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He didn’t even want to make love with her right now. He wanted to sleep with her, then wake her with coffee and strawberry crêpes. He wanted to argue with her and yet know all the while she’d be there to catch him when he fell. To catch her when she fell. He wanted a lazy afternoon, sitting beneath a flapping parasol of a café, watching the world go by, and to dance with her at midnight, surrounded by the lights of the city.
And then he wanted to lie down with her, and give her not just his body but his heart and soul. Gabriel had reckoned that he knew a thing or two about sex, but he’d been wrong. He wanted Clara to teach him what making love was really all about.
* * *
On Sunday morning, Gabriel woke in a bed that was creased and crumpled from the night before. Clara wasn’t there.
Making coffee maybe. He listened for sounds of her moving around downstairs and heard nothing. She must be making coffee quietly.
The weekend had been perfect. If it hadn’t convinced Clara that planning wasn’t always a useful guide in life, then nothing would. Neither of them could possibly have planned the moments they’d shared together, and he knew that Clara had felt it too.
He rolled over, and something crunched against his cheek. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that it was a sheet of paper, left on the pillow beside him. Unfolding it, he saw Clara’s handwriting.
No goodbyes. Just memories.
Thank you for all of them.
Xox
What?
Gabriel sat up and read the note again. It started off promisingly enough, the no goodbyes part was exactly what he’d been intending to say to Clara this morning. The just memories shattered all of that, though. He’d been hoping that maybe they could have a little more than memories. That they might take the first tentative steps into exploring some kind of future together.
It would be a bold move on Gabriel’s part. Any kind of permanence in a relationship was entirely new to him, and Clara had made it clear that it was territory that she was uneasy about returning to. But bold moves held the possibility of golden results.
And failure. Gabriel threw the note to one side and flopped back onto the pillows. The cry of frustration that escaped his lips failed to make him feel any better. Clara just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave her own past behind and gamble on a future with him.
But he could do it. He could throw the dice again and win her back, because it was the only thing that made any sense to him. And if he was to improve the odds of Clara changing her mind, he needed a plan...
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CLARA SAT ON the weather-beaten boards of the veranda, fiddling with the motor that she’d just extracted from the back of the refrigerator. The only thing she’d managed to achieve was to get grease all over her hands. The wretched thing wasn’t going to be persuaded to work, and she doubted she’d be able to find anywhere that sold spare parts for a model this old.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. That was the story of her life at the moment. She’d left Gabriel’s bed, knowing that she couldn’t say goodbye to him, and that it was inevitable that she would have to. Clara couldn’t bring herself to trust and he couldn’t bring himself to commit. It was a double whammy.
After a day spent crying, she’d dried her eyes and gone back to work. Her next project had been a straightforward one, and had given her time to think about the idea that Gabriel had planted in her head.
She wanted something more than this. She’d gone to her boss, telling him that she was thinking of going back into medicine.
He’d told her that he didn’t want to lose her, but that he’d support whatever decision she made. Security work was all or nothing, and there was no room for the half-hearted. And in an act of genuine kindness, which had touched Clara’s heart, he’d offered to contact a friend of his who had a holiday place in Mexico. It had no mod cons, but it was situated on a safe, secluded beach and offered the chance to be alone and think. If Clara could do without Wi-Fi and a phone signal for a couple of weeks, he’d make the call.
No Wi-Fi, and the certain knowledge that her phone wasn’t about to ring sounded like the height of luxury. And the decision that she’d agonised over seemed so much simpler. Medicine was the career she really wanted, and she was going to make the change. It left her even more time to think about Gabriel. To miss him in the night. To tell herself every day that she might go back and restart her career, but that there was no going back where Gabriel was concerned.
And now the fridge was broken. So much for the joys of solitude.
An SUV, covered in dust, turned off the road and wound its way along the track towards the house. Someone must be lost. It drew to a halt and the driver got out. Dark hair and golden skin, his eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses. Pale chinos and a white casual shirt, sweat stains on the back from a long drive. Gabriel.
Clara put her hand up to shade her eyes, hoping that it would hide the tears. Why did he have to come here? More to the point, how had he found out where she was?
‘You weren’t easy to find.’ Gabriel’s habit of getting to the point pre-empted her first question.
‘How did you?’
‘I called you and I couldn’t get an answer. So I contacted your boss, and he said that you were on holiday. I asked him if you were going anywhere nice.’
‘In other words, you used your position as a client to get the information out of him.’
Gabriel nodded. ‘Yes, I did. I’m hoping you might forgive me for that.’
