Pressed against the other side of a door, Emma chuckled to herself. Her escape from the corridor had brought her out somewhere at the back of the building, at the top of a flight of steps. They sank into a dark courtyard garden.
From the other side of the door, a particularly loud bump and a torrent of swearing indicated that Piers might have tried kicking the wall. Emma snorted, then clapped her hand to her face. It would be just her luck to give herself away. But the door didn’t open. Emma waited, and Piers’ steps faded into silence. The wind whispered through the olive trees in the garden below.
“Now, that was an intriguing entrance.”
Emma whirled around.
From the darkness, a cigarette flared. In its momentary glow, Emma made out a bright eye. The sharp edge of a cheekbone.
“I wonder what brought you outside in such a hurry?”
The voice was cultured, hovering somewhere between boredom and amusement.
Emma stumbled down the steps toward it. “What—who—what are you doing out here, in the dark?”
“Couldn’t I ask you the same thing?”
The speaker lounged against an olive trunk. The party spilled enough light to hint at the burnt-tan hand around his cigarette, the gold threading his messy curls. Emma moved closer. The boy wasslim but powerfully built, like a big cat. After a night navigating rooms of waistcoats and blazers, his loose T-shirt was a shock to Emma’s system. The cotton looked soft with age. Careless, comfortable. Emma wriggled inside her black velvet armor, feeling envious.
And as the boy turned his face into the light, Emma felt her throat catch. She had once seen a statue of Apollo at a museum, she remembered dazedly. And although usually she preferred the beauty of living things to the still, cold art humans kept in their galleries, something about this statue had gripped her. She had stared at the perfect lines of cheek and belly and thigh. The princely nose, the fierce eyes. That stone Apollo had looked as though he were about to leap from his plinth and sprint into the forest. The boy in front of her had the same sense of power, barely concealed in stillness.
Unused to being confronted by specimens of masculine perfection, Emma retreated into idiocy. She pointed at him—actually pointed—and asked the only thing that came to mind:
“What happened to your arm?”
The young man rubbed the welts that scored his forearm, rippling and purple. A rueful grin made him suddenly, and welcomely, more human.
“This? Being an idiot. I dove right onto a box jellyfish last year.”
Emma couldn’t repress a shudder. “A box jelly?” No wonder he still had the scars. Their venom was legendary.
“Yeah, just off the Tasmanian coast.”
Emma had been inspecting the scars with awe. But at this, her head snapped up.
The stranger tossed the cigarette into the shrubbery and leanedagainst the wall. “It was after the Sydney-Hobart race, if you know it? The rest of the crew stayed with the yacht, but me’n one of the other guys, we rented a dinghy to explore the coast. The water was incredible, so—well, I jumped in, and found myself in a passionate embrace with a box jelly.”
He looked at her, waiting for a laugh.
“You’re the photographer,” she said, a wordless joy creeping through her. She was certain. This slim young god, with the messy hair and careless clothes, was the one who had arranged those images on the walls.
“I’ve been in your bedroom,” she added, before she could stop herself.
That startled him out of his languid lean. He cocked his head to one side, eyes sparkling. “Oh yes?”
“I saw a photograph there. In your room. Of the rocks outside Hobart.”
“The organ pipe cliff,” he said slowly. “Yes, with—”
“—the seal colony,” Emma finished. “I loved it. I used to spend hours there, just watching them.”
The knowing smile had slipped from his face. He looked years younger, and eager, as though he were running up on a beach to ask if she wanted to play skipping stones.
“You know it?”
“I lived near there. When I was younger.” She grinned back at him. “We’d go to the national park on weekends. That photo caught how I remember it feeling, exactly. The sun, the waves. And that was you, wasn’t it? Your photo. Your bedroom.”
He shook his head in wonder. “Well—yeah. You got all that from me telling you about diving onto a jelly?”
