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Finally Chloe, gasping for breath, pounded on his shoulders. “Put me down.”
Daniel stopped spinning and set them down, still smiling. “Guess we’d better get to work.”
Within a couple of hours, they’d carried in the few pieces of furniture they owned—a brand-new bed with matching side tables, Brianna’s crib and chest of drawers, Daniel’s tallboy and a bookcase he’d had before they’d married, a couch and matching chair upholstered in maroon corduroy and a pine coffee table they’d bought at an auction. The only good piece of furniture they owned was a round oak dining table that Chloe’s parents had given them as a wedding present.
“Our furniture looks a bit shabby now that it’s in our new house,” Daniel said when they’d arranged the pieces. “And sparse.”
“It’s fine,” Chloe insisted, tucking her hand through his arm. “We’ll have more as we go along.”
Daniel covered her small hand with his larger one. In the year and a half that had passed since they’d gotten married, this was the first time she’d talked about the future with any sense of permanency.
“What’s important is that it’s a new beginning,” Daniel said, almost to himself.
Eyes shining, Chloe turned to face him and took both his hands in hers. “Yes. A new beginning.” Then her face dimmed a little and she bit her lip. “Daniel, I should tell you, I’ve been doing something I shouldn’t. You see…”
“Don’t.” He squeezed her hands, not wanting to hear the words spoken aloud. “You don’t need to say anything.” He hadn’t found any new letters in several months and he’d assumed that she’d finally gotten over the Australian doctor. He might have known for sure if he’d actually read the correspondence, but he’d refused to invade her privacy.
Her forehead creased in a worried frown. “But…”
He searched her face. “You meant it when you agreed this is a new beginning, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” She gazed back steadily and an understanding passed silently between them. With a tentative smile she wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek to his chest. “I swear I’ll be a good wife to you.”
Daniel stroked her hair, savoring the closeness. “Don’t be silly. You already are. Do you want to take a walk on the beach?”
Chloe’s glance shifted to the window and the bright blue sky. She hesitated and then she said, “Not right now. I’d like to unpack some of those boxes, and Brianna’s going to need something to eat soon. You go.”
Daniel followed the path he’d cleared on previous walks through the salal bushes down to the small beach. The coastline curved outward in either direction to a rocky point where waves surged and foamed. Here in the center of the cove, the water was calm. A breeze ruffled his hair and brought the tang of salt and seaweed close. Brianna would learn to swim here, the way he’d learned to swim on the west coast of the island near Tofino where he’d grown up. The water was cold, but that just made a person strong.
He walked along the shoreline, his boots crunching in the loose shells and gravel, stooping now and then to pick up an abalone shell and admire its opalescent inner surface. A crow flew overhead, cawing, and settled with a noisy flap of black wings high in a fir tree at the edge of the beach.
As Daniel rubbed a smooth stone between his fingers, thoughts of Chloe flitted through his mind. The sweetness of her smile, her eagerness as she surged beneath him, her passionate feelings for their new house. Just when he thought he was beginning to understand her, she surprised him. It would probably always be that way with them. The fact that she was his wife at all was still astonishing.
Daniel stopped and looked up at the house and felt his heart fill with pride and hope for the future. This was their home. His and Chloe’s and Brianna’s. Someday there would be more children.
He frowned and blinked. Was that a wisp of smoke coming from the fireplace chimney? Daniel stared hard for another minute, then shook his head. The sky was perfectly clear. He must have been imagining things.
Pocketing the abalone shell to show Chloe and Brianna, he headed back to the house.
Humming the celebrated pas de deux from Swan Lake, Chloe twirled across the kitchen floor between the fridge and Brianna’s high chair, setting a small tub of yogurt on the tray with a flourish. Brianna rewarded her performance with a giggle and a clap of her sticky fingers.
“You like that?” Chloe said to her. “You should have seen me dance the solo.” She mimed the dying swan princess, folding her crumpled wings and slithering to the floor where she rested motionless, collapsed. Brianna leaned over the side of her high chair, watching intently to see if her mother would rise again.
Chloe lifted her head and Brianna smiled.
“Ah, Brianna, if only…” Chloe slowly rose to her feet. If only what? Her audience wasn’t a fourteen-month-old child? Her life hadn’t telescoped from opening nights and nationwide appearances to diapers and vacuuming? She loved Brianna and adored the house and Daniel was an angel, but there was no point in denying that her life lacked excitement.
