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She shrugged, her bare shoulder blades rubbing against the wood of the door. ‘The doctor said that apparently around half of first pregnancies end in a miscarriage, sometimes so early that the woman doesn’t even know about it.’
‘But you knew,’ he said, dropping his arms and straightening up.
‘I thought I knew,’ she said, free to move past him into the big, unlit living area where she could safely avoid his all-seeing gaze. Someone had lit a bonfire at the far end of the beach and through the big picture windows she could see the fiery sparks leaping up into the sky, reaching out for the cool sprawl of stars that were just beginning to prick through as dusk teetered on the edge of night. ‘As it turns out I was only pretending…’
‘I’m sorry.’ His voice was soft as the night as he came up behind her.
The breath shivered out of her lungs and she wrapped her arms around herself, wishing she were one of those sparks, dancing up into nothingness. ‘Why? You never wanted the baby—’
‘Not for the baby. For you. For your loss. Because it was so much more than a pretence for you, wasn’t it, Kate? For weeks you thought you were having my baby…’
She bit her lip, but the self-inflicted pain didn’t help banish the tears that stood in her eyes, blurring the dance of the sparks. She opened them wide and blinked, but then a strong pair of enfolding arms slid around and over hers, chasing away the chill, drawing her gently back against a warm column of hard flesh, and the tears spilled over her cheeks and dripped down into the crease of a tanned elbow.
The arms tightened and she felt Drake’s square chin skim over her shoulder at the nape of her neck, his head dipping and turning so that he could push his face into the side of her throat, his hard forehead nudging up under her jaw, his lips moving against her soft skin.
‘Ah, Katherine…I’m sorry…’ He began to rock her from side to side, his big hands compressing her upper arms, his hips directing but also passively supporting the sway of her willowy body.
A sob burst from her chest and she briefly struggled against his unbreakable grip.
‘Kate…’ he whispered against her throat. ‘Katie…’
It was the first time he had ever used the sweet diminutive of her name and that he should do it now just seemed too much. A second sob tore loose, and then another, and then the tears just wouldn’t stop. When she stopped fighting his hold he slid his arms down to her hips and turned her around, pulling her hands around his waist, drawing her head against his chest and rubbing the knuckles of one hand up and down her spine, continuing to rock her in rhythm to her sobs.
‘I don’t know why I’m crying; there’s nothing to cry about,’ she wept, her voice muffled in the folds of his linen shirt. ‘It’s not as if I’ve really lost a baby…just a silly delusion…What made me think I could be a good mother, anyway? I suppose you think I’m totally mad—’
‘Shh, Kate,’ he soothed, ‘you’re the sanest woman I know—you’re the one who anchors me to my humanity.’ He rested his cheek on the top of her tousled head. ‘You lost something precious to you this week, and even if it was just an illusion, why shouldn’t you be allowed to grieve for it?’
Her fingers clenched into his shirt, the beat of his heart against her jaw reverberating through her bones. ‘You don’t really care,’ she choked, lifting her head. ‘You’re happy that your life can go back to the way it was before…’
‘Not happy…sad.’ He tilted her chin up so that she could see the truth of his words in his sombre face. ‘In all the time I’ve known you I’ve never seen you cry, except at a movie. That made me feel safe. I don’t like to see you hurting.’
She looked up at him with drowned eyes, a ghostly silver in the half-darkness. ‘Then why…why did you walk away from me like that?’ she said rawly.
He brushed back the hair from her forehead, dislodging several grains of sand, which he stroked away from the top of her furrowed brows. ‘Because I’m a flawed human being, sweetheart. Sometimes I let the past get in the way of my better instincts. But I do learn from my mistakes and I’m here for you now, so you don’t have to bear this alone.’
He pressed his lips to her crumpled forehead, smoothing it out with a string of gentle kisses that drifted to the corner of her damp eyes, and down to her salty cheeks and bite-swollen lips. His soft murmurs of tender reassurance and the rocking cradle of his arms, the feather-light touch of his mouth stroking her reddened eyelids closed, and the achingly sweet brush of his cheek against hers both lulled and enticed her into a dreamy state of contented acquiescence.
So that when she found herself upstairs in Drake’s luxurious grey and blue bedroom, being divested of her clothes, she was only mildly curious.
‘What are you doing?’ she murmured through tear-thickened vocal cords as Drake’s comforting arms withdrew so that he could pick up a remote control to draw the blue silk drapes and dim the squat bedside lamps to an intimate glow.
‘Getting comfortable,’ he said, pulling the white shirt over his head without undoing the buttons, and discarding it carelessly on the thick silver-grey carpet. He did the same with her top and was deftly drawing her salt-stained shorts down her legs when she bestirred herself to weakly protest.
‘I haven’t had a wash. You can’t look at me; I’m all grubby—’
‘I don’t mind. Hop out,’ he ordered and threw the shorts on top of the pile of clothes when she unthinkingly obeyed.
‘I do. I always have a shower before I see you,’ she fretted, trying to hide herself behind her arms. ‘I need to feel that I’m clean, and look my best, and smell beautiful…’
He took her hands, gently saluting the one that still showed signs of bruising from the extracted splinters, and placed them over his shoulders, spanning her slender waist with his big hands and nuzzling her pouting mouth with more of those butterfly kisses. ‘You’re just as appealing to me au naturel,’ he murmured reassuringly. ‘You smell like a real woman; I like that better than any artificial fragrance…a woman of the sun and sea and beach.’
He licked at the tracks of her tears on her face and she gave a sad, salty chuckle.
‘You feel like Koshka, only your tongue is softer.’
He gave her some more of his soft tongue, and took advantage of her distraction to unfasten her bra, letting out an exclamation as a thick crust of dry sand fell away with the cups, leaving her bare breasts coated with a fine dusting of pale grit, the minute grains of quartz sparkling in the lamp-light.
‘I need a towel, I’m all sandy,’ she said self-consciously, wrinkling her nose and trying to ineffectually brush away the grittiness.
