Barefoot Bride Read online

  Closing her eyes, she sucked in her breath as Will pressed warm, slow kisses up the side of her throat. ‘That’s none of your business,’ she managed unsteadily.

  ‘Does he love you?’ Will whispered against her skin, and the brush of his lips made her shiver again.

  She swallowed hard, her eyes still squeezed shut. ‘Yes,’ she said, but she knew it was a feeble effort. ‘Yes, he does,’ she tried again, although it sounded as if she was trying to convince herself.

  Alice wanted to believe that Clive loved her, otherwise what was she doing with him?

  ‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Will, and, although she couldn’t see him, she knew that he was shaking his head. ‘Clive doesn’t love anybody but himself.’

  There was a long pause, then Alice opened her eyes and found herself staring up into Will’s face, the face that had once made her heart clench with the knowledge that she could touch it and kiss it and feel it whenever she wanted.

  ‘Do you love Clive, Alice?’ Will asked quietly.

  Alice couldn’t answer. Her throat was so tight it was hard enough to breathe, and all she could do was stand there, her arms pinioned above her head, and look back at him while the world stopped turning, and there was only Will and the feel of his hands over her wrists.

  To her horror, her eyes filled with tears, and Will bent with a muffled curse to kiss her, a fierce, hard kiss that seared Alice to the soul. Nearly two years since they had said goodbye, but her mouth remembered his instantly, and she found herself kissing him back, angrily, hungrily, until Will released her wrists at last and yanked her into him to kiss her again.

  Instinctively Alice’s arms reached round him and she spread her hands over his back. It had been so long since she had held him, so long since she had felt the solidity and the hardness of the body she had once known as well as her own. She had forgotten how much she missed the feel of him and the wonderfully warm, clean, masculine scent of his skin.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ Will echoed her thoughts in a ragged voice. ‘I don’t want to miss you again.’

  ‘Will…’ Alice was reeling, shocked by the emotion surging between them and the power of her own response.

  ‘I’m going to Belize next week to work on the reef,’ he went on, taking her face between his hands. ‘Come with me,’ he said with an urgency she had never heard from him before. ‘Come with me and marry me, Alice. We need each other, you know we do. Clive has got his big, fat bonuses to keep him warm. He won’t even notice you’re gone. Say you’ll come with me, and we can spend the rest of our lives making each other happy.’

  And the truth was, Alice remembered by Beth’s pool in St Bonaventure, that for a moment there she hesitated. Every fibre of her body was clamouring to throw herself back into his arms and agree.

  And every cell in her brain was clanging a great, big warning.

  She had the security she had yearned for at last. She had a good job, and in a year or two she would be in a position to get a mortgage and buy her own flat. Wasn’t that what she had always wanted? A place of her own, where she could hang up her clothes in a wardrobe and never have to pack them up again? She was safe and settled. Did she really want to give that up to chase off to the Caribbean with Will, no matter how good it felt to kiss him again?

  ‘Say yes,’ Will urged her, encouraged by her hesitation.

  Very slowly, Alice shook her head. ‘No,’ she said.

  She would never forget the expression on his face then. Alice felt as if she had struck him.

  ‘Why not?’ he asked numbly.

  ‘It wouldn’t work, Will.’ Alice pulled herself together with an effort. ‘We went through all this two years ago. We agreed that we’re different and we want different things. Our lives were going in different directions then, and they still are now. What’s the point of pretending that they’re not?’

  ‘What’s the point of pretending that what we have doesn’t exist?’ he countered, and she swallowed.

  ‘It’s just sexual chemistry,’ she told him shakily. ‘It’s not enough.’

  ‘And Clive and his bonuses are, I suppose?’ Will made no attempt to hide the bitterness in his voice.

  Alice didn’t-couldn’t-answer. It wasn’t Clive, she wanted to tell him. It was the way her life seemed finally under control. She was settled, and had the kind of reassuring routine that she had craved when she was growing up.

