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Fliss glanced at him curiously as he got into the driving seat beside her. ‘Wasn’t that your phone?’
He didn’t look at her as he started the car. ‘So?’
‘So—oughtn’t you to have answered it?’
Matt’s mouth compressed. ‘Probably,’ he agreed carelessly, putting the heavy vehicle into gear and turning down the drive. ‘Where are we going?’
He was aware of Fliss giving him a studied look, but it was Amy who answered him. ‘We usually go to Cobbleton,’ she said, leaning forward to tap her mother on the shoulder. ‘Isn’t that right, Mum?’
Fliss shrugged. ‘Maybe Mr Quinn would prefer to go somewhere else,’ she replied, that prim note of disapproval Matt found most challenging in her voice.
‘I don’t know this area at all,’ he declared, glancing over his shoulder at his other passenger. ‘But Cobbleton sounds good to me. You’ll have to give me directions how to get there.’
‘Oh—’ Amy put a finger to her lips. ‘Well, I know it’s not that far.’ She paused. ‘Perhaps Mummy could tell you which way to go. She knows, don’t you, Mum?’
He heard Fliss give a small sigh. ‘I’m sure Mr Quinn would rather go somewhere he knows,’ she said stiffly. ‘He’s not that unfamiliar with the area. His fianceée’s parents live in the village.’
‘What’s a fianceée?’ asked Amy innocently before Matt could reply, and Fliss turned to give her daughter a tight smile.
‘That needn’t concern you—’
‘I don’t have a fianceée,’ Matt overrode her grimly, and then, as they reached the crossroads on the outskirts of the village, ‘Which way?’
‘Cobbleton is that way.’
Fliss waved a dismissive hand in the direction she wanted him to take, but he could feel the censure oozing from her pores. It annoyed the hell out of him. Dammit, the reason why he hadn’t answered his phone was nothing to do with her. Because that was what this was all about. He just knew it. Did she suspect it might have been Diane? Of course she did. But why the hell did she care what Diane thought when the other woman clearly had no such inhibitions about her?
For a while they travelled in silence. A signpost at the next junction offered the information that Lyme Regis and Honiton were in one direction, while Brightsea and Cobbleton were in the other, so there was no argument over which road to take. Even Amy had subsided into silence, and he guessed his angry outburst had frightened her a little.
That annoyed him more than it should. He and Amy had got along so well up to that point, and he didn’t like to think that she blamed herself for his attitude towards her mother.
Taking a deep breath, he glanced over his shoulder again and said pleasantly, ‘Tell me about Cobbleton. I’ve never heard of it. I guess it isn’t a big place.’
Amy hesitated, but shyness was not her strong suit. ‘No, it’s just small,’ she agreed. ‘But we like it, don’t we, Mum? We’ve been lots of times.’
‘Sounds good.’ Matt concentrated on the road, determinedly not looking at Fliss. If she wanted to sulk, that was her problem. ‘Does it get many visitors?’
‘Some,’ said Amy thoughtfully. ‘But we don’t bother with them. We use’ly just go down to the beach, don’t we, Mum?’
Fliss gave a noncommittal shrug and Matt stifled an oath. This was going to be some outing if she refused to speak unless she was spoken to. Dammit, couldn’t she see that he was making an effort here?
‘Do you swim?’ he asked now, looking deliberately at her, and Fliss was obliged to acknowledge his question.
‘You can, if you want to.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
She shifted a little uncomfortably in her seat. ‘Not if Amy and I are on our own,’ she replied unwillingly. ‘She can swim, but the beach drops away quite steeply once you’re in the water. I’d be afraid she’d get into difficulties and I couldn’t get to her.’
‘Right.’ Matt was grateful to have got more than a monosyllabic answer at last. ‘So—are there no lifeguards?’
Fliss gave him an incredulous look. ‘At Cobbleton? It’s a fishing village, Mr Quinn. Not Bondi Beach!’
‘It’s Matt,’ he said evenly. Then, ‘There are lifeguards all over the place, not just on Bondi Beach.’
‘Which I suppose you know all about,’ said Fliss shortly, and he raised a modest eyebrow.
‘That there are lifeguards all over the place?’ he asked innocently. ‘Oh, yeah, I—’
‘I meant Bondi Beach,’ she corrected him, even though Matt was fairly sure she’d known exactly what he was doing. ‘I expect you’ve travelled all over the world.’
‘Well, not all,’ he said mildly. ‘But I have been to Oz. Have you?’
Fliss snorted in disbelief, but once again it was Amy who intervened. ‘What’s Oz?’
‘Australia,’ said Matt and Fliss in unison, and then she exchanged a reluctant smile with him. ‘People call it Oz because it’s easier to say than Australia,’ he added for the child’s benefit, giving her mother a conciliatory look. ‘Bondi Beach is a famous Australian landmark.’
‘Oh.’
As Amy absorbed this information, Matt tried again with Fliss. ‘I don’t know what Diane’s told you, but she and I are not engaged. We never have been. Chances are we never will be.’
‘Well, it’s nothing to do with me,’ she said, turning to look out of the window, and for some reason that really annoyed him.
