Christmas Eve Marriage (HQR Classic) Page 9

  He looked back to meet Thea’s eyes. ‘In the end I took the quicker route back.’

  Thea swallowed and reminded herself fiercely about not getting too involved. ‘I missed you too,’ she said as lightly as she could. ‘I had to deal with Kate on my own!’

  ‘Oh, dear.’ Rhys grimaced sympathetically. ‘Did it go all right?’

  ‘I didn’t have to talk much, which was something. She was very keen to tell me how pleased Lynda will be to hear about our engagement. Apparently she has been very worried by you being on your own.’

  He made a sound somewhere between a snort and a sniff. ‘Kate’s quite an authority on my relationship with Lynda, isn’t she?’ he said sardonically. ‘She spent most of the first week telling me how worried Lynda was about my failings as a father.

  ‘I don’t spend enough time with Sophie, it turns out, and when I do see her I give her the wrong things to eat, read her the wrong stories, buy her the wrong presents, and let her watch the wrong programmes on television. Basically, I’m the wrong father,’ he went on, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. ‘Kate thinks I’m compounding the error of being an absent father by trying too hard, which is probably true.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Thea, ‘but it’s not up to Kate to tell you what kind of father you should and shouldn’t be.’

  ‘Oh, she wasn’t saying anything I haven’t heard plenty of times from Lynda.’ He sighed. ‘I missed a whole chunk of Sophie’s childhood. I don’t know her the way Lynda does.’

  ‘No, but then I gather it wasn’t you who left and took Sophie away so you couldn’t see her regularly,’ Thea pointed out calmly.

  ‘No,’ he admitted, ‘but I still feel guilty about the missing years. Lynda was right about one thing. I should have been prepared to give up my job in North Africa. Effectively, I put my career ahead of my daughter.’

  Having a wife laying down ultimatums about choosing between them couldn’t have helped either, thought Thea.

  ‘Could you have got a job in the UK?’

  ‘Not then—or not doing the same thing, anyway.’ He lifted his shoulders. ‘The fact is that I enjoy my job, and I was involved in what seemed to me an important project. I didn’t feel that I could just give up on it—but that doesn’t justify the fact that I didn’t,’ he added quickly.

  ‘It’s a good reason for Lynda coming to a compromise, though,’ said Thea, and he rubbed his face wearily, his smile a little twisted.

  ‘Lynda doesn’t do compromise. She’s a very strong-minded woman, and once she decides what’s going to happen, that’s what happens. She didn’t want to live in North Africa any longer, so she left. It was an obvious decision from her point of view.’

  He sounded frustrated rather than heartbroken by Lynda’s behaviour, Thea couldn’t help noticing. Maybe he hadn’t been quite as devastated as Kate had made out. On the other hand, it was five years ago. He might have got over it, no matter what Lynda wanted to think.

  ‘Lynda wanted a divorce so she could start afresh,’ said Rhys, ‘and, although I thought about moving back to London the next year so I could share in looking after Sophie, I found myself in the absurd situation where the only way I could pay Lynda the maintenance she wanted while she was setting up her business was to continue working overseas.

  ‘It was only this year that Lynda’s business took off and I found a position at a comparable salary so that I can live in London and support Sophie, but now I’m afraid it may be too late. I’ve missed so much time with her.’

  ‘I don’t think you should worry too much,’ said Thea comfortingly. ‘You haven’t been back long and Sophie will come round in time. You saw what she was like just now.’

  He wouldn’t look at her. ‘She’s just enjoying herself because Clara is there.’

  ‘Partly, but she was also looking for you. She’s been waiting for you to come back so that she could show you that she had learnt how to do handstands. It’s the little things that are important,’ she told him. ‘You can’t expect her to turn into a daddy’s girl overnight.’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’ Rhys sighed in spite of himself.

  ‘Kate was right about one thing, at least,’ said Thea gently. ‘You don’t need to try so hard with Sophie. You’re her father and she loves you because of that. She just doesn’t know how to show it at the moment. All you need to do is be yourself, and let her know that you love her, however sulky and badly behaved she is.’

