The Story of Us (30 page)

He nodded slowly, and I don't think my response was exactly a surprise. ‘I want to be honest here, Emma. Because I'm past the age of playing games and not saying it how it is. There's something here, something between us, and I don't know if it's because of how we met, or if it's just a physical thing, but it definitely feels real.'

‘I know. And it scares the crap out of me.'

He gave a humourless laugh. ‘Not the most flattering thing to hear, but given the circumstances, I understand the sentiment. But you have enough complications in your life right now, you don't need another one.'

Jack stood up abruptly and held out his hands to draw me to my feet. But he didn't release me when I stood in front of him, just looked into my face for a long moment, as though he was trying to imprint it into his memory. So I could one day turn up within the pages of his books, or was there another reason? I didn't realise a small frown line had been drawn between my eyes until his thumb gently tried to erase it from my brow. His voice was soft as he broke the spell of the moment. ‘I'm sorry, Emma, today was meant to be a pleasant distraction for you, not something else for you to worry about. Perhaps you should just forget we had this conversation?'

He bent to collect the blanket, and while he wasn't looking I picked up the large flat pebble I had been playing with. I wanted something to remember from this moment; something tangible and solid. Silently I slipped the stone into my pocket.

I was quiet on the short drive to the restaurant, going over everything he had said in the dwindling daylight beside the lake. By the time we reached the cheerfully lit gourmet pub there was only one thing I knew with absolute certainty: the things he had said were already indelibly scored in my mind, and nothing, not now or in the future, was ever going to make me to forget them.

The restaurant was charming, all oak beams, stone walls and rustic charm. We were shown to a secluded table beside a window, lit by a spluttering red candle in a glass.

There was an elderly couple seated nearby, leaning close to each other across the width of their snowy white tablecloth, their wrinkled, age-spotted hands unashamedly entwined. I felt an unexpected pang of envy at their intimacy. I missed that; I wanted that feeling back again, and I was pretty certain now who I wanted it with. Impossible dreams, the type that had no foothold in reality, but still they refused to go away.

‘It's been a nice afternoon, Jack. Thank you for inviting me.' I sighed. ‘I think I needed to get away from everything.'

‘It's good to see you looking more relaxed,' he said with that smile of his that always made my pulse rate skip a little. I wasn't the only one affected by his charms; the waitress had most definitely been staring at him when he'd held out my chair, with his customary good manners. She'd briefly glanced my way, her face full of appreciation and a look which so clearly said
Well done!
that it was hard not to smile. Women were always going to do that: look at him that way, flirt a little perhaps, try to get his attention. Yet when we were together, I had never once felt that his focus was anywhere else except entirely on me. Jack had everything you would ever want or look for in a man, the whole package. He was a glossy magazine's tick list of every woman's composite ideal
.
Was it really so surprising that I was starting to fall—

‘What can I get you both to drink?'

Did I just think ‘… to fall'?

‘Would you like to see the wine list?'

‘… to fall'?, as in ‘… in love'?

‘Emma?'

But I wasn't falling in love with Jack. Was I? This was just some passing infatuation, physical attraction. It couldn't be love. Well, could it?

‘Emma, is something wrong?'

I jumped, as though I'd just awoken from a trance, to find both Jack and the waitress studying me with open curiosity. ‘A glass of house white, please,' I said, delighted that I hadn't lost the ability to speak coherently, even if I had apparently taken leave of the rest of my senses. Could I actually have done something so stupid as to fall for someone who was about to permanently disappear from my life, was practically allergic to commitment, and still scarred by the betrayal of his ex-wife? How was
any
of that even possible, when only six weeks ago I'd been about to marry someone else?

Jack was speaking, but once again I'd been too distracted to hear him. ‘Sorry,' I apologised, shaking my head as though I could reposition all the errant thoughts scampering through it into a far corner of my brain. ‘What did you say?'

He looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Are you sure you're feeling all right? You're not sick, or anything? You look a little… odd.'

‘No. I'm fine, absolutely fine,' I lied.

He reached across the table and covered my hand with his. ‘It's going to get easier you know, in time. It isn't always going to hurt this much.' He had taken my hand in his so many times before that I should have been immune to his touch, but as his fingers curled around mine, something felt different. A pulse began to pound in my throat as he looked at me. His dark tawny eyes were suddenly serious.

‘I still don't like the thought of leaving so soon when things are still so difficult for you.'

What I wanted to say was
‘Stay then. Finish your book here. Finish
all
your books here. You have the most portable profession in the world. You don't have to leave.'
All of which would have been completely ridiculous and more than a little insane. So what I
did
say was, ‘You saved my life, Jack, but that doesn't make you for ever responsible for it, or me. You're off the hook now.'

There was a bitter sweetness in his smile as he replied, ‘Somehow I think I'm
always
going to feel kind of responsible for you.' His voice was strangely serious. ‘Even from the other side of the world.'

There really wasn't anything I could say to that, but I stored his words in a far recess of my mind, for later examination.

‘
Could
you stay longer, I mean, if you wanted to?' I felt the flushed heat of a blush creep over my cheeks as I tried to make my question sound entirely inconsequential.

‘Not really,' he admitted. ‘I've got business in New York, and the tenancy on the Trentwell house is up at the end of the month.' He almost left it there, but then added cautiously, ‘And, as I mentioned earlier, I have a… commitment… a responsibility to someone back home. I
have
to go back.'

I swallowed, determined not to let him see the effect his words had on me. There it was then, he had a ‘commitment'. There
was
someone he was going back home to, I'd suspected that there might be. So this was the end of it; in fact tonight could very well be the last time I ever saw him. I felt the sharp jab of tears behind my eyes and furiously blinked them away. If this
was
the last time, I was determined not to squander it on thinking of all the things that might have been.

