In the silence that followed, Atholl kept his hands moving over her arms, circling the tops of her shoulders too, his touch growing lighter, his eyes following the movement over her skin, letting his hands tangle in her hair as they converged at the nape of her neck. He cradled her face, his fingertips grazing the soft skin between her ears and hairline, his thumbs straying in slow sweeps across her cheekbones.
All the time Beatrice’s breathing seemed to quicken and their bodies moved closer together, swayed by the gentle flux of the currents around them.
Her eyes had closed by the time she pressed herself against his bare chest and her nerves thrilled at the sound of the sharp intake of breath he made in response. That was the last thing she heard other than her heart’s drumming as she spread her hands wide and slipped them around his smooth, hard back, finding that his skin still retained the heat of the morning’s work under the sun. Atholl lowered his mouth to hers, pressing a slow kiss to her lips.
It lasted only a moment. Long enough to confirm all her intuitions that he’d be good at this. Thatthey’dbe good at this.
But as the warmth between them grew and the distance between them lessened, the thoughts intruded. Rich had never kissed her like this. And she’d married him. And he’d loved her. Hadn’t he? Or was it never there in the first place? This kind of connection? It certainly never,everfelt like this.
Thought followed thought until the searing warmth faded to be replaced by other things: a little guilt, a little sadness, and as Atholl’s fingertips brushed over her sides and towards her belly, a little memory of her lost baby.
He felt her withdrawing and he too pulled back. The coral cut her soles again. Funny how she hadn’t felt it a moment ago.
‘Let’s swim,’ he said, giving her arms one last warm stroke. She watched him dive.
Beatrice hadn’t been able to read his neutral expression but she had understood the feelings between them; feelings of being thwarted, sabotaged from within, and a little sting of defeat.
Atholl was already resurfacing after the plunge beneath the water. Beatrice watched him swimming with powerful strokes out into the deeper water.
There was nothing for it but to take a deep breath and try to make up the distance between them.
She didn’t let her head sink beneath the surface, it was way too cold for that, and she gasped at the frigidity of the waves wrapping her body in their chilly grip. The only thing that warmed her was seeing Atholl treading water, waiting for her and they swam side by side for a while. Beatrice tried to clear her mind and simply enjoy stretching out her body and letting her muscles work.
‘Getting warmer?’ Atholl called as he circled her.
‘Much.’
‘Just keep moving. Shall we swim for the horizon?’ he said.
A sail boat crossed the blue skyline and both wordlessly set it as their focus. Atholl matched Beatrice’s slow pace.
‘Are we OK?’ he asked after a long moment.
‘We’re OK.’
‘I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have done that, kissing you, I mean.’
‘Didn’t I tell you to stop with the sorries? … and I wanted to kiss you.’ Beatrice’s breathing showed she was tiring already but swimming into the deeper water felt too good to turn around anytime soon even if she was at risk of getting out of her depth.
‘But?’ he prompted.
‘But… I panicked a bit. I haven’t done much kissing lately.’
Atholl waited. The water resisted their movements and the tiredness in her muscles felt delicious.
‘It’s been a while since me and Rich…’ the words tailed off as the effort of pulling herself through the water grew harder. ‘That’s my husband’s name. He moved out all of a sudden one day at the start of July.’ Beatrice hoped Atholl would say something, anything, but he didn’t, so she had no choice but to go on. ‘I worry sometimes that he blamed me about the baby. He never said as much but his dad certainly did.’
‘Well his dad sounds pernicious!’
Beatrice surprised herself by laughing at the word and the fierce way it rolled from Atholl’s mouth.
‘I suspect your man Richard was grieving, regardless of what his father had to say about it. He’d be cut up and sorry, but he cannae have blamed you.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Some men aren’t good at speaking their feelings. It takes one to know one. He must have been suffering, only differently – or expressing it differently – to the way you did.’
‘Well… maybe you’re right.’ A little lightness entered her chest at Atholl’s words. How had he come by this new talent for knowing the right thing to say to relieve her pain, this man who had been so cold at first and thought himself so bad at communicating?