  And, yes, maybe Clive and the other boyfriends she had had weren’t kindred spirits the way Will had been, but at least she knew where she was with them. They didn’t make her entrails churn with excitement the way he had done, it was true, but they didn’t make her feel superficial and materialistic for wanting to root herself with tangible assets either. Will was like her parents. He wanted things like freedom, adventure and independence, but Alice had learnt that you couldn’t count on those. You couldn’t put them in the bank and save them for when you needed them. Freedom, adventure and independence might be great things to have, but they didn’t make you feel safe.

  So all she did was look helplessly back at Will until he dropped his hands, his expression closed. ‘That’s three times I’ve asked you to marry me,’ he said bleakly as Alice lowered her trembling arms and rubbed them unsteadily. ‘And three times you’ve said no. I’ve got the message now, though,’ he told her. ‘I won’t ask you again.’

  He had stepped away from her then, only turning back almost against his will for one last, hard kiss. ‘Goodbye, Alice,’ he said, and then he turned and walked out of her life.

  Until now.

  Alice sighed. For a while there, the past had seemed more vivid than the present, and her heart was like a cold fist in her chest, just as it had been then.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Beth, whose blue eyes could be uncomfortably shrewd at times.

  ‘Of course.’ Alice summoned a bright smile. ‘It was fine,’ she repeated, knowing that Beth was afraid that tension between her and Will would mar the party she had planned so carefully. ‘And it will be fine this time, too. Don’t worry, Beth. I promise you I don’t have a problem meeting Will or his wife,’ she went on bravely, if inaccurately, as she got to her feet. ‘Will probably won’t even remember me. Now, why don’t I give you a hand unpacking all that shopping?’

  Will watched anxiously as Lily took Beth’s hand after a moment’s hesitation and allowed herself to be led off to the pool, which was already full of children squealing excitedly. His daughter had looked apprehensive at the thought of making new friends, but she hadn’t clung to him or even looked to him for reassurance. He was almost as much a stranger to her as Beth was, he reflected bitterly.

  ‘She’ll be fine.’ Roger misread Will’s tension. ‘Beth loves kids, and she’ll look after Lily. By the time the party’s over, she won’t want to go home!’

  That was precisely what Will was afraid of, but he didn’t want to burden Roger with his problems the moment that they met up again after so long. He’d always liked Roger, and Beth’s delight at bumping into him the day before had been touching, but the truth was that he wasn’t in the mood for a party.

  He hadn’t been able to think of a tactful way to refuse Beth’s invitation at the time, and this morning he had convinced himself that a party would be a good thing for Lily, no matter how little he might feel like it himself. Beth had assured him that it would be a casual barbecue, and that several families would be there, so Lily would have plenty of other children to play with.

  Will hadn’t seen his daughter play once since they had arrived in St Bonaventure, and he knew he needed to make an effort to get her to interact with other children. But, watching Lily trail reluctantly along in Beth’s wake, Will was seized by a fresh sense of inadequacy. Should he have reassured her, or gone with her? He was bitterly aware that he was thrown by the kind of everyday situations any normal father would take in his stride.

  ‘Come and have a beer,’ said Roger, before Will could decide whether to follow Lily and Beth or not, so he let Ro
ger hand him a bottle so cold that the condensation steamed. There wasn’t much he could do about Lily right now, and in the meantime he had better exert himself to be sociable.

  The two men spent a few minutes catching up and, by the time Roger offered to introduce him to the other guests, Will was beginning to relax. He didn’t know whether it was the beer, or Roger’s friendly ordinariness, but he was definitely feeling better.

  ‘Most people are outside,’ said Roger, leading the way through a bright, modern living-area to where sliding-glass doors separated the air-conditioned coolness from the tropical heat outside.

  Will was happy to follow him. He had never minded the heat, and, if he was outside, he’d be able to keep an eye on Lily at the pool. Roger glanced out as he pulled open the door for Will, then hesitated at the last moment.

