Bachelor Dad, Girl Next Door. Sharon Archer

without daring to touch.

      She seemed lonely, sad. He had a powerful urge to reach out to her, to offer comfort. Or was it something else?

      He’d kissed her on this very spot. Hard to believe it was a dozen years in the past. He could remember how she tasted. Sweet with a promise of spice.

      ‘Remember the night of the schoolies’ party?’ The question was out before he could think better of it. She had a powerful effect on him—a walk down memory lane with her was a torment he could do without. Besides, that night didn’t reflect well on him.

      ‘Of course.’ Slowly, she turned her head to look at him. Dark shadows from the bruising beneath her eyes made her look mysterious, almost exotic, reminding him how little he knew about her.

      ‘I wasn’t kind to you that night.’ He’d wanted to take what she’d offered…and more. Much more. He’d wanted to grab, to hold on, to lose himself in her sweetness, her gentle sympathy. Somehow, he’d found the sanity and strength to pull back, to send her away.

      But he hadn’t done it graciously.

      She shrugged and looked away. ‘I wasn’t asking for your kindness. I only wanted to talk to you about getting a medical degree.’

      ‘I know.’ He frowned. Had the kiss that came back to haunt him after all these years meant nothing to her? She sounded so indifferent that he felt an inexplicable urge to push, to get a reaction from her. ‘I’m surprised I didn’t put you off.’

      ‘You weren’t that bad.’ She took her hands out of her pockets and bent to pick something up.

      He swallowed, unable to look away from the unconscious provocation of jeans pulled tight against her curved buttocks. The knitted top rode up, exposing a small wedge of pale skin, gone in a flash as she straightened. She bent to examine a curved shell in her long fingers, her face hidden by a curtain of wavy dark hair. It was a little shorter now than it had been when he’d buried his fingers in it twelve years ago.

      He pulled his mind back to the conversation.

      ‘Wasn’t I?’ Perhaps the incident loomed much larger in his mind because sobriety the following day had brought sneaking shame at his behaviour. ‘That isn’t how I remember it.’

      ‘You were grieving for your cousin.’ She slanted him a look as she pushed the thick curls back over her shoulder.

      ‘This must be a first for gender interaction.’ He huffed out a small laugh, feeling irrationally frustrated with her. ‘I’m trying in a roundabout way to apologise for the things I said and you’re busy making excuses for me. I took my anger out on you.’

      She grinned at him, her teeth gleaming in the subdued light. ‘Would you feel better if I said you’d been callous and cruel and I’ve never recovered? That I’m bitter and twisted with an abiding fear of beaches?’

      He felt suddenly foolish. ‘Maybe not.’ But he realised that some tiny part of him wanted a sign that their exchange on that long-ago evening had meant something to her…even as he recognised his folly.

      Her hands tipped the shell from palm to palm as she contemplated him for a moment. ‘Want to walk?’ she said, waving a hand vaguely along the beach. ‘Just along to the rocks and back.’

      ‘Sure.’ He levered off his runners and hooked his fingers into the heels. Sand sifted between his toes in a soft caress. When Terri moved away, he fell into step with her.

      The gentle sibilance of the waves filled a small silence. He felt an odd mixture of relaxation and intense awareness of every move that she made.

      ‘You said something important to me that night.’ Her voice was deliciously husky, easy to listen to.

      ‘Now I am worried. Wisdom brewed in a beer bottle.’ He grimaced. Should he be embarrassed or pleased that she apparently remembered something after all? ‘What pearl did I drop?’

      ‘That one of the hardest lessons is not being able to save everyone.’

      ‘Ah. Yes.’ An echo of his harsh feelings trickled through his memory. Such bitterness and anger at the senselessness of his cousin’s death. What chance had Terri had to soothe his pain? Yet she’d tried after he’d pushed everyone else away. And she’d succeeded to a degree. Their kiss had distracted him. It was that he remembered most clearly about that night, not his grief.

      ‘You were right. Failure can be hard to live with.’ She sounded sombre. Was she thinking about her husband? Had she tried to save him after the explosion? He was trying to frame a diplomatic question when she said, ‘You were talking about Kevin, weren’t you?’

      A shadow darkened his mood for a moment. His cousin had been young, full of promise, full of male bravado—a reflection of himself. ‘Mmm. I was still pretty raw.’

      She tilted her head to look at him. ‘You were very close?’

      ‘We grew up together.’ The simple sentence couldn’t begin to describe their relationship. His throat grew thick. ‘Mum used to say that we were more like twins than cousins.’

      They reached the rocks and silently turned to retrace their steps.

      She stopped to throw the shell into the water then scrubbed her hands together. When she turned her gaze met his. ‘Dad said you were working on Kevin when he arrived at the scene.’

      He’d forgotten that her father had been the local police sergeant at the time. It’d been her father who had pulled him away from Kevin’s body when the paramedics had arrived. A band of stiffness tightened around his larynx. He cleared his throat. ‘It wasn’t enough.’