  His face relaxed into a smile. ‘You sound very wise for someone who doesn’t actually have any children.’

  ‘Oh, I’m an experienced armchair parent,’ she told him with a sigh. ‘I’m an armchair divorcee too, come to that. You wouldn’t believe the crises I’ve been through with my sister and friends. I’ve seen it all before!’

  ‘Well, I wish you’d been here at the beginning of the holiday,’ said Rhys. ‘You might have saved me a difficult week.’

  ‘It’s never too late for advice from Auntie Thea,’ she said smugly. ‘And if I had been here last week, we’d have all arrived together and we would have been in Kate and Nick’s clutches before we had a chance to concoct some elaborate pretence to get out of seeing them, so you could say it’s all worked out for the best!’

  He looked at her, sitting comfortably on her lounger, her face glowing from a day in the sun and her hair tumbling in its habitual disorder to her shoulders. She had taken her sunglasses off in the shade, and her grey eyes were warm, the humorous mouth tilted in a smile.

  ‘I’m beginning to think it has,’ he said.

  CHAPTER SIX

  RHYS turned his gaze back to the White Mountains where he had been walking, leaving Thea to wonder just what he had meant by that.

  ‘You’re good with children.’ He returned to the earlier part of the conversation after a while. ‘Would you like children of your own?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Thea sighed a little. ‘I’d really like that big family I told Kate and Nick we were going to have, but it takes two, doesn’t it? There’s not much chance of it at the moment, and I’m not getting any younger either.’

  She brooded silently on the matter for a few moments. ‘Sometimes I can’t help thinking that it would all have been so much easier if my parents had just arranged a marriage for me!’

  ‘Who would they have chosen for you?’ asked Rhys, amused.

  Absently, she picked a leaf off the geranium beside her and twirled it under her nose as she considered.

  ‘My mother would have picked a man with a nice steady job,’ she decided eventually, ‘and my father wouldn’t have cared as long as he played cricket, so I’d have ended up with a braying, bat-toting accountant in white flannels. I’d probably have been very happy,’ she added glumly.

  Rhys lifted disbelieving brows and Thea sighed again.

  ‘Or not,’ she conceded. ‘Of course I don’t just want children. I want to spend my life with someone I love and who loves me, someone who makes me laugh and likes me the way I am. Someone who’ll stand by me in good times and in bad and won’t mind if my hair’s a mess or if I put on a couple of extra pounds. Is that too much to ask?’

  ‘It’s too much to expect without a lot of hard work,’ said Rhys slowly. ‘It’s not too much to dream about and to aim for, no.’

  ‘I’m always being told I’m a hopeless romantic,’ said Thea, shredding the leaf between her fingers. ‘Maybe I am. I decided a long time ago that I didn’t want to compromise. I always thought that if you wanted everything to be perfect, you should hang out for the right man…but then you find what you think is the right man and it turns out not to be so perfect after all,’ she finished, and let the last pieces of leaf drift sadly to the ground.

  ‘I’m sure it will work out for you, Thea.’ Rhys sat up and put his feet down so that he could face her. ‘I can’t imagine Harry won’t realise how special you are. If I were in his shoes, I would be on the first plane out here I could find. He might even be on his way now.’

  ‘He doesn
’t know I’m in Crete,’ she said, not meeting his eyes, not wanting to see the kindness and the sincerity and the complete lack of jealousy there.

  ‘Your sister knows, doesn’t she?’

  She nodded reluctantly. ‘Nell doesn’t like Harry, though.’

  ‘If Harry could convince her that all he wanted to do was to make you happy, I bet she’d tell him the address anyway,’ said Rhys stoutly. ‘And if he had any sense he’d be out here now, on his knees and begging you to forgive him and take him back. I know I would.’

  Thea smiled a little sadly. She couldn’t imagine Harry on his knees to anyone—with the exception of Isabelle, of course.

  ‘The thing is, Rhys, Harry’s not like you.’

