She looked back at him as if to ask what he was doing. Why did he want to know? He’d like an answer to that himself. ‘Yes, for a few days anyway.’
A tourist then. She had to be. Late in the season, but people came through all the time, walking the coastal paths mainly.
What did you say to someone who had tried to save your life, even if you hadn’t needed them to? He would offer her a lift, but she didn’t seem like she’d happily climb into a car with a stranger. Sensible.
‘Can I buy you dinner?’ The words came out before he knew what he was saying.
Her mouth opened as if to reply and then she shut it again, wrapping her arms tighter around her chest. She looked as perplexed as he felt.
‘Dinner?’
He shrugged, that gesture that came so easily to him, part of his nature. ‘You came to my rescue. You could say I owe you.’
The smile that flickered over her lips transformed her. She had been beautiful, but that smile… It was something else. An unknown feeling inside him unfurled at the sight of it, a reaction he knew was dangerous. He would be better to ignore it. To push it down inside him and deny it had ever appeared, let alone examine it or recognise it for what it might be.
‘Or you could say I accosted a naked man in the water. Why were you naked anyway?’
It was Rafael’s turn to flush. ‘I just felt like a swim.’
‘Naked.’
She kept saying that word. He wished she wouldn’t. It sounded like such a stupid thing to do now. He had the feeling she was teasing him and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. People didn’t tease him.
Well, two could play at that game.
‘There are a lot of things I can do naked,’ he told her, casting her what Jacqueline used to call his finest smoulder.
The tourist, the woman, gave another one of those smiles. It said she knew exactly what he was trying to do, and that she wasn’t impressed. But rather amused. ‘I’m sure there are. But I don’t hook up with strange men in the sea – strange men, by the way, who should know better than to swim in this region. The water’s treacherous here.’
She sounded like Mémé.
‘I’m well aware of that. I know the sea here better than anyone. And I know where the currents are too, where it’s safe. It’s my home.’
She laughed and the sound was music. Even though he already knew she was about to wind him up even more. There was something thrilling about it he didn’t quite understand yet. ‘Oh, right. You’re a merman? That explains so much. The swimming, the nakedness. Grand so, I’ll see you around, Ariel.’ She turned away and climbed quickly up the narrow path through the heather and bracken.
Ariel? The little mermaid?
She was callinghimamermaid?
‘I’ll hold you to that dinner,’ he called after her.
Her laugh floated back down. ‘Sure. You find me and we’ll have dinner.’
And then she was gone.
Rafael shook his head, bemused. Like the Itron Gwenn, the White Lady his great-aunt liked to spin fairy tales about. A ghostly, magical creature who appeared and disappeared on a whim. Mythical, ethereal.
The old woman lived in a world of myths and stories.
Mémé’s moods were becoming increasingly fragile. It was the real reason he was back, after all. To see how bad it had become, to make a decision. To stop her taking on projects that haemorrhaged money to charlatans. To protect her interests because no one else would.
He made his way back towards the car parked at the end of the road leading to the cove, promising he would track down his elusive would-be saviour later on and thank her properly. Maybe he’d even apologise for his rudeness. Sainte Sirène was a tiny village. If you could even use a word as grand as ‘village’. And he knew every inch of it.
He stopped for a moment and laid his hand on the memorial, shaped like a menhir, but carved with a ship in full sail. Beneath it was the double cross of Lorraine, the symbol of the Free French forces. And then the names:Brochard, du Lac, Heussaff, Kerdaniel, Pascal, Poullain, Ruellan…
He knew them all. They were friends, they were family.
This was his home. It had been home to his family for longer than history itself.
