Gently Cameron disengaged himself from Meagan and started pulling on his jeans. Mutely Meagan started getting dressed too. She shivered and it wasn’t just from the gathering coolness in the air. Cameron stood apart from her as if he was already beginning to regret making love to her.
‘The final straw came before her affair. I told her I wanted us all to move back here. My mother had died and my father was getting frailer. He needed my help. Rachel was furious. She wasn’t prepared to give up her city lifestyle to live here. Then I found about the affair.’ His mouth twisted. ‘He was very rich, much richer than an impoverished Scottish lord whose main income came from his salary as a GP. We agreed to divorce and that I would move back here with Ian. It made sense. He’ll be Lord Grimsay one day, with all the responsibilities that entails. We agreed that Rachel would come and see him whenever she could. But in the meantime he’d have stability in a community that knows and loves him.’
He moved towards Meagan. ‘Rachel’s lover never did marry her, and she discovered that there were elements of being Lady Grimsay that she missed. She wanted us to give it another go. So, you see, It’s all a bit of a mess. But there is one thing I’ll never regret—and that’s my son. He’s the most important thing in my life.’
How lucky Rachel was and she seemed to have no idea. Meagan would have given anything to have had a child and had she been given the chance, she would never have allowed anything or anybody to take that child away from her. The pain she felt at losing her chance of a baby was still intense. Would it ever fade? she wondered.
Cameron must have seen something in her expression. ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Did you and your husband not want children—or were you not ready yet?’ Meagan looked up at the sky and watched the clouds for a moment.
‘I fell pregnant,’ she said ‘but at eight weeks I had to have emergency surgery for an ectopic pregnancy in one of my Fallopian tubes.’ Cameron stepped closer, drawing her into his arms.
‘I was devastated—we both were. And what was worse was they discovered my other tube was also damaged. So I am unlikely ever to have children.’ She felt her voice break as she remembered how she had felt when they had told her the news.
‘Charlie always wanted a big family. Although he said it didn’t matter, I knew it did. And then I…’ She broke off and took a breath before continuing. ‘I threw myself into my work. I guess from then on we just drifted apart. We spent hardly any time together. We were like strangers.’
She stopped for a moment letting the memories wash over her. She remembered coming into their empty flat, leaving before Charlie was up, how their sex life had dwindled away to nothing. They had hardly spoken. Oh, he had tried at first, but she had been too wrapped up in her own pain to notice his.
‘And then,’ she went on in a rush, wanting to tell him everything, ‘one day I got a phone call. Charlie had been driving to a conference and his car had swerved to miss a car on the wrong side of the road. He was killed instantly. I never got the chance to say goodbye, that I was sorry.’ She felt her eyes fill with tears and her throat tightened. ‘He wasn’t alone in the car. He was with a colleague—a nurse—who was going to the same conference. She escaped with a few minor injuries. She came to see me after the funeral, told me they had been in love and that he hadn’t known how to tell me. It was the deceit of his affair that almost destroyed me. Why couldn’t he have told me the truth? I would have let him go. I knew I didn’t love him and I would have wanted him to be happy. I felt so guilty. It wasn’t fair. Just because I couldn’t have children, I shouldn’t have made both our lives a misery. I should have encouraged him to leave.’
Cameron pulled Meagan back down on the sand and she buried her head in his shoulder.
‘After the funeral I ran away. I wanted to be where no one knew me. Oh, I loved my time with Médecins Sans Frontières but I’m not proud of the reason I took the job.’
‘And now?’ Cameron prompted gently. ‘How do you feel now?’
Meagan closed her eyes as she thought for a moment. How did she honestly feel now? she wondered. She had spent the last few years feeling torn by Charlie’s affair, and the happiness he had missed out on. Now with sudden clarity she realised she had been burying her grief—for her lost child, for the babies she would never have, for the failure of a marriage that had begun with so much love and promise—behind a wall of anger and resentment. Putting all the blame on Charlie, when she was just as much to blame for the breakdown of their marriage. It had been easier for her to keep the anger simmering rather than acknowledging the pain and grief she feared would overwhelm her.
‘Charlie thought it would break my heart if I found out he was with another woman. But he was wrong. I would have been glad for him. I realise that now.’ She turned to Cameron. ‘Isn’t that so sad? How we think that by not being honest with people we’re protecting them when all we’re doing is hurting them and ourselves more.’ She sat up and hugged her knees, suddenly feeling as if a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Charlie had been denied a happy ending, and for that she’d always feel partially responsible, but that didn’t mean she should deny herself one too. ‘I feel as if I have the chance to start my life over,’ she said. ‘Coming here, meeting you again. It’s as if fate—’
‘Meagan, don’t.’ Cameron interrupted softly, disengaging himself from her embrace. She looked up at him. Something seemed to shut down in his eyes.
Oh, God, why had she said that when it was obvious he didn’t feel the same way about her? For a moment they sat in silence, lost in their own thoughts.
‘If we stay much longer, they’ll send the coastguard out looking for us.’ He held out his hand and pulled her to her feet. ‘I don’t know about you, but I have spent too much time in their company already this week.’
Was that all he was going to say? Meagan wondered. But, then, what else had she expected? A proposal? Just because they’d had the most amazing sex, it didn’t mean they were getting married. They should take things slowly. Get to know each other. See if they had more in common than just lust. But even as she thought the words, Meagan knew she was kidding herself. She had never stopped loving him. She found her bikini and pulled it on. She loved Cameron. Against her better judgement. But it was too late. For better or worse, she knew she would love him until the breath left her body. But how did he feel about her? He had said that Rachel wanted him back. Was she going to have her heart broken again? This time Meagan knew there would be no way back.
Cameron turned to her. ‘There’s one more thing I have to tell you,’ he said. ‘When Rachel agreed to get a divorce and let Ian come back here with me, she made me promise her I’d never get married again.’
‘But that’s ridiculous,’ Meagan burst out. ‘She had no right to make you promise anything of the sort.’
‘The trouble is she swore that if I ever did, she would fight me for custody of Ian. She knows that I would never allow anyone to take him away from me.’
‘But she’d never win custody,’ Meagan protested. ‘He spends all his time with you.’
‘That’s just it. He doesn’t spend all his time with me. He spends a large part of his time with Mrs McLeod and Jessie. You know what kind of hours I work. And she would have no compunction about using my domestic arrangements to argue that custody should be given to her. So you may be right,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid that is a risk I am just not prepared to take.’
And as they made preparations to leave the beach, Meagan knew that