A Royal Wedding(70)
Which made her so angry she clenched her nails even harder into the wooden railing.
He had been the one who had walked out on her.
He had been the one who had been full of promises and not kept one of them.
He had been. He had been the love of her life, who had left her behind just like all the other men in her life who had abandoned her when the going got tough. If it had not been for her stepfather, Tom, she would have given up on the whole sorry lot of them a long time ago. Now Simon was here, in this stunning country, and she was going to have to deal with him.
A peal of happy children’s laughter rang out from the beach below, interrupting her thoughts, and Kate blinked hard in the dazzling bright morning light to focus on the stunning view before her.
The hotel terrace faced the ocean, and the beautifully kept lawns stretched out to a wide strip of glowing white sand, where her view of the lapping waves was broken only by the thin trunks of tall palm trees.
It was like a poster of a dream beach from the cover of a holiday brochure, complete with a long wooden canoe on the shore and umbrellas made from palm fronds to protect the professional sunbathers from the heat of the African sun in January.
Palm trees. She was looking at real African coconut palm trees. The sky was a cloudless bright blue, and the warm breeze was luxuriously dry and scented with the salty tang from the sea blended with spice and a tropical sweet floral scent.
A great garland of bougainvillea with stunning bright purple and hot pink flowers wound its way around the handrail, intertwined with a wonderful frangipani which spilled out from a blue ceramic pot, attracting nectar-seeking insects to the intensely fragrant blossoms.
Kate spent most of her life in small air-conditioned computer rooms surrounded by office equipment and machinery. It was only natural that she should bend down to appreciate the frangipani flowers close up. Only the biggest insect she had ever seen in her life was inside one of the flowers at the time, and decided to leave just as she bent her head to sniff the blossom. Insect and cheek collided, and the insect was just as unhappy about that fact as she was.
Ouch! ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ Kate mumbled as she stood up and wafted the offending creature away. ‘No wasp stings. Not on my first morning in Africa.’
‘Hello, Katie,’ came a voice as familiar as her own. ‘Talking to yourself again?’
CHAPTER TWO
‘WELL, this is quite a surprise,’ Simon said, in that educated formal voice which could only come from a lifetime of privilege and expensive private schools. And it was still as amazingly, jaw-droppingly able to light a match under her fire more than any other voice she had ever known.
Her heart and body leapt to attention at the sound of his voice, so fast and so loudly she was surprised that he had not heard it. Speech was impossible, and it maddened her more than she could say that he still had the power to unsettle her so badly.
But she was determined not to let him see that he had got to her. Those days were long gone.
‘Hi, Simon,’ she said through a dry throat, in as casual and controlled a voice as she could imagine. ‘Likewise. I had no idea that you were still in Ghana.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he answered. ‘Still here, still working, still unpaid and still a volunteer. I’m even in the same village. Unlike some people I could mention. It seems like you have come up in the world, Katie.’ He tilted his head to one side and grinned. ‘Congratulations. The company must have a lot of faith in you to suggest you take over from Andy at such short notice. That is quite an achievement.’
Simon pushed one hand deep into his trouser pocket as he leant his other elbow on the railing and towered over her, blocking the blazing sunlight from blinding her, but also shading her with his shadow.
To her unending shame Kate felt her neck flame red in embarrassment and delight that Simon should take pleasure in her promotion—or was it just the impact of that killer grin of white teeth against his unshaven deeply tanned skin?
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, ‘although I certainly hadn’t planned to be here. Yesterday morning I was in Mexico, expecting to fly home to a grey London for the weekend. Instead of which …’ Kate waved her right hand in the air towards the rolling waves under the azure blue sky. ‘Andy Parsons’ little boys arrived ahead of schedule, so the company asked me to take his place for a few weeks.’
And then she paused, lifted her head, and looked deep into Simon’s face. They were standing so close together that none of the other delegates who had ambled onto the wide long terrace around them could possibly hear what they were saying.