A Wild Affair

A constant drift of people up a side street caught Quincy's attention. She wandered a few steps that way and stood on the corner, watching as the crowd moved towards a large building at the top of the narrow street.

Circular, rising in stone tiers of a creamy pink colour faded with sun and time, the building defeated all her attempts to guess at its function. A railway station? An opera house? she wondered. Gothic arches pierced it at intervals, giving it the likeness of some crumbling wedding cake which has been nibbled by giant mice. The Colosseum in Rome, Quincy thought suddenly— that's what it reminds me of! Obviously the crowds thickening around it were tourists eager to improve their minds before they collapsed on the sun-drenched beach.

Behind her, brakes suddenly screamed, horns blared, and she turned quickly to stare at the road. A white car had swerved out of the bumper-to-bumper lines of traffic and was parking half on the pavement. While Quincy watched, a man leapt out of the car and turned towards her, ignoring the excited invective he was getting from other drivers.

For one second Quincy thought she was imagining things, then as the tall black-haired man loped towards her, the sun flashing off the mirror of his dark glasses, she felt shock clench her stomach. Only one man in the world moved like that.

Agitated panic sent her running in the opposite direction; forgetting Penny, forgetting common sense, only knowing she could not bear to face Joe again, it would hurt too much.

'Quincy!' His voice held anger, but far from halting her, it made her more determined to get away from him. The very sound of his deep, husky voice made her heart beat fiercely and her skin prickle with anguished awareness.

'What are you doing here?' he asked, as though her presence was inexplicable, something he found difficult to believe.

'I'm on holiday,' she said, adding crossly: 'Obviously—what else would I be doing here? What are you doing here? I thought you'd be in America.' She wanted to make sure he knew that, it was certainly true, and she didn't want him imagining that she had come to Spain in the hope of seeing him. She might have fallen in eagerly with Penny's idea, but she hadn't suggested it, she could comfort herself with that, and if Spain had been invested with magic because of Joe's family connection with it, there was no reason he should know that and no reason why she should feel guilty.

'I'm taking a holiday, too, would you believe?' said Joe with a trace of derision. 'My manager decided I was tired and overworked and suggested I take a month off, so as my parents have wanted to show me Spain for years, I jumped at the chance.'

'Are they with you?'

'Yes,' he said, smiling. 'They're having a second honeymoon, they tell me.'

'With you along?' Quincy asked, laughing, and saw an answering amusement in his eyes.

'I'm the soul of tact,' he assured her, then his eyes ran down her slim body. 'Been on the beach?'

She nodded, grateful for the fact that she had slipped a yellow towelling beach robe over her swimsuit before she left the beach. Sleeveless and V-necked, it ended mid-thigh, exposing most of her long, smooth-skinned legs. Against the deep tan of most of the people they had seen since they arrived, both she and Penny had seemed very pale, but her morning on the beach had given her a faint sun-flush. Joe, on the other hand, was as tanned as ever; his skin a deep, golden bronze she envied.

'How are your family?' he asked.

'Very well, thank you.' Their voices sounded stilted. From talking to each other with that painful intensity they had retreated to a polite formality she found almost as disturbing.

'Did Bobby like his radio?' Joe asked, and she could have ki

cked herself for not remembering to thank him without being prompted.

'He was thrilled,' she said hurriedly. 'It was very kind of you to remember it, thank you very much.'

'It was part of our bargain,' he said, and the curt phrase made her wince, reminding her too vividly that those days in London had been nothing but a publicity stunt to him, part of his career, a business matter. There had been nothing personal about it. He had flirted with her, but it hadn't meant anything to him. In the weeks since they last met he probably hadn't even thought of her once, while she hadn't been able to get him out of her mind. He had lingered like some song you can't quite remember, but can never forget; haunting and troubling you at odd moments of the day. She had carefully avoided talking about him to anyone, in the hope of forgetting; but that had only locked him inside the secret chambers of her memory, he had never left her, she had felt her whole body jerk in tense attention if one of his songs was played on the radio or he was mentioned in a newspaper.

'Are you here alone?' Joe asked, and she looked at him, startled.

'No, I'm with a friend,' she said, suddenly remembering Penny, who would no doubt be wondering what on earth had happened to her.

'I see,' said Joe, his hands dropping away from her. 'Brendan?' The question was delivered in a cool voice, but his face hadn't altered; his dark eyes fixed on her face, watching every flickering expression, his mouth straight and firm and unsmiling.

'Brendan?' she repeated, flushing. 'No, of course not—I'm with an old school friend, Penny Stevens. I was waiting for her just now when…' she broke off, her eyes moving away from him. 'She'll be looking for me, I must go before she gets in touch with the police and reports me missing.'

This time Joe made no attempt to detain her. He fell into step as she turned to walk away, his black shadow thrown along the sunlit stone wall as they made their way out of the building, into the blinding glare of the Spanish afternoon. Looking sideways at him as a woman near the gate stared, Quincy murmured in warning: 'You'd better put your sunglasses on before you're recognised.'

He fumbled in his shirt pocket, drew them out and slid them on, becoming at once just another black-haired Spaniard.

'I'm surprised you don't have bodyguards,' Quincy commented and he grimaced.

'In the States I do when I'm travelling from gig to gig, but I thought I'd be okay over here. I hate going around with a couple of gorillas.'

'I'd hate it too,' said Quincy, and he shot her a hard look.

'Yes,' he said, as though she had not needed to tell him so. 'My mother finds it upsetting. At one time she used to come to my concerts, but it gave her nightmares, she said, so she stopped coming.'