She cleared away the dishes while Alex drew a diagram of a football field in the notebook her father always carried, and talked about offensive plays and touchdowns. By the time her father had learnt all he needed to know to enjoy the American football games he watched on cable television, Annie had stacked the dishwasher and put a plate of cheese, fruit and biscuits on the table.
‘No more food!’ Alex protested. ‘In fact, I think it’s time I walked off some of that delicious dinner.’
He turned to Annie.
‘You mentioned the beach, and I know it’s not far away. Shall we go there for our walk? I’m happy to drive if you direct me.’
Annie hesitated.
‘You go,’ her father said, no doubt aware of all the machinations of her mind.
Annie nodded, thinking the beach would be as good a place as any to tell Alex what she had to tell him. To tell him she didn’t think even a getting-to-know-each-other relationship would work.
‘I’ll just get a jacket. I can duck up the back lane and meet you at your car,’ she said, but Alex shook his head.
‘I’ll wait for you. We’ll go together. We’ll sneak away without our respective dogs knowing what we’re up to.’
Annie slipped upstairs, heart again skipping with excitement although she kept telling it this was the end, not the beginning.
Alex drove easily, and in one of life’s little miracles they found a parking space not far from the wide concrete steps that led down to the beach. It was after eleven and only a few people wandered along the broad strip of sand, although a scattering of couples and groups, drawn to the soothing sounds of the surf, were walking on the promenade.
Annie breathed deeply, drawing the damp, salt-laden air into her lungs.
‘I love standing by the Pacific and thinking the next big lump of land it hits is America. I love the idea that the water in a wave I’m watching here might one day, depending on the currents, wash across a beach in California.’
Alex put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her body closer to his.
‘Should we talk about the big lump of land that is America? About North America in particular?’
Annie sighed.
‘We should, Alex,’ she said, relishing his warmth and closeness, wishing with all her heart this could be a real ‘first date’ so they were coming together with nothing but expectations of fun and pleasure—with no baggage from the past. ‘But I’m not sure that I can. Or ought to…’
She couldn’t go on, couldn’t come right out and say, I’m living a lie.
‘Then we’ll walk,’ he said, his voice strained. ‘But one day, Annie, I hope you’ll feel you can trust me well enough to talk.’
His disappointment in her was so obvious, it cut into Annie like a scalpel.
‘Maybe we shouldn’t even walk,’ she muttered, but Alex was already guiding her towards the smooth wet sand where the waves finished their journey across the Pacific. He released her for a moment to slip off his shoes and turn up the bottoms of his jeans, and she bent and took off her sandals. Then, with his arm around her shoulders once again, they paddled through the shallows to where the beach ended in a high tumble of rocks that stretched, like the humped back of some fossilised sea creature out into the waves.
And in the shadow of the rocks he turned her towards him and drew her body close to his, then bent his head and kissed her with a mastery his previous kisses had ensured.
Annie was surprised at how familiar his body felt, how at home she felt in his arms. And the kiss. It was a different kind of magic—sweet, gentle and seductively addictive.
Until the first easy exploratory moves were done! Then the attraction she felt for Alex fired a need so deep and filled with longing she couldn’t pretend, even to herself, that this was just a casual, first-date kind of kiss. This was a kiss that sent tendrils of desire spreading through her body, seeking out the deep-hidden places and bringing nerves and flesh to life with a tingling, trembling, pleading anticipation.
Somewhere there was noise. Loud noise. Annie hoped it wasn’t her making it—whooping and crying out as her body delighted in Alex’s embrace. Then Alex gently put her from him.
‘Someone’s in trouble,’ he said, sounding as breathless as she felt. At that moment Annie saw the source of the noise, a young man standing on one of the humps of rock, calling for help.
‘Someone swept off the rocks,’ she guessed. ‘Fishermen usually.’
They were both scrabbling towards the lad who was still yelling for help but not offering any more information until Alex reached him.
‘It’s Dad. He slipped and backwash carried him out. I can see him in the surf but I can’t reach him.’
Other beach-walkers were gathering on the sand at the base of the rocks.
‘I’ve called triple O,’ one said.
‘My wife’s run back to the lifesavers’ clubhouse. There’s usually someone there.’
Alex had pulled on his shoes and was accompanying the youth back to where his father had disappeared. Annie followed more slowly, barefoot, because her sandals would be worse than useless on the rocks.
‘I can see him,’ Alex told her, ‘but he’s being buffeted by the waves and hitting against the rocks. He needs to swim out beyond where the waves break and wait for rescue there.’
Alex called to the man, telling him to swim away from the rocks, but he either couldn’t hear or had already been injured and the best he could do was stay afloat. Before Annie realised what was happening, Alex was stripping off his clothes, thrusting first his shoes, then his trousers and shirt at Annie, telling her to hold them.
Then he walked out to a high, dry rock and was about to dive when Annie yelled at him.
‘Jump, don’t dive. It might be shallower than you think.’
So he jumped, while Annie held her breath, first until he surfaced then again until he reached the man and together they swam beyond the curling breakers. She refused to think about the sharks that cruised these shores, or of the way a freak wave could lift the pair and throw them up onto the rocks. Her mind concentrated on willing them both to stay alive.
Then she heard the roar of the jet skis and knew help was on the way, but she still watched tensely as the first jet ski stopped, the driver dropping a flotation device to Alex then lifting the fisherman onto the back of the seat. The driver of the second jet ski helped Alex aboard, and the two machines roared off towards the beach.
Annie followed more slowly, having to pick her way across the rocks, clutching Alex’s clothing to her chest. They smelt of him, she realised as she drew warmth and comfort from objects as mundane as a pair of jeans and a shirt. Then she shivered as her body lit again with excitement, imagining enjoying the scent of the man himself just as intimately.
Get real, girl! It’s not going to happen. It can’t happen.
Can’t it?
The mental argument took her to the clubhouse where Alex, wrapped in a blanket, was waiting for her.
‘Much quicker to get a ride back,’ he teased as she passed over his clothes. And seeing him there, alive and well and teasing, made her remember the clench of terror she’d felt when he’d gone into the water, and she had to bite back an urge to yell at him for being so foolhardy.
‘I’m OK,’ he said gently, taking her hand and pulling her close enough to drop a kiss on her hair. ‘I’m a strong swimmer and could see the