I hid what I was feeling behind the teasing banter which always seemed so easy between us. I laughed when he pretended to find the British fare on the menu totally bewildering. ‘Shepherd's pie, ploughman's, bangers, and toad in the hole? What is wrong with you people?' I toasted the future with him and tried not to let the sadness in my eyes show that his and mine were clearly going in two very different directions.

We left the restaurant by a rear door, finding ourselves in an outdoor seating area beside a river. The sun was very low in the sky and would soon be setting, and its dwindling rays made the flowing water sparkle and glisten like bubbling mercury.

‘Do you feel like taking a walk before we go?' Jack asked.

I nodded, and fell into step beside him as we travelled the length of the patio until we reached a short flight of wooden steps leading down to the towpath. Jack took my hand on the damp and slippery treads, and then kept hold of it as we walked along the path. The temperature was noticeably cooler than it had been earlier, but I didn't feel the chill at all with my hand in his.

There wasn't another soul to be seen on our side of the river, and on the other bank there were just open fields. It felt private and isolated, as though we were much further than just a few minutes' walk from civilisation. As the shadows grew and the trees cast intriguing silhouettes around us, I felt like we were disappearing into our own private world, a world where all the rules were different.

There was a bridge up ahead, a wooden-railed old-fashioned affair. There was no reason for us to take it. There was nothing we needed to reach on the other side, and yet when we came to it, we both turned to climb its short flight of steps. The trees on both banks were heavy here, their branches low enough to graze Jack's head as we stepped on to the planked decking. When we reached the centre of the bridge, we stopped by unspoken consent and watched the river give up its fight with the night, as it turned from silver to inky black. There was a gentle breeze blowing, which ruffled my hair away from my face, but I let the red strands billow wherever the wind took them, as I braced myself against the bridge railing and looked back along the length of the river. The moon was out now, impatiently pushing the last fingers of daylight away.

We didn't speak for a long time. Words seemed superfluous in this moment of perfect harmony. I was the first to break the silence. ‘It's so peaceful here. I'd like to stay for ever.' I expected him to laugh at such a fanciful statement, but he didn't. ‘You should have brought your camera,' I continued.

He moved from his position at the rail to stand in front of me. ‘I don't need it,' he said, his voice low. ‘I think I'm always going to remember this moment… and for all the wrong reasons.'

I don't remember his head lowering, nor his arms going around me, and that's a shame, because I knew sometime in the future I was going to want to replay this moment over and over again. All I knew was that one moment Jack was standing in front of me, and the next I was in his arms, my mouth moving beneath his as I was swept along by a primeval force, giving in to the most amazing kiss I had ever experienced.

I was tumbling in freefall, mindless of where I was or when I would crash back to earth. His body fitted perfectly against mine, every contour finding its counterpart as we merged into one. I heard a groan, and it might have come from either of us as the kiss defied our need for oxygen and continued to transport me from reality into a red velvet haze, where I knew nothing except the complete rightness of feeling this man's mouth and tongue matching and meeting mine.

He didn't break away abruptly or all at once, but released my mouth slowly with a series of shorter lingering kisses, which made even breaking apart deliciously erotic. He kept his hold on me, but arched backwards so that he could see my face. Neither of us was breathing properly, and I could feel our hearts hammering against each other through the walls of our chests, speaking to each other in an ancient rhythm.

‘I know I shouldn't have done that,' Jack began, his voice ragged and not quite controlled, ‘but I won't apologise or lie, because I'm
never
going to be sorry that I did.'

I tried to speak, but my lips didn't seem to want to perform anything so mundane, all they wanted was to be joined with his again.

‘Perhaps it was wrong of me to take advantage of you like that. But just once… just one time… I had to know what it would feel like.'

There was so much wrong in his last sentence I didn't know where to start. ‘You didn't take advantage… you didn't.' My ability to communicate articulately seemed to have vanished along with the fire in his eyes. ‘I
wanted
you to kiss me.' I could almost hear my last shred of pride slip through the planks of the bridge and fall into the water below. ‘I've wanted it for a long time.'

Jack closed his eyes briefly. I really thought he was going to give in and kiss me again, but then with a strength and determination I hated him for finding, he gently increased the distance between us. The tremor I felt running through him was the only indicator I had that he hadn't wanted to release me at all.

‘This is wrong,' he said, not quite meeting my eyes as he spoke, ‘for both of us.' I tried to shake my head in denial, but he stilled the movement by capturing my jaw in his hand. Very tenderly he drew his thumb over my lower lip, which was still swollen from his kiss. ‘You've been through too much and you're vulnerable and confused. You don't know which way to turn, and I'm an unnecessary complication that you just don't need right now.'

‘But—' I could hear the defeat in my voice long before my brain had the good sense to realise this was a fight I wasn't going to win.

Jack shook his head sadly. ‘It's much too soon for you, and far too late for me.' His arms flexed and he eased me further away until the last bit of body contact between us was broken. ‘I'm not what you need in your life right now, Emma. But God help me it's taking every last ounce of strength I have not to drag you back into my arms and obliterate the memory of every other man whose lips have been on yours.'

I looked up at him with eyes that weren't ashamed to plead. What I felt was written all over my face and a revealing pulse was throbbing erratically at the base of my throat. There was no question what I wanted. None at all. I heard him groan softly as he looked at me, before he determinedly forced himself to look back at the river.

‘You don't need to be starting something now with me. Something with an end that's staring you in the face. You've had too many endings in your life recently. I won't be another one.'

I could have tried arguing, I could have begged, but a small kernel of self-preservation finally kicked in, saving me my last vestiges of dignity. ‘What did you mean about it being too late for you? Because you're about to leave?'