Alex laughed. “It’s about as far from bachelor pad as it could be at the moment.”
“I’m sure there’s lots we can do with it,” Ruth said.
My neck was stiff. Their feet were in my field of vision: hers pale and delicate with pink varnished ovals; his brown and smooth with nails cut straight across. When he said something in a low voice, she rolled toward him and her toes brushed his shin. I clenched my jaw.
The little boat bobbed closer to the shore, and Dominic slid off into the water to tow it in. A faint wail reached our spot on the beach. I leaped up and met them at the water’s edge, taking Edwin from Dominic’s arms as he swung him off the boat.
“I swallowed it,” Edwin sobbed, and I helped him up the sand and wrapped him in a towel. Alex poked a straw into a carton of juice for him.
“Unlucky, Edwin,” Dominic told him. “You did great up ’til then. That was a monster wave that got you.”
Edwin sniffed and nodded. Dominic poured himself some more champagne and lay back, puffing out heavily.
“I’d offer to take you out, Laura, but that’s finished me off,” he said, his eyelids lowered.
“Darling, it’s the champagne that’s finished you off,” Ruth said.
Dominic raised his head for a moment. “Alex’ll take you if you fancy it. Won’t you, Alex?” He settled his head back down on the blanket, easing it left and right to shape the underlying sand into a more comfortable pillow. “She’s a proper swimmer, our Laura—a real athlete.”
I rubbed sand from my shins, frowning.
Ruth nudged Alex with her foot. “Yes, go on, Alex.”
“You can’t stay at Summerbourne without learning how to sail a Topper,” Dominic said, his eyes firmly closed.
Alex looked at me. “Have you done it before?” I shook my head. He stood up and stretched, and then held his hand out to me.
“Shall we?”
Ruth settled back onto her elbows with a serene smile, her huge pink-framed sunglasses hiding her eyes. I fumbled out of my shorts and T-shirt, tugging at the black fabric of my swimming costume automatically, wishing I owned something prettier. I’d lost weight when I was ill a few months earlier, and hadn’t been able to train at the pool, and this had left me feeling self-consciously sharp angled and untoned.
I kept my eyes fixed on the sea, and then on the boat as Alex and I dragged it into the water together. When he cupped his hand under my elbow to help me climb aboard, the breeze snatched my breath away.
“How d’you feel up there?” he asked.
I looked at the glittering surface of the sea and the dark strands of his hair and the tiny hesitation in his smile. “Precarious.”
He laughed and sprang up to join me. “Just relax, and lean with me,” he said. “You’ll get a feel for it in no time.”
The moment the sail went up, we were seized by the elements. The restless mass of water sucked at the hull beneath us, threatening to swallow us, but the wind scooped us up and sent us skimming over the surface, our hair whipping behind us. Sunlight refracted off the spray; everything sparkled. His thigh pressed against my thigh, his shoulder pressed against my shoulder, and the heat from his limbs soaked into my muscles and made my heart swell.
We swayed in synchrony, countering the tug of the sail as the boat shot across the waves. Alex threw his head back and laughed at the sky, and I leaned in closer to him, awed by the power of the wind and his seemingly effortless control over where it took us.
“Like it?” he asked.
“I love it!”
I lost all track of time as we flew over the surface of the planet together.
Afterward, when it was all over and we were tugging the boat through waist-deep water toward the shore, he asked me how I was enjoying living at Summerbourne.
“Have you fallen under their spell, the golden couple? Are they treating you well?” There was a fleeting intensity in his look. I had no idea how to answer beyond a vague nod and a shrug.
Neither Dominic nor Ruth left the picnic spot to help us haul the boat up the sand, but they greeted us with smiles and congratulations.
“Bravo! What do you think, Laura? Are you a convert?” Dominic asked.
Ruth threw me a towel and indicated the sleeping child by her side.
