Merger By Matrimony

‘No, I’m not saying that at all,’ she said seriously, although the corners of her mouth were still twitching with repressed amusement. ‘We argue and get frustrated just like the next person.’

‘And what about the pure thoughts?’ he asked slyly. ‘Isn’t the heat supposed to up the libido?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Destiny said primly, flushing. She thought of Henri and wondered whether her libido had ever been active when she had been around him. They knew each other so well. A deep bond of trust and friendship that was half-cultivated by their circumstances. But desire? Lust? She had occasionally fancied that she loved him, and had certainly responded to his flirtation, but the temptation to take things one step further had never been there.

She looked surreptitiously at the man sitting opposite her. All dark, dangerous arrogance. Just the sort of man bemoaned by women’s magazines. Well, they certainly didn’t tell you how much men like that got under your skin and worked away there until just thinking about them was enough to send your pulses into overdrive, did they?

‘Oh, surely you must have had a quick kiss and a grope behind the bushes by the river…’

At any other time she would have told him to mind his own business, but the food and the wine had made her mellow. Even the way he was looking at her, with lazy, brooding interest, sent a little dart of excitement shooting around her body. She was beginning to understand any number of the little games that men and women played, games that had no part on their compound.

‘Behind the bushes by the river at night is the last place you would want to be, believe me.’ She drank some more wine, which was going down more smoothly and more quickly with each mouthful.

‘But it would just instil an element of danger, wouldn’t it?’ He swirled the liquid in his glass round and round and continued to stare at her with languid blue eyes.

‘Snakes? Reptiles? Nasty slippery things that wouldn’t hesitate to attach themselves to your ankle if you weren’t looking out for them? You’re telling me that all that adds up to an exciting element of danger?’ She made a face and he smiled slowly at her. Conversation with Henri was never like this. He teased her, but his banter was harmless. This didn’t feel harmless. In fact, it felt strangely erotic. She blushed with sudden guilty awareness, and reassured herself that it was all in her imagination. Sophisticated men and women, living in big cities, spoke like this to one another, she decided naively.

‘Would you care to see the dessert menu?’ The waiter was somehow standing by them. She hadn’t even seen him approaching.

‘Yes, please.’

‘You’re going to have dessert?’ He made it sound as though she had committed an unforgivable crime and her outstretched hand paused.

‘Shouldn’t I?’

‘Of course you should. It’s just that the women I’ve dated in the past have avoided dessert like the plague.’

‘Why?’ She took the menu and looked at it, trying not to salivate at the descriptions of things done with chocolate and fruits and cream.

‘Obsession with their figures,’ he said drily.

‘I have a big frame,’ Destiny said defensively. Come to think of it, she had noticed the way Stephanie had refrained from piling food onto her plate. Unlike her. Stephanie had taken minuscule amounts, eaten very slowly and declined seconds. Unlike, come to think of it, her. ‘And anyway,’ she continued, after having ordered tiramisu with lots of cream, ‘I don’t get to eat food like this. It’s a novelty.’ Besides, she told herself, eating less wasn’t going to reduce her height, was it? It would just turn her into one of those skinny women she saw in the magazines who seemed to have not much of anything.

‘So,’ she said, when the tiramisu was in front of her, ‘I’m not going to feel guilty about this.’

‘You shouldn’t. It’s very refreshing to meet a woman with a hearty appetite.’

‘Would you like some?’ She held out the spoon, feeling very relaxed and daring, and he leaned forward. At the very moment that his mouth circled the spoon their eyes met, blue tangling with green, and she felt a rush of blood invade her system, burning like a sudden high fever.

‘It’s very good.’ His eyes never left her face, even after he had sat back and was sipping his cup of coffee. He just continued to stare at her over the rim of the cup.

‘I have a proposal for you,’ he said slowly. He reached forward before she could say anything and his finger brushed the side of her mouth. ‘Cream just there,’ he said.