Unbreak My Heart (Childhood Sweethearts Reunited) (12 page)

They walked through woodland to the coast and cut down the steep path to Batty Bay, Andre taking the stroller so it didn't slip on the stones. When they reached the sand, Kate kicked off her sandals and walked barefoot. Each warm, gritty footstep took her back in time. The familiar dark shapes of the rocks loomed up out of the sea like old friends. Every buttress and cave in the cliff face hooked up precious memories like shiny fish lost in the dark waters of her life.

Although the beach was busy by the car park, two hundred yards further on where they stopped, it was deserted. Andre parked Keiko's stroller in front of the small cave where he had been Batman and Kate, Cat Woman. She stared into the dark interior, the childish words of their games echoing in her mind. Andre touched her arm and time rushed past her with a whoosh.

She bent and removed Keiko's dress so she lay naked except for her diaper, under the shield of the sunshade. There was little natural shade to be found at this time of day and Kate didn't want her baby to be uncomfortable in the heat. "We must remember to adjust the angle of the stroller as the sun moves around to keep Keiko in the shade and watch she doesn't get too hot."

Andre looked over Kate's shoulder. "She's a very good girl."

"I know. Considering what she's had to put up with since she was born, she's a little angel." Kate stroked her sleeping baby's cheek.

"I'm famished." Andre pointed to the flat, rocky outcrop a few yards away that jutted into the water. "Let's eat up there like we used to."

"What about Keiko?" Kate's ever-present fear of the photographers rushed back.

"She'll only be a few yards away, and from up there we can look down into the stroller and see her. If she needs you it will take seconds to climb down."

Kate bit her lip and glanced along the beach. She had a clear view all the way to the parking area while the rock Andre had suggested they sit on closed off this end of the bay. Nobody could creep up on them.

"Okay." She agreed reluctantly, ignoring her strange sense of foreboding.

Andre striped off his shirt. Kate wondered how his skin stayed a perfect, light bronze when he spent his time inside. Methodically, he rubbed suntan lotion over his shoulders and neck, up his arms, across his muscular chest and flat stomach. Her mouth dried. Her fingers twitched as his hand glided across the swell of his
pecs
. God, she wanted to touch him, to stroke her palms over the mounds and hollows of muscle and bone, mold them with her fingers as though he were made of clay and she could sculpt the masculine beauty of his body.

He glanced up and caught her staring. Kate looked away quickly, grateful for the sunglasses that hid her eyes.

"Take your dress off. I'll spread lotion on you. You need to be careful with your fair complexion."

Kate's eyes tracked his hand as it made a careless sweep across his abs. If he touched her, the sun lotion would do her no good because she would burn up anyway. "I can manage myself, thanks."

She slipped off her dress, folded it, and stuffed it in her bag. After he passed her the lotion bottle, he crossed his arms, watching her. The white bikini suddenly seemed itsy bitsy, teeny weenie and totally inadequate. She turned her back and smeared on the cream at lightning speed.

"Let me do your back," he whispered beside her ear. A prickling rush of awareness spread across her skin.

Kate squeezed her eyes closed for a moment. "I can manage."

"Kat, don't be daft. You can't reach your back." With a sigh of acceptance, she squirted a blob of lotion on his palm and held herself taut while he rubbed it in. From the quick, efficient way he covered her back, he obviously wasn't overwhelmed with desire by the contact. No slow, sensuous strokes to worry about. When he'd finished, he stepped in front of her. "Do me."

"Oh. Right," she squeaked. She squirted lotion between his shoulder blades and watched the thick cream trickle slowly down his spine.

He frowned over his shoulder. "Rub it in, Kat."

Biting her lip, she caught the white trail and stroked it across his smooth, warm skin. Blood burning, unable to stop, she traced the tiny bumps of his spine, massaged the firm bulges of muscle in his shoulders, touched the small dark curl of hair at his nape. She'd been wrong; touching him was nothing like sculpting cold clay. It was hot and dangerous, like molding fire with her bare hands.

