LITMIR.BIZ

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Mina can manage them.’

      She sank down beside him on the grass.

      ‘When I came back to work at the hospital,’ he told her, ‘I brought my mother’s ashes here and scattered them in the grass.’

      ‘So she and your father could be together.’

      Caroline spoke quietly, a statement, not a question.

      She rested her hand gently on his shoulder, and his skin burned beneath the touch, his body warring with his mind, wanting her so badly, yet here, beside his mother—

      He had to tell Caro.

      Now, before anything went any further …

      But she was so damned insecure, wouldn’t his marriage—for all it was over now—seem like a further betrayal?

      Hurt her as much as his deserting her had?

      She slid her hand down his arm to grasp his fingers.

      ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s visit my mother now.’

      They’d done this so often as children, coming to the little cemetery, sitting among the graves, talking to her mother and his father, telling them what they’d been doing, laughing, and sometimes crying.

      They reached Charlotte Lockhart’s memorial—a simple stone with her name and the words ‘wife and mother’—Max having given the initial of her name to both her children.

      ‘Hold me,’ Caroline whispered, and Keanu put his arms around her and drew her close, feeling her softness, her breasts against his chest, long silky hair tickling his neck, covering his hands that now held her to him.

      She raised her head, and he caught the glisten of tears in her eyes.

      Her eyes were shadowed with memories, and not happy ones. This was Caro, so he kissed them, first one and then the other, his lips sliding to her temple, teeth nibbling at her ear lobe, kisses along her jaw, although her mouth—that wide, sensual mouth—had always been his destination.

      Or so it seemed as he tasted her, his tongue sliding around her lips, delving, probing.

      Had her mouth opened to him?

      Were her lips responding?

      For a moment it seemed as if she might have been a statue, then, with a groan that started somewhere down near her toes, she kissed him back, her mouth moving on his, her hands exploring his shoulders, arms, neck, gripping at his hair, his head, holding his mouth to hers as if her life depended on it.

      They were in a graveyard.

      His parents were here …

      Somehow his lips had slipped lower, kissing her neck, while she pressed hers against his head and murmured his name. His hand had slid beneath her shirt, found a breast, a full breast that felt heavy in his hand. His thumb strayed across the nipple, already peaked by the heat of the kiss.

      She’d dragged his head back to kiss his lips, so he gave in and let her, matched the heat of her kisses, and the little moan she gave as his fingers teased the taut nipple was like honey in his mouth.

      Had his legs given way that he was on his knees, still holding Caroline, their bodies pressed together? Moonlight cast shadows from the trees around the graveyard, picked out writing on the stone beside which they knelt.

      Charlotte Lockhart.

      Wife and mother …

       Wife!

      ‘This is crazy,’ he whispered as he eased himself away from Caroline, his body throbbing with need, hers hot within his hands, which had settled on her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry, there’s something I should have said—told you—have to tell you.’

      Blue-green eyes—dazed with desire?—stared at him and she shook her head, as if trying to take in his stumbling words.

      She released the grip she’d had on his shirt, raised her hands to lift his off her shoulders, then bowed her head so the hair on the top of her head brushed against his chest.

      He saw her shoulders move as she took a deep breath, then she lifted her head and looked at him, into his eyes, hers questioning now but so beautiful.

      Too beautiful to hurt?

      Perhaps he could contact his lawyer first, before he told her, find out the situation …

      Coward!

      He took her hands in his and eased her back down onto the ground.

      ‘So tell,’ she said quietly.

      But words wouldn’t come. I’m married seemed too blunt, far too hurtful.

      ‘It’s about attraction,’ he finally began. ‘About attraction and love and how there can be one without the other but how do you know at the beginning?’

      ‘Are you talking about our attraction?’ she asked, her head turned not to him but towards the distant sea, so all he could see was her profile—no emotion …

      ‘Not really but in a way, yes, and I should have told you earlier. I should have told you when it happened—but we’d been apart so long and I really didn’t know how to. And I certainly should have told you before I kissed you.’

      Now she turned to him.

      ‘It’s something bad, isn’t it? You’re already married, or engaged? I should have guessed. Why wouldn’t you be?’

      She went to rise, but he caught her hand and kept her on the grass beside him.

      ‘Married but separated for five years,’ he finally admitted. ‘It was attraction, nothing more, but we didn’t discover that until after we were married. We weren’t exactly virgins, but Mum’s greatest pain, later when she did eventually talk about Ian, was that she’d lost her moral compass—the ethical code by which she’d always lived. And that was in my mind—some half-formed ethical code that said if we were having sex we should get married. We’d met at uni, as physio and medical students—our paths crossed often—and the attraction was definitely there. Marriage seemed a great idea, but something didn’t gel. We didn’t fight, we didn’t hurt each other, we just kind of drifted in different directions and in the end sat down and talked about it and agreed it had been a mistake.’

      He ran out of words and leaned back on his elbows, looking up at the silvery moon above them.

      ‘Where is she?’ Caro asked.

      He shrugged.

      ‘She went to Melbourne. We didn’t keep in touch, nor did we get around to divorcing. I don’t know why—perhaps because it seemed like admitting what a huge mistake we’d made. Anyway, a couple of months ago she contacted me, told me she wanted a divorce and sent the papers. She’d met someone else, sounded so happy I was pleased for her, so I signed the papers. They’ll go before a judge some time soon, then a month and a day later I won’t be married any more.’

      Caroline had sat, stunned into silence, as Keanu told his tale. Somehow, in all her thoughts of Keanu over the years, the fact that he might marry had never occurred to her.

      Not that it should matter, but obviously it did, because her heart was hurting, and her throat was tight, and what she really wanted to do was hit out at him.

      But why shouldn’t he have married?

      Wouldn’t she have married Steve if he hadn’t dumped her when the mine had gone bad?

      ‘Did you think of me at all?’

      She wasn’t sure where the question had come from, but heard it make its way out of her dry mouth.

      ‘Only every minute of the ceremony, which is when I realised how wrong it all was. But I put that aside, and gave the marriage all I had, Caro. Moral compass stuff again. We were friends as well as lovers and I didn’t want to hurt her.’

      Now

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