  ‘Beth did tell you who’s staying with us, didn’t she?’ he asked, suddenly doubtful.

  ‘No, who’s that?’ asked Will without much interest as he stepped out onto the decking, shaded by a pergola covered in scrambling pink bougainvillaea.

  He never heard Roger’s answer.

  He saw her in his first casual glance out at the garden, and his heart slammed to a halt in his chest.

  Alice.

  She was standing in the middle of the manicured lawn, talking to a portly man in a florid shirt. Eight years, and he recognized her instantly.

  Even from a distance, Will could see that her companion was sweating profusely in the heat, but Alice looked cool and elegant in a loose, pale green dress that wafted slightly in the hot breeze. She was wearing high-heeled sandals with delicate straps, and her hair was clipped up in a way that would look messy on most other women, but which she carried off with that flair she had always had.

  Alice. There was no one else like her.

  He had thought he would never see her again. Will’s heart stuttered into life after that first, jarring moment of sheer disbelief, but he was still having trouble breathing. Buffeted by a turbulent mixture of shock, joy, anger and something perilously close to panic, Will wasn’t sure what he felt, other than totally unprepared for the sight of her.

  Dimly, Will was aware that Roger was saying something, but he couldn’t hear it. He could just stare at Alice across the garden until, as if sensing his stunned gaze, she turned her head, and her smile froze at the sight of him.

  There was a long, long pause when it seemed to Will as if the squawking birds and the shrieking children and the buzz of conversation all faded into a silence broken only by the erratic thump of his heart. He couldn’t have moved if he had tried.

  Then he saw Alice make an excuse to the man in the ghastly shirt and turn to walk across the garden towards him, apparently quite at ease in those ridiculous shoes, the dress floating around her legs.

  She had always moved with a straight-backed, unconscious grace that had fascinated Will, and as he watched her he had the vertiginous feeling that time had ground to a halt and was rewinding faster and faster through the blur of the last ten years. So strong was the sensation that he was half-convinced that, by the time she reached him those long years would have vanished and they would both be back as they had been then, when they’d loved each other.

  Will’s mouth was dry as Alice hesitated for a fraction of a second at the bottom of the steps that led up to the decking, and then she was standing before him.

  ‘Hello, Will,’ she said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘ALICE.’ Will’s throat was so constricted that her name was all he could manage.

  Roger looked from one to the other, and took the easy way out. ‘I’d better make sure everyone has a drink,’ he said, although neither of them gave any sign that they had even heard him. ‘I’ll leave you two to catch up.’

  Will stared at Alice, hardly able to believe that she was actually standing in front of him. His first stunned thought was that she hadn’t changed at all. There were the same high cheekbones, the same golden eyes and slanting brows, the same wide mouth. The silky brown hair was even pulled carelessly away from her face just the way she had used to wear it as a student. She was the same!

  But when he looked more closely, the illusion faded. She must be thirty-two now, ten years older than the way he remembered her, and it showed in the faint lines and the drawn look around her eyes. Her hairstyle might not have changed, but the quirky collection of dangly, ethnic earrings had been replaced by discreet pearl studs, and the comfortable boots by high heels and glamour.

  Alice had never been beautiful. Her hair was too straight, her features too irregular, but she had possessed an innate stylishness and charm that had clearly matured into elegance and sophistication. She had become a poised, attractive woman.

  But she wasn’t the Alice he had loved. That Alice had been a vivid, astringent presence, prickly and insecure at times-but who wasn’t, when they were young? When she’d talked, her whole body had become animated, and she would lean forward and gesticulate, her small hands swooping and darting in the air to emphasise her point, making the bangles she wore chink and jingle, or shaking her head so that her earrings swung wildly and caught the light.

