‘I only did a term of Latin in Year Seven—’
‘Stronger as one,’ he translates as he takes my hand, pulls me towards the edge of the cliff, and then right over it. We plunge into the ocean below, hitting the water hard and sinking beneath it in a thrilling burst of freezing cold, shrouded in the bubbles we’ve made, his grip on my hand tightening as we kick towards the light and burst through the surface just as another wave crests over us. He pulls me tighter against him, until we surface into the brilliant midday light.
‘That wasincredible!’ I yell, face to the sun, smile to the sky.
We power to the edge, clamber out onto some rocks and back up to our starting point, and jump off twice more, each time more sure of ourselves. It’s exhilarating.
Finally, we tire of the climb and bask on the warm rocks below, ocean breeze on wet skin, spent from all the exertion.
‘You must miss your husband,’ he says as water crashes, seagulls swooping overhead. He is propped on one elbow now, casting a shadow across my face and a halo around his own, all sculpted muscles and tattoos and brooding, brilliant writer vibes, and I’m sure Fraser would forgive me—nay, expect me—to be distracted from the question.
‘I do miss him,’ I answer, at last, wrestling as always with the semantics, knowing the timing of Fraser’s death was the greatest tragedy of all and not wanting to elicit even more pity from this man by explaining that we were just a whisper away from walking down the aisle. ‘At first, I thought I’d never be able to breathe again, let alone …’ I swallow down whatever I was going to say, because I’m convinced it involved the rapidly developing crush I’m fighting here.
‘Let alone what?’ he asks gently, the corner of his mouth threatening a lopsided smile. It’s that gentleness that gets me, juxtaposed as it is with the gloriously ruggedeverything else… and my eyes sweep over his face, dark hair still dripping with salt water, blue eyes intent and compassionate as I lie here, powerless to extract myself.And why on earth would I want to?
‘Beau, this is …’Magical? Temporary? Why am I attempting to label it?
The way he’s looking at me morphs from what I can only describe as hopeful, verging into wants-to-kiss-me territory, and then into a flash of worry, brows knitted. Perhaps he is concerned about the state of my heart? He saw the depth of its bruises on the other clifftop. Perhaps it’s not me he’s worried about at all, but him, and the danger of getting tangled up in any way with another woman after the last scandal. Or maybe I’m just getting this all wrong because—look at him.Who am I kidding?
‘Is there something about clifftops that brings out the best in you?’ he asks.
I prop myself on my elbows, squinting into the sun.
‘The music,’ he suggests, tilting his head and smiling. ‘The adventure. Throwing your heart out over one, flinging your body off another. The general audacity of it all.’
Something about the word ‘audacity’ trips a wire in my brain. It’s been so long, years, since I’ve felt bold. But when I think about what I’ve pushed through, what I’ve survived—things I’ve told Beau already and things I haven’t trusted him with yet—maybe the audacity has crept up and overtaken me. You think you’ve come a certain distance but find that you’re further ahead than it seemed.
I plunge us into the silent exchange of a long gaze, during which another sort of audacity springs to mind. It would be so easy to take the lead here. To close the gap, trace the lion on his chest, and reel him towards me, teasing him closer until he pushes me back onto the hard surface of the rock we’re lying on like this is a scene from one of his films …
But just as I’m tempted to do that, right when I feel my body tilt towards his, my knee rising and making contact with his thigh, there’s a loud bang from a wave hitting rocks, and a threatening wall of water suddenly crashes overhead and onto us as the rock becomes terrifyingly slippery and the wave engulfs us in white foam.
I reach for something to hold. But I’m on my back, the power of the sea threatening to pull me in. I feel myself slipping, until Beau throws his weight across my body, anchoring us as he grasps a ridge in the rock with one hand, his other arm around my waist, sheltering me from the surge. As the water drains away, every ounce of the audacity he’d so admired just seconds agoseems to rush out of my body and I soften into the hard lines of his, my face against his chest, his heart thundering.
He eases off me and helps me sit up, and we shake the water from ourselves. Finally we look at each other, stunned. As dangerous as that was, I feel sixteen right now. A light, carefree age I never thought a widow could access again. It must be magic.
‘Is that how you’d have directed it?’ I ask. ‘For your movie?’
His smile is strained as I catch him glance at my lips. ‘More or less,’ he admits, blue eyes flashing back to mine with an unmistakable edge of desire.
Twenty minutes later, we fall into the Tathra pub, physically worn out, sunburnt and thirsty. There’s a table for two near a window, and he suggests I nab it while he orders our meals at the counter before the kitchen closes after lunch.
‘What can I get you? Beer? Wine? Something stronger?’
‘Lemonade,’ I answer firmly, and because I know how this goes and want to head off at the pass the inevitable negotiations, I add, ‘I don’t drink.’
‘Lemonade,’ he repeats. ‘And the burger?’
I nod. Usually by now we’ve entered into a debate over my avoidance of alcohol:I can’t tempt you with bubbles? What about a cocktail? Espresso martini?I have to say,No thanks, just a soft drink, while the entire venue seems to fall into silence, because this—the not drinking—is positively un-Australian. People can’t make it work in their heads.
‘Do you mind if I have a beer?’ Beau asks, doubling back to check, having seemingly thought of the question halfway to the bar.
‘Go ahead! Just stay under the limit unless you want me driving your ute home, and we know how that goes …’
He shudders and laughs aloud as he heads back to order, and I watch his effect on the room. The way people turn. The smiles on the faces of the bar staff when he greets them with some invisible aura, all of them falling under his easy spell, as if he is the movie’s star, not its architect. And when he turns and locks eyes with me again, beer in one hand, lemonade in the other, and smiles, I realise this man is stirring some long-forgotten, grief-trodden part of me. And I don’t just mean the libido he shook to life on Day One.
Surely it’s okay for a forty-year-old to entertain a distracting little infatuation during her birthday week, even if Beau Davenport ordinarily attracts models like Harlow and presumably Tattoo Lucinda and all the other glamorous women he’s been spotted with in the social pages April has been sending me. It’s a grief version of those ‘safe crushes’ teenage girls harbour on pop stars and film idols. The ones that let them experiment with love without risking any real heartbreak.What might it be like if I fell in love, post-Fraser?
He crosses the room, places the drink in my hand, sits down, and waits for me to clink glasses. Then he takes a large sip of beer, puts the glass on the table, leans in, crosses his arms, and looks at me as if Harlow and Lucinda are in the rearview mirror.
