Reluctant Date (26 page)

* * *

She spent the morning mooching along the shore with her
cotton trousers rolled up, kicking through the waves. It helped a little, just
being back beside the sea. She tried not to mind that it wasn’t Dolphin Key;
that the seagulls were different; that there were fewer shells; and that she
was unraveling different tangles of seaweed. And when she thought she had
cleared the memories of Florida from her mind, she climbed up to the top of a sand
dune and started to eat her lunch.
 

By the fourth mouthful she had lost her appetite though. She
pushed the rest of the food back into her backpack, unscrewed a bottle of
water, and took a long drink. Then she laid back and looked up at the sky
through the spikes of marram grass that grew in random green tufts across the
sand dunes.

She was asleep when Daniel found her. He stood for a long
time looking down at her sleeping face, noticing the new hollows in her cheeks.
He noticed, too, that she was more slender than when he had last seen her. With
a sigh he sat down beside her and waited for her to wake up.

* * *

Claire opened her eyes when a cloud sailed across the face
of the sun. She sat up with a shiver, looked round for her backpack, and found
herself staring into a pair of troubled brown eyes.

“Your mother said I would probably find you near the
lifeboat station.” Daniel gave a half smile as he pulled her jumper from the
top of her backpack and draped it around her shoulders.

“Thank you…I…why are you here?” She pushed her arms into its
sleeves and pulled the jumper over her head as she spoke.

“Because it seems to be the only way I can get you to speak
to me,” he told her when she re-emerged. Her hair was ruffled into the cloudy
mass of curls he loved so much. “Without your mother’s daily emails I would
have gone mad. She has been keeping me up to date. Why haven’t you answered my
phone calls, or the messages I sent you?”

“Because there’s nothing I want to say to you,” she kept her
eyes fixed firmly on a ferry that was sailing on the outgoing tide.

“You had plenty to say to my father,” he reminded her.
 
“Of course I missed most of it, but I heard
enough to know you didn’t have any problem with words then.”

“If you are expecting me to say sorry then you are going to
be very disappointed.” The anger that had prompted her actions in the first
place started to rekindle as she swung round to face him.

“I’m not expecting an apology Claire.
 
I just want to understand why you ran out on
me.”

She glared at him. “Surely it’s obvious.
 
It was impossible for me to stay after I was
so rude to your father.
 
I broke
Melanie’s confidence too. I even told him what you and Carl were going to do to
the business but without checking whether you had actually gone through with
it.
 
Then, to cap it all, I encouraged
your mother to abandon post and go and see her new grandson. The child of the
son whose name must never ever be mentioned in the Marchant family.”

“Yes, I know all that, but it wasn’t my question.
 
What I asked was,
why did you run out on me?”

His eyes didn’t waiver as he waited for her answer and when
surprise kept her silent he leaned forward and gently took hold of both her
hands.
 
“I can remember the exact words
you used the last time you spoke to me Claire.
 
You said,
‘find yourself someone
who doesn’t care about the fact that your father is slowly destroying your
family Daniel.
 
Find yourself someone who
doesn’t care about you!’
 
My question
is, did you really mean it?”

“Yes.” She looked down at their hands, to where his strong
brown fingers had enclosed her own, and wondered why she had started trembling.

“I thought so.” He moved one of his hands to her face and
gently turned it towards him. “I’ve been such a fool Claire.
 
There was so much going on in my life that I
couldn’t see what was in front of me until you took it away.”

“I felt so guilty about persuading you to come to Florida to
work when I knew all along that I had an ulterior motive, that I took too long
to tell you how I felt about you. It never occurred to me that you might feel
the same way.
 
Instead I kept remembering
how vehemently you had told me you weren’t interested in dating anyone, so I
decided to play the long game. That is until you started a relationship with
Scott, at which point I lost all hope that you would ever…”

“What relationship with Scott?” Claire interrupted, her
forehead furrowed into a frown until she saw Daniel’s wry smile. Then she
started to laugh.
 
“Oh, you mean that
relationship!”

“Yes!
 
The
relationship he and Melanie were forced to tell me about after you blew their
cover!”

“Poor Scott! He was eaten up with worry about keeping it a
secret.”

“Mmm.
 
That’s what he
told me while I was bawling him out.
 
He
also told me I should sort out my own feelings before I criticized anyone
else.”

“Scott said that?”

“Yes.
 
He was the only
one who had any idea how we felt about one another. He said it was about time I
did something about it instead of worrying about everybody else in Dolphin
Key.”

“And?”

“And so I’m here to do something about it,” he told her,
pulling her close. Then he kissed her.

* * *

They didn’t say very much at all for a very long time after
that. They might have stayed there even longer if a short-lived flurry of rain
hadn’t interrupted them.

“
Thank you Scott
,”
Daniel murmured as he stood up and pulled Claire to her feet. She grinned at
him; her eyes alight with the mischief that had been missing from her face for
so long.

“Does that mean he and Melanie are forgiven?”

“See for yourself,” Daniel thrust his hand into his pocket
and pulled out his cell phone. Scrolling through the photos stored in its
memory he finally found what he was looking for, and handed it to Claire.

A short video started to play. The picture was clear enough
for Claire to see it had been taken outside his house. As she watched, the
camera zoomed in to two people sitting close together on the dock.
 
It was Scott and Melanie, and when they
turned towards the photographer they started laughing.
 
Then they waved directly into the camera.

“Come back Claire,”
they called out in unison.
 
“Our engagement party is on the fifteenth of
next month.
 
Please be back by then.”