  Will had loved just to watch the way the expressions had chased themselves across her transparent face. It had always been easy to tell what Alice had been feeling. No one could look crosser than Alice when she was angry; no one else’s face lit like hers when she was happy. And when she was amused, she would throw back her head and laugh that uninhibited, unexpectedly dirty laugh, the mere memory of which was enough to make his groin tighten.

  Ironically, the very things that Will had treasured about her had been the things Alice was desperate to change. She hadn’t wanted to be unconventional. She hadn’t wanted to be different. She’d wanted to be like everyone else.

  And now it looked as if she had got her wish. All that fire, all that quirkiness, all that personality…all gone. Firmly suppressed and locked away until she was as bland as the rest of the world.

  It made Will very sad to realise that the Alice who had haunted him all these years didn’t exist any more. In her place was just a smart, rather tense woman with unusual-coloured eyes and inappropriate shoes.

  ‘How are you, Alice?’ he managed after a moment.

  Alice’s feet were killing her, and her heart was thumping and thudding so painfully in her chest that it was making her feel quite sick, but she produced a brilliant smile.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she told him. ‘Great, in fact. And you?’

  ‘I’m OK,’ said Will, who was, in fact, feeling very strange. He had been pitched from shock to joy to bitter disappointment in the space of little more than a minute, and he was finding it hard to keep up with the rapid change of emotions.

  ‘Quite a surprise bumping into you here,’ Alice persevered in the same brittle style, and he eyed her with dismay. When had the fiery, intent Alice learnt to do meaningless chit-chat? She was treating him as if he were some slight acquaintance, not a man she had lived with and laughed with and loved with.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed slowly, thinking that ‘surprise’ wasn’t quite the word for it. ‘Beth didn’t tell me that you were here.’

  ‘I don’t think she made any connection between us,’ said Alice carelessly. ‘It wouldn’t have occurred to Beth to mention me to you. She didn’t know that we’d been…’

  ‘Lovers?’ suggested Will with a sardonic look when she trailed off.

  A slight flush rose in Alice’s cheeks. ‘I didn’t put it quite like that,’ she said repressively. ‘I just said that we had been close when we were students together.’

  ‘It’s not like you to be coy, Alice.’

  She looked at him sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You and Roger were close,’ said Will. ‘You and I were in love.’

  Alice’s eyes slid away from his. She didn’t want to be reminded of how much she had loved him. She certainly didn’t want a discussion of how in love they had been. No way could she cope with that right
now.

  ‘Whatever,’ she said as carelessly as she could. ‘Beth got the point, anyway.’

  He had changed, she thought, unaccountably disconsolate. Of course, she had known in her head that he wasn’t going to be the same. Ten years, marriage and children were bound to have had an effect on him.

  But in her heart she had imagined him still the Will she had known. The Will she had loved.

  This Will seemed taller than she remembered, taller and tougher. His neck had thickened slightly and his chest had filled out, and the air of calm competence she had always associated with him had solidified. He still had those big, capable hands, but there was none of the amusement she remembered in his face, no familiar ironic gleam in the grey eyes. Instead, there were lines around his eyes and deeper grooves carved on either side of his mouth, which was set in a new, hard line.

  It was strange, talking to someone at once so familiar and so much a stranger. Meeting Will like that was even worse than Alice had expected. She had planned to be friendly to him, charming to his wife and engaging to his child, so that they would all go away convinced that she had no regrets and without the slightest idea that her life wasn’t quite the glittering success she had so confidently expected it to be.

  She might as well have spared herself the effort, Alice thought ruefully. In spite of all her careful preparations, her confidence had evaporated the moment she’d laid eyes on him, and she was as shaken and jittery as if Will had turned up without a moment’s warning. She knew that she was coming over as brittle, but she couldn’t seem to do anything about it.

  ‘Beth said that you were working out here,’ she said, opting to stick with her social manner, no matter how uncomfortable it felt. It was easier than looking into his eyes and asking him if he had missed her at all, if he had wondered, as she had done, whether life would have been different if she had said yes instead of no that day.