It had been two long months since they’d moved in. Daniel reveled in the wildness and solitude of the ocean and the forest, but Chloe missed people—especially during the work week when her friends were all busy in the city. She still missed walking out of her apartment and strolling down the street to the corner café or going out to a concert in the evening.
She was foraging through the sparse pickings in the fridge for her own lunch when the doorbell rang.
“Who could that be?” She tugged on her tank top to smooth it down and pushed back the wisps that straggled from the twist of hair at the back of her head. Her mother and father always called before they visited, and besides they only came on Sundays.
Chloe hurried down the hall to open the front door. “Oh, my God,” she gasped. “What are you doing here?”
Chapter 4
Evan presented her with a dozen red roses wrapped in gold paper and gave her his trademark brilliant smile. “Is that any way to greet your long-lost love?”
She cradled the blooming flowers in the crook of her arm. Primly, she said, “You’re not my love now.”
He laughed and kissed her quickly on the mouth. A whiff of his aftershave, leather and sandalwood, caught her unaware and transported her back to the past. To a brief but intense history of tumbled beds and Sunday brunch in fine hotels, to violin concertos and kisses in the rain.
Flustered, she backed away. “I’d better put these in water.” Seeing Evan sling his canvas-and-leather satchel down inside the door, she added in alarm, “You can’t stay here.”
“I know that.” His lighthearted Aussie drawl always made it sound to Chloe as if he were on the verge of laughter. “Your lumberjack would chop me up for kindling.”
“Don’t call him that,” Chloe said. “Daniel’s a good man.”
Her heart beating rapidly, she walked briskly back to the kitchen. She could feel Evan’s gaze on her bare legs and his powerful presence in her house. Daniel’s house. Dropping the bouquet in the sink, she faced him. “Didn’t you get my last letter?”
Evan’s light blue eyes burned into hers. “The one where you told me not to write anymore?” A sound from the high chair made him glance past her shoulder. His deeply tanned skin paled. “Is this your daughter?”
“Brianna.” Chloe found a tall, square vase in the cupboard and filled it with water. “She’s—”
“Fourteen months old last week,” Evan said. Chloe stepped aside and he walked toward the little girl who was smearing strawberry yogurt around her tray. “G’day, Brianna,” he said softly. “How’s it going?”
Brianna lifted a round trusting face and displayed her yogurt-covered fingers for his inspection. Evan studied her intently, then turned to Chloe. “She looks just like you.” He paused. “I can’t see anything of me or Daniel in her.”
Chloe busied herself arranging the roses. “Naturally, she’s like Daniel.”
“So you’ve had a DNA test?”
He sounded disappointed. Did he really wish Brianna was his? Fear clutched at Chloe. What if he contested the issue of paternity and sued for custody? Daniel would be devastated and Brianna would be traumatized. “Y-yes, yes, we have,” she faltered, not looking at him. “She’s definitely Daniel’s child.”
Evan tipped up her chin and searched her face. “Liar.”
Chloe blushed and pulled away. “All right, we haven’t, but this is her home and Daniel is her father.”
“Do you really imagine I’d try to take her away from a stable, secure family?” Evan shook his head. “What would I do with a toddler, anyway? A refugee camp is no place for a child. At least not for fortunate kids like Brianna who have a home.”
“Have you finished your stint in Sudan?” Chloe rinsed a cloth in warm water and wiped Brianna’s hands. Relief flooded through her. He wasn’t going to upset the fragile balance she’d finally achieved in her life, in her marriage. Anyway, she wouldn’t let him. “I thought you were there for two years.”
“They let me off a month early for good behavior.” Chloe’s eyebrows rose and he admitted the truth. “I got a recurrence of malaria, a bad bout. I went to Paris to recuperate but the City of Lights isn’t much fun when you’re sick and on your own. So then I decided to head home, stopping on my way to visit my brother in Victoria.”
“How is Jack?” she said.
“I haven’t seen him yet. I came here straight from the airport.” Evan moved closer and stroked his knuckles lightly down her arm. “Did you really not want my letters? Or did the lumberjack force you to put me off?”
“Don’t call him that!” Chloe shivered at Evan’s touch. Unsettled, she slipped sideways out of his reach. “Daniel doesn’t even know about our correspondence. I made the decision to stop writing myself. In fact, I burned all your letters the day we moved here.”
