‘That wasn’t exactly beating himself up,’ Kate protested. ‘He’s just determined that we should be the best we can, and it’s only by going over the things we did—or sometimes didn’t do—that we can improve.’
‘But he had to hold the helicopter until he knew there were no survivors in the car,’ Angus said. ‘Anyone would.’
Kate stopped at the always open gates into the hospital and looked out over the shops and restaurants that lined the front to the ocean beyond.
‘Are we going to continue to discuss this all through dinner?” she asked, and caught the surprise on Angus’s face.
He held up his hands in mock surrender.
‘Sorry, I get carried away.’ There was a little pause before he half smiled and admitted, ‘Actually, I’m incredibly nervous about this dinner.’
Kate grinned at him.
‘Snap,’ she said. ‘I think the last time I felt this way was when I was fifteen and a boy I liked at school asked if I’d go to the pictures with him.’
‘And did you?’ Angus asked as they walked on. ‘Go to the pictures with him?’
‘I did,’ Kate said, ‘and we had popcorn and a milkshake and I got such a shock when he put his arm around my shoulders, I spilled the milkshake all over my dress. He did walk me home but he never asked me out again.’
‘First dates!’ Angus said, a small smile flirting around his lips.
‘Tell me about yours,’ Kate said, as they reached the promenade and turned to walk along it.
‘Fifteen, and when I tried to kiss her, Michelle slapped my face.’
‘Michelle?’ Kate gasped. ‘The Michelle you were going to marry? You went out with her from when you were fifteen?’
Guilt that she might have caused the break-up of such a long-standing relationship filled her chest, leaving her breathless as she waited for his reply.
‘Why not?’ Angus said, confirming Kate’s worst fears.
‘Well...’
What to say?
Did people still do that? Go out with each other exclusively from the age of fifteen?
‘Did you go out with other people in between?’ she asked, desperately hoping it had been an on-and-off relationship from the beginning.
‘Off and on, both of us, but somehow we always ended up back together,’ Angus said, sounding as unemotional as someone discussing the weather.
They’d been together fifteen years—she knew he’d been thirty when she’d met him—then had broken up after—
One night of madness...
Only it hadn’t been madness, well, not to her. It had been as natural and necessary as the air she’d breathed.
The memory still felt that way.
But now the conversation, harmless as it had seemed at first, had erected a barrier between them, a wall of stupid, residual guilt as palpable as glass.
* * *
Angus wondered what she was thinking. They’d been chatting amiably enough and now even he, who wasn’t always attuned to nuances in conversation or tension in the air, realised something had shifted.
Because he’d only ever seriously dated Michelle?
Surely not!
Time for a conversation change.
‘Where’s good to eat?’ he asked, and when Kate looked blankly at him he added, ‘Well, you’re the local.’
‘The bistro at the lifesavers’ building,’ she told him. ‘There, on the rocks at the end of the beach.’
‘The place beside the swimming pool in the rocks?’
‘That’s it,’ she said, picking up speed as they headed towards it.
Escaping him or the conversation?
But the beauty of the night caught him, pushing away the awkwardness he’d felt. A pale half-moon had appeared just above the horizon, and its silvery light turned the unusually calm ocean into a sea of mercury.
‘It’s unbelievable—the beauty of the ocean,’ he murmured, and she stopped and turned so they stood beside each other to admire the view.
‘It is,’ she said, and took his hand, squeezed his fingers. ‘Thank you for reminding me. Living here, it’s easy to take it for granted.’
He looked down at her, at the dark hair that curled around her head like a cap, at neat brows and long eyelashes. Had she felt his gaze that she looked up, and her lips were right there?
He touched her cheek, lightly, and sensed her hesitation, then whatever it was that had flared between them on the island sent colour to her cheeks as she lifted her lips to meet his.
The kiss was slow, exploratory really, but it loosened something deep inside him that had been tight for a long time. Her lips were soft and warm against his, and her skin smelt of the beach, and sun, and flowers he couldn’t name, and of a woman he’d kissed three years ago...
They turned and walked again, closer now, her hand in his, and the silence sat more easily between them.
But it didn’t stop the doubts raging in Kate’s head.
This was stupid, getting closer to Angus when all the physical stuff that had thrown them together once before was obviously still there between them...
The physical stuff that had led where it had...
It was only dinner!
And if dinner led to another dinner—even a date?
Led further?
How fair would that be, getting involved with him and not telling him.
She should tell him.
And just what would that achieve? Quite apart from the pain she could feel just thinking about talking about it, how would it affect him?
Wouldn’t it hurt him too?
And if it didn’t—
No, she couldn’t tell him—couldn’t talk about it—not without bringing up those traumatic days and the agony of grief that had followed them.
The pain that still hit her when she saw a small child—
‘—heard a word I’ve said?’
She turned to the man who was causing her so much confusion.
‘Sorry, miles away.’
And thinking unhappy thoughts, Angus decided, seeing sadness in her eyes as she’d looked up at him.
‘Well, that’s okay, because it wasn’t very interesting chatter anyway,’ he said, but her distraction reminded him of the ‘loner’ tag she had at the hospital. Wasn’t that why he was hanging around Bondi? To see if he could find out what had changed her?
Not that it was any of his business, but he’d liked the Kate he’d met at the island, and maybe he could find her again beneath the shell she’d built around herself.
Oh, yes? a voice in his head taunted. You want to see more of her for purely altruistic reasons? To find out why she’s changed? Nothing to do with the attraction you feel towards her? The physical attraction you felt back then, that’s still there between you? The attraction you’d like to follow up on? Have a bit of a fling?
Except instinct told him that Kate wasn’t a ‘just a fling’ kind of woman. A woman he