Chapter Ten
TABBY SETTLED THEbunch of keys down on Aristide’s desk in the room he used as an office. ‘I ran into Imogen at the art gallery and she insisted that I return these for her.’
Aristide grimaced. ‘I’ll return them to the agent. She shouldn’t have approached you with them, but I’m pleased to know that she’s finally leaving and that she will have no reason to return to the island.’
‘I’m going upstairs to start packing before lunch—’
‘I’m heading down to the beach for a walk.’ Aristide rested his truly stunning dark golden eyes on her shuttered face. ‘Join me…’
‘OK,’ she said lightly, determined to keep up the bright, breezy front out of pride. ‘But I’ll have to change first into something cooler. I dressed up for Andy this morning. She’s always so elegant.’
Up in their bedroom, where she scolded herself for even thinking of it astheirbedroom, she picked out denim shorts and a halter top and stripped off her skirt with its elasticated waist, loose-ish top and flat comfy pumps, thinking enviously of Imogen’s racy red stilettos and bag and of how frumpy she herself had felt in comparison. She didn’t want to leave Aristide but she had to protect herself.
Aristide was already down on the beach, a tall, lean figure sheathed in black denim jeans and tee, thumbs lodged in his belt loops as he gazed out to sea, his proud profile perfect in silhouette. She followed the path down to the shore, recalling the rarity of beach visits while she was a kid and the sheer excitement of seeing her first rock pool. Her throat thickened and she swallowed convulsively as she looked at Aristide and then looked away again. Like Imogen, she was leaving and, certainly, with regard to the remaining months of her pregnancy, Aristide would be a very rare visitor…if he visited at all.
Refusing to hurry herself, she strolled across the sand to join him, her flip-flops abandoned above the waterline. ‘It’s so beautiful and peaceful here,’ she sighed appreciatively.
‘I don’t want you to leave,’ Aristide admitted with absolutely no lead-in.
‘I sort of don’t want to leave either,’ she confided reluctantly. ‘But isn’t that always true of a good holiday?’
‘Don’t cheapen what we’ve had together,’ Aristide rebuked. ‘We’ve enjoyed a great deal more than a shared holiday.’
Tabby stiffened. ‘Yes, we’ve had a fling and now it’s over,’ she opined in a tight, small voice. ‘But from now on we will be friends and co-parents and that’s a bit of a jump right now, but not seeing each other until the babies are born should make it easier on both of us.’
‘I don’t know where you get the idea that I’m about to vanish from your life while you’re pregnant. What sort of male would behave like that?’
‘A sensible one. Get a little distance. Obviously if I’m ever in need of help I can phone you…or if…er, anything were to go wrong,’ she muttered. ‘But we’re not together in the normal sense of the word.’
‘I thought we were,’ Aristide declared.
‘Did you really?’ Tabby turned to look at him, her wide blue eyes bright against her breeze-stung cheeks. ‘Put it this way—if you thought we were a couple, you failed to mention it to me.’
Faint colour etched the knife-sharp slant of his high cheekbones as he reflected that that was a fair point, for he had, out of habit, played his cards very close to his chest. ‘I did tell you what I was hoping to achieve by bringing you here with me.’
‘Yes, that this was a trial run at a real relationship for you. One mistake, Aristide. I’m nobody’strialrun. I didn’t come here to try and impress you as an eligible match like some desperate Regency heroine. I came here because it made sense to find out more about my babies’ father and his family because you and your family will soon be part of their lives.’
‘You’re very defensive,’ Aristide growled, dark eyes glittering with censure.
‘No, I’m not. For once, I’m simply being honest. We’re both adults, we’re both pretty practical and we’re not enemies. That’s a fair basis for being good co-parents in the future.’
Everything she was saying was inside her head and came from a logical place, but her heart was breaking at acknowledging the current emptiness of her future without him. She wanted him and she loved him but he did not feel the same way about her, unless she had got something terribly wrong in her assumptions.
‘You’ve detached from me. You’re talking as though you’ve already gone.’
‘I’m being sensible. We had a great time together but now it’s almost over,’ she argued, conscious that he had hit the nail squarely on its head with that accusation. Once she knew that she was leaving, she had tried to move on mentally from him, but what else could he have expected from her? Nothing would ever persuade her that Aristide would have preferred an emotional scene in which she condemned him for using and discarding her.
Aristide moved a step closer and reached for her hands. ‘I didn’t want to do the conventional thing. The dinner, the down on bended knee and the proposal felt outdated to me when there’s already a ring on your finger. I now see that I was too proud, arrogant and smart for my own good. I should’ve given you the frills,’ he completed.
Tabby had been stunned into silence. Out of the blue, he was asking her to marry him? Where had that come from? She hadn’t foreseen that, should’ve seen that coming from a mile away, she reasoned. She had formed her attitude to him of recent entirely on what he’d shown her. And what she realised at that point was that Aristide had shown hernothing. Well, at least nothing that even hinted at love.
‘I wouldn’t need frills from a male that sincerely cared for me,’ she muttered awkwardly, her tongue tripping in her dry mouth because the unexpected had thrown her for a loop.
‘Obviously, Idosincerely care for you,’ Aristide reasoned.
‘Yes, but you don’t love me.’ Tabby said it for herself, the truth of that statement piercing her like a sharp, wounding blade.
‘We don’t need love. We have everything else,’ Aristide told her fiercely. ‘We have the passion, the fun, the commitment, the caring. How could you possibly add to that?’