He winced. “That was cruel.”
“You know we can’t continue to have a relationship.” She wrapped her arms around her waist, anchoring her fingers in the waistband of her skirt. “How did you find me at this address?”
“Your husband runs a business out of his house and he’s listed in the Yellow Pages. It didn’t require Sherlock Holmes to track you down.” He glanced around at the warm maple cabinets and the granite countertop. “It’s nice. Daniel’s a good builder, I’ll give him that.”
“I was just going to have some lunch,” she said, softening her tone a little. She went to the cupboard and took out a can of tuna. “Will you join me?”
“Yes, but put away the canned fish.” He brought his satchel into the kitchen and proceeded to pull out a portable feast. “Remember how we used to talk about going to Paris?” he asked Chloe, placing a luscious circle of brie and shrink-wrapped pâté on the counter. “Since we didn’t get there together, I’m bringing Paris to you. Pain de campagne,” he went on, handing her a heavy round loaf. “Olives. Italian, not French, but still…Dried muscatel grapes and—” with a flourish he produced a foil-capped bottle “—real Champagne.”
Chloe burst into delighted laughter. “Evan, you are the limit! But this is just what I needed today.” She got Brianna out of her high chair and set her on the floor with some toys. Then she cleared the newspapers and flyers off the dining table. She started to bring out the everyday plates, then changed her mind and got a stool to reach into the top cupboard for the set of good china her grandmother had given her as a wedding present. Real champagne all the way from France deserved crystal flutes.
“Do you have an ice bucket for the wine?” Evan asked.
“I have a plastic bucket in the laundry room.”
For some reason this struck them both as hilarious. Suddenly a party atmosphere had taken over, as they unwrapped the food and poured the wine together. Conversation and laughter bubbled along with the champagne. Chloe ate ravenously and drank with abandon, as if this might be her last meal. She hadn’t felt so alive in months. Maybe not since Evan left, a tiny voice whispered. She brushed the thought aside and let him refill her champagne glass. His tales of adventure ranged from Sudan to Istanbul to the glittering restaurants and theaters of Paris.
Chloe took in his chiseled features and golden hair. His thin V-necked cashmere sweater looked sophisticated and sexy over designer blue jeans. She watched his long fingers restlessly toy with the cutlery. Fingers that had brought her unparalleled pleasure had also saved lives and comforted the sick.
“What was it like in the refugee camp?” she asked. “It must have been awful.”
Shadows filled his eyes, hinting at never-to-be-forgotten scenes of horror. “It’s like nothing you can imagine. Hell on earth. Patients arrive in a continuous stream, and the suffering is beyond imagining—limbs hacked off, women raped almost to the point of death, mutilated children, disease, starvation…We do what we can, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, but there’s no respite.
“Horrible as that is, I could cope with it. But it’s what I couldn’t do that tormented me, the hundreds of people I had to turn away because the clinic simply didn’t have the resources to treat them all.” He tilted his glass to his lips, but he’d already drained it dry. “Have you got anything else to drink?”
“I’ll go see.” Chloe got up, staggered a little and laughed. “I’m not used to drinking in the afternoon.” She wagged her finger at him. “You’re a bad influence.”
“Good,” he replied with a wicked grin. “You look as though you could use shaking up.”
“I do not!” she said hotly. “I have a great life. A wonderful husband and a beautiful child.”
Suddenly remembering Brianna, she glanced around the room in a panic. Her heart flooded with relief. The baby was playing quietly with her activity center. Feeling her mother’s gaze on her, Brianna looked over and raised her arms to be picked up.
“There you are, pumpkin,” Chloe cooed, gathering her into her arms. “You’re being such a good girl.”
“Unlike her mother?” Evan drawled.
Chloe ignored that and went to the fridge with Brianna still in her arms. “There’s some Chateau Cardboard,” she said, eyeing a box of white wine wedged between the milk and the orange juice.
“Oh, my, you have come down in the world,” Evan teased. “I suppose it’s better than nothing.”
Chloe felt her cheeks flush. “Or there’s Glenlivet.”
“That sounds better,” Evan said. “A couple fingers of scotch ought to cure what ails me.”
