probably СКАЧАТЬ