Jessica Hart - Barefoot Bride

‘What do you know about it?’ she fired back, glad of the dim light that hid her flush.

‘I know you, and I know there’s no way on earth a man like Clive could ever make you happy,’ said Will, so infuriatingly calm that Alice’s temper flared.

‘You didn’t make me happy, either!’ she snapped, but Will just shook his head, unfazed by her lie.

‘I did once,’ he said. ‘We made each other happy.’

Alice didn’t want to remember those times. She turned her head away. ‘That was then and this is now,’ she said.

‘We haven’t changed.’

‘ I have,’ Alice insisted. ‘It’s been nearly two years, Will. I’m not the same person I was before. I’ve got a new life, the life I always wanted.’ She lifted her chin. ‘Maybe Clive gives me what I need now.’

‘Does he?’ Will took a step towards her, and instinctively Alice backed away until she found herself up against a tree.

‘Does he?’ Will asked again softly, taking her by the wrists and lifting her arms until she was pinned against the tree trunk. ‘Does he make you laugh, Alice? Do you lie in bed with him and talk and talk?’ he went on, in the same low voice that reverberated up and down Alice’s spine. ‘The way you did with me?’

Her heart was thumping and she could feel the rough bark digging into her back through the flimsy material of her dress. She tried to pull her wrists away, but Will held her in place with insulting ease. He wasn’t a particularly big man, but his spareness was deceptive, and his hands were much stronger than they looked.

And Alice, too, was conscious that she wasn’t fighting as hard as she could have done. She could feel her treacherous body responding to Will’s nearness. It had always been like that. Alice had used to lie awake sometimes, watching him while he slept, and wondering what it was about him that created such a powerful attraction.

It wasn’t as if he were especially good-looking. In many ways, he was quite ordinary, but there was something about him, something uniquely Will in the line of his jaw, in the set of his mouth and the feel of his hands, in all the lean, lovely planes and angles of him that made her senses tingle still.

Will’s voice dropped even further as he pressed her back against the tree. ‘Do you shiver when he kisses you here?’ he asked, dropping a light kiss on Alice’s bare shoulder where it curved into her throat, and in spite of herself Alice felt that familiar shudder of excitement spiral slowly down to the very centre of her, where it throbbed and ached with memories of all the times they had made love.

Closing her eyes, she sucked in her breath as Will pressed warm, slow kisses up the side of her throat. ‘That’s none of your business,’ she managed unsteadily.

‘Does he love you?’ Will whispered against her skin, and the brush of his lips made her shiver again.

She swallowed hard, her eyes still squeezed shut. ‘Yes,’ she said, but she knew it was a feeble effort. ‘Yes, he does,’ she tried again, although it sounded as if she was trying to convince herself.

Alice wanted to believe that Clive loved her, otherwise what was she doing with him?

‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Will, and, although she couldn’t see him, she knew that he was shaking his head. ‘Clive doesn’t love anybody but himself.’

There was a long pause, then Alice opened her eyes and found herself staring up into Will’s face, the face that had once made her heart clench with the knowledge that she could touch it and kiss it and feel it whenever she wanted.

‘Do you love Clive, Alice?’ Will asked quietly.

Alice couldn’t answer. Her throat was so tight it was hard enough to breathe, and all she could do was stand there, her arms pinioned above her head, and look back at him while the world stopped turning, and there was only Will and the feel of his hands over her wrists.

To her horror, her eyes filled with tears, and Will bent with a muffled curse to kiss her, a fierce, hard kiss that seared Alice to the soul. Nearly two years since they had said goodbye, but her mouth remembered his instantly, and she found herself kissing him back, angrily, hungrily, until Will released her wrists at last and yanked her into him to kiss her again.

Instinctively Alice’s arms reached round him and she spread her hands over his back. It had been so long since she had held him, so long since she had felt the solidity and the hardness of the body she had once known as well as her own. She had forgotten how much she missed the feel of him and the wonderfully warm, clean, masculine scent of his skin.

‘I’ve missed you,’ Will echoed her thoughts in a ragged voice. ‘I don’t want to miss you again.’

‘Will…’ Alice was reeling, shocked by the emotion surging between them and the power of her own response.

‘I’m going to Belize next week to work on the reef,’ he went on, taking her face between his hands. ‘Come with me,’ he said with an urgency she had never heard from him before. ‘Come with me and marry me, Alice. We need each other, you know we do. Clive has got his big, fat bonuses to keep him warm. He won’t even notice you’re gone. Say you’ll come with me, and we can spend the rest of our lives making each other happy.’

And the truth was, Alice remembered by Beth’s pool in St Bonaventure, that for a moment there she hesitated. Every fibre of her body was clamouring to throw herself back into his arms and agree.

And every cell in her brain was clanging a great, big warning.

She had the security she had yearned for at last. She had a good job, and in a year or two she would be in a position to get a mortgage and buy her own flat. Wasn’t that what she had always wanted? A place of her own, where she could hang up her clothes in a wardrobe and never have to pack them up again? She was safe and settled. Did she really want to give that up to chase off to the Caribbean with Will, no matter how good it felt to kiss him again?

‘Say yes,’ Will urged her, encouraged by her hesitation.

Very slowly, Alice shook her head. ‘No,’ she said.

She would never forget the expression on his face then. Alice felt as if she had struck him.

‘Why not?’ he asked numbly.

‘It wouldn’t work, Will.’ Alice pulled herself together with an effort. ‘We went through all this two years ago. We agreed that we’re different and we want different things. Our lives were going in different directions then, and they still are now. What’s the point of pretending that they’re not?’

‘What’s the point of pretending that what we have doesn’t exist?’ he countered, and she swallowed.

‘It’s just sexual chemistry,’ she told him shakily. ‘It’s not enough.’

‘And Clive and his bonuses are, I suppose?’ Will made no attempt to hide the bitterness in his voice.

Alice didn’t-couldn’t-answer. It wasn’t Clive, she wanted to tell him. It was the way her life seemed finally under control. She was settled, and had the kind of reassuring routine that she had craved when she was growing up.

And, yes, maybe Clive and the other boyfriends she had had weren’t kindred spirits the way Will had been, but at least she knew where she was with them. They didn’t make her entrails churn with excitement the way he had done, it was true, but they didn’t make her feel superficial and materialistic for wanting to root herself with tangible assets either. Will was like her parents. He wanted things like freedom, adventure and independence, but Alice had learnt that you couldn’t count on those. You couldn’t put them in the bank and save them for when you needed them. Freedom, adventure and independence might be great things to have, but they didn’t make you feel safe.