Worlds Apart

‘You must be in a lot of pain after a knock like that,’ continued the other. ‘Knees are always the worst places to injure.’

Caryn forced a smile of her own. ‘It really isn’t hurting very much at all,’ she lied. ‘It was my own fault anyway. I should have waited for the green light.’

Logan made no comment, but she could sense his glance through the driving mirror, imagine his sardonic expression. They were already approaching the turn-off from the main road. He took it without hesitation, as also the next turn into St Albans, drawing to a halt in front of the Gregory residence.

‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘Safe, if not exactly sound. You should get that knee seen to. You might have chipped the bone.’

‘I will,’ she affirmed, hoping no one happened to be looking out of the front windows at present. ‘Thank you for the lift.’

‘I’ll help you out,’ he said as she reached for the door-handle. ‘At the very least it will have stiffened up.’

He was right, Caryn discovered, biting off an exclamation as she moved her leg. Perhaps not chipped, but certainly badly bruised. Fortunately her job didn’t call for a lot of walking.

Logan came back to open the door and extend a hand. She took it with reluctance, relinquishing it again the moment she was out of the car and standing on the kerb. Turning her head, she directed a brief smile at the other occupant.

‘Goodbye—and thank you too.’

Mrs Bannister nodded but didn’t speak. She looked, Caryn thought fleetingly, as if she scarcely knew what to say.

Logan made no further attempt to touch her in any way. Wearing a soft leather jacket in light tan, and silky roll-necked sweater, he looked every inch the landed gentry. Only on the surface, though, she reminded herself. Underneath he was pure dross.

‘I need to talk to you,’ he said in low but urgent tones.

Body tensed, nerves stretched, she said jerkily, ‘I don’t think we have anything to talk about.’

‘Yes, we do.’ He paused, added with purpose, ‘You wouldn’t want me to come to the house, I assume?’

Her head lifted sharply. ‘No!’

‘Then meet me tonight on the beach. Seven o’clock. Same place.’

He was gone before she could say yea or nay, rounding the car bonnet to slide back behind the wheel. Mrs Bannister lifted a hand in farewell as the vehicle moved off.

Staring after it, Caryn wondered what on earth Logan could have to say to her that hadn’t already been said last night. Nothing she wanted to hear, at any rate, so he could wait in vain.

On the other hand, he might very well keep his threat to come to the house if she failed to keep the appointment, and how would she explain that to her parents? She had no choice but to go, regardless of how she might feel about it. He had made sure of that.

It was something of a relief to find that her arrival had gone unwitnessed. Her knee was painful, and as Logan had warned, already stiffening up, but she managed not to limp on her way upstairs to view the damage.

Just badly bruised, she judged from a cursory inspection. It would probably be black and blue by morning, so short skirts were definitely out. Fortunately, fashion didn’t dictate any particular length at present.

They ate at six, as they always did on a Sunday. Right up until ten to seven, Caryn was vacillating over keeping her appointment with Logan. She reached a final decision on the strength of curiosity alone—or so she told herself.

Her announcement that she was going for another walk drew no particular comment. Her mother was ensconced in front of the television for her favourite situation comedy show, her father was still engrossed in the Sunday newspapers—the two of them settled into comfortable middle-age. Nothing wrong with that, Caryn supposed, yet tonight it somehow seemed indicative of everything she didn’t want for herself. Life was for living, not stagnating. It was high time she gave some serious thought towards exchanging one for the other.

She was at the appointed place on the hour, to find the stretch of beach empty of all but the gulls. By ten past she had begun to think the whole thing had been Logan’s sick idea of a joke, although what possible entertainment he might get from that she couldn’t begin to imagine. She was on the verge of leaving when she saw horse and rider finally approaching.

Logan came up at a fast canter, drawing to a halt far enough away to avoid showering her with sand kicked up by the chestnut’s hooves.

‘Thanks for waiting,’ he said, dismounting. ‘I had a call from Australia.’

Caryn retained her seat on the ledge of sand as he moved towards her. ‘I only came because you made it impossible to refuse,’ she said stonily. ‘Not because I want to be here. Just say what you have to say.’

He contemplated her in silence for a lengthy moment, eyes veiled. When he did speak it was with an odd note in his voice. ‘I need to know how you really feel about me now, Caryn.’

The question dried her throat. She gazed at him with darkened eyes, fighting the almost overwhelming urge to jump up and rake her nails down that lean brown cheek. ‘How would you expect me to feel?’ she got out with an effort

His smile was wry. ‘What I’d expect and what I can hope for are two different things.’

Her voice seemed to be coming from a long way away. ‘So what do you hope for?’

‘That you’ll be prepared to marry me,’ he said.

This couldn’t be for real, she thought dazedly. He was making fun of her. He had to be!

‘Don’t look so stricken,’ he said on a dry note. ‘All I’m asking for is a simple yes or no.’

‘All?’ She drew in a shaky breath. ‘I don’t know what kind of game you think you’re playing, but you’re not doing it with me!’

He caught her arm as she began to turn away, pulling her back round to face him and holding her there, a look of determination on his face. ‘It’s no game, believe me. I need you, Caryn.’

Need, not love, a part of her mind registered, but the shock was still too great to take any real account of the distinction.

‘I don’t understand,’ she managed to get out. ‘Why now?’

His lips twisted. ‘Because you’re eighteen, not sixteen. Old enough to know your own mind.’

Eyes wide and dark, she gazed at him in silence as she grappled with the implications of that statement. When she did find her voice it came out low and husky. ‘Are you trying to tell me you felt the same way two years ago?’

‘Why else do you think I went away?’ he asked. ‘You were sixteen, I was thirty-one. I doubt if your parents would have sanctioned marriage between us—whatever the circumstances.’

He was right about that, Caryn knew. They would have been utterly devastated had they been forced to learn of her premature initiation into womanhood, but there would have been no marriage. Not at sixteen. She searched the firm features with a sense almost of desperation, heart and mind in turmoil. Right at this moment she didn’t know how she felt about him—about anything. It was all too much to take in.

As if in recognition of her dilemma, he drew her to him, sliding a hand behind her head to tilt her face up to his. The kiss moved her immeasurably in its gentle yet inexorable seeking. She found her arms moving of their own accord up about his neck, her whole body surging into closer proximity. There had never been anyone else who could make her feel this way—as if fireworks had been lit inside her. She wanted him to go on kissing her, to make love to her, to lift her to that seventh heaven she had experienced so briefly yet never once forgotten.

It was Logan himself who brought matters to a halt by putting her firmly, if with reluctance, away from him. He was smiling, eyes fired with a desire he made no effort to conceal.

‘Still the same lovely, warm, responsive Caryn,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve dreamed about making love to you again, but it isn’t going to happen like this. We have a lot to talk about first.’

Still held fast in the grip of her turbulent emotions, Caryn allowed herself to be drawn to a seat on the wedge of sand she had so recently vacated. Logan kept an arm lightly about her shoulders.

‘Before we go any further,’ he said, ‘I have to tell you that my mother knows the whole story, and has done from the start. She kept an eye on you for me. If there had been any hint at all of a pregnancy, I would have come back and faced up to it, but going away seemed the best thing for us both at the time.’

Caryn said slowly, ‘Does she know about… now?’

‘Yes.’

‘And approves?’