Reluctant Date (8 page)

He saw Claire’s eyes widen and the chuckle turned into an
easy laugh.
 
“I forgot.
 
You don’t have brothers or sisters do
you?
 
It’s okay!
 
I didn’t threaten him or anything.
 
We just came to a brotherly agreement that he
would live his life and I would live mine. I also told him if he ever breathed
a word of what he’d done then I would dredge up a few childhood memories to
share with Beth!”

“Beth?” Now Claire was thoroughly puzzled.

“Yes Beth. Didn’t she tell you she’s married to him?”

* * *

By the time they pulled up outside the apartment Claire was
going to live in for the next six months, she was dizzy with tiredness. She had
forced herself to stay awake for most of the journey, only nodding off for a
few minutes at a time as Daniel’s dark blue Range Rover ate up the miles.

“Careful of your ankles, there are rocks here and lose
stones,” Daniel steadied her as she stepped down from the car into a blackness
that was so dense she couldn’t see the ground. “Stay right where you are while
I fetch the flashlight from the trunk.”

“Is it…um…always this dark?” Claire, who was used to a
streetlight shining outside her bedroom window back in the city, tried to
penetrate the darkness without success.

“No, but the moon doesn’t seem to want to play ball
tonight,” Daniel’s disembodied voice was deadpan.
 
He relented when he switched on the
flashlight and shone its beam away from the car towards the black outline of a
building standing foursquare in front of them.

“Don’t worry. Although you can’t see them from here, there
are safety lights along the walkway at ground level. If you’d rather stay
somewhere where there are streetlights, though, then tell Beth. She’ll be happy
to find you a different apartment.”

“No! It’s fine. I guess I just wasn’t expecting it to be so
dark,” Claire swung her flight bag onto her shoulder and retrieved her jacket
from inside the car. She had no intention of letting Daniel add
afraid of the dark
to the list of
hang-ups he had already uncovered. And what could be so bad about it
anyway?
 
After all she was going to be
living in an apartment block with other people, so if something scared her in
the middle of the night then she would be able to share it with someone. Making
a firm resolution to get to know her nearest neighbours as quickly as possible,
she slammed the car door shut and gingerly felt her way around to where Daniel
was lifting her suitcases out of the trunk.

He handed her the flashlight.
 
“You look after this while I take care of
your luggage.”

Feeling better now she had charge of illuminations, Claire
shone the beam ahead of them as they picked their way across an area of rough
ground dotted with hillocks of coarse grass, rocks ready to trip the unwary,
and an area of shingle.
 
Then they were
on a boardwalk that led, finally, to a covered walkway and an elevator.

* * *

Daniel, following on behind, took in every detail of
Claire’s silhouette; the long, denim encased legs, the square determination of
her shoulders, the tangle of upswept hair revealing the slender stem of her
neck, and felt himself being sucked into a future where he had no control.

Unlike Claire, he hadn’t expected their time apart to
diminish her attraction, nor had he had any second thoughts about enticing her
to Florida.
 
From the moment he first met
her he knew how he felt about her and he wasn’t expecting that to change
anytime soon. So, with characteristic single-mindedness, he had done something
about it, and then buried himself in his work.
 
It had left him with little time to think and even less time to worry
about what would happen when she arrived, so when he had set off for the
airport he hadn’t considered how he might react when he saw her again.
 

Tall and striking in black denims and a scarlet jacket, she
had been easy to spot, and he had already raised his hand to wave to her when
their eyes met. She hadn’t smiled. She had just acknowledged him with a cool
gray gaze as she walked towards him, her expression unreadable.

He had greeted her cheerfully, made small talk, taken charge
of her luggage, all without touching her, when what he had actually wanted to
do was sweep her into his arms and kiss her for a long, long time. The
interminable journey to Dolphin Key and the stop off to eat hadn’t helped
either. Having Claire so tantalizingly close and yet not be able to touch her
had taken far more will power on his part than he would have thought possible.

Now, under cover of the darkness that surrounded them, he
let his guard down for the short time it took them to reach the elevator, and
recalled the moment when, glancing across at Claire, he saw she had fallen
asleep, her head resting sideways against the window.
 
Free to look at her without worrying she
might think he was coming-on to her; he had divided his gaze between the dark
ribbon of the freeway and her sleeping profile for several uninterrupted
minutes. Although it had been too dark for him to see her in detail, every
shadow and curve of her face had etched itself into his brain, and at that
moment he had realized that for him it really was Claire or nobody.
 

Offering her a job, persuading her to move to Florida, had
been part of a half-formed plan, a way of getting to know her better under the
camouflage of working together. Behind it came the hope that, given time and
familiarity, she would begin to reciprocate his feelings and rethink her views
on dating. Now, however, with her sitting beside him as his car ate away the
miles, he knew he had taken an irrevocable step, and if he couldn’t make her
want him then he would be heart sore for a very long time.
 

He didn’t have the first clue why he felt this way. Nor did
he like it.
 
It undermined his faith in
who he was. The Daniel Marchant who had forsworn all serious relationships so
that he could concentrate on the two jobs he was trying to hold down whilst
also building his vision of the future, was no more.
 
Instead he was a mess of conflicting emotions
that all centred on the girl at his side and which, if he gave them the upper hand,
might scupper all his plans.

What if he couldn’t persuade her to stay for longer than her
six-month contract?
 
What if he never
managed to persuade her he was the right person for her?
 
What if he never got past first base on her
emotional chart? What if he
did
persuade
her but she wanted to return to her home in England? What if…

The arrival of the elevator brought him back to the here and
now. As they squeezed in with the suitcases, he forced a smile. “It’s not
usually so crowded but not many of the people staying here bring six month’s worth
of clothes.”