"Thanks, that'll do," he said gruffly.

"Come on. Let's go eat. I'm starving," Kate said, hoping to distract them both from her overenthusiastic sun screening.

He took the cooler from her, hefted it onto the rock and climbed up. After a glance at Keiko, Kate tossed up her towel and followed. The ancient piece of granite humped up out of the gently swirling waves like a slumbering sea monster, encrusted with seaweed and limpets underneath, weathered smooth on top. They lay on their stomachs on the hot, flat rock and Kate trailed her hand in the water as she ate a tuna sandwich. She threw the crusts in the sea and watched as they washed back and forth. Three herring gulls swooped down and quarreled until every soggy crumb was gone.

She rested her chin on her arms and eyed Keiko's buggy beneath lowered lids. It was incredibly peaceful, the silence broken only by the occasional scream of an excited child carried on the breeze from the far end of the beach, and the mournful calls of the gulls. The water lapped gently against the edge of the rock, its slapping rhythm lulling time to stand still. The past few terrible weeks drifted on the edge of consciousness like a distant memory. All thanks to Andre.

She turned her face his way, pillowing her cheek on her arms. He lay in the same position, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses. When he didn't say anything, she thought he must be asleep. She touched his arm. "Hey…"

He lifted his chin and slipped his dark glasses on top of his head. The sun illuminated ribbons of gold in his brown eyes that were achingly familiar. "I'm not asleep. I was thinking, Kat. Remembering."

For a few seconds their eyes locked and a strange mix of emotions swirled inside Kate like colors blended on a canvas; pale yellow sadness for what was lost, gray confusion, blue curiosity, green balance and security, pink love. All against a background of vivid red and orange desire that threatened to overwhelm. She wanted to slide over and curl her body around his lean muscular length. He made her feel safe. He made her laugh. He made her melt like warm honey.

She turned away and dipped her arm in the chilly water, the cold helping her focus. Andre was the only person who'd ever understood her. But he'd rejected her and it wasn't just because of his father. Andre might have been forced to leave Jersey, but he made the choice not to keep in contact with her. "Andre, what happened to us when you went away to boarding school?"

He ran a hand over his face and sighed. "I let you down. I'm sorry. I was angry with you for laughing at me when I kissed you. It sounds stupid now, but back then it was a big deal. I didn't mean to stay away so long, but boarding school life was a world away from here. I got caught up with new friends, and it was easier to stay with them during the vacations than come home."

Kate's eyes burned. She had to swallow before she could speak. "You didn't even email or phone." The memory of rejection shattered like a glass heart in her chest, each razor-sharp sliver a little girl's tear.

Andre slid a hand in the water and gripped her cold fingers. "I know I abandoned you without a word. I admit it. I'm sorry. Can we put it behind us? Can you forgive me?"

"It wouldn't have been so bad if you'd warned me you might not come back. I thought we were still best friends." She swallowed the lump in her throat and the colorful dots of the distant holidaymakers splintered into a kaleidoscope of color through her tears.

Andre put his arm over her shoulders and rested his forehead against her temple. "I was a teenage boy who suddenly discovered a world out there full of fun and distraction. Can't we just forget the past and start again?"

Kate closed her eyes and struggled to regain her composure. She would never forget the heartache of losing him. He'd been everything to her, her rock in troubled waters. When he cast her adrift she had foundered and nearly lost herself. Strange as life is, it was her father's death that saved her. Moving to England with her mother gave her a fresh start, and she met Dan. That relationship had not ended well, but Dan had been there when she needed someone. She would always be grateful to him for that. And he had given her Keiko…

Kate glanced at her baby's stroller and a smile pulled at her lips. From now on she would always have her little angel to love. Keiko wouldn't judge Kate on her hair or clothes or who her parents were. Keiko would love her unconditionally, the way real love should be. Suddenly Kate didn't want to be with Andre or think about the past. She didn't want any man. She wanted to cuddle her baby.

