Chapter Seven
“DAN DEFINITELY NEEDS a larger pair of swim-shorts,” Xander declared, brooking no argument.
He was driving them over to the retail park by the motorway.
“And he can have some new summer togs while we’re at it.
” He turned towards Dan in the back in his booster seat.
“We’ll check out adding another couple of cars for your garage too. ”
“He’s already got four,” Laurel said tightly.
Her interjection irritated him. “You can’t have too many cars,” he said. “Can you, Dan?”
“No,” Dan agreed.
Laurel gave no more objection and Xander was glad.
All the same, as they queued to pay for the extra cars Dan had chosen, he murmured sibilantly, “I am not spoiling him, so stop looking like you’re chewing a lemon!
” He glanced towards Dan, but he was examining a tabletop display of Easter bunnies, just out of earshot.
“Do you begrudge me giving him things?” he asked.
He could hear the slightest edge in his voice but didn’t care.
She shook her head quickly. “Of course not! But I fear—” he saw her hesitate “—I fear that he will start taking the lifestyle you can afford for granted. It’s—” she hesitated again “—very easy to do.” She paused. “I should know.”
His eyes held hers. He heard himself speak, put the question to her that her comment had invited.
“So, is that what happened, Laurel? Being with me opened your eyes to luxury, so when Olympia turned up, and you knew your time was up, you decided to take a piece of it home with you. A ruby-and-diamond piece.”
The queue had moved on, and it was his turn to pay. As he put his credit card away, took the carrier bag, he turned to look at Laurel. Her face was half averted, and she seemed to be blinking, gaze unfocussed.
His gaze moved down slightly, and he frowned. She was wearing, as she always did, the same old cheap clothes she clung to. It annoyed him, annoyed the hell out of him. It was such a waste of her beauty.
“Look,” he said now, decisiveness in his voice, “while we’re here, I really want to get you some decent clothes!”
She looked round. “No.” It was all she said. It annoyed him even more. Her mouth compressed. “Your money is for your son, not for me. How many more times do I have to say it?”
Xander felt his annoyance rise. “It’s ridiculous!” he snapped.
Something flashed in her eyes. “Not to me,” she bit back.
“Yes, I admit that I enjoyed the lifestyle I had when I was with you. It was so very easy to enjoy! And because I did I got called a thief—then and now. So, no, I am not going to let you buy me clothes! I am not, Xander, giving you any more rope to hang me with! Not a single damn centimetre!”
She walked off, heading for the children’s wear section. She’d walked away from him like that at Piraeus, never looking back, head held high. Past and present seemed to meld, two images merging in his memory—and in his present vision.
Collecting Dan, handing him the carrier bag with his toys, Xander walked after her. His emotions were mixed, frustration uppermost, that she was being so obdurate. Damn it, he wasn’t trying to give her any more rope to hang her with.
I just want her to have some new clothes, show off her beauty. The way I remember it.
The way he wanted to see her again.
Is that such a crime?
No, it was not. Not in his book.
He frowned, thinking about what she’d said, that she’d enjoyed the lifestyle she’d had with him in Greece that summer.
Yes, she had, but now that he thought about it, she hadn’t expected him to buy things for her when they went out and about.
She’d bought some extra outfits for herself—a particularly fetching ankle-length dress in fine white cotton splashed with embroidered blue flowers, he recalled, remembering how good she’d looked in it—and how he’d enjoyed slipping it from her when they retired that night—but only from tourist shops, and always paying herself.
He’d bought her a silk shawl once, in an up-market boutique on a marina, and then she’d promptly bought him a baseball cap with the name of the island on it, which he’d solemnly worn all day just to please her, because she’d said she couldn’t run to spending as much as the shawl had cost him, not that he’d wanted her to spend her money on him, the reverse if anything, because he’d have been happy to buy her things…
Including jewellery if she’d asked for it. But she never had.
So, why steal that bracelet? Was it more to get back at Olympia for looking down at her? Or was she jealous because it was a gift from me? Or both?
Did it make it less worse, her crime? Or not…?
“Dad, do you like these? Mum says she does.” Dan was holding out a pair of dark blue swim-shorts with pale blue dolphins on it. With a start, Xander came back to the present.
