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'I knew you and my mother would hit it off,' he said, apparently congratulating himself on what he imagined to be a magic rapport. 'I saw how easily you were talking to each other after lunch—what was my mother saying to you?' There was a slight flush in his face as he asked that and Quincy frowned.
'Oh, nothing special,' she hedged.
'My mother's famous for saying what she thinks,' said Joe, and there was a definite trace of uneasiness in his voice.
'I think you could say she did that,' Quincy agreed.
Joe pulled off the road into a layby near some shady trees. The traffic went snarling past them and the sun glittered on grey rocks rising at the edge of the swirling blue sea. Staring straight ahead, Joe tapped his fingers on the wheel in a long silence. Quincy looked at him uncertainly. Why had he stopped?
'Did she jump the gun, Quincy?' he asked at last, his voice rough and very low, only just audible.
She wasn't sure what he was talking about and frowned. Joe turned and looked at her, his mouth un-steady. 'I didn't think to warn her not to say anything yet, I thought they realised how things stood.'
'They may—I don't,' said Quincy. 'What are you talking about, Joe?'
'Us,' he said. 'You, how I feel about you.'
'How do you
feel?' she asked huskily, too surprised to think and feeling her heart turning over inside her like a porpoise in a sunlit sea, the surprise of sudden, unexpected joy bursting on her mind and body and causing dangerous sensations in both.
'Don't you know? he muttered as though she must know, she had to understand, and, not understanding, torn by painful winds of confusion and uncertainty and hope, she looked at him with wide, vulnerable green eyes, no longer trying to hide her own feelings, abandoning any pretence of being indifferent or calm.
Joe moved abruptly and Quincy moved at the same instant. Their bodies touched, clung; their mouths meeting in a long kiss. Her,, eyes closed helplessly, her arms went round his neck, the heat between them a growing physical power which made her shudder with a passion the meeting of their mouths could not assuage.
When he lifted his head she couldn't meet his eyes, her face so hot she felt she had sunstroke.
'I've missed you,' he said deeply. 'A hundred times I planned to fly to England to see you, but I told myself it was madness. You hate the way I live, I could see that in London. I couldn't ask you to live the way I do, you couldn't take it. I told myself to forget you, but I couldn't. I couldn't get you out of my mind. I thought about it until I nearly went crazy. I was impossible to work with—Billy got close to beating my brains out! My temper was hair-trigger, I wasn't sleeping, I couldn't concentrate on my work.' He groaned, and Quincy watched him, a smile in her eyes.
'Poor Joe,' she said, and he gave her a wry look.
'It wasn't funny. Even my family noticed in the end—my mother got it out of me, she always does. She's very persistent, my mother. She uses the water dropping on a stone technique; nag, nag, nag, until she finds out what she wants to know—and then she gives you the benefit of her opinion loud and clear.' He laughed and Quincy half smiled, thinking back over the conversation she had had with Mrs Aldonez—what had Joe's mother really been saying to her? Had she misunderstood all that?
'What did she say to you?' she asked Joe, and he bent and caressed the side of her neck with his fingertips, sending a little shiver of pleasure down her spine. 'She gave me very practical advice—build a house of my own, wind down my career and spend more time at home from now on,' he said huskily.
Quincy looked up at him, doubt in her eyes.
'I can't offer you much,' said Joe, his voice roughening again. 'I've got plenty of money, of course, but at the moment my life is still a crazy mess, I can't offer you much peace. I haven't really got much at all, unless I've got you—and that makes me a taker, rather than a giver. I need you a hell of a lot more than you need me—I realise that. In fact, that's about all I can offer you—the fact that I need you so much it hurts.'
Quincy laughed, close to tears of happiness. 'You're crazy,' she said, and saw him wince.
'I guess I am,' he said. 'I shouldn't have asked, I've no right to try to drag you into the organised insanity that goes on around me most of the time.'
'If that's where you are, that's where I want to be,'
Quincy said, and he looked down at her searchingly, his expression changing. 'I love you, you idiot,' she told him. 'Can't you see that?'
Joe's brown skin took on a deep flush. He caught one of her hands and lifted it to his lips, bending his head over it in a way that pierced Quincy with an almost unbearable happiness. For a few minutes they were alone, their own emotions surrounding them with a crystal wall of silence that excluded the rest of the world. Joe lived in full view of the world, a spotlight always on him. She had felt protective and angry at that concert in London, seeing his isolation in the dangerous glare of those massed eyes, the hunger of the audience reaching out to devour him and absorb the fierce energy he gave off. Joe needed a refuge, a safe place where he could be himself without pretence, without a mask. He would always be under attack, he needed a love which was real, which was human, which was for him as a man, rather than for that glittering icon which the public pursued with such ruthless determination.
A few minutes later, Joe said huskily as he lifted his head again, 'Ever since we've been over in Europe, my mother's been nagging me to go and find you and ask you to marry me—she was getting irritated with me for dragging my feet. She kept asking me how I could know what you would say until I'd taken the risk of asking you, but I was too scared you'd say no, I didn't dare put it to the test.'
Quincy was thinking, her brow furrowed. 'How did you describe me to her?' she asked slowly—what impression had he given his mother, for heaven's sake?
'I told her you were the loveliest girl I'd ever seen,' Joe said. 'I said you'd take her breath away.'
Quincy laughed, relaxing. 'I don't think I did that, not that I noticed, she seemed to have plenty of breath left.' Mrs Aldonez had been welcoming her to the family, she realised, not telling her bluntly that she was no threat to Joe. Looking into Joe's dark eyes with a passion which made them glow with response, she smiled at him. 'If I hadn't come to Spain, then, we might never have met again.' It was a chilling thought.
'We would,' Joe said. 'Sooner or later I'd have plucked up my courage and come to find you—I'd have had to, I need you.' He leaned forward again and kissed her softly, and a car driving past hooted rudely, making Quincy jump. 'Take no notice, my darling,' Joe murmured. 'He's jealous, that's all.' He drew her close again, brushing his lips over her mouth. 'What were we saying?'