Kate pulled out from under Andre's arm and, choosing the fastest way to the beach, slid off the rock into the thigh-deep cool water. The chill stole her breath as she waded the few yards to the warm sand and then kneeled beside the buggy. Keiko stared up, her innocent green eyes focused on Kate, her chubby arms waving and legs kicking. "Are you hungry, sweet pea?" Kate tugged a towel from her bag and spread it on the sand in the shade of the rocks before lifting her baby.

Andre vaulted down from the rock and folded his lean body to bring him down to her level. "You didn't answer me, Kat? Am I forgiven?"

"Forgiven? Yes." There was little point in holding the past against him. He was helping her now, being a friend. But they'd lost something back then, the innocence of first love, the total trust and belief she'd had in him. Once gone, that could never be recaptured. She would always have doubts about him now.

"I sense a 'but' coming," he said.

Kate shrugged, just wanting him to go away so she could feed Keiko in peace. "It's forgiven, not forgotten, Andre."

He sucked in a breath and rose, turned and wandered off along the sand. Kate fed her hungry baby and watched Andre grow smaller as the distance between them increased. A deep sadness welled inside her. Her old Andre might still exist but the new Andre held sway over the man he was now. And the nascent instincts of this new Andre had been what made him leave her behind.

***

Kate couldn't sleep. She stood in Andre's kitchen, the flagstones cool on the soles of her feet, the silence of a moonless night heavy against her ears. She stared unseeing at the half-finished picture of a Celtic cross on the kitchen table.

When she was tense, painting always helped, especially finger-painting. She could let her mind go, and lose herself in the feel of the paint and the satisfaction of seeing the image emerge from the strokes and colors on the paper.

Tonight the distraction wasn't working. A hurricane of emotions and thoughts swirled around her head. One minute she was drowning in memories of Andre's kiss after the party, the texture of his warm skin under her fingers as she applied his sunscreen, the next a hollow sadness filled her as she relived their disappointing beach trip.

What had she expected? To go back in time as if the last nine years had never happened and become a carefree teenager again? Instead of recapturing the past, the visit had reinforced how much they had both changed and grown apart.

The clock in the sitting room chimed twice. With a sigh, she wondered if she should go back to bed and try to get some sleep before Keiko woke again.

A creak alerted her the kitchen door had opened. Andre entered the room dressed only in gray jersey shorts. Hair disheveled, he blinked sleepily. He ran a hand over his face and glanced down at her picture. "Painting, now?"

Averting her eyes from the temptation of his naked chest, Kate pushed aside memories of how it felt to touch him. "I couldn't sleep. I've got a lot on my mind." She gestured at her painting. "This relaxes me."

"You're still thinking about our conversation on the beach."

Kate simply shrugged. His comment had been a statement not a question.

"I am too." He moved closer, invading her space with his tempting body, teasing to life her senses. "You can trust me to look after you, Kat." He ran a finger across her cheek and held it up with a quirk of his lips to display the green paint he'd wiped off her face.

"I want to trust you. But I'll never feel like I used to, as though the earth would stop turning before you'd let me down."

His head dropped forward and he pinched the bridge of his nose. For long seconds the only sound in the room was the faint ticking of the sitting room clock. "It's tough being superhuman."

"I don't expect you to be—"

"Yes!" Andre's gaze jumped to hers. "You do, Kat. You expect too much. I loved you, and I looked after you the best way a boy can when he's struggling to grow up and understand how the world works. I'm not infallible. I had my own crap to deal with."

Kate stared at Andre, his angry tone snapping her out of the miserable pit of reminiscences she'd wallowed in. "I know you had problems with your father."

"You knew, but you didn't understand. You didn't want to. You expected me to solve all your problems and cope silently with my own."

A flush of guilt washed over Kate's skin. Had she really been like that? "I guess I was too young to understand what you had to deal with," she offered.