POSSESSED BY THE FORCE OF NATURE
1
Luke was relieved that the woman who waved to him as he pulled up on the driveway would not know just what an effect she still had upon him. He was tired after a long drive over busy roads congested with summer holiday traffic, but the sight of the estuary through the trees that lined the route had begun to lift his spirits. And now the sight of Harriet Thompson was completing the process of easing him into the mood for a few days' break and with the hope that the fine weather would last for a while longer.
"My folks told me that I might meet you!" he called out, his voice light. Luke stretched even as he gazed at her. Harriet was seen to put a box into her car. "Is your packing up going as you hoped it would?"
She waited to answer him until Luke closed the space between them. "Yes, I guess so. It's difficult after so many years of coming here for family holidays."
There was a vibrancy about her, now, that he remembered before loss took its toll upon her. An unbuttoned beach dress, floaty and colourful, was worn over a green T-shirt and denim shorts, leather wristbands and beaded bracelets adorning her wrists, a colourful bandana tying back her blonde hair and so much a reminder of the woman he had so often seen when chance brought them all together. In the summer he would often call on his parents as they stayed in the beach house that was a neighbour of the Thompsons.
Now, and for the next two days, he alone would be Hariet's neighbour and he hoped that their paths might cross, or he would spend some time with her and if she agreed to that. She might do so after what she had gone through and after the decision that she had reached to move out and sell the house.
They always got along.
" I do hope that the weather holds out for you."
"So do I, and while it does I intend to go windsurfing. You could come along and watch, take a break from the packing." He asked it on impulse yet knowing that a guy of thirty coming onto her would, perhaps, be a step too far.
"Oh!" she laughed in surprise and lifted away her sunglasses to meet his look upon her. "I need notice of that!"
"It's just a thought," Luke said as he went back to his car and opened the boot, intent on taking out what he needed. "I brought my wet suit and won't miss the chance to get out there. It's been a while since I did that."
"So, I see!"
"And it's really happening," he remarked, standing by the open boot lid but gazing at her. "The place won't feel the same whenever I travel over here."
Harriet simply nodded as her way of acknowledging what he had told her so directly. Where did that thought in him come from, she wondered, and yet she felt flattered that he should even suggest it.
"I'll have to adjust to new ways too, Luke."
She had a somewhat fleshy oval face, her cheeks fuller, but her smile was bright and captivating, Harriet's lips parting and delicate creases seen to each side of her mouth. A smear of sunblock had been applied and matched the glow on her skin, already deeply tanned after the best of the weather had so obviously been made use of.
"I'll miss being here," she now confessed as they again stood side by side and gazed out over the estuary, the sun glittering off the water and windsurfers making the most of the breeze. "I have my memories of being here and that is enough."
"It's a shame that the others didn't want to take it on so that you could visit and yet not have the worry of owning the place."
She smiled and met Luke's gaze upon her and on hearing his considerate way of saying it. "I tried but couldn't persuade them. Now I'm selling up and life will go on, only differently."
Days had already been spent boxing up the personal effects that mattered the most and could be used in her home close to Oxford. The purchasers of the house had made an acceptable bid for all the furniture. The journey had never troubled her or Mark, her late husband, as many weeks at a stretch had been spent in the cottage and they had perfected the timing of their journeys, back and forth, to minimize the aggravation of being stuck in traffic.
"Have you got something better to do that would keep you from coming down to the beach?" he asked, his voice holding just a hint of a challenge in its changed tone.
"No, I haven't got something 'better to do' as you put it. I just wonder how it will look for me to be seen with you...what people will get to thinking."
"Thinking and reality are two quite different things, Harriet. Just come down to the beach and enjoy the weather. It's been a long day for me, so far, so I just want to get the journey out of my system." It was clear to her that he had made his mind up to go to the beach. Luke smiled before he grabbed his gear out of his car and made for the house. "Sorry, but I have to get on or I'll miss the best of the breeze."
"Let me think about it!" she called after him, "what you've just asked me!"
All she got was his answering wave before Luke was out of her sight.
2
Harriet knew that she was in trouble the moment that she saw Luke strip off his shirt and cargo shorts. She now gazed at his black, 'shorty', wet suit, the arms in cobalt blue and in stark contrast to the rest of it. The suit shaped him like a second skin, the collar zipped tight against his throat, the arms, and cropped legs, as well as the body, leaving nothing for her to imagine of what was covered up.
He was tall and athletic, square-shouldered and youthful, with a lean and toned torso, so not the kind of young man who would have any interest in her, let alone to be possessed by a sexual attraction to a woman of her age. But Luke defied the stereotype, and she felt both surprised and uncommonly flattered that he should have 'given her the eye' as she called out to him and as Luke prepared to leave the house.
"You've persuaded me," she had said, her admission having the effect of lightening the mood between them.
They had chattered while he drove the few miles to a safe beach, one that was not affected by the rip currents of the estuary that they looked over from their holiday homes.
"I hope you won't mind looking after these for me?" he asked as his car was locked and he gave her a sports wallet and two sets of keys, for his house and the car.
"No, of course not," she answered, a moment's brush of his fingers on her hand as she took them from him all that passed between them. "You'll be careful, won't you?"
He smiled in response to her voicing concern. "Sure. I've done it many times before and there are no sharks in the water here."
"Don't say that!" she said and gripped his arm, feeling the strength in him as she did that. "I'll only get to worrying about that...about what else is out there."
Luke nodded but said nothing in reply to that. "I'll be about half an hour, promise."
"I'm not going anywhere."
Harriet put on her white-framed sunglasses and stepped away from him. She watched as Luke chose a sailboard with a multi-coloured sail. She wouldn't miss him on that, she supposed, as being his reason for choosing it.
She was soon wrapped up in what he was seen to be doing, riding the waves and following the course of one as it rushed towards the shore, cresting it before dipping down and riding it in perfect balance.
The effect of being with him, like this and so unexpectedly, had taken hold of her as she strolled through the lapping surf and became lost in the moment. The young man who had re-entered her life, so unexpectedly, had taken quite a different hold on her, both emotionally and, to her dismay, physically.
He had flirted with her and she found herself thinking that she wanted to get lost in the moment, or every moment that she could have with him. How reckless and impulsive, but she was soon to leave this place, and their bond, tenuous at best, would fall away. She had already decided not to let that happen until after she had taken pleasure from every shared moment, improbable as it had all seemed only an hour or so ago.
She stepped over the wet sand until a warm and drier surface was felt under her feet. Taking off her floaty blouse she stripped off her T-shirt and put on the blouse once more, knotting its tails at her tummy, the tanned skin of her cleavage and breasts, shaped by her bikini, open to anyone's gaze if they passed by.
But there was only one pair of eyes that she now wanted upon her and they were those of the young man seen boarding so expertly not so far from where she sat.
He even waved to her.
"There's time for this, for everything he has made me feel," she murmured, lifting away her sunglasses and closing her eyes as she let her imagination run wild. "It's been so long since I was made to feel this way."
Who was to know, or care, about what she might do?
3
"Phew!" Luke laughed as he strode across the sand to join her. "I'm not so rusty at doing that as I thought I'd be."
Harriet watched him loosen the zip at his throat, then slick back his brown hair from a lean face. What a strong and good-looking young man he was, and she still felt nervous at having agreed to be in his company. But Luke's confident ways both surprised her and helped to put her at ease, so she would let him seduce her.
"You did very well, I'm impressed," she smiled, those who like her had watched him, and others, surfing and zigzagging over the tumbling waves and marvelling at his antics more than those out on the water with him. "Don't get cold..."
