Rekindled by Barbara Delinsky

experienced that night. I’d like to hear what you did.”
    “Oh, Ross.” She sighed wearily. “I don’t want to go into this.” She caught the graceful takeoff of a tern from the salt-soaked beach. “It’s too beautiful here to rehash the past.”
    “The past had its moments of beauty, too.”
    Her head snapped back, but the warmth of his gaze cut off the retort that might have come. Suddenly it seemed pointless to resist his request. It was just a matter of choosing the right words. “The past did have its moments. And, yes, they were beautiful.” There was a soft quality in her voice as she returned to that night.
    Ross grasped the stone on either side of him. “Had you planned it to happen? When you came toward me from across that room, had you hoped that we’d end up in bed?”
    “Beforehand?” She looked up in surprise. “No. I’d never done anything like that before. Oh, we dated plenty and went to our share of parties. But we had never, that is, neither of us had, ah, I mean, I had never..
    .”
     
    “I know.” He rescued her from her floundering, daring to touch her cheek with the back of his fingers. Instinctively she tipped her face toward his touch, then caught herself and righted her head.
    “Were you sorry you did it?” His voice was low, urgent.
    “No … Yes … I don’t know,” she finally ended in a whisper, tugging at the towel draped about her neck. “I can’t give you a simple yes or no. I’ve never regretted the act itself It was beautiful.”
    “Then what is it about me that makes you so uncomfortable?”
    The ensuing silence was rich with the sounds of the shore-the lapping of the waves, the cry of the gulls, the rustle of the breeze in the drying leaves of the wild honeysuckle. Each had the potential to soothe, yet Chloe remained tense.
    “Seeing you,” she finally confessed, “brings back memories of a holiday weekend that was tragic for me.”
    “Your sister’s death.”
    Her eyes shot to his. “You knew?” And hadn’t tried to contact her?
    The dark sheen of his hair captured the golden rays of the slow-setting sun. “Yes, I knew, but not until long after I’d returned to Africa. I didn’t feel then that it was my place to contact you.”
    “Why not?” She didn’t understand that detachment. He was certainly persistent enough now.
    “In the first place,” he began, “it was pitiful, how long after the fact I learned of it. Sammy wrote me the news in a letter the following spring.”
    He seemed to hesitate. More quietly, he said, “It was only then that I’d had the guts to ask him about you.”
    “But why?” she cried.
    “Because you weren’t the only one to have afterthoughts of that night!
    From what I could see I had seduced the virgin daughter of my host’s best friend. I was twenty-seven. You were eighteen. I should have known better. But the worst of it was that I was glad I hadn’t.” His voice gentled. “The memory of that night helped me through many a lonely night afterward.”
    “Oh, Ross,” Chloe whispered, feeling a great longing inside. “I wish it hadn’t. It’s too late to go back.”
    “I don’t want to go back. I want to go ahead. That’s why I’m here.”
    Anguished, she looked down. “It’s no good. I can’t.”
    “Can’t or won’t? We’ve been through this before. Well,” he drew in a breath, “believe this. I may have been immature eleven years ago, running away from something that frightened me, but I won’t make the same mistake twice. It was fate that brought us together up at Rye Beach, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you get away. I’ve made it my business to find out every possible thing I could about you during the past two weeks. And I know what happened to Crystal.”
    His words hung in the air. Her eyes begged him to say no more. She bolstered the plea with her low whisper. “Then you can understand why I can’t bear to think back on that time.”
    “It was an accident, Chloe! It