“Dad, do you like these? Mum says she does.” Dan was holding out a pair of dark blue swim-shorts with pale blue dolphins on it. With a start, Xander came back to the present.
“Great,” he enthused. “Shall we find a couple of T-shirts to go with them, for the summer?”
He started going down the racks, Dan joining in enthusiastically. Laurel was standing a little way away now, an abstracted expression on her face. As if she, too, were far away in the past.
The past that brought us together, then ripped us apart.
His own expression flickered. But they were back together again now, sharing in Dan.
Is that all we have to share?
Or could there be more?
And do I want there to be?
The question hung motionless in the space between them.
Now the proud owner of new swim-shorts, Dan was keen to get them wet. So they headed back to Xander’s hotel for another pool session. Much against her will, Laurel had succumbed to Dan’s pleas to watch him swim this time and so had come poolside.
“I can only watch, Dan,” she told him. “I haven’t got my cossie with me.” She fully intended never to have her swimming costume with her. She wanted no repeat of that first time, when Xander’s eyes had so fatally gone to her figure. For the same reason she tried now not to let her eyes go to Xander. But it was hard. Far harder than she wanted. Anger at her own self lashed at her. She didn’t want to be like this, didn’t want it at all. She was fighting it as hard as she could.
And the last thing she wanted was to encourage it in Xander. As she stripped off her jumper in the heat of the pool area, she was glad that the T-shirt underneath was one of her worst. The neckline had gone, and it had been washed shapeless. Deliberately, she reknotted her hair, exposing her neck to keep it cooler, knowing tufts of hair were sticking out in an unlovely fashion. Shewantedto look unlovely.
It must have worked, because Xander’s glance, as she settled down on a lounger, rolling up her trouser legs in a similarly unlovely fashion, was the opposite of the way he’d looked her over in her turquoise one-piece. His dark brows were drawn together as he frowned.
Her lips compressed, glad he didn’t like what he was seeing.
As for him buying her new clothes—
Yeah, as if I’d give him any more rope!she echoed to herself grimly. She’d been right to spell it out for Xander as she had. “Mum! I’m going to swim a width! Watch, Mum, watch!”
Laurel’s expression softened, relieved to have her thoughts, which she should not have, diverted.
“Go for it!” she called out. “And back again!”
Beside Dan, Xander stood waist-deep in the water, his perfect, smooth, leanly muscled torso on full view, ready to catch Dan if he floundered, which he didn’t. But Laurel only had eyes for her son.
It was all that was safe for her to look at.
And she hated that it was.
I have to defeat this. I have to! Because if I don’t—
No, she would not answer that. Must not.
Doggedly, her gaze stayed only on Dan.
Xander sauntered back from the reception desk in the hotel’s foyer, once the grand hall of the country house when it had been a private residence. Dan and Laurel were waiting for him near the front door, ready to leave after another superb afternoon tea following their swim.
He frowned inwardly. Laurel had looked her worst yet as she sat poolside. She’d thrown at him that she wouldn’t let him buy her better clothes because she’d said he’d only hold it against her. But even in cheap clothes she could have looked better, could have bothered to do her hair, put on some make-up. In Greece she’d always dressed with style and flair, even on her student budget, always looked her best with face and hair.
But now she makes no effort. None!
Why?
He stopped dead, realisation suddenly dawning. The truth hitting him.
Because she does not want to look good for me. She actively wants to look her worst!
