He felt her stiffen beneath his fingers and felt the old resentment burn in his gut. He hated intolerance.
‘I thought they had an unhappy marriage?’ Ellie had all but stopped the machine. ‘Isn’t that what you meant by his folly of a marriage?’
‘Oh, no.’ Ruben laughed, relieved her tension hadn’t been in judgment of his parents. ‘No, people couldn’t cope with their age gap.’
‘And gave you a rough time over it?’
‘You can imagine the slurs at a small-town school back then.’
‘What’s wrong with two people making each other happy?’ Ellie sounded as if she was frowning. ‘Why can’t people just be pleased for them? Doesn’t everyone want to find a great love like that?’
He smiled at her naïveté—she’d watched too many Hollywood happy endings. ‘People can be unkind when they don’t understand or if it’s something they’ve not been around much.’ He hardly ever discussed it, he’d encountered too much intolerance—even in this supposedly modern world. There was just that inevitable smirk or comment—as if his dad were up there with Hugh Hefner or something. But Ellie’s instant emo defence of them had him explaining more than he usually would. ‘They really were a love match and really in love. Sickening really.’ Sometimes even he’d felt excluded from it. This despite knowing he’d been the much-wanted, much-loved product of their relationship. And he’d been determined not to break their blissful ignorance and had never once told them of the taunts he’d suffered. He’d learned to handle the other kids his own way. When he’d first started school as an undersized six-year-old, with English as a second language, a weird accent in a small town with a father already almost at retirement age and a mother younger and more beautiful than everyone else’s? It had been sink or swim—and Ruben had mastered the stroke. ‘They just saw through each other’s layers to the person within, and they loved what they saw.’ He still felt that mix of happiness for them and frustration with them—because they’d been unable to achieve much else because of that total adoration of each other.
‘Has your mum met anyone else since?’ Ellie asked quietly.
‘No. I kind of wish she would,’ he found himself admitting aloud for the first time in his life. ‘But she’s adamant it isn’t going to happen.’
‘Because she buried her heart with him?’
‘Yeah. I think she’s scared of getting that hurt again.’ He understood that too. The loss had been unbearable. ‘She couldn’t stay in New Zealand. Couldn’t stay any place where she’d been with him.’
‘But what about you? You were so young.’ Ellie’s body had gone taut beneath his fingertips again.
He laughed off her concern—the way he laughed off anything that touched too close to vulnerable aches. ‘I wanted to finish what he’d started. I wanted to do that for him.’
‘But it must have hurt her to leave you?’
Her sweet concern stabbed now and he didn’t want it. ‘Mama knew I was okay. And I was busy.’ He’d made sure she’d thought he was okay. By then he was a master of hiding his hurt—those years of coping with childhood taunts had taught him well. You covered up—no one could grin and bear it like Ruben. He could turn any nightmare around with a comment and a smile, hiding how gutted he might be inside. He’d won them over with the ability to laugh and make others laugh—but he never let them close. Not when he knew too well how much it hurt to lose those you held close.
‘It would have hurt her more to stay.’ He dismissed the topic completely, switching to tell her something more about the mountain on their right, and then another anecdote from when Andreas had owned the lodge.
As the big building came into view he directed her to take the bike right up to the main entrance. He’d have it cleaned and put away later. For now it was the two of them who needed hosing down. Indeed, off the bike the first thing Ellie did was glower at his mud-covered clothes and then down at her own.
‘I don’t have any other jeans, you realise.’
Ruben couldn’t contain his amusement. She looked like an earth goddess—a curvy sprite of a woman. Little curls had sprung around her temples, her face damp, her eyes shining. ‘You can borrow some of mine.’
‘Like they’d fit.’
‘They’ll be fine. Now come on, I’m freezing,’ he lied. ‘We don’t want to get a chill.’
He’d taken the cover off the spa pool early this morning and he headed straight for it.
‘I told you I didn’t bring my swimsuit.’ She followed him round the side of the lodge and stared at the pool with an unmistakably longing gleam in her eye.
Yeah, Ellie had a sensualist streak—he wanted her to embrace it.
‘I’ll give you a shirt that’ll do.’ She was going to have to peel off those blue jeans. He’d never appreciated denim as much before and he was a jeans-every-day guy. But hers were wet, hugging her curvy butt and thighs and he wanted to slide his hand down the tight front of them really badly.
He went into the pool house and grabbed a tee, tossing it at her and exiting before he turned into some kind of caveman and went for her mud and all.
He stripped poolside while she was in the change room, and forced himself to go under the outdoor shower—cold—sluicing away the streaks of dirt before quickly getting into the heated water. He badly needed to relax.
‘You can’t resist it, can you?’ she teased as she came out of the pool house, ready to join him. She too had showered. Now his clean shirt was clinging to her wet body beneath.
Ruben pressed the spa bubbles on full to hide how horrifically extreme her effect on him was.
‘Resist what?’ he asked vaguely. Thinking about sex all the time? Hell, he wished he could get her out of his head, or at least get some other woman in. He’d never been unhealthily fixated on one lover like this. He blamed it on the absolute excitement of waking to discover a hot, perfect lover straddling him. Pure fantasy come to life.
Of course he couldn’t help thinking of it and nothing but. Of course he’d had to finagle a way of getting her back in his bed—even just for a weekend. Only it wasn’t proving to be as simple as he’d planned.
‘Seeking out pleasure.’ She shook her head, shivering as she stepped carefully into the steaming water.
‘I work hard so why shouldn’t I enjoy playtime?’ He sent her a sideways look and jeered lightly. ‘Nothing wrong with relaxing and celebrating and enjoying pleasure. We should appreciate it when something feels good.’
‘Don’t think you can get me to yes by glamorising hedonism,’ she answered equally flippantly.
‘But you know how good it was. You told me how good it was.’ And he’d loved hearing it. ‘The best ever.’ And he couldn’t get past it now, not when she was doing the wet-tee-shirt thing in a hot tub.
‘It’s bad form to compare lovers,’ Ellie said primly, sitting on the opposite side of the spa from him and determinedly not looking at his bare chest. She didn’t believe for a second that he actually felt the same way—she hadn’t been his best lover ever as well.
‘I’m not doing that.’ He laughed. ‘I’m merely reminding you that that night with me was the best sex of your life. I can’t understand why you don’t want a repeat of that.’
‘Because it wasn’t real,’ she said simply.
‘It wasn’t real?’ Ruben’s tease vaporised. ‘Wasn’t real?’
In a heartbeat the relaxed, teasing atmosphere snapped to stormy. Ellie’s suddenly feverish temperature couldn’t be blamed on the bubbling water.
‘No,