Island Fling to Forever Read online

  ‘Physically? Sure—we both look like Mama, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

  He tried to remember what Anna looked like; he’d only met her briefly a couple of times since he arrived. Obviously she couldn’t look too like Rosa or he might have noticed sooner. ‘I suppose...’ he said, slowly. ‘I mean, yes, you look like Sancia. And so does Anna. And yet, I never looked at Anna and thought she looked like you.’ And he would have done. He’d spent three years looking for Rosa in strangers.

  ‘Dad used to say that when you looked at the two of us in photos we could be twins,’ Rosa said, sounding a little wistful. ‘It was only when you saw us in motion that it became clear we were completely different people.’

  Jude tilted his head to look at Rosa, taking in her slouched posture, one ankle resting on her knee. Her long, dark hair hung over one shoulder in some sort of complicated braid, and she was watching him from under long, dark lashes.

  She was trying to look relaxed, he realised. And maybe to other people she’d look that way. But Jude could almost feel the tension coming off her in waves—the same as last night.

  With another sigh, she sat upright again, leaning her elbows forward onto the patio table. ‘The thing is, Anna was always Dad’s favourite. She’s just like him, really—all academic and serious and organised and stuff. And me, I’m more like Mama. A free spirit.’

  ‘That’s why you don’t get on?’ Jude asked. ‘Too different?’

  ‘Partly.’ She bit her lip, bright white teeth sharp against the lushness of her mouth. Jude felt a jolt of lust rush through him as he remembered the last time he’d seen her do that. She’d been sitting astride him at the time...

  He swallowed. Hard. ‘What else?’ Focussing on the facts, that was what mattered now.

  He was going to learn why Rosa left him. He was going to understand, finally, the terrible string of events that led to Gareth’s death. And then he was going to turn around and leave her, and any influence she had on his life, behind. Move on himself, at last. That was the plan and he was sticking to it. Memories be damned.

  ‘My mother left us. I must have told you that?’ She looked at him, waited for him to nod a confirmation before she carried on. ‘Before then life was...balanced, I guess. Dad would spend all his time at the university, or in his study, only appearing to complain about the state of the house, or to try and install some sort of order into our lives. And Mama...she just concentrated on us all being happy. She didn’t care if we arrived at the beach without the picnic, or our swimming costumes. We’d have ice cream for lunch and swim in our knickers.’

  ‘They were the ultimate in opposites attracting, then?’ Jude guessed.

  ‘Pretty much.’ Rosa gave him a lopsided smile. ‘But it worked, you know? At least, until it didn’t.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Rosa sighed. ‘Can we walk while I tell this story? I talk better when I’m moving.’

  He remembered that, Jude realised. All those nights cramped on the tour bus, and it was always him whispering secrets and telling his soul. Rosa only started to talk when they escaped—when they ran down Southend pier at night together, or explored the streets of London, just the two of them. That was when he got to hear the inner workings of Rosa’s heart.

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked, getting to his feet.

  Rosa had already jumped up, and was halfway down the track. ‘To the sea, of course,’ she said, the words tossed back over her shoulder.

  Jude didn’t mention that he’d had enough of the sea on his crossing from the mainland, or that his bungalow was right next to the shore. Why wasn’t he surprised that Rosa—shiftless, always moving Rosa—was drawn to the ocean, with all its ebbs and flows and tides?

  At least the sea was predictable, to a point. Except for tsunamis and stuff.

  Even they seemed more predictable than Rosa.

  Jude kept quiet and waited for her to start talking again as they walked. He caught up easily, and walked beside her on the narrow path that wound across the island, down to the shore.

  Eventually, she spoke.

  ‘When Mama left...she didn’t exactly walk out. That’s not Mama’s style, really—a monumental decision and a fight and a definite end.’

  ‘So what did she do?’ Jude couldn’t quite quash the hope that somewhere in the story of why Sancia left Ernest Gray would be the explanation for her daughter’s hit-and-run attitude.