‘Yeah, right,’ he muttered. ‘That’s why you’ve taken a vow of silence, is it? Or was it because I didn’t answer my phone? Forgive me, but I thought that was my business, not yours.’
Of course that was unforgivable and he knew it. He didn’t need to see the hectic colour that stained her cheeks to know he’d offended her again, and he swore under his breath.
‘Do you want to go back?’ he demanded, deciding he was too tired of fighting off his own demons to contemplate fighting hers, too. Either she wanted to spend the day with him or she didn’t. It was her call.
She said nothing for a few moments and he was already looking for somewhere to turn the car when she said in a low voice, ‘Do you?’
Matt did a double take. ‘Me?’
‘Yes, you,’ she murmured unhappily. ‘You’re right. What you do is not my concern. I had no right to interfere. Particularly as you’ve been kind enough to offer to take us to the beach.’
Matt shook his head. ‘Don’t say that.’ And when she looked uncomprehendingly at him, he continued, ‘It wasn’t kind at all. I gatecrashed your outing with Amy, and I’m guessing your father wouldn’t have suddenly acquired a use for his car if I hadn’t been coming along.’
‘You could be right.’ Fliss cast a nervous glance over her shoulder as she answered him, but Matt could see Amy in his rear-view mirror and she didn’t appear to be listening to them. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Hey, I’m used to it.’ Matt grimaced. ‘The Press went from hanging on every word I spoke when I got back, to writing eulogies about my mental incompetence when I began refusing interviews.’
Fliss looked at him then. ‘Are you saying they wrote lies about you?’
Matt pulled a wry face. ‘Nothing libellous, I don’t think. They have teams of legal experts who pore over every word that’s printed to ensure they don’t have to pay out a fortune in damages.’
‘Then—’
‘You have to understand that not everything you read is gospel. So long as there’s a germ of truth in there somewhere they can argue that they’re justified in reporting the story.’ He paused and then went on doggedly. ‘Like the fact that I was—well, for want of a better word, traumatised when I got back. That provided endless columns of newsprint, I can tell you.’
Fliss frowned. ‘But being traumatised doesn’t mean you’re mentally incompetent.’
‘No.’ Matt sighed, his hands tightening on the leather steering wheel. ‘But it could be argued that it depends on the degree of trauma, and most people reading the article would accept that. Hell, I’d have accepted it myself if I hadn’t had firsthand experience of that kind of grey journalism.’
He saw her bite her lip, and the tightening in his groin caught him unawares. This wasn’t what he’d had in mind when he offered to take them to the beach, and it was unsettling to find that she still had that effect on him.
‘But you were—traumatised,’ she said at last, looking down at her hands. ‘Weren’t you?’
Matt expelled a weary breath, and told himself he was glad her words had dispelled his moment of madness. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said flatly. ‘Traumatised, right. A pitiful excuse for a man, that’s what I was when I got back.’
Fliss glanced at him. ‘It must have been a terrible experience.’
‘Yeah.’ Matt conceded the point, and then, because he needed someone to understand his dilemma, he went on, ‘It was all my own fault, really. I wanted a story and I suppose I never thought they’d imagine I might be a spy.’ He grimaced. ‘Me? A spy? How ludicrous can you get?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Fliss regarded him thoughtfully. ‘I thought you looked—well, different, when I first saw you.’
‘Different?’ He was wary.
‘Sort of—dangerous,’ she admitted unwillingly. ‘It’s your haircut, I think. It’s very short.’
‘Ah.’ Matt raked his nails over his scalp, absorbing that confession. It was kind of reassuring to know he didn’t look like the wimp he felt. ‘Anyway, that was their excuse for taking me prisoner. And, when I couldn’t answer their questions, they—got angry.’
Fliss glanced at Amy then, but he knew she knew exactly what he meant. And he found to his amazement that it was liberating to talk about it. It didn’t seem half so terrifying when he was discussing it with her.
‘So—how did you get away?’ she asked, and he sensed her nervousness in asking the question. After all, if she’d read anything about him she’d know that he’d never discussed his experiences publicly.
‘One of the rebel captains arranged for a Jeep to be waiting for me,’ he said. And then, with an effort, ‘He saved me from a fate worse than death, if you know what I mean.’
‘My God!’ Fliss stared at him for a moment, and then put out her hand and touched his knee. ‘I’m sorry. No wonder you were traumatised when you got home.’
‘What’s traum’tised?’ asked Amy, leaning forward, and Matt wondered how much she’d heard or understood. Not a lot, he guessed, and he was so grateful to Fliss for listening to him and understanding. He had the feeling no other woman of his acquaintance would have reacted so positively to his story.
‘Traumatised means depressed,’ Fliss said now, glancing at Matt again for his approval. ‘Mr Quinn was just telling me about someone who had lies written about them because they were ill.’
‘Really?’
Amy sounded only mildly interested, and Matt gave her mother a rueful smile. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘For that and for not judging me.’ He blew out a breath. ‘So—how much further do we have to go?’