“I’ve probably packed far too much but Beth said to come
prepared for most eventualities,” Claire gave him an answering smile across the
pile of luggage.

“Please don’t tell me you’ve brought a snow suit,” Daniel
aimed for light banter, anything to keep things uncomplicated between them. He
could still remember the vehemence with which Claire had declared she wasn’t
looking for a husband, partner, or even a boyfriend, so this was certainly not
the time for him to make any sort of move. The last thing he wanted was for her
to think he had brought her over so he could hit on her.
 
No!
 
He
was going to have to keep his feelings strictly under control for the foreseeable
future.

Chapter Seven

Claire stood in the centre of the large open plan room and
turned in a slow circle.
 
Now Daniel had
gone she could concentrate, take in the surroundings that were going to be her
home for the next six months.

The apartment was on the top floor of what appeared to be a
large, wooden building, although it was difficult to tell in the darkness. She
could hear the sound of the sea too, not loud, but loud enough to indicate it
was nearby.
 
Tomorrow was soon enough to
explore though.
 
It was far too dark to
even bother to pull aside the drapes and go out onto the balcony that Daniel
said ran the length of the apartment. Instead, she studied the interior and
approved of the simple white paintwork, the blue upholstery, the rush matting
on varnished floorboards, the blond wood of the kitchenette and, bliss upon bliss,
the huge bowl of fresh oranges sitting on the kitchen counter beside a
state-of-the-art juicer.

Too tired to even pull a bottle of water from the
refrigerator, she turned towards the bathroom.
 
Unpacking would have to wait until tomorrow.
 
She didn’t even bother to go in search of her
toothbrush.
 
Instead she used the one
that was in the complementary travel bag an air attendant had handed to her,
and which she had stashed in her carry-on before she left the aircraft.

Then, after making sure that the door was secure, she made
her way up a tightly spiraling staircase to a tiny bedroom in the eaves.
 
Also furnished in white and blue but with the
addition of citrus yellow flowers on the counterpane, it was fresh and
airy.
 
Throwing off her clothes, she opened
a window. Mosquito netting was fixed across it and it was the unfamiliarity of
the net, more than anything else, that made her realise how far away from home
she was, and from everything familiar.

* * *

As Claire rolled over in bed she tried to identify the noise
that had woken her.
 
It sounded like a
particularly tetchy baby and for a moment she wondered if one of her near
neighbours was pacing the floor with a crying infant. Then, as full
consciousness kicked in, she realized it was the raucous shout of a seagull and
it was so close it might as well have been in the bedroom with her.

Suddenly wide awake and keen to explore her surroundings,
she threw back the bedcovers, pulled on the T-shirt she had worn on her flight
over, and made her way, barefoot, down the twisty stairs.
 
Ten minutes later, having got to grips with
the juicer, she dragged back the heavy blue drapes, fumbled with the door
catch, and then stepped out onto the balcony with a glass of fresh orange juice
in her hand. She didn’t lift it to her lips, however. Instead, she abandoned it
on a small metal table that stood to one side of the balcony next to a stack of
collapsible chairs, and took the two steps necessary to reach the railing. With
her hands resting on the smooth, weathered wood, she stared out onto an expanse
of water that exactly reflected the first pink streaks of dawn painting the
sky.
 
Overhead the seagull scolded her
for disturbing its early morning solo.

A sound halfway between a sigh and a sob escaped her as she
gazed in amazement at her surroundings. In front of her the view slowly
coalesced into something picture postcard perfect as the pinks softened to
apricot, to yellow, and then to a clear, soft daylight as the sun finally
breached the horizon and settled into its morning routine.

Nobody had told her she would be living on a beach curving
around a bay of water that was so calm its ripples barely frilled the white
sand at its edge; a beach with views out to small islands lush with vegetation;
a beach protected on one side by a small rock-strewn promontory, and on the
other by the ramshackle order of a fishing pier that was already showing signs
of early morning activity.

She watched as a lone fisherman busied himself with lines
and bait, and a man wearing a green fleece and a black baseball cap tied an
inflatable dinghy to one of the supporting pillars. Suddenly she wanted to be
there too.
 
She wanted to see Dolphin Key
and her new home from a different perspective. She wanted to know what the
fisherman hoped to catch.
 
She wanted to
get up close to the cluster of pelicans squabbling over a mess of spilt bait.

Reclaiming her orange juice she gulped it down, left the
empty glass on the table, and took the stairs to her bedroom two at a
time.
 
In moments she had pulled on her
jeans, run cursory fingers through her hair, unearthed a cotton sweater and a
pair of trainers from the bottom of one of her suitcases, and was ready to
go.
 
For a moment her hands hovered above
her camera but then she turned away. Now was not the time. She needed to get a
feel for the place first, learn all about it. There would be plenty of time for
photos later.

* * *

The beach was deserted except for several sandpipers bobbing
about at the tide line. Claire watched them for a moment before she scattered
them by walking across the white sand to investigate the clumps of seaweed and
shingle that had been washed in by the tide.
 

Twenty minutes later, having trawled every inch of the tiny
beach, and poked at every piece of flotsam, she climbed up onto the road and
made her way across to the pier. It was busier now. A truck, with a trailer
attached, was unloading a motorboat onto the slipway, and a few more fishermen
had arrived and were standing in a group. Without pausing in their discussion,
they nodded as she walked past them. Claire gave a shy smile. She wasn’t used
to being acknowledged by complete strangers because in recent years she had
chosen to be a city girl, not someone living somewhere as small as Dolphin Key.