Passionate Choice

Chapter 2.2

   The moon had risen and everything was silvered by its radiance. Under the leaning coconut palms shadows were thick and black. At first, she followed the pathway which led to the block of rooms in which hers was located, just in case anyone was watching her, but before she reached the building she altered course and struck off along another path which led down to the beach and the jetty at the end of which the dive-ship was tied up, light glimmering from its wheelhouse.

   Along the jetty she walked quickly and up the gangway to step on to the side deck of the ship. The doorway to the main cabin was closed but she was able to slide it open and step inside. A single light glowing from a bulkhead showed her that the cabin was empty so she left and walked along the deck to the companionway which led down to the lower deck and the small sleeping cabins. At the bottom of the companionway she paused to listen. The only noise she could hear was the creaking of a warp that tied the ship to the jetty.

   "Hello," she called out. "Anyone on board?"

   There was no answer so after knocking on the doors of the small cabins and opening them to look in only to find each room untenanted, she went back to the main deck, realizing with a rueful dismay that Keith and his crew had already left the ship and gone in to the resort. They must have been on their way through the plantation of trees and shrubs when she had been pretending to go to her bedroom by another path.

   Slowly she walked back along the jetty. There was no point in going back to the dining-room or to the bar and lounge. She couldn't talk to Keith confidentially in front of Ben and both Heather and Ben would be surprised if she returned. He would never believe that her headache had gone so quickly.

   She stepped off the jetty on the beach which curved away to her left, the pale sand shimmering under the moon. A slight breeze had sprung up rustling the palm finds and rippling the dark water, causing tiny moon-glinting waves to rush up the beach. Taking off her sandals, she walked along the beach, her feet sinking in the soft sand, her head drooped in thought.

   She must see Keith alone before he told Ben or Heather that he knew her. Ben wouldn't understand if he learned that she had spent nine months with Keith, living with him, loving him, sharing laughter and tears, calms and tempests, as they had sailed about in his yacht. Ben wouldn't understand, so why tell him?

   But if she didn't tell him about her brief but intensely passionate affair with another man, wouldn't she be guilty of deceiving him? Was it really necessary to tell him? Wouldn't it be better to go on pretending she didn't know Keith and had never met him before? But could she depend on Keith?

   Had Keith forgotten her? Somehow, she didn't think so. How could he have forgotten the hours, the days, the weeks of stolen delight they had experienced together? She had tried to forget but hadn't succeeded. All she had been able to do was to push all memories of love and passion into a secret drawer at the back of her mind; a drawer never to be opened until many years had gone by, until she was safe, and able to open the drawer and flick through the memories without fear of torment, could tear them up and throw them away like so many old photographs of people and places long forgotten.

   But this recent unexpected meeting with Keith had forced that drawer open and now the memories were tumbling out unbidden, vivid and heart-stabbing. Most of all that first meeting with him would keep flashing across her mind. Across a crowded room she had looked, seen him and fallen in love with him.

   It had been so unlike her to look and love. At the time she had been twenty-two, had not long graduated with an honours degree in history and had already started her studies towards a master's degree in archeology. Her holiday with her friend, Sheryl, in Nassau had been arranged so that she could learn to scuba dive, a skill which would be valuable to her should she wish to participate in any undersea archeological expeditions.

   Ambitious, liberated in her thinking, she had decided at the age of eighteen that romance was not for her and although she had known young men, had worked and studied with them and several had been attracted to her, she had always been the one to set the pace in such affairs, retreating from emotional involvement when an affair had threatened to become serious and interfere with her ambition to have a career, postponing love and passion until she was established in that career, keeping her physical desires damped down and under strict control until such time as she was ready to let them flare up.

   And then she had gone to a party in Nassau, had looked across a room at a stranger and from that moment had lost control of her destiny.