Читать книгу A Stranger on the Beach - Michele Campbell - Страница 26

Caroline offered to give him a lift home. On the way, he would show her a special place. There were things he knew that she didn’t. Things only a local would know, someone who lived closer to the ground than she did. Maybe he was rough around the edges, but she liked that, or else, why be with him? He suspected it was nostalgia. The harshness of her accent in unguarded moments gave her away. She hadn’t always been the lady of the manor.

They got all the way to the cave, and she didn’t want to go inside.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, as they stood side by side, staring into the entrance.

He could understand why she’d hesitate. It was dark in there, and she didn’t have the history with the place that Aidan did. He used to run away to there when things were hard at home, pretending he was like Butch Cassidy at the hole in the wall. The first time he got drunk, the first time he got high, and the first time he had sex were all in that cave. Good times. Bad times, too. The one girl he’d ever loved had spent time with him in there. Then she’d shared the place with someone else, and the aftermath was so ugly that Aidan was paying for it to this day. But that wouldn’t happen with Caroline. She was better than Samantha. She was a lady.

He took her by the hand. “It gets wider in a few feet. Light comes in from a hole in the roof. It’s magical, you’ll see. You have to trust me.”

He let her go first, creeping along behind her. Within a few feet, the narrow entrance fed into a space the size of a small bedroom. Rough rock walls slanted up to a peaked ceiling, where the hole revealed a patch of sky. The light filtering through was delicate and shimmering, like the inside of a seashell. And it smelled like the ocean. Aidan took off his jacket and used it to sweep sand off a low, flat boulder.

“Your chair, my lady,” he said.

She hesitated, hanging back near the opening.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s okay, promise. Come here, I’ll protect you.”

She walked toward him, but stopped short of the rock, seeming so shy all of a sudden that she reminded him of the deer he’d seen this morning from her kitchen window, drinking from the swimming pool. Caroline’s house, on his grandfather’s land. It was a magic combination, and it was within his grasp. Like the woman herself. He reached out and put his hands on her waist, pulling her closer, holding her eyes with his. She stopped resisting, and her body relaxed. Then he slid a hand between her legs and felt her up through her jeans until she moaned. He stood up, drew her closer, grazed her lips with his.

“I used to come here in high school,” he said, kissing her neck, her ear. She trembled in his arms.

“Matter of fact, I lost my virginity on this rock,” he said.

“Really? How old were you?”

“Fifteen. She was twenty-two. My boss at the Food Mart.”

“Another older woman? Seriously?”

“Yeah, she was married, too.”

“Wow.”

He looked into her eyes. “Is that weird? What was your first time like? Wait, let me guess. You were in college, and you ended up married to the guy?”

“How’d you know?”

“Because you’re such a rich girl.”

“I’m a nice girl.”

He laughed. “Not if you’re hanging out with me, you’re not.”

He kissed the freckles on the bridge of her nose. Those freckles were like a promise. That she was the girl next door. That she could be his. Then he kissed her again and knew it was true.