“Great,” he enthused. “Shall we find a couple of T-shirts to go with them, for the summer?”
He started going down the racks, Dan joining in enthusiastically. Laurel was standing a little way away now, an abstracted expression on her face. As if she, too, were far away in the past.
The past that brought us together, then ripped us apart.
His own expression flickered. But they were back together again now, sharing in Dan.
Is that all we have to share?
Or could there be more?
And do I want there to be?
The question hung motionless in the space between them.
Now the proud owner of new swim-shorts, Dan was keen to get them wet. So they headed back to Xander’s hotel for another pool session. Much against her will, Laurel had succumbed to Dan’s pleas to watch him swim this time and so had come poolside.
“I can only watch, Dan,” she told him. “I haven’t got my cossie with me.
” She fully intended never to have her swimming costume with her.
She wanted no repeat of that first time, when Xander’s eyes had so fatally gone to her figure.
For the same reason she tried now not to let her eyes go to Xander.
But it was hard. Far harder than she wanted.
Anger at her own self lashed at her. She didn’t want to be like this, didn’t want it at all.
She was fighting it as hard as she could.
And the last thing she wanted was to encourage it in Xander.
As she stripped off her jumper in the heat of the pool area, she was glad that the T-shirt underneath was one of her worst. The neckline had gone, and it had been washed shapeless.
Deliberately, she reknotted her hair, exposing her neck to keep it cooler, knowing tufts of hair were sticking out in an unlovely fashion. She wanted to look unlovely.
It must have worked, because Xander’s glance, as she settled down on a lounger, rolling up her trouser legs in a similarly unlovely fashion, was the opposite of the way he’d looked her over in her turquoise one-piece. His dark brows were drawn together as he frowned.
Her lips compressed, glad he didn’t like what he was seeing.
As for him buying her new clothes—
Yeah, as if I’d give him any more rope! she echoed to herself grimly. She’d been right to spell it out for Xander as she had. “Mum! I’m going to swim a width! Watch, Mum, watch!”
Laurel’s expression softened, relieved to have her thoughts, which she should not have, diverted.
“Go for it!” she called out. “And back again!”
Beside Dan, Xander stood waist-deep in the water, his perfect, smooth, leanly muscled torso on full view, ready to catch Dan if he floundered, which he didn’t. But Laurel only had eyes for her son.
It was all that was safe for her to look at.
And she hated that it was.
I have to defeat this. I have to! Because if I don’t—
No, she would not answer that. Must not.
Doggedly, her gaze stayed only on Dan.
Xander sauntered back from the reception desk in the hotel’s foyer, once the grand hall of the country house when it had been a private residence. Dan and Laurel were waiting for him near the front door, ready to leave after another superb afternoon tea following their swim.
He frowned inwardly. Laurel had looked her worst yet as she sat poolside.
She’d thrown at him that she wouldn’t let him buy her better clothes because she’d said he’d only hold it against her.
But even in cheap clothes she could have looked better, could have bothered to do her hair, put on some make-up.
In Greece she’d always dressed with style and flair, even on her student budget, always looked her best with face and hair.
But now she makes no effort. None!
Why?
He stopped dead, realisation suddenly dawning. The truth hitting him.
Because she does not want to look good for me. She actively wants to look her worst!
Was that just because of her hostility towards him, or…?
Another truth hit him square on.
Or because I did not hide that I could not tear my eyes from her in that swimsuit she looked so fantastic in?
And if that were so…
Inexorable logic bore him forward.
There could be only two reasons she didn’t want him making clear to her how her beauty wowed him still, didn’t want his attention on her in that way.
Either I repulse her in that way now, or it’s the very opposite.
His gaze rested on her now forensically. Everything falling into place like a perfect explanation, an irrefutable Aristotelian syllogism of the kind he’d learnt in school.
She is susceptible to me still. And she knows it. But is trying to hide it.
That was it, he was sure of it. Laurel was deliberately playing down her looks because she knew she was still drawn to him, the way she’d been in Greece from the very first.
And as for himself—
More truth slammed into him.
I am just the same. Just as susceptible.
Except for one crucial difference.
I acknowledge it. She denies it.
He resumed walking towards them, the words echoing in his head. He’d pay attention to them later. Decide what to do about them. Right now, though, he had something to tell Dan.