Merger By Matrimony

‘Big. Everything about me is big,’ she said with a little laugh.

‘And does that bother you?’

‘Not really.’ She shrugged and thought about it. ‘Sometimes I used to feel a bit awkward at having to talk down to all the other women on the compound, but on the whole it’s been to my advantage. If you can call it an advantage to be opted for all the more physical jobs that require a bit of strength.’ Now his hands caressed both her breasts, pausing only to rub thumbs over the peaks of her nipples now and again. She felt a familiar stirring down below. The kind of stirring that turned her brain to cotton wool.

‘You mean the bespectacled Henri didn’t rush to your immediate aid?’

‘Doesn’t work that way out there, I’m afraid. Women need to be able to do their job usefully and not rely on a man to pull them out of uncomfortable conditions.’

He paused in what he was doing. ‘Was your mother as capable as you?’

‘If not more.’ She sighed. ‘My father said that he loved her from the very first moment he set eyes on her.’

‘Where did they meet? At a dance? Dinner party?’

‘Oh, she was stitching up a young boy whose head had been busted open by a cricket ball.’

‘Ah. Unusual circumstances for love at first sight.’

‘I guess their eyes met over the needle and nylon.’ She giggled.

‘So what are you going to do? Stay or stay?’

‘Stay?’

‘Right choice…’

Was it, though?

She had no idea what time they had finally drifted to sleep. She only knew that she was considerably more experienced in the ways of pleasuring a man than she had been at the start of the evening. And when she wakened several hours later, with needles of light filtering through the curtains, it took her several seconds to remember where she was. Then her eyes flew open to find herself alone on the bed with a mass of crumpled sheets around her.

With the cold light of day came the cold light of reality. Her fragile reasons for sleeping with Callum Ross now seemed ludicrous and naïve. Seductive words and dim lighting, and the overwhelming recognition of her own feelings for him, had worked in devilish ways to banish her reserve, and the prospect of a headlong collision with planet Earth now seemed something that couldn’t be reasoned away into non-existence.

What could she have been thinking of?

Had she imagined that she could enjoy the fruition of her love for one night—or maybe one week or even one month, until she left the country—and then take off with her heart and soul intact? What was the remainder of her life going to be now? Back in Panama, with only her memories for bitter company?

She groaned silently to herself, wondering if there was any reasonable chance that she could sneak out of the house without being caught. Perhaps shinny out of the window or something.

She tried to picture someone of her stature shinnying and ran up against a mental block. Shinny down and break her back by crashing thunderously onto the ground in the process would be more like it.

The thing that really scared her was the suspicion that, whatever qualms were now dawning on the horizon, she would still forfeit reason for the pleasure of being with him, and she knew that the more snatched moments of happiness she stole now, the greater would be her eventual prison sentence.

The thoughts were still churning over in her mind when the object of them returned to the bedroom, wearing a white bathrobe underneath which was nothing but his bare body, as she could see every time it swung apart in rhythm with his tread.

‘Breakfast,’ he said, raising the tray in both hands slightly and grinning. ‘Full English.’ He deposited the tray on the bed, relieved himself of his bathrobe with an enviable lack of self-consciousness, then slid next to her.

On the tray was a plate heaped with bacon, sausages, toast and scrambled egg, two cups of coffee and two plates with the required cutlery stacked on top of them.

Her onslaught of misgivings evaporated at the sight of him, as she had known it would.

‘Tuck in,’ he said, heaping a bit of everything on a plate and sliding a spare tray from underneath onto her lap.

‘Don’t tell me. You’re an expert at entertaining women in your bed in the morning.’

‘On the contrary. Don’t forget, Steph and I were together for two years and I’m a one-woman man.’

‘Did you ever love her?’ She took a sip of the coffee and waited for his answer.

Love her? Callum almost laughed. Love was anything but the placid affection he had felt for his former fiancée. Love, as he could now testify, was something that took over every pore of your body and left a strong man hesitant and exposed.