Passionate Choice

Chapter 3.1

   There was another silence and again neither of them moved. Then Keith said, slowly and softly with just a suspicion of mockery in his voice, "So that's the way of it. You, who didn't care much for commitment, as I remember, are going to take the big step and marry the professor for better or worse. How come?"

   "What do you mean, how come?" she demanded, deciding she had had enough of standing in front of him, her face fully illuminated by the moonlight while his was in the shadows. He could see any expression that flitted across her features while she could see nothing clearly of his. Turning, she began to walk back along the beach and he fell into step beside her.

   "I mean, why? Why are you going to marry him? Had he compromised you? Are you going to have his child?" The mockery was still there in his voice, cruelly taunting. Yet the Keith she had known had never been like this, at least not with her. He had changed after all.

   "No. Of course I'm not going to have his baby," she retorted. "We haven't..." she broke off realizing that she had been about to confuse him as if he and she were close friends who told each other everything. She had been going to tell him that she and Ben were not physically intimate.

   "Ah, so you're not lovers yet," he jeered. "That figures. He doesn't look as if he had much fire in his belly."

   "How can you say that?" She turned on him angrily. "You hardly know him."

   "True," he agreed equably. "I'm just judging him on what I've seen of him so far. So you haven't told him about our adventure together?"

   "No, I haven't."

   "Going to?"

   "No."

   "Deliberately deceiving him?"

   "I don't think so. If I told him about it, he wouldn't understand. He would be upset and hurt so its best that he doesn't know. What is past is past and is best forgotten, but I have to ask you not to tell him anything about it either. Please, Keith, you won't say anything to him about you and me having met before, Will you? Please."

   They stopped walking and were facing each other again.

   "What's my silence on the subject worth to you?" he challenged her, bending towards her so that he could look into her moonlit eyes. "What bribe do you have to offer to keep me quiet?"

   "You used not to be so unkind," she accused in a low voice, shaken by his cynicism.

   "Maybe I learned how to be from you," he retorted.

   "Wh...what bribe do you suggest I should offer?" she muttered.

   "Oh, I was thinking along the lines of you and I having a couple of nights together, on board the dive-ship. I could easily get rid of Gary and Max, and we could cruise to some other islands." His voice trailed off into silence—suggestively.

   Anger such as she had never known before flared up in Selena and before she knew what she was doing, she had raised her hand and slapped his face. "How dare you?" she gasped. "I would never think of...of stopping so low to buy your silence. Just because I...I once lived with you and slept with you, doesn't give you the right to assume that I'm the sort of woman who...who would use her body as a bribe. Never would I do that. Never."

   Turning on her heel, she set off along the beach walking fast and furiously, her heart beating madly, her face flushed with anger while tears brimmed in her eyes; tears, because Keith, whom she had once lived with all her heart and soul, could have such a low opinion of her.