  ‘She came here, to La Isla Marina, for a holiday.’ Rosa’s smile was too tight, too fixed. ‘It was only supposed to be for a week or two. She left Anna and me with Dad.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Sixteen. Anna was eighteen. About to sit her A-levels.’

  ‘And you must have had your GCSEs,’ Jude pointed out.

  ‘Yeah. But they didn’t matter in the same way. Anna was always the academic one.’ Rosa shook her head. ‘Anyway. Two weeks turned into a month. Mama said that our grandparents needed her help—that running the resort was too much for them now they were getting older. And it wasn’t a lie—I mean, you saw this place when you arrived. But...somehow, she just never came home again.’

  Jude’s heart ached for this girl who’d lost the only family member who made her feel as if she belonged. ‘I can’t imagine how that must have hurt.’

  Rosa shrugged. ‘It wasn’t so much Mama leaving, I don’t think. I mean, I visited her out here every holiday and, to be honest, the weeks I spent here on the island were the happiest I remember. And she was so much happier here. It wasn’t until she left that I saw the truth—how unhappy, how stifled she’d been in Oxford, surrounded by people who needed academic proofs and publications to back up their every feeling.’

  ‘People like Anna and your dad.’

  ‘Exactly! Mama was never like that. She was all impulse and fun and living life in colour. She needed to be free.’

  ‘Like you.’ Because that was always how he’d remembered Rosa. Full colour. Even when he felt stuck in black-and-white noir.

  ‘Maybe.’ She gave him a sidelong look. ‘Anyway, with Mama gone, it was just Dad and Anna. And Dad retreated back into his office again, so Anna took over everything else. Running the household, organising Dad, and ordering me around.’

  Jude winced. ‘I’m guessing that didn’t go down so well with you.’

  ‘You guess right.’ Rosa sighed. ‘The worst thing is, now, with ten years of hindsight, I can’t even blame her completely. We were both trying to cope with a monumental change in our lives, and I guess we each did it differently. But then... I just felt so hemmed in and frustrated. Before then, we’d always got on well. Yes, we were different, but we were sisters and we were close. It was us against the parents, you know? But when Mama left...’

  ‘It was you against Anna.’

  ‘And it has been ever since.’ Rosa pushed a last, stray branch out of their path, then moved ahead of him, her long braid swaying in time to her hips. It was almost hypnotising. As if she could take over his mind just in the way she moved. Which, on past evidence, wasn’t entirely untrue. ‘We haven’t spoken in three years, now.’

  Then she stopped in front of him, so suddenly he almost crashed into her. Jude’s hands came up, ready to grab her hips for balance, but at the last moment he realised the insanity of that plan and held onto the nearest tree, instead.

  Rosa breathed in deeply, her shoulders moving with the motion. ‘I miss the sea, when I’m away. Other oceans don’t smell quite the same.’

  ‘It must be strange to be home, with your whole family here.’ Jude let Rosa step out onto the small beach in the cove they’d arrived at. It was secluded, idyllic and, under other circumstances, wildly romantic.

  ‘Very,’ Rosa admitted. ‘There are so many memories tied up in this place...’ She trailed off, then gave a low laugh.

  ‘What?’

 
‘Talking of memories, I just realised where we are,’ she said. ‘This is the beach where I lost my virginity.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ROSA REGRETTED IT the moment she said it. When would she learn to think before she spoke? When she was little, her father had always told her she needed to learn that lesson more than any other, before she grew up. Now she was twenty-six, she was starting to think that it might be a permanent condition.

  What else could explain her impulse to mention sex in front of the one man she was busy pretending she had never slept with?

  She glanced quickly at Jude’s face, looking away almost instantly to stare out over the sea. This was one of her favourite spots on the island—always had been. That was why she’d chosen it for what she’d imagined would be a memorable night—her first time.

  It was memorable, she supposed, if not entirely for the right reasons. It had basically been a disaster.

  Much like the conversation she felt coming.