  His face changed. ‘No, I know. I’m sorry,’ he said heavily. ‘I didn’t mean to sound as if I was criticising Harry. He’s the one you love, and sometimes there’s no accounting for why we love the people who hurt us the most.’

  Thea wondered if he was thinking about Lynda, who had hurt him so badly. He looked so solid, so sharply defined in the light. She couldn’t imagine how anyone could leave him.

  ‘No, there isn’t,’ she agreed.

  ‘It doesn’t stop you loving them, though, does it?’

  She stared down at her hands, all at once desperate to remember how much she loved Harry, but all she could see was Rhys, his light eyes and his strong jaw and his cool, cool mouth.

  ‘No,’ she said, feeling suddenly uncertain, as if the ground was sliding away beneath her.

  ‘Don’t look like that, Thea.’ Rhys put out an involuntary hand and took hold of hers. ‘Don’t give up hope. Maybe not knowing where you are will make Harry realise how much he misses you.’

  That was what Thea had hoped when she left England, but now it was hard to imagine Harry even noticing that she was gone, hard to think about anything when Rhys’s fingers were warm and strong and infinitely reassuring around hers.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Look, why don’t we do something all together tomorrow?’ Rhys released her hand and sat back, and she tried not to mind too much.

  ‘Sure.’ It was definitely time to lighten the atmosphere, and she produced a bright smile. ‘We could go to the archaeological museum like Hugo and Damian!’

  He quirked an eyebrow at her. ‘Are you going to try asking the girls if they’d like to do that, or will I have to do it?’

  ‘I think I’ll save my breath,’ she admitted. ‘Where were you thinking of?’

  ‘Knossos. It’s a bit of a drive from here, but then so is everything, and you can’t come to Crete and not see one of the oldest and most important archaeological sites in the world.’

  That was what Nell had said, too. Thea remembered her reply. ‘Clara and I won’t be visiting any boring old ruins, Nell. We’ll be at the pool, or in the shops, and that’s the limit of our cultural activities this holiday!’

  Somehow the idea was a lot more appealing now that Rhys had suggested it. It would be good for the girls, Thea justified her change of mind to herself. They couldn’t spend their whole time swimming and, if they weren’t careful, Clara would end up monopolising Sophie and Rhys would hardly get to see his daughter at all. At least if they all went, he would get to spend some time with her.

  And if it meant that Thea spent more time with him, well, that was just incidental.

  ‘That sounds great,’ she said. ‘Always providing we can get the girls out of the pool!’

  Rhys put the idea to them over supper. ‘Thea’s keen to go,’ he finished, and Thea shot a warning look at Clara, who knew perfectly well that the words Thea and keen rarely coincided in the context of visiting ruins.

  But Clara had evidently not forgotten her plans to distract Thea from Harry and throw her together with Rhys instead. When Rhys asked if she would like to go, she was enthusiastic and carried poor Sophie along in her wake, offering the ultimate accolade.

  ‘Cool.’

  In the event, Thea found Knossos much more interesting than she had expected. She couldn’t make much sense of the labyrinth of stone steps and passageways, or the higgledy-piggledy collection of palace rooms and tiny storerooms, but there was no doubt that the place had an atmosphere. Just thinking about how old it was made her feel dizzy.

  Although that might also have had something to do with the fact that Rhys was beside her, very real and very solid and somehow very immediate amongst the old, old stones.

  He steered them away from the crowds of tourists to the quiet parts of the ruined palace in the shade of the pine trees, and he told the girls the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, complete with the kind of blood-curdling detail that had even the streetwise Clara saucer-eyed.

  ‘You mean all that happened here?’ she asked, and Sophie moved closer to her father.

  ‘The monster’s not here any more, is it?’

  ‘No,’ he said, putting an arm round her, and she let him draw her into the security of his body as he looked around him. ‘They’re all long gone.’

  ‘Tell us another story,’ she said.

