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She trudged down to the water’s edge and got her feet wet, took a few deep breaths and stretched her quads. She started off slowly and soon became aware of another runner coming behind her. She’d let herself hope that sound of feet slapping wet sand would be him the last two nights and damn her stupid heart if she didn’t hear those feet behind her now and think the same thing. The runner passed her with a cheery, “Hi,” and she slowed further till she was walking, all of her get up and go, gone, like her incentive to make things better at work.
She stumbled when Drum walked up beside her, tripping on her own footfall but so crazy glad to see him she almost started skipping.
“Hi,” she said it lightly, blithely, breathlessly like the runner who’d passed her, like it meant nothing and couldn’t scare him off.
“Hi,” he said, voice low and warm like the blast from an open oven door. It hit her full in the chest, how much she’d missed him the last two nights, how great it was to look on his sun-drenched body. “Not running?”
“I should. I’m crabby.” She looked away. “I’m probably bad company.” It might be better if he knew that straight up. “Crap day at work.” She willed it not to matter to him and as he walked beside her, it no longer mattered to her.
He strode past her, put himself directly in front of her and jogged backwards. “Let’s run it off you.”
She grinned at him stupidly, like she’d swallowed too much sea water and was delirious. “No, really. Walking is good.” She loved running with him, but if they walked maybe they could talk as well.
“Bok.”
&nbs
p; She lifted her elbows, making them wings of mini outrage. “You did not just bok at me?”
He smirked. That was definitely a smirk lifting one side of his face, tightening the skin around one eye. Cocky bastard. He didn’t know she had a weakness for smirks and his was so gorgeously executed, with true devil may care that spoke to her inner bad girl, the one who pierced and tattooed.
It was the smirk, it was the teasing, it was delight at seeing him after the stress of the day. She lunged forward, planted her hands on his wide, bare chest and pushed him.
He laughed, a glorious sound, moving backwards easily with her motion, turning and taking off. She watched him kicking up sand, picking up pace, for all of two heartbeats. She chased him as if her happiness depended on it.
And he wouldn’t be caught. He could outrun her easily, his longer stride, the power in his body, he stayed ahead of her, within catching distance, but out of her reach. They thundered down the beach and Foley was breathless with her effort and her laughter, losing pace, falling further behind.
He’d come, he’d called her chicken. She hadn’t scared him off. It was better than junk food.
As they reached the rock fall at the end of the beach he stopped, turning to face her as she finally caught up. He was physically a god, head squared, chin down, hair falling over his forehead, and the breeze caught in its strands, hands on his hips, easy breaths swelling his chest. She had to stop herself from running at him, hoping he’d catch her up. She was breathing much harder than he was, not all of it from the effort, a good deal of it from the excitement of seeing him again.
His eyes went navigator on her, moving head to toe and back again, looking for a familiar landmark, making her throat tight, because that was different and she felt lost in it. He locked on her eyes. “Feeling better?”
She nodded. “More.”
His chin came up; query in his expression.
She wanted more of the anxious anticipation, more of the chase, more of the delight, the teasing, more of his eyes telling her they wanted what he saw, more everything about him and the way he made her feel.
He was a risk and she was taking him.
She turned and took off, pounding back the way they’d come and he was on her, the sound of him louder than the sea in her ears, then beside her and she settled the pace, no longer trying to outrun him, or wind herself, just trying to be free and complete in the experience. He was right, running could be a meditation and this, now, was the clarity she needed after the confusion of the day, it was lime and ginger and green tea, the thrill of a something familiar yet tasting so very different.
They did two more laps, not talking, stopping only once more when Foley saw an old neighbour and stopped to say hello briefly. Drum moved ahead but kept her in earshot. He didn’t want to be in her conversation, but he wasn’t leaving her either.
She suggested they sit. He suggested she talk. So she told him about Gabriella and the strange moment with Roger, about Adro and how she’d let her own team down, about the Beeton house and her failure to find a solution for the deadlock, about whether it was time for her to move on.
“You love this job.” It was the first thing he said and it felt out of sync with everything she’d been saying.
“I did love it, but now I don’t think. It’s not. Oh.” How annoying. He was right. And it’s what Nat would’ve said too, but she’d have listened for half the time it’d taken for Foley to rave.
“You love it, or this decision wouldn’t be so hard. You’d have made it already, wouldn’t be agonising about it.”
“Maybe.” She wasn’t going to concede so quickly. “What makes you so sure?”
“I haven’t always lived in a cave.”
“You had a job you cared about?”
