kiss.
A goodbye kiss, because she was leaving and for who knew how long?
He met her eyes squarely, ready to admit the pain he’d inflicted on her young pride an hour later. ‘I was eighteen and an insensitive jerk.’
But that was then. This was now. And now was full of possibilities. She wasn’t an innocent; she was an international sensation. A modern woman who’d no doubt had her share of men over the years—a thought he didn’t particularly want to dwell on.
Her mouth twisted with grim humour. ‘Has anything changed?’
A grin tugged at his mouth. ‘Nope. Still that same insensitive jerk.’ He couldn’t help himself—he stepped closer, so their bodies almost touched, and brushed a finger down her cheek.
She shook her head. ‘We’re not those kids now. It’s in the past. Leave it there.’
But Dane couldn’t leave it there, whatever the hell it was, because his brain had ceased to compute anything so complicated as reason or words or sentence structure. All it recognised was the fragile face he suddenly found himself holding between his palms, emerald eyes swimmingly close, the seductive scent of her perfume, her hands against his chest and her indrawn breath as he leaned in to touch his lips to hers.
He tasted heat and sun-warmed honey, and he slid his hands through silky hair then down over smooth shoulders and chiffon to haul her closer, so he could absorb the fuller, richer flavour as her mouth opened for him.
He closed his eyes as her body grew pliant, melting against his. Fingertips scraping against his shirt. Soft throaty murmurs. Fast, warm breaths against his cheek—
Hard, flat palms pushing at his chest—
Heaving a breath, she reared back, eyes dark and wary. ‘Why did you do that?’ She touched the fingers of one hand to her lips then spun away.
Good question. Damn good question. He noticed the wisps of hair he’d dislodged from the clasp at the back of her head floating about her temples and around her neck. ‘Perhaps I wanted to see if it was the same as I remember.’
She turned, eyes flashing with residual passion…or desire or anger—he couldn’t tell through the sexual haze still blurring his vision. To give himself a moment he paced to the dressing table, picked up a bottle of perfume, set it down.
‘And was it?’ She closed her eyes, as if regretting the question, then shook her head. More silken hair tumbled over her shoulders. ‘Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.’
‘Or maybe I just wanted to kiss you for old times’ sake.’
He leaned nonchalantly against the dressing table as if his blood wasn’t thudding through his body like a big bass drum. As if his jeans didn’t feel as if they’d shrunk two sizes in the crotch. ‘You kissed me back, Queen Bee.’
The shared knowledge singed the air between them, and she drew a shaky breath but didn’t reply.
‘And it felt good. You thought so, too.’
She let out a stream of air through her nostrils. ‘Isn’t that just a typically arrogant male response?’
‘Am I not a typically arrogant male?’
She glared back, unsmiling, or was that a hint of humour at the corner of her mouth?
‘Good,’ he said, taking it as a yes and venturing a grin of sorts. ‘Now we’ve got that sorted, I’ll check outside.’
Mariel shot a hand up, palm out. Oh, no, she wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily. ‘Not sorted, Dane. Why don’t we just get it out in the open now, then never speak of it again?’
His smile faded. ‘Okay,’ he said slowly. ‘Why did you come to see me that night? We’d said our goodbyes at your place.’
‘That kiss. It meant something to me. It meant everything to me.’ Her heart twisted, remembering.
‘It was a goodbye kiss,’ he murmured.
‘I thought—stupidly and naïvely, I realise now—that I was in love with you. And when you kissed me…like that…I thought…’ She waved it away. ‘Well, I went looking for you because I wanted to ask you…to tell you I was coming back…that we…’
That evening was still as clear as day in her mind. After The Kiss, she’d driven to his house. She’d seen his car lights on in the garage…
‘I heard a noise,’ she said. ‘I was so pathetically dumb I thought you were in pain. Imagine my shock-horror when I saw Isobel on the bonnet of your car and you going at it like…well.’
She recalled that she must have made some sort of sound, because they’d both turned and seen her. Then bizarre fascination had held her in thrall for those few agonising seconds while her gaze swept the two of them and her heart shattered.
‘I hate you, Dane Huntington, I never want to see you again!’
She didn’t remember how she’d made it to the sanctuary of her car—it was the feminine giggle and the ‘Poor Mariel’ that stuck in her mind, and the sound of Dane’s footsteps behind her, his calls for her to wait up. Wait?
Dane shook his head and she knew he, too, was remembering. ‘Thing is, Mariel, as close as we were, as much as I cared for you, the one thing we never discussed was our sex lives.’
‘Or lack of.’ She held his gaze unapologetically.
‘We should have. It would have saved any misunderstanding. I came by the next day to apologise, but you’d already left. So I’ll apologise now. For hurting you.’
She nodded. ‘Accepted. But you didn’t have any reason to apologise. I realise that now. You didn’t see me the way I saw you.’
Maybe not then. She read the message in his eyes and something fluttered inside her. Or perhaps it was something else that had stopped him.
‘I tried contacting you several times,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t take my calls. You won’t know I was in Paris a couple of years later. I dropped by to see you, but your landlady told me you were in London for the weekend with your boyfriend.’
‘He wasn’t my boyfriend; he was a fellow student.’
‘Student, boyfriend—it makes no difference now.’ He needed air. ‘I’ll go check the garden.’
It took a good ten minutes to scour the perimeter of the extensive grounds. Not that it was absolutely necessary. But it gave them both some time.
As he returned to the house light from the kitchen’s stained glass windows flowed into the adjacent atrium, turning the abundant greenery within to the colours of amber and ripe plums.
From the other side of the glass he saw Mariel, sitting on the edge of the raised pond beside a stone maiden pouring sparkling water from her jug. A moth, distracted by the light, fluttered above her head. Shards of crimson and gold light sliced through the fronds of a potted palm, danced on the water and reflected over the face he hadn’t had the pleasure of looking at up close and personally in a long time.
She’d needed to chase her dreams overseas, he reflected. And she’d excelled. He’d been right in not taking their relationship to the next logical step. Thinking herself in love with him would have brought her nothing but grief. She might never have left, and he hadn’t wanted to be responsible for that.
Marriage had never been on his agenda.
He focused on her once more. She’d braced her forearms on her thighs and held an open can of beer between her palms. Her posture drooped and he was hard pressed to remember any occasion when Mariel had allowed herself that indulgence since early high school. She probably hadn’t noticed that her dress gaped at the front, revealing more creamy cleavage. Another tinny sat on