  Jude came to stand beside her, close enough that his arm brushed against hers. His skin was too pale, Rosa thought, looking at it next to her own. As if he’d been locked away somewhere, forced to make music and never see sunlight.

  No wonder he’d felt he needed to run away to a sunny island in the middle of nowhere.

  ‘Talking about sex,’ Jude said, his voice soft, his gaze fixed on the horizon. ‘Are we ever going to?’

  ‘Have sex?’ Rosa’s voice came out squeaky, even as she realised that of course that wasn’t what he meant.

  ‘Talk about it. What happened between us.’ He turned his head to look at her, and his bright blue gaze seemed to see right through her clothes, her skin, deep into the heart of her.

  That was the problem with Jude. He always saw too deep.

  ‘Why you left,’ he added, and Rosa broke away from his gaze.

  ‘Do we have to?’ she asked, kicking at the sand with the front of her flip-flop.

  Jude’s cool fingers came under her chin, lifting her face so she had to look at him again. ‘Rosa... I can’t help but think that I’m here on this island for a reason. To find closure, on all kinds of things—starting with what happened between us, and everything that happened afterwards. And if you want us to work together on this wedding, I think we’re going to have to, you know...’

  ‘Have the talk.’ Rosa sighed. Why couldn’t she have fallen for one of the roadies, or even one of his bandmates like Jimmy, three years ago? Most men she met would run a thousand miles rather than talk about their feelings—which suited Rosa just fine, thanks.

  But no, she had to go and fall for the sensitive artist. The one person who wanted to understand her.

  Even if she didn’t want to be understood. Even if she didn’t understand herself, sometimes.

  ‘I’ll do you a deal,’ Jude said, his voice more normal suddenly—as if they weren’t talking about sex and love any more. ‘You tell me what happened that night—why you left, and why you never came back. You help me understand that, and we never have to talk about it again, okay? We can just be acquaintances—friends, even—spending time together on a holiday island. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Rosa said, slowly. It sounded good, she had to admit.

  The only problem was, for all her brave words, she couldn’t imagine ever being friends with Jude Alexander. Not after what they’d shared.

  But she was willing to try if he was.

  Taking a few steps forward towards the sea, she kicked off her flip-flops and sat on the edge of the sand, letting the waves lap over her toes.

  Leaning back on her hands, Rosa shut her eyes. The warm sun on her skin felt like home. Like love.

  ‘So,’ she asked, her eyes still closed. ‘What do you want to know?’

  She felt rather than saw Jude settle beside her, and wondered if he’d taken off his shoes, too. Maybe even rolled up those dark linen trousers. He might have a slender, rock-star frame, but his shoulders were broader than you’d think, and there were muscles on that frame, too, she remembered. Could almost see through his thin white shirt if she didn’t concentrate on not looking...

  She opened her eyes. Jude had his bare feet in the water, just like her. Rosa smiled. Good. He needed to relax more.

  ‘Was it something I did?’ he asked, staring out at the sea. ‘Or did you just not feel the same way I did?’

  Rosa swallowed, tasting regret in her mouth. ‘How did you feel?’

  ‘Like magic had walked into my life, the moment I met you,’ Jude said, simply. ‘Like I’d been waiting for you for centuries.’

  Guilt pierced through Rosa’s heart. She knew exactly what he meant, and of course she’d felt it, too. But how could she tell him that was the whole problem? That sort of perfection wasn’t meant for the mess that was her. She’d screw it up sooner or later, and sooner was better, in her experience.

  ‘And that’s why you’re the songwriter of the two of us,’ she joked, her heart breaking as she said it. ‘You can take a tour-bus fling and make it into poetry.’

  ‘Is that all we were?’ Jude shifted on the sand so he could look at her, almost lying down on his side as he spoke. ‘A tour-bus fling?’

  God, but it was so tempting to curl up there with him, safe in his arms. But Rosa knew she might not have the strength to leave them twice.

  ‘We knew each other for four weeks, Jude,’ she reminded him, gently.

  ‘I knew all I needed to in the first day.’