Chloe got down the bottle of expensive whiskey with a feeling of misgiving. This was Daniel’s one luxury: he allowed himself a single drink before dinner on the weekends. Still, she couldn’t let Evan think her marriage had dragged her down—although by comparison to his life her surroundings must seem boring and hopelessly provincial.
She tried to put Brianna back on the floor but the little girl cried, so Chloe put her in her high chair and cut her a hunk of the chewy country bread that Evan had brought. “That’ll give your gums a workout.”
Leaving Brianna to eat, Chloe poured Evan a drink. He got up from the table and came into the kitchen, where she handed it to him.
“Come on, you have to join me.” He grinned. “Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.”
She hesitated for a moment, then with an answering grin and a shrug she sloshed a small amount into another glass. She was just drunk enough not to worry about consequences.
Evan sipped his scotch, leaning against the counter and gazing down at her with an indulgent smile. “How have things been with you? Made lots of friends in this neck of the woods?”
“We don’t have many neighbors yet. The lots haven’t all sold and only one other house has been built so far—that of the man we bought the land from. His wife works, and anyway we don’t have much in common. A fisherman lives down the road, but when he’s not out on his boat he’s in the pub.”
“But you could drive into the city. Visit your old friends?”
“We don’t have a second car,” she explained, adding defensively, “but we will, soon. I’m going to be teaching ballet. I’ve printed up and distributed leaflets.” She stopped herself with a small sigh. “Nothing will happen until school starts in September.”
“A whole month away.” Evan watched her carefully. “Your lumber…Sorry, your husband must be quite something to keep you satisfied out here in the sticks.”
She shrugged unhappily. “He works long hours during the summer, traveling up island and even across to Saltspring Island.”
“Leaving the missus all alone and lonely,” Evan said softly.
“I’m not…” she started, then broke off. She was lonely. But that wasn’t Daniel’s fault. “He has to take every job he can get. Come winter, work will be scarce.” The champagne and the whiskey were making Chloe confused. Did she resent Daniel for having to defend him or Evan for making her see how dull her life was? Daniel had built her this house, but then he’d left her imprisoned like a princess waiting to be rescued.
“Where is he now?” Evan reached out to tuck a tendril of her hair behind Chloe’s ear. “Will he be home soon?”
“He’s in Duncan. He won’t be home for hours.” Chloe held her breath. At the end of the U-shaped kitchen, she didn’t have much room to maneuver. Evan was so close, just a touch away, and so tempting. Gazing into his sky blue eyes, she could easily imagine that she was still in love with him and he with her.
“I’ve missed you, Chloe,” he murmured. “Missed your smile, your touch.” He bent his head, his lips inches from hers. “I’ve been lonely, too.”
Chloe started to strain toward him, then suddenly stopped herself. This was crazy. Her heart beat fast as she backed away, only to find herself hard against the counter. “You’ve been gone two years. You must have had other women.”
“In the camp we were four to a room, with a few fitful hours of sleep a night. Not exactly a romantic setting.”
“In Paris, then.” He was too handsome not to attract women. And what man could resist being pursued?
Right now he was doing the pursuing, edging closer until his hips brushed hers and his hands skimmed her arms.
“Ah, French women—they’re charming and chic.” He captured her hand and kissed the palm. “But we have a connection, Chloe. Our minds work the same way. Our hearts beat as a single unit.” He placed his hand below her left breast. “I can feel your heart beating now, like a small wild bird.”
Chloe licked her parted lips, helpless as that wild bird to stop what was going to happen next. Nor did she want to—she craved Evan’s kiss with a kind of madness. It was all she could think of; the need to feel his mouth on hers, his hands on her body.
She slid her arms around his neck and drew him to her, hungrily tasting his lips, his tongue. So familiar, yet so exotic—a postcard of paradise, remembered and yearned after, finally within reach. The kiss went on and on, erasing her will and replacing it with feverish need. Dimly she heard a clattering, metal on tile, and couldn’t make sense of the sound.
Yet a hole had been torn in the silken sensuality that Evan had wrapped her in. Thoughts of Daniel broke through, flooding her with guilt and regret. What was she doing?
She broke apart and pushed Evan away. “Stop! I can’t do this.”
Afterward, Chloe couldn’t have said what made her glance over at Brianna in her high chair. A mother’s instinct? Guilt, that her daughter should witness her mother betraying her father?
