Here where?
She looked around. They stood on a smooth white bolder at the eastern end of the rocky cove. The island curved round so that opposite them across the water, another cliff rose up.
She looked back at Adam who didn’t seem in a hurry to explain. He just leaned against a rock, arms folded across his chest. Was he waiting for her to see something?
Hands on hips she looked around again. There was nothing. Even the sea barely rippled in the wind shelter. The sun sparkled gold and silver like glitter on the pale blue water. Behind it, the cliff was covered in the Elijah grass she’d been painting.
Then she saw it. The big picture. The blue sea, blue-green grass on the hill under the pale blue sky.
“Oh,” she breathed.
“Wait.” He dropped down to the rock below and made his way farther down to the harbor.
Wait for what? And where was he off to?
“I’m going for a swim. It should give you enough time.” And he was gone, round the corner and out of sight.
A swim.
That explained the wet hair. Although it didn’t explain him. Who went swimming in early February? Unless he was one of those cold water fanatics. In all her thirty years, she’d never met someone like him. A silent assassin with a penchant for botanical research and cold water swimming who wanted to show her beautiful landscapes but suddenly becoming cryptic and leaving her alone to discover it for herself.
She pulled out her phone to take pictures, turning this way and that across the entire 180 degree view. It was crisp and cold making the air very clear, the blue sky almost hurt her eyes. A few minutes later, the sun moved behind the cliff; it was still in the sky, sunlight still came from behind it and sparkled on the water, but the grass on the curve of the hill was in shadow.
All the breath whooshed out of her. So that was what he wanted her to see.
In the shadow. not a trace of green remained. The grass now looked deep blue. How could the same place look so completely different?
And he was right to have made her bring her sketching things. No camera could do this justice. Who’d have thought it? Inside the scientist doctor shell, the man had a romantic soul.
Deciding not to think about his soul or even his body semi-naked in the water, she searched in her coat for all the blue pastels and flipped her sketch pad open. Colours shaded through the spectrum of blues; she started with a teal pencil and dipped the tip into a pocket of seawater trapped by a dip in the rock.
She worked fast to catch the image before the light changed. A different blue now, colouring in the sea, leaving white lines where the shimmer of sunlight on water looked like silver thread woven into blue silk. She was just finishing off when the sun moved out from behind the cliff and the Elijah grass was green again. She added a few touches, then gathered her pencils and sketchpad and looked around for Adam.
How long had he been gone? Hopefully he hadn’t drowned. She couldn’t see him anywhere. She clambered down on the lower boulders and followed the curve of the bay.
And just there, a flash of movement caught her eye. An arm rising out of the water, then a head.
Adam, half-naked, planted both hands on a flat white rock and pulled himself out.
OMG.He wasn’thalf-naked.
Laura whipped her head away and tried to retreat before he saw her. Unfortunately her hands, like her mind, were in shock and couldn’t operate properly; pencils fell unto the rock with a clatter and rolled this way and that. As she bent down trying to collect them, her sketch pad fell into a crevice between two boulders. The more she tried to reach for it, the further down it slipped.
“Let me.” Adam was right behind her in that stealthy, quiet way of his. He dropped to lie flat on the rock and reached into the gap.
At least he’d managed to pull on some trousers. But his top half was bare. And still wet.
She averted her gaze. Not that she’d seen anything. Anyway, all men had wide shoulders. And she hadn’t seen anything else. Just a flash of hip and thigh. Nothing.
“Got it,” he said, rising to his feet and offering her the sketchbook.
“Thank you.” She busied herself straightening the pages which had bent slightly.
“Have you got everything?” he asked, rubbing his body with his tee-shirt before pushing his arms into his dark green jumper.
The same colour as his eyes.
She must have been staring because his eyes darkened as their gaze held.