  It was very hot, even in the shade. Thea was acutely aware of her surroundings. The air was full of the scent of pine needles, and the cicadas sawed in a deafening chorus. She let Rhys’s voice roll over her, feeling the warm, ancient stones beneath her palms, and it was as if all the confusion and the uncertainty and the anguish she had felt since Harry had left was draining slowly but steadily out of her until she was quite empty, and then she was filling up again with a feeling she didn’t recognise, but which left her strangely restored.

  Her gaze rested on Rhys. After Harry’s passion and volatility, he was so restrained, so self-contained, so at ease with himself and where he was and what he was doing. What did it take to rouse a man like him to passion—apart from igneous rocks, of course?

  Thea closed her eyes and let herself imagine what it would be like if there was no pretence. No Paines, no Lynda lurking in the background, no Clara watching everything with interest, not even Sophie. If there were just the two of them, and a wide white bed, like the ones in the villas.

  Would he pull her down on to the crisp sheets? Would his hands be slow and tantalising, or hard and demanding? Would he smile against her skin, and oh! how would it feel to be able to touch him properly, to wrap her arms around him and let her lips drift over that taut brown body?

  The image was so vivid, the desire clenching at the base of her spine so intense, that Thea took a sharp intake of breath and opened her eyes wide to find Rhys and the two girls staring at her in concern.

  ‘Thea?’ said Rhys cautiously. ‘Are you OK?’

  Dizzy and disorientated, struggling against the vertiginous tug of her fantasy, Thea blinked and swallowed hard. ‘Yes…yes, I was just…’

  Thinking about you kissing me. About kissing you back. About making love.

  ‘…just…um…’

  Her voice trailed off, her mind so full of imagining what it would have been like that she couldn’t think of a single thing that she might legitimately have been thinking about. In the end, she gave up and she stared dumbly back at him and wondered what it was about someone so ordinary-looking that had her aching with desire like this.

  Even Harry, the love of her life, had never made her feel this, this raw, physical longing. With Harry, it had almost been enough to be with him, and let the dazzle of his presence envelop her. She had never quite believed that she wasn’t dreaming when she was with him.

  She had never experienced this piercing desire before, this feeling that if she couldn’t reach out and touch Rhys, if she couldn’t press her lips to his throat, if he didn’t pull her into his arms and lay her down in the dust and the pine needles right there and then she would simply shatter into a million pieces.

  The feeling was so intense that Thea was shaken, almost scared. Her mouth was dry and she felt giddy, almost ill. She closed her eyes again in the desperate hope that when she opened them again everything would be back to normal.

&nb
sp; ‘You don’t look well,’ said Rhys. ‘It is quite hot. Perhaps we’d better just sit here in the shade for a while.’

  That was it, the heat! She really was ill, thought Thea with relief, and she drew a deep breath.

  ‘Do you feel faint? Put your head between your knees.’

  It was easier to pretend than to explain, and anyway, she did feel dizzy. Thea dropped her head obediently and Rhys put a comforting hand on her back. She could feel the imprint of his palm burning through the thin material of her dress.

  ‘Better?’ he asked after a while.

  Thea nodded and straightened slowly. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, although not with any degree of certainty. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’

  ‘It’s easy to underestimate the heat.’

  After studying her with narrowed eyes, Rhys took his hand away at last. Thea wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. Not that it made much difference, in any case. She could still feel her back tingling where his palm had pressed into her. If she took her dress off, she was sure they would find a perfect imprint of his hand on her skin. They could probably take his fingerprints off it.

  ‘Where are the girls?’

  ‘They’ve found some kittens,’ said Rhys in a resigned tone, and nodded over to a corner of the ruins where Clara and Sophie were crouched down and cooing ‘oh…so cute’ in a kind of harmony. ‘The cats will be wild and probably covered in fleas, but try telling those two that!’

  ‘Oh, well, the fleas won’t stand much of a chance. Clara and Sophie spend so much time in the pool any flea will drown in no time.’

  ‘Unless they pass them on to Hugo and Damian first. Then we’ll be unpopular!’

  Thea laughed and felt better. ‘I’m sure no flea would dare to jump on to a Paine. Kate just wouldn’t have it. The flea would be sent packing and told that kind of behaviour just wasn’t acceptable!’