Wish You Were Here
Prologue
PROLOGUE
NEW YORK CITY, USA, 2011
Lifting the crystal glass to her lips, she lingered as the champagne bubbles teased and tingled on her tongue, before turning to her husband to toast their wedding anniversary. Ten years since that day. It had been an intimate ceremony with close friends in a clifftop church on the breathtakingly beautiful Italian island of Capri. And they were still so deeply in love today.
‘To me.’ She raised one eyebrow and smiled at him as they tapped their glasses together. ‘For having the good fortune to meet you all those years ago. I know it’s a cliché, my darling, but our love has truly changed my life.’ Gazing at him, she admired his thick, messy blond hair, brushed back from his kind face. The tall, athletic physique and still so incredibly handsome, as reminiscent of a classic Hollywood movie star as he’d been on the day she had first set eyes on him.
‘And loving you has changed my life too. So here’s to us, to ten wonderful years together and to ten more, my love.’ He smiled right back, his sparkling denim-blue eyes creasing at the corners as his tender gaze met hers.
‘And the rest!’ she said, in faux outrage. ‘We are not that old, and if our energetic lovemaking this morning was anything to go by, then I reckon we both have plenty of life left in us yet. I’m very much looking forward to growing old together.’
‘Well, when you put it like that…’ He lifted one eyebrow. ‘Although I do regret us not getting together sooner, so we could have even more time together.’
‘There’s no point in regrets, my darling. Plus, I think we have stayed the course precisely for this reason… that we were older and wiser when we started our relationship. Each of us not prepared to put up with shoddy behaviour, as I certainly did in the past,’ she said, referring to the two disastrous marriages she had endured before falling in love with him and finding her happy ever after.
‘Hmm, but for me it was more a case of not ever feeling ready to commit, until I met you and that all changed.’ He nodded. ‘I guess I grew up at last and realised I needed to make a proper effort if I wanted to build a good life with you. Although you make it so easy to do, my darling.’
‘Well, they do say that when something is easy then it’s meant to be,’ she told him.
‘They sure do. I’m so proud of us and all that we have navigated together. I love our life and having my best friend by my side. I love surprising you with wonderful experiences such as this too.’ He paused to point across the Hudson River towards the shoreline, the lights from the Manhattan skyscrapers twinkling like jewels in the moonlit sky. ‘And I promise never to stop surprising you.’
‘Here’s to more of it all – more surprises, more laughing, more dancing, more loving.’
‘Let’s dance to that.’
Gently taking the champagne glass from her hand and placing it with his on the table set up on the deck of the yacht for their celebration picnic, he moved in closer and circled a tanned, muscular arm around her waist. She placed one hand on his shoulder and clasped his other hand in hers. Their fingers entwined, sending a familiar flood of fire surging through her body, of enduring love mingled with desire, still the same sensation she’d felt the first time they’d danced together, all those years ago. From his first touch, it had been electrifying, a trillion tiny firecrackers exploding deep within her.
They met at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999 and, like a scene from one of the movies they had watched earlier, their eyes locked before he made his way through the party crowd towards her. Incredulous at seeing her again, he had never forgotten her mesmerising audition to be a Bond girl back in the seventies, when they were both in their twenties and he was first starting his career as a movie casting director. She had worn a cream silk dress that had clung to her curves and swished around her thighs to accentuate her incredibly long and toned legs. He had apologised, of course, for not casting her all that time ago, the decision taken out of his hands by the film’s producer, and she had forgiven him as they moved together in time to the music, before running to his sports car to race back to her hotel suite where they made exquisite love all night long. They had married two years later, both in their forties and both very appreciative to have finally met ‘the one’ in mid-life.
It was extraordinary how their infatuation for each other, both physically and spiritually, had lasted such a long time and hadn’t petered out as it had in their previous relationships. They just got each other. Always had. Both of them enjoying passionate debates on just about every topic there was, and often late into the night, when the conversation would then turn to lovemaking. They laughed together too, and danced daily, their bond of joy and spontaneity special and the secret ingredient to their successful marriage. And right here on the deck of the yacht, their bodies swayed and twirled in time to the music once again. A velvet-voiced melody drifting from the Bluetooth speaker at the helm, floating through the warm evening air. A shaft of pearlescent moonlight shimmering on the water to form a frame for their special anniversary moment.
‘How wonderful life is,’ he sang along, his deep American accent as smooth and warm as honey over peach pie as he let go of her hand to move his fingers to the nape of her neck; his lips hot on hers as they kissed and laughed and swayed together some more, just revelling in, and cherishing their love for one another.
‘While you’re in the world,’ she breathed, tilting her head back from his embrace, lingering on the lyrics of the beautifully soulful song as she looped her fingers through his, locking their love in this perfect moment for evermore.