It was mellow inside. Some of the tables were full, and the area around the bar was busy, but they were still able to grab an empty table to the side where they sat in silence until orders for drinks were given.
Tempted to go for a bracing Maui lager, instead she had a soft drink.
The silence was making her even more edgy. She didn’t want to look at him, because she didn’t want to be reminded of just how much he had come to mean to her, but it was an effort to sit in stony silence with her eyes averted.
‘You were going to tell me that you were a mind reader,’ he finally said, quietly. ‘I’m willing to bet that you aren’t.’
‘You came over here because you’re not quite through with what we had,’ Mia scorned. He had knocked back drink number one, a whisky, in record time, which was alarming. He also couldn’t quite meet her eyes. ‘Am I heading in the right direction?’
‘It’s no good trying to pre-empt what you think I’m going to say,’ he told her, but in such a low, driven voice that she had to lean forward to catch what he was saying. He ordered another whisky and she couldn’t help herself when she said anxiously, ‘Why are you drinking so quickly?’
‘Dutch courage,’ he said with a wry smile.
‘Dutch courage? Why would you need Dutch courage? When have you ever been scared of anything? If this is some kind of tactic to get under my skin, it’s not going to work!’
‘I need Dutch courage because I’ve never had this kind of conversation before. I’ve never…felt this need before.’
‘I think you’re confusing need with lust.’
‘I don’t think the two are connected at all, and that’s why I’m finding this difficult. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. Never thought I could. Just hear me out and, if after you want to walk away, you have my word that I won’t follow you. Thing is, Mia, you came at me like a bolt from the blue. One minute I had a plan for my life, and the next minute you’d managed to blow a hole right in the middle of it and I didn’t know what the hell had happened.’
Mia shifted uneasily. Something was blooming inside her and she couldn’t shove it down where it belonged.
She wanted to hear more. She didn’t want to hear more. So she waited in silence.
‘I just know that what started off as something simple became more and more complicated with each passing second. You got under my skin and you stayed there. I should have known my life was changing when I realised I didn’t want you to leave my bed. I wanted you to fall asleep next to me and wanted you to be the first person I saw in the morning when I woke up.’
‘Really?’ But there was doubt in her voice.
‘Really.’ He smiled tentatively, and that was so novel for a man as self-assured as he was that she softened and began to open up, began to let those shoots of hope grow. When he absently took her hand and fiddled with her fingers, she didn’t pull back.
‘For as long as I can remember,’ he confided huskily, ‘I’ve been distrustful of relationships. My parents, as far as I was concerned, sacrificed everything in the name of love. Work…responsibilities… Me. When they were killed in that plane crash, it seemed just another example of their reckless adventuring which always took precedence over everything else. They should never have gone up. The weather was terrible, but there they were, like a couple of love-struck teenagers, acting with the folly of youth instead of a couple of middle-aged parents with three kids to think about.’
He sighed and pressed his thumbs to his eyes, then he looked at her. ‘I vowed to always, always be in control of my life. There was no way I would let anyone get me to a place where I forgot what my priorities were. Security. Stability. Relationships were enjoyable breaks in between the more important things in life, and that worked until I met you.’
‘And then what happened?’ Mia asked breathlessly.
‘Then I met you and I fell in love.’
‘You…you what?’
‘I fell in love with you, my darling. I had all the symptoms but I failed to recognise the illness. Bad metaphor.’ He grinned. ‘I was so used to the humdrum monotony of having my feet planted on the ground that I failed to appreciate the joy of being able to fly, which is how you make me feel.’
‘Me too,’ Mia admitted. She felt tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. ‘It was so hard not being able to tell you, knowing that you would run a mile if you had any inkling that I was falling madly in love with you. When we were island-hopping, there was always this tightness inside me because I knew it was going to end and when it did…’ She shivered and closed her eyes briefly.
‘You didn’t say anything.’
‘How could I? I was proud. Proud enough to think that I had to walk away with my dignity intact.’
‘I didn’t realise how much that would hurt.’
‘Why…? Why didn’t you say something sooner?’ Mia couldn’t help but ask and he shot her a rueful smile.
‘You talked about pride,’ he said drily. ‘You don’t have a monopoly on that particular emotion. It was more than that, though.’
His voice was thoughtful now. ‘I just kept telling myself that I would adjust back to the life I’d always known, kept telling myself that I should be pleased that you’d accepted the inevitable with such…indifference. I shut down all the pain and bewilderment and hurt because, for the first time, I wanted a woman to stop me from walking away and you didn’t. I told myself that it was only a matter of time until things returned to normal. On all counts, I was wrong. It just took me a while to figure that out. I’ve been a fool, my darling, but I came here to set the record straight.’
‘I love you,’ she said simply.
