CAROL MARINELLI - English Doctor, Italian Bride

Real, because as he’d held her, as this stunning man had held her in his arms, she’d understood every warning her father had given her, every speech her mother had made that a kiss could lead to other things.

Closing her eyes, she remembered the awful row she’d had with her mother.

She’d been just shy of eighteen, in her last year of high school, studying like crazy for her exams. She had, after a lot of persuading, been allowed to go to her best friend’s eighteenth birthday, yet her mother had insisted that she be home from the party by eleven. The first to leave, she hadn’t got home till twelve and had stood angrily and defiantly in the kitchen as Carmel had ripped into her. Only that time Bonita hadn’t said sorry.

Bonita had known she’d had nothing to be sorry for. She had left all her friends partying the night away, her homework had been up to date, and she’d still worked part time in the shop. Bonita had known she couldn’t do it any more, couldn’t live like that a moment longer, and she wouldn’t. She told her mother she was leaving home, that she was going to share a flat, was going to have a life.

She hadn’t even known that Hugh had been there—he’d been trying to sleep in the lounge and had heard every word. But the next morning, when her brother Paul—because it was OK for him to be—had been in bed nursing a hangover and her parents had been at church, no doubt praying for her imagined sins, Hugh had come into the kitchen. He’d found her in her thick candlewick dressing-gown, her eyes swollen from crying, and had tried to say the right thing.

‘I hate her,’ Bonita snarled.

‘She just worries about you!’

‘Why?’ Angry, hurting, furious, it was all there in her words as she paced the kitchen. ‘Because I’m a girl…’

‘And because you’re the youngest, because you’ve got three older brothers, because they had you late in life.’

‘I’m eighteen in a couple of weeks, I could be married and have children by now, I’m learning to drive, I’ll be at university next year. I’ve had it with her—I’m going to leave. Today, when they get home from church, I’m going to tell them properly. I’m going to get a job, find a flat…’

‘Don’t leave home, Bonny!’ Hugh came over to where she stood. ‘Not now.’

‘You did!’ Bonita pointed out. She was furious now, crying hot, angry tears, hands flailing, blaming him somehow. ‘You left the country when you were eighteen—I’m not allowed out the house after eleven! I’m not a child.’

‘Come here.’ He cuddled her then—and it felt nice. They hadn’t ever really got on. Oh, she’d had a crush on him for years, but he’d teased her so mercilessly, had been so downright horrible at times, that it hadn’t been hard to dislike him, too. But when he held her, for the first time she felt that someone might just understand. Her brothers didn’t, they just told her to toe the line and not upset Mum and Dad, and her parents certainly didn’t, and neither did her friends, who told her to just tell her parents where they could stick there rules. But standing in the kitchen Bonita realised two things.

Armstrong was an appropriate surname for him, because being wrapped in his arms was heaven.

And maybe, just maybe, Hugh was the one person on this earth who did understand.

‘Your dad’s just worried that you’re going to—’

‘It’s not Dad who’s the problem,’ Bonita interrupted, shaking her head against his chest. ‘It’s Mum. She’s the one who’s always having a go—she called me a tart last night before I went out, just for wearing lipstick.’

‘If your dad had seen you wearing lipstick you wouldn’t have been allowed to even go to the party!’ Hugh patiently explained, only she wasn’t listening, couldn’t see it, refused to get it.

It was her mother who was the problem!

‘I just can’t stand it here.’

‘You don’t have to for much longer,’ Hugh said. ‘Do your exams, get your grades and maybe when you go to university things will settle down, but you can’t throw it all away now.’

She nearly had. That morning, replaying the row, three months more at school had seemed endless, way easier to just leave, to get a job, to do anything if it meant that she could get away, to be allowed to live. And then he’d held her.

‘Don’t do anything rash, you could end up regretting it for ever.’

For ever was a lot longer than three months… even her jumbled mind could work that one out. Her head on his chest, she could hear the steady beat of his heart, the hands of time that soothed, only they didn’t…

The pendulum paused on the edge of time, dipped into the next second and clattered back into a different rhythm.

His mouth was there, just inches away, talking to her, telling her to hold on, delivering reasonable words that soothed. Only suddenly she was aware of it…and she knew that suddenly he was aware of her, in a way he never had been before. Everything shifted then. A slightly startled look flashed between them as they both caught the other looking in a way they shouldn’t. And then he kissed her…or she kissed him.

No matter how many times Bonita replayed it, she could never quite decide who moved first, just lips merging, blending to the most exquisite of tastes. His mouth tender at first, exploring her slowly, her inexperienced lips tentative, savouring each delicious sensation, the feel of him full on her mouth, the tangy fragrance and the soft coolness of his tongue.

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