OK, they were going with flippant, then. ‘I think you’d find your postal code and credit limit would be sufficient compensation for many people.’ Not to mention the body.
‘Many? But not you?’
She blew a breath slowly out and stared into the orange glow of the sunset. ‘I would actually be quite choosy about who I married,’ she started.
‘Despite all evidence to the contrary,’ he murmured.
She looked at him. ‘It’s not like I picked Dan out of a Proposals-R-Us catalogue. I’d known him a while. I really like him as a person. He’s bright and dedicated and he has really good family values.’
Would he notice the complete absence of the L-word?
‘You two wanted kids?’
She snorted. ‘We never discussed a week into the future, let alone years.’ Which only made her proposal even more misguided. ‘But he’d been looking after his sick sister and her kids for a while. So I got to see it in action. The potential.’
‘Family’s important to you?’
She frowned, thought about it. ‘The values are important. The capacity to love and nurture something to adulthood.’
‘Like plants?’
She chuckled. ‘Exactly. Kids can’t possibly be any fussier than ferns.’
‘And that’s more important to you than money or an address? Values?’
She looked at him. ‘You’ve seen how I live. Do I strike you as someone who cares much about money or the trappings of wealth?’ Or threw them around needlessly?
‘Not having it is not necessarily synonymous with not wanting it,’ he said. ‘I used to have none and I definitely wanted it.’
‘Some things are more important than money.’
‘So what was the leap year promotion all about?’ he asked suddenly. ‘If not for the fifty grand. Why put yourself and Bradford through that?’
The sun touched the horizon. ‘Did you know that sunsets are only a mirage? By the time we’re seeing it touch water, the sun has already dropped below the horizon. Something to do with the curvature of the earth.’
He turned to look. And it wasn’t until then that she realised how closely he’d been watching her before. But then he brought his eyes back around. ‘I didn’t know that. But I do recognise a subject change when I hear one.’
‘It’s not... I’m not comfortable talking about it.’
‘Why? You think I’m going to judge you?’
‘I think it might end up in the radio show.’
His face changed, then, in an instant. Back to London Zander. ‘Right.’
‘Zander...’ Her eyes fell shut to block out his offence, but she forced them open again. ‘I could barely admit to Dan why I’d done it. I can’t tell the whole country.’
I can’t tell you. Not without having to ask herself why Zander’s good impression mattered more to her than Dan’s.
He stared. ‘Off the record.’
She dropped her eyes and plucked at the long blades of the estuary bank. ‘Do you know what I do for a job?’
‘You study seeds.’
‘I X-ray seeds. Day in, day out, to find the ones that are incompetent. The ones that aren’t viable. The ones that aren’t normal. It makes a person quite proficient at spotting the signs of irregularities in others. Or in yourself.’
He stayed silent. Waited for her to connect the dots.
‘Everyone I know has paired off. Started families. I felt like I was falling behind.’
There was no judgement, just curiosity. ‘Is it a race?’
‘No.’ She had years of optimum childrearing ahead of her.
‘But?’
She lifted her eyes. But the clock was ticking. ‘It’s hard, being with them and not being able to contribute, to understand. They all have that shared experience in common. They’ve become so much closer.’
‘You were going to get married and have kids just to ensure you could contribute to conversation? That seems extreme.’
Put like that it sounded as ridiculous as it probably was. ‘I want what they have.’
‘School debt and early grey hair?’
She went to stand. ‘I shouldn’t expect you to understand. You have so much—’
His fingers caught her wildly flapping ones. Tugged her back down. ‘George, sorry. Go on. What do they have that you want so much?’
She stared at where his long fingers held hers. Not releasing them. ‘Everything. The package. A man and children to love them. A nice house in the country. Security and someone to celebrate joys with. To be wanted enough for someone to give up their freedom for.’ All the things she didn’t have growing up. ‘Someone to fill all the holes inside me.’
‘So Daniel was your gap-filler?’
She stared. Swallowed. Dropped her head with shame. ‘Poor Dan. That’s awful.’
‘Give yourself a break. Everyone fills their gaps with something.’
‘What fills yours?’
His answer was immediate. ‘Work. Running.’
The only two things he did. They couldn’t both be gap fillers, surely? ‘What are you filling?’
He stared. ‘A whole lot of empty.’
Wow. That was quite a mouthful. There was nothing to say to that. They just stared at each other as the sun fully set. Its sinking took with it some of the magic of the cusp of night and day, breaking the spell she’d been under.
How else could she excuse her revelations of the last few minutes?
She let her eyes refocus over his shoulder.
‘It’s gone,’ she whispered.
‘It’ll be back tomorrow.’
She nodded. But still they didn’t move.
‘Why are we here, Zander?’ she breathed into the fading light.
He stared at her in the rapidly cooling, darkening evening. ‘Because you followed me up here?’
Half of her was terrified he’d just shrug and blame tradition. That this thing between them wasn’t mutual. But she wasn’t about to be put off so easily. ‘Here, by the twinkling water as the sun sets.’
‘Do you want to leave?’ he murmured, eyes locked on hers.
She should. ‘No.’
‘Do you want to feel?’
Her lungs locked up. Suddenly the grass and cows and water around them seemed to grow as if the two of them had just hauled themselves over the top of a beanstalk, forcing them closer together and making the scant distance separating them into something negligible.
Her pulse began to hammer in earnest.
Zander raised his hand and slipped it behind her head, lowering his forehead to rest on hers. His heat radiated outwards. His eyes drifted shut.
She hesitated for only a moment, then turned her face to rub her jaw along his, twisting inwards, seeking out the lips that hunted for hers. The full lips she’d been wanting to taste since she’d seen them stained with bolognese sauce and a