My voice was filled with so much emotion, I knew he wouldn’t leave me alone, but I wished he would. Perhaps that was what I should have wished for when we burned the sparklers: to free myself of the stupid feelings I had for a man I couldn’t have.
‘Are you all right?’ Sam asked, eventually catching up with me and sounding out of breath. In my haste to get away from him I’d forgotten that he found walking on the sand so difficult. ‘My singing wasn’t that bad, was it?’
He was trying to coax a smile, but he had no chance of achieving that.
‘No,’ I said, ‘of course not.’
I shook my head and took another step. There’d been music the night I went out with Joe, but it had been loud, brash, raucous and fun. What Sam had just delivered was completely different. Stirring, sensitive, and expressive, he had moved me in a way I hadn’t been touched in a very long time. Probably forever. It had felt like far too intimate a moment to share with someone who was supposed to be just a friend, and a friend who was attached to another friend at that. I couldn’t let him see the impact his impromptu performance had had on me.
‘It was wonderful,’ I sniffed, pulling my sleeves down over my hands and staring out to sea.
I really didn’t want to carry on crying, but I just couldn’t seem to stop now that I’d started.
‘I just needed a minute to myself,’ I sobbed, my breath catching in my throat as I tried not to sound as if my heart was breaking and roughly brushed the relentless tears away with my cuffs.
‘Hey,’ said Sam, quickly closing the gap between us again as my sobs grew louder and before I had a chance to move away, ‘come here.’
He wrapped his arms around me and instinctively I clung to him. His embrace felt warm, safe and strong and I let myself melt into it even though I knew that I shouldn’t, even though I knew that it was wrong, even though it felt like I was betraying Hope. In spite of my guilt-ridden awareness of each and every one of those things, I also knew that there was no magnet in the world strong enough to pull me out of his arms. It was where I needed to be. Exactly where I had wanted to be from the moment I had caught sight of him for the very first time.
He pulled away a little so he could wipe away my tears with his thumb before gently tucking my hair behind my ears. I couldn’t be sure if it was the feel of his fingers on my skin or the act of kindness itself, but something stirred within me. As he bent his head and lowered his lips to mine there was an electrifying certainty coursing through my system that I was about to feel something familiar, even though it was years and years since I had first felt it, and only then for a minute or two.
The touch of him and the taste of him was exactly as I remembered it. Sam had been the boy at the beach hut who had delivered my first unforgettable and never since matched kiss, not Joe. Sam had made my legs shake then and he was doing it again, only now with double the intensity. So, I hadn’t embellished this memory or woven it into an improbable fantasy, I had simply kissed the wrong man before and that was what made me think that I had, but now I had found the right one.
Lost in the moment, soft, slow, sweet and tender kisses rained down, before gathering in passion and purpose. This latest development was a brand-new addition and goodness only knows what we would have ended up doing were we not on the beach, at the party, just a stone’s throw from where other people were sitting, including Hope . . .
I was the one who stopped, and quite suddenly once the thought of Hope spotting us had popped into my head. I looked over to the group but no one was taking any notice of us and thankfully I couldn’t see my friend among them.
‘Tess,’ Sam murmured seductively, his voice thick as he dipped his head to kiss me again.
As much as my body yearned to reciprocate, as tempted as I was, I couldn’t let the magical moment carry