Despite its inauspicious beginnings, it was a good day. Matt, who had started out feeling tense and irritable, found himself relaxing completely. Amy had that kind of effect on him, and although Fliss caused a different reaction entirely their combined companionship was exactly what he needed.
With Amy, he could forget everything but how easy it was to please a child, and because she was there, his relationship with Fliss couldn’t progress in a way that might have embarrassed both of them. Amy made him wish he had a child of his own, a possibility that seemed exceedingly remote now, but at least he could pretend she was his. And there was no doubt that anyone seeing the three of them together would assume she was.
As Amy had said, Cobbleton was little more than a village on Lyme Bay. A small harbour gave refuge to the handful of fishing boats that still used this stretch of the coast as a mooring, but its main attraction was the unspoilt spread of beach that curved away from the river estuary. Fliss said that the muddy flats to the west of the harbour were rich in bird life, and Matt thought how different it was from the arid sand-dunes that had rolled back from the coast in Abuqara.
After leaving the Land Cruiser on the quay, they spent some time exploring the rocks that edged the harbour. Amy was fascinated by the crabs and other crustaceans Matt turned up, and even Fliss took off her tennis shoes and paddled in the shallows.
Then they climbed back up onto the quay and followed the narrow promenade along to where the seemingly miles of unblemished sand stretched away to limestone cliffs. It was getting hotter all the time as the sun rose higher in the sky and they were all glad to relax for a while on the rug Fliss pulled from her backpack.
If Matt was intensely conscious of Fliss’s slim limbs only inches from the hairy length of his up-drawn knee, he tried not to think about it. But there was no denying that he was conscious of her with every fibre of his being, and only Amy’s presence prevented him from doing something totally outrageous like testing the shape of her calf with his hand. The memory of how she had looked in his dream two nights ago hadn’t gone away and he wondered if he was doomed to spend the rest of his life hankering after something he could never have. If so, it was going to be a pretty miserable existence, and when Amy suggested that they ought to cool off in the water he was more than willing to oblige.
It was only when she started stripping off her shorts and T-shirt that he realised she didn’t just mean that they should go paddling. She was wearing a pretty blue-flowered bikini beneath her clothes and she obviously expected him to accompany her.
Fliss, perhaps sensing his ambivalence, said quickly, ‘Don’t go out of your depth, Amy,’ and the little girl pulled a disappointed face.
‘I can swim, Mum,’ she protested, but Fliss was adamant.
‘I mean it, Amy. I don’t want to have to come into the water after you. Unlike you, I haven’t brought my swimsuit.’
For a moment, Matt allowed himself to entertain an erotic image of Fliss racing stark naked into the sea. But such images were not productive, even if they did have the desirable sideeffect of propelling him to his feet.
‘I’ll go with her,’ he said, forgetting for a moment that by hauling off his shirt he was exposing his scarred back to public gaze. There were few people on the beach, it was true, but if anybody did notice him they were bound to be curious as to where he’d got his injuries. Still, what the hell? he thought grimly. He couldn’t spend the rest of his days hiding from life.
He’d reckoned without Amy, of course, and, although they walked down to the sea together, as soon as he plunged into the waves she was given an unrivalled view of his back. For a few moments he was intent on acclimatising his body heat to the much cooler temperature of the water, but when he turned onto his back and looked towards the shore he found the little girl still standing in the shallows where he’d left her.
‘Are you coming in?’ he called, but Amy only stood there shaking her head and he realised she was upset.
Raking back his short hair with a careless hand, he wondered what was the matter. Whatever, he knew he would have to do something about it. At any moment, Fliss was going to notice something was wrong. If Amy was upset about his injuries this was something he and the child had to deal with together.
He was still within his depth and, standing up, he waded back to the shallows, shivering a little in spite of the heat of the sun. ‘What’s wrong?’
Amy sniffed. ‘I don’t want to go swimming,’ she said offhandedly. ‘I’m going back to Mummy.’
‘Wait!’ Matt had no experience in these matters, but something told him he could do this. ‘Is it me that’s upset you?’
‘No.’
But Amy wouldn’t look at him and he knew it was. ‘Is it the scars on my back?’ he persisted gently.
‘No.’ Amy flicked him an indignant look. ‘I just don’t feel like swimming anymore.’
‘OK.’ Matt lifted his shoulders in a careless gesture. ‘I’ll have to swim on my own, then.’
Amy pursed her lips. ‘All right.’
‘All right.’
Matt turned away, but before he’d taken more than a few steps Amy spoke again. ‘What happened to your back? Did you have an accident?’
His shoulders rounded now, but he turned back again. ‘No. It’s like I told your mummy. The people who put me in prison thought I was a bad man so they—punished me.’
Amy’s eyes widened. ‘Does it hurt?’
‘Not anymore.’
She caught her breath. ‘They must be really bad men.’
‘I suppose that depends on your point of view.’
He gave her a rueful smile. ‘I’d been warned not to go too far from my hotel in Abuqara City, but I thought I’d be clever and get an interview with this old mullah—er, man—who was believed to have contact with the rebel forces. He did, and by the time I realised how stupid I’d been it was too late.’
