Reluctant Date (10 page)

Claire had been standing on her balcony, leaning forward,
one hand shading her eyes against the early morning brightness of a burgeoning
sun that was sparking mahogany highlights in her cloud of black hair.
 
Hair that was corkscrewing into a tangle of
curls in front of him right now thanks to the salty dampness that still had to
be burned out of the atmosphere.

It hadn’t been her curls that had grabbed his attention
though.
 
It had been the outline of her
body that had mesmerized him. She had been wearing a T-shirt that barely
skimmed the top of her thighs, and the pale shape of her long legs and bare
feet were visible through the balcony railings, as were the soft curves that
pushed against the soft cotton of her T-shirt. She was obviously totally
unaware she was on public view, and in a way she was right because probably
nobody else would have noticed her tucked away at the top of the apartment
building, no one except him.
 
He hadn’t
been able to take his eyes off her, however. Instead, hoping that she wouldn’t
notice him, he had tied up and then stayed in the dinghy, just watching her,
until she had suddenly moved away and disappeared through the half open drapes.

It was only then that he remembered what he had come for and
had clambered up onto the pier and jogged down the road to collect his
supplies. When he returned she was on the beach. Fully dressed now, and wearing
sturdy trainers, she was trawling the tideline, pausing every now and then to
poke at something with her toe or to pick it up for closer examination.
 
Unable to stop himself he had stayed where he
was, rucksack hooked over one shoulder, watching as she came slowly towards
him.

By the time she reached the pier, however, commonsense had
taken hold and he had clambered down into the dinghy. He couldn’t hang around
like a heartsick schoolboy forever. He had a job to do so the sooner he pushed
his feelings for her into the background and got on with it the better.
 
There would be plenty of time later to worry
about what he was going to do about the flip his heart gave every time he saw
her. She needed time to settle into her job before he could risk making a move.
Until then he had to keep his distance, just be a work colleague, because from
her reaction to him so far it was obvious that was exactly how she saw him.

Then she had stopped to look at the view at a point just
above where his dinghy was moored, and all his good intentions had fled.

* * *

“They are stunning! I so wish I had brought my camera,”
Claire broke into his thoughts as she shifted round to look at him.

He smiled at her, ignoring the effect her cool gray gaze had
on his blood pressure. “In that case I’d better give you a crash course in
dinghy management so that you can come out here any time you want. How are your
boating skills?”

“Non existent! I told you, I was just the lock keeper.”

He slid sideways to make room for her.
 
“Well it’s time you learnt then.
 
You can take us back in.”

Claire shook her head.
 
This was becoming surreal.
 
One
moment she was a librarian putting in her hours at a city library, her only
light relief the regular visits from local schoolchildren.
 
The next she was watching pelicans squabble
over pieces of fish while the early morning sun warmed her back, and while the
man of her dreams stuffed the remains of their picnic back into his rucksack
and talked casually about handing her the controls of his boat.

“I…are you sure about this?”

He nodded as he patted the seat beside him.
 
“Come over here and I’ll take you through
it.”

She clambered across to the stern, sat beside him, and
watched carefully while he showed her how to lower the outboard motor back into
the water and pull the throttle sufficiently hard to fire it up.
 

“Now your turn,” he leaned back so that she could reach the
tiller more easily, and then delivered a steady stream of encouragement as she
tried to copy him.
 
She was successful at
her third attempt, and soon they were heading back towards the pier while the
white pelicans patrolled the reeds behind them.

Claire felt her confidence grow as the dinghy responded to
her lightest touch.
 
Less than three
months ago she would have laughed if anyone had told her she would be sailing
across a small inlet in the Gulf of Mexico amongst dolphins and pelicans, instead
of trudging to work through the cold winds and rain that were inevitable in
January in northern Europe. Yet, somehow, it already felt like the most natural
thing in the world.
 
Exhilarated she
turned to Daniel with a wide smile.
 
A
smile that faltered as their eyes met.

Feeling as if her heart was about to burst out of her body,
she started to turn away.
 
As she did so
she saw the dolphins again.

Noticing them at the same time and realizing that they were
swimming towards the dinghy, Daniel quickly took the tiller and slowed the
engine until they were barely moving. Then they sat, side-by-side, watching, as
a small group of dolphins frolicked across their stern.
 
It wasn’t until they had finally become no
more than sleek shadows speeding away across the bay that Claire remembered to
breathe.

Daniel chuckled as he opened up the throttle.
 
“Over to you again if you’re not too dolphin
struck!”

She grinned at him as she took the tiller.
 
“I can’t believe I’ll ever become blas
é about them.”

“Oh you will, believe me.”
 

He
pulled his gaze away
from the mesmerizing effect of her wide, gray eyes.
 
Eyes that were so thickly fringed with black
lashes that they could be an advertisement for mascara, except that her face
was scrubbed clean of makeup, reliant only on its own natural color and the
flush the early morning sun had brought to her cheeks.

With an inward sigh he took his arm away from where it had
rested behind her while they watched the dolphins, and shifted himself to the
middle of the dinghy. For one brief moment, out there at the edges of the bay,
he had thought that maybe she was attracted to him after all.
 
There had been something in her eyes when she
looked at him, something that had made his heart beat just that little bit
faster, and then the dolphins had disturbed them.
 
For the very first time in his life he wished
they had, just for once, kept their acrobatics to themselves instead of showing
off all around the boat.

Chapter Nine

For the next hour and a half Claire’s morning was far more
mundane as she showered and changed, unpacked her clothes, and generally
familiarized herself with the apartment.
 

