Or so it seemed as he tasted her, his tongue sliding around her lips, delving, probing.
Had her mouth opened to him?
Were her lips responding?
For a moment it seemed as if she might have been a statue, then, with a groan that started somewhere down near her toes, she kissed him back, her mouth moving on his, her hands exploring his shoulders, arms, neck, gripping at his hair, his head, holding his mouth to hers as if her life depended on it.
They were in a graveyard.
His parents were here …
Somehow his lips had slipped lower, kissing her neck, while she pressed hers against his head and murmured his name. His hand had slid beneath her shirt, found a breast, a full breast that felt heavy in his hand. His thumb strayed across the nipple, already peaked by the heat of the kiss.
She’d dragged his head back to kiss his lips, so he gave in and let her, matched the heat of her kisses, and the little moan she gave as his fingers teased the taut nipple was like honey in his mouth.
Had his legs given way that he was on his knees, still holding Caroline, their bodies pressed together? Moonlight cast shadows from the trees around the graveyard, picked out writing on the stone beside which they knelt.
Charlotte Lockhart.
Wife and mother …
Wife!
‘This is crazy,’ he whispered as he eased himself away from Caroline, his body throbbing with need, hers hot within his hands, which had settled on her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry, there’s something I should have said—told you—have to tell you.’
Blue-green eyes—dazed with desire?—stared at him and she shook her head, as if trying to take in his stumbling words.
She released the grip she’d had on his shirt, raised her hands to lift his off her shoulders, then bowed her head so the hair on the top of her head brushed against his chest.
He saw her shoulders move as she took a deep breath, then she lifted her head and looked at him, into his eyes, hers questioning now but so beautiful.
Too beautiful to hurt?
Perhaps he could contact his lawyer first, before he told her, find out the situation …
Coward!
He took her hands in his and eased her back down onto the ground.
‘So tell,’ she said quietly.
But words wouldn’t come. I’m married seemed too blunt, far too hurtful.
‘It’s about attraction,’ he finally began. ‘About attraction and love and how there can be one without the other but how do you know at the beginning?’
‘Are you talking about our attraction?’ she asked, her head turned not to him but towards the distant sea, so all he could see was her profile—no emotion …
‘Not really but in a way, yes, and I should have told you earlier. I should have told you when it happened—but we’d been apart so long and I really didn’t know how to. And I certainly should have told you before I kissed you.’
Now she turned to him.
‘It’s something bad, isn’t it? You’re already married, or engaged? I should have guessed. Why wouldn’t you be?’
She went to rise, but he caught her hand and kept her on the grass beside him.
‘Married but separated for five years,’ he finally admitted. ‘It was attraction, nothing more, but we didn’t discover that until after we were married. We weren’t exactly virgins, but Mum’s greatest pain, later when she did eventually talk about Ian, was that she’d lost her moral compass—the ethical code by which she’d always lived. And that was in my mind—some half-formed ethical code that said if we were having sex we should get married. We’d met at uni, as physio and medical students—our paths crossed often—and the attraction was definitely there. Marriage seemed a great idea, but something didn’t gel. We didn’t fight, we didn’t hurt each other, we just kind of drifted in different directions and in the end sat down and talked about it and agreed it had been a mistake.’
He ran out of words and leaned back on his elbows, looking up at the silvery moon above them.
‘Where is she?’ Caro asked.
He shrugged.
‘She went to Melbourne. We didn’t keep in touch, nor did we get around to divorcing. I don’t know why—perhaps because it seemed like admitting what a huge mistake we’d made. Anyway, a couple of months ago she contacted me, told me she wanted a divorce and sent the papers. She’d met someone else, sounded so happy I was pleased for her, so I signed the papers. They’ll go before a judge some time soon, then a month and a day later I won’t be married any more.’
Caroline had sat, stunned into silence, as Keanu told his tale. Somehow, in all her thoughts of Keanu over the years, the fact that he might marry had never occurred to her.
Not that it should matter, but obviously it did, because her heart was hurting, and her throat was tight, and what she really wanted to do was hit out at him.
But why shouldn’t he have married?
Wouldn’t she have married Steve if he hadn’t dumped her when the mine had gone bad?
‘Did you think of me at all?’
She wasn’t sure where the question had come from, but heard it make its way out of her dry mouth.
‘Only every minute of the ceremony, which is when I realised how wrong it all was. But I put that aside, and gave the marriage all I had, Caro. Moral compass stuff again. We were friends as well as lovers and I didn’t want to hurt her.’
Now Caroline was sorry she’d asked the question, sorry about so much, but the pain in her heart remained and she knew she had to get away—think about this, work out why now, when it was all over, it was hurting her.
Why his being married was so ridiculously hurtful, especially as he wasn’t really married at all …
And shouldn’t he have told her all this before they’d kissed—the first time, not the last time?
Even if he wasn’t married married, shouldn’t it have been mentioned in passing?
She touched his shoulder as she stood up, then made her way up to the house, her mind so full of conjecture it felt too heavy for her neck.
Vaguely recalling, through a foggy haze of lust and shock, that Keanu had mentioned something about her being on duty at six, Caroline got herself out of bed, dressed, ate a lamington Bessie had apparently baked the previous day, drank a glass of milk and headed down to the hospital.
This time of the year, it was light by five in the morning, but half an hour later than that the morning still had a pearly glow and the sound of the birds waking up, the calm sea beyond the rainforest, and a sense of the world coming alive with a fresh new morning filled her with unexpected happiness.
True, there were problems but right now nothing, but nothing, seemed insurmountable.
Inevitably, Hettie was already there, in spite of Caroline being twenty minutes early.
‘Anahera’s off duty today and will be helping her mother with preparations for Alkiri’s funeral. In fact, the fire’s already been started in the fire pit.’
Fire? Fire pit?
The words seemed hard to understand in a hospital, until Carolyn remembered where she was and what was happening today—a funeral and funeral feast.
‘Keanu’s also gone down to the research station to help set everything up,’ Hettie added. ‘I’ll take a look at the young