  She remembered. Remembered the way their eyes had met and she’d just known. Known that this man was going to be important.

  Rosa didn’t believe in love at first sight, but if she had...

  She shook her head. What difference did it make if it was love or not? That didn’t change everything else that it was.

  A burden. A chain. A prison.

  She’d seen what happened when a woman fell in love—so deeply in love that she gave up all her own dreams and moved to Oxford to live his life, instead of hers. She’d seen her mother live it, so she didn’t have to. Twenty years of frustration and bitterness, followed by her finally leaving for her island refuge.

  Rosa had known, even then, that she wasn’t willing to live that life. Wasn’t willing to compromise her own dreams one bit to live someone else’s.

  She needed to end this now. She needed to tell Jude enough to get him to stop asking—to give him his closure. Then they could both move on, and she’d be as free of him as he was of her.

  That was what she wanted. It was all she ever wanted: freedom.

  ‘I told you why at the time,’ she said. ‘I had to come home for my abuelo—for my grandfather’s—funeral.’

  ‘Except you didn’t tell me where home was,’ Jude reminded her. ‘Or that you weren’t coming back.’

  And there was the sticking point. She hadn’t really known that, at the time. It was only once she was out of Jude’s sphere, without his smile or his hands or his eyes influencing her decisions, that she realised the risk. When she knew that she had to stay away.

  That, and a terrifying two weeks when her body told her she might have made a monumental, life-changing mistake, that first, impulsive night she’d spent with him.

  As she’d waited, too scared to even buy a pregnancy test and know for sure, too distraught dealing with all the funeral stuff to even really think about it, one thing had been abundantly clear to her.

  If she went back to Jude when she left La Isla Marina, that would be it. If four weeks in each other’s company, in his bed, could have this kind of impact on her life, her heart, then going back would be a life sentence.

  She’d fall irrevocably in love with him, and never be able to break away. She’d live her mother’s life—following him around the world as he toured, always being his plus one, and never finding her own life, her own self. Her own happiness.

  Or wor
se, she’d be Anna—managing Jude’s personal life as Anna managed Dad’s, giving up her own opportunities and possibilities to him.

  She couldn’t do that. Couldn’t sacrifice all her dreams for his dream of stardom.

  And she’d had no doubt that Jude would be a star—anyone who’d heard The Swifts play had known that it was only a matter of time before they made it big. And Jude and Gareth, they’d made a pact, when they were barely teenagers, that one day they’d be famous together. They’d escape all the people who told them they’d never make anything of themselves, the families and schools who told them it was impossible. They were going to conquer the world together—and they’d already been so close, when Rosa met them. She knew it wouldn’t be long until the name Jude Alexander was on everyone’s lips.

  Would he even want her around, then? When beautiful women were throwing themselves at him, and every door was open to him?

  By the time her cycle had returned—delayed by stress, rather than her carelessness in bed with Jude, it seemed—the funeral was long over and Rosa had made a decision.

  She needed to find her own life, her own happiness. She wouldn’t make her mother’s mistakes all over again, falling for a man whose career would always come first, who would forget she existed for weeks at a time.

  And so she’d run as far away as she could—and ended up back here with him three years later, anyway.

  Looking at him, Rosa knew the risk was still there. If she let herself get too close to Jude, let herself hope, she could fall anyway, despite all the distance she’d put between them. And if she gave him a hint that she still felt that way...

  So she had to lie. Or at least, not tell the whole truth.

  ‘Honestly?’ she said, knowing she was being anything but honest. ‘I hadn’t decided when I left what I was going to do next. But then an opportunity came up for a new commission out in the Middle East, and it sounded interesting so...’ She shrugged. ‘You know me. I like to keep moving, finding new experiences, seeking out the next big thing.’

  Jude grabbed her hand suddenly, making her turn to face him, staring into her eyes as if he could see the truth behind them. Rosa held her nerve, ignoring her heart beating too fast in her chest, and let him look. Nothing she had said was technically untrue, after all.