When she had returned from her unplanned boat trip she had
been surprised to find that it was still only eight-thirty.
 

“I feel as if I’ve been up for hours already,” she told Daniel
as she deftly avoided his steadying hand and made a grab for the ladder as soon
as he secured the dinghy.

“See you later,” he called as he pulled the painter free and
circled round at speed until he was pointing towards the open bay. Then he was
gone in a splutter of noise that set the gulls in motion and rocked the sea
into waves that slapped against the stanchions of the pier.

Claire watched him speeding across the bay for several
minutes before she walked slowly back to her apartment, forcing herself to
concentrate on the white pelicans and the dolphins so she didn’t have to think
about Daniel. It didn’t work though.
 
By
the time she was in the shower the memory of his proximity returned with such a
vengeance that she could recall, with a disturbing clarity, the way the early
morning dampness lifted the ends of his hair into a tousle of half curls; the
way his brown eyes glinted gold in the soft rays of the early morning sunshine,
the way his strong fingers guided the boat, and then, later, directed her own
hands on the tiller.
 

Determinedly she turned the faucet of the shower to cold and
spent the next two minutes under a blast of water that left her
breathless.
 
Then, her skin rosy, and her
hair dripping around her shoulders, she stepped from the shower and rubbed
herself dry with the huge fluffy towel Beth had left hanging on the bath rail.
She wasn’t going to think about Daniel any more.

* * *

Beth arrived on the dot of ten.
 
She greeted Claire with a wide smile and a
bag of cookies.

“I thought these would wash down well with a mug of coffee,”
she said.

Claire returned her smile as she invited her into the
apartment.
 
Beth was small, with delicate
features, tousled brown hair, and wide blue eyes.
 
A baggy T-shirt over a pair of cotton
cut-offs hid the pregnant curve of her stomach so effectively that she looked
more like a carefree teenager than a mother-to-be. She saw Claire’s gaze go
instinctively to her midriff, however, and she laughed.

“I guess Daniel told you,” she said.

He has a nice wife who
is recently pregnant,
Claire remembered Daniel’s exact words and, even
worse, she remembered exactly where they had been standing when he said them.
They had been in the foyer of the hotel where they’d first met, and he’d been
explaining why his brother had set up their date. A flush of embarrassment
washed over her face as she nodded. At the same time she wondered why she had
ever thought signing up to a dating agency was a good idea.
 

Beth plumped herself down into an armchair, placed the bag
of cookies onto the coffee table, and grinned at her.

“Carl is a jerk,” she said conversationally.
 
Then she added, “he’s my jerk and I love
him.
 
He’s still a jerk though!”

“I…you know then…how Daniel and I met, I mean?”

“’Fraid so!
 
Daniel
didn’t try to keep his voice down when he was bawling Carl out for interfering
in his life.”

She gave a peal of laughter when she saw Claire’s stricken
expression.
 
“Hey don’t look so tragic.
Nobody over here is looking for any love interest between you two.
 
We know Daniel invited you to join him for a
meal because he felt he owed you one thanks to Carl. We know, too, that when
you got talking he discovered you were looking for a new job and realized he
could offer you one that would suit you exactly.”

“That’s about it,” Claire agreed.

She didn’t know why Daniel hadn’t gone into more detail,
such as how he had tracked her down at work and infiltrated her family circle,
how he had persisted with the job offer until he’d worn her down, but she was
very grateful he hadn’t.

Although she still didn’t understand why he wanted her when
it would have been easier to find someone suitable in America, she had given up
trying to make sense of it. If he thought she was just what his organization
needed and was prepared to smooth every obstacle in her path so that she could
move continents, then she was just going to make the most of the experience.
She decided to put a lighthearted slant on the whole episode for Beth’s
benefit; a public joke that would counter any lingering suspicion she and Daniel
were in anyway interested in one another.

“It was actually very funny. Daniel’s face was a
picture.
 
He was so angry with his
brother, and so embarrassed for me, that I…well I got the giggles!”

“Let me guess.
 
That
would be at about the same time Daniel had a sense of humour bypass!”

Claire grinned at her, and soon they were both convulsed
with laughter. It was only later, when they’d finished their coffee and were
about to leave the apartment that Beth put a slight damper on the morning.

“Carl is still far too pleased with himself,” she said.
 
“Daniel has been looking for the right person
to join the team for ages, so the fact he landed you as a result of being set
up on a date is a plus as far as my dear husband is concerned.”
 

And that’s about it, thought Claire gloomily as she followed
Beth along the wooden walkway and down the stairs. I’m the right person for the
team.
 
There’s nothing more to it than
that, so the sooner I accept it, the better.

* * *

The weather was too good for her to feel gloomy for long,
however.
 
By the time they reached the
street she was being warmed by the sun, while overhead the sky was a glorious
unbroken blue.
 
As they walked along Beth
pointed out landmarks, giving her a potted history of some of the residents of
Dolphin Key along the way.

“Scott and Daniel will tell you more than you want to know
about the nature reserve, and the birds and wildlife, but they won’t ever get
around to telling you about the things that really matter,” she said, as they
passed more shops and galleries than Claire had expected in such a small place.
There also seemed to be far too many restaurants for a population of less than
a thousand people. She guessed it was because Dolphin Key was primarily a
tourist resort.

Beth interrupted her thoughts.
 
“Here is our one and only supermarket.
 
If it doesn’t have what you want today, it
will by tomorrow as long as you know the right people to ask.
 
Come on in and I’ll introduce you to Carol.”