“I’ve got a few other messages too,” he told her, retrieving
the camera and scrolling down.

The next one was of Beth and the baby.
 
“We
need you back here,”
she told Claire.
“Harris
wants you to see how much he’s grown…and I, well I just miss you.”

“Harris!” Claire whispered, her eyes swimming with tears as
she looked at Daniel.

“Mmm. Beth and Carl think it’s a good name for a boy. I think
they’ve got a certain Claire Harris earmarked to be godmother too.”

“And you have come to terms with Beth being married to
Carl?”

Now it was Daniel’s turn to look mystified.

“You…Beth was your girlfriend until Carl came along,” she
reminded him, resisting the urge to look away even though she didn’t want to
see the memories she was sure would shadow his face.
 
“That’s why you weren’t looking for anyone to
date, remember.
 
You were still coming to
terms with the fact she left you for your brother.”

“Where on earth did that come from?” Daniel asked, as he
took the camera from her unresisting fingers and stuffed it back into his
pocket.
 
Then, when she didn’t answer, he
shook his head.
 

“Sure I went out with Beth for a while Claire, but she was
never going to be the love of my life.
 
We had fun together for half a summer and then she met Carl. Once that
happened I may as well not have existed, but it was absolutely fine by me.
 
I like Beth, love her as a friend, a
sister…but that’s it.
 
The rest is a
figment of your imagination. It’s you I love, and I have done so since the
first moment I saw you.”

“But you can’t love me,” she sank down onto the ground again
and covered her face with her hands. “I was rude to your father. I helped to
hide Scott and Melanie’s relationship from you, I….”

Daniel interrupted her by sitting down beside her and taking
her in his arms again.
 
“All history,” he
said.
 
“Thanks to you, we didn’t need to
remove Dad from the Board after all, because he resigned before the final
motion went through. And he says he’s going to take a computer course at the
end of the summer. He’s joined the Talking Books Service as well. There’s a
message from him on my phone too.
 
Something about thanking you for doing what nobody else dared to
do.
 
Well that’s what he means, even if
he didn’t quite put it like that,” he told her with a wry smile.

“And your mother?” she lifted a tear-stained face hopefully
to his.

“Is in her element helping to care for her grandson. She is
going to help out in the print shop as well, because Carl will be too busy
running the family business to spend much time there in future. And when Harris
is a little older, she and Beth intend to expand it into a working art gallery,
and encourage other artists to join them.”

He smiled at her as he leaned forward and kissed away the
last of her tears.
 
“Of course all these
changes leave me without a full time job.
 
I’m still on the Company Board. Actually I was voted in as Chairman so I
will still be involved, but only part time…so I need to find another way to
earn a decent living.”

“You’re going to expand your own company,” she said, and the
smile on her face was like sunshine after a storm.

“I am.
 
But to make it
truly successful I need someone who has cataloguing skills. I also need someone
who can take photographs as well as develop and run training courses. There’s a
vacancy for someone who can talk to the visiting public too and…most
importantly…is prepared to be around twenty-four hours a day, seven days a
week.
 
Do you know anyone who might be
interested?”

Epilogue

The boat sailing away from the Marchant’s big old family
home was ablaze with fairy lights.
 
They
were draped along the side rails and twisted up the poles that supported its
striped canopy.
 
A big cheer went up from
the people standing on the dock, and most of them stayed where they were until
the boat disappeared from view.

“That was so romantic. How lovely to get married at
Christmas, and in such an idyllic setting. If I wasn’t so happy with Mark then
I might even feel a tiny bit jealous.” Jenny and her husband followed Claire’s
parents back into the marquee that had been erected on the lawn.
 

“I didn’t think much of her going away outfit though. Still
I can see that things are done differently over here.”

* * *

Claire, sitting at the prow of the boat, watched the house
and all of their wedding guests fade from view.
 
When they had completely disappeared she moved across to the stern and
took her husband’s hand off the throttle.
 
Immediately the boat’s engine slowed to a soft putter.

Daniel smiled at her. She was wearing a pink T-shirt and a
matching wrap over khaki cut offs, and her feet were bare.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go somewhere more exotic
than Dolphin Key for a honeymoon?” he asked her.
 
“It’s not too late you know.
 
We can pick up a flight to anywhere you
choose in the morning.”

“I’m sure,” she said, snuggling up against him as a night
breeze suddenly whisked up a few waves and made the boat rock gently to and
fro. “I’ve spent too long away from it recently to want to leave now. Besides,
nobody will dare to visit us for at least twenty-four hours!”

“You’re confident about that are you?” he asked. There was a
hint of resignation in his voice as his house came slowly into view.
 
All the lights were blazing and they could
hear music drifting across the bay.

“Completely, because I put Carl and Beth on the case,” she
said.
 
“That’s just their way of
welcoming us home.”

With a sharp intake of breath he
increased their speed, only slowing down again when the boat reached the
dock.
 
With one deft twist of the rope he
secured it to the mooring ring and turned off the engine. Then he bent down and
kissed her hard. It was a kiss that was full of promise and it only ended when
he picked her up and dumped her on the dock.

“I know that wasn’t exactly a romantic move but give me time
and I’ll do better,” he told her as he clambered up beside her. Then he swept
her up into his arms again.

She locked her hands around his neck.
 
He was taller than anyone she knew, tall enough
to make her feel small. He was strong enough to make her feel fragile and
protected too, despite the length of her legs and the slender curves of her
body.
 
It wasn’t a feeling she was used
to but it was one she was rapidly learning to enjoy.