Since when had he had a problem sleeping on his own? Indeed, that was something he had always actively encouraged. It was rare for any woman to occupy his bed overnight, and certainly never for nights on end, as though some kind of habit was being nurtured.
He had been interested to see how breakfast together would go, following what he still considered to be an overly dramatic and premature ending to what they had going on. He’d imagined that he might have to deal with her embarrassment.
Understandable.
She lacked his considerable experience in these matters. In fact, when he thought about her, which he had done for most of the night, it was to conclude that she was strangely innocent and touchingly disingenuous, despite the outward image of a cool, controlled and utterly unflappable professional.
It tickled him pink to think that he was the one-in-a-million guy who had seen right into that very private part of her.
So he had been surprised and a little disgruntled, several hours earlier, when he had sat down to breakfast with a woman who was once again metaphorically dressed in her London work uniform.
Every time he had tried to steer the conversation in a more personal direction, she had blanked over and looked at him with polite, ever so amused grey eyes and then promptly returned the conversation right back to work. Deals that were brewing on the side lines... An email from a company he had casually approached six months previously that was now interested in doing business with him... The sudden absence of one of the CEOs whose mother had been rushed to hospital following a car accident...
She had been thoroughly andadmirablyin control, andnaturallyhe had been immensely grateful to be spared the awkwardness of having to get things back on track in preparation for a resumption of their normal working relationship.
He had reminded himself of the continuing nightmare of the ex who couldn’t go away. Another lingering ex was the last thing he needed.
Still... Was there any reason for her politely but firmly to decline his suggestion that he accompany her to the airport?
‘Good Lord! That’s very sweet of you but of course I don’t want you coming with me to the airport!’ She had knocked back his offer with incredulous laughter and then followed up by wryly informing him that she was perfectly capable of checking in at an airport, even if ithadbeen ages since she’d had a chance to go abroad before this.
He had gritted his teeth and smiled when she had earnestly thanked him then for the opportunity to visit such a wonderful island. And when he had tilted his head to the side and asked her whether that was all she wanted to thank him for, she hadn’t been in the slightest bit coy.
‘Oh, the sex was lovely,’ she had said warmly, but her eyes had glazed over, and it had been perfectly clear that thelovely sexwas something she was already in the process of putting behind her.
Who was he to complain? She’d made it easy for him. She had pulled back from dwelling on the fact that shedidn’t do casual, saving him the necessity of gently reminding her thatemotionalrelationships were a beast he steered clear of.
He drained his glass. It was a little after six and he would spend the remainder of the evening working. He’d signed off on the deal he had come to finalise, and in the blink of an eye he would be boarding a plane for Hawaii, no doubt in the mood for some distraction.
Dwellingwas a much-overrated pastime. There would be no time todwellwhen he was working by day and playing by night. It was a tried and tested formula that had always stood him in good stead. It had worked when his parents had died, and it had worked in the aftermath of his juvenile crush on a woman who had only been good for warming his bed. It would damn well work now.
He stood up, stretched and absently appreciated the rapidly sinking ball of fire disappearing over the horizon. Give it three days and he would probably be hard pressed to remember just how intense the past few days on this island had been...
Ellie gazed at her mobile phone, which had not stopped ringing for the past eight hours.
The trip back had been uneventful enough, and she had almost managed to convince herself that putting distance between them would work wonders when it came to clearing her head.
She’d fallen hook, line and sinker for her boss, and so of course it was going to be a towering mountain to climb for that brief liaison to be erased from her memory bank, but erased it would be. She had no choice in the matter, at least not until she managed to find another job that paid as well.
She had managed to get through the nightmare of their last breakfast together in one piece. Her jaw had ached from the discomfort of the phoney smile she had plastered to her face, but she hadgot through it,and that was the main thing.
It had been a pointer that overcoming this suffocating misery was achievable.
She landed at Gatwick Airport and took a taxi back to her flat. The idea of trudging on public transport seemed way too depressing and arduous.
She knew that one of the things she would have to become accustomed to was going to be the drudgery of normal life.
She’d always taken great pride in being the sort of person who wasn’t easily impressed by the trappings of wealth. She’d worked with James Stowe and seen first-hand the amount of money he lavished on the women he dated, because she often found the receipts for ludicrously expensive items kicking around on his desk, and had privately smirked at the superficiality of those women who were actually impressed by all that sort of stuff.
And yet, she now found herself swelling their numbers, seduced by the pleasure of all those comforts that went hand in hand with great wealth. She had gazed at the perfect splendour of a pristine beach, dipping into a picnic prepared by a top chef, and she had felt so blissfully happy.
Did that make her superficial? No. Worse than that, she had to acknowledge that she would have felt just as blissfully happy had they been tucking into chicken and chips eaten out of plastic baskets, because James had been the reason for her happiness.
Nevertheless, she would have to come right back down to earth, and fast. And for the first twenty-four hours, she actually believed that that was on the cards. She unpacked, stuffing her newly acquired clothes to the back of her wardrobe, where she anticipated them spending a few years hibernating before she gave them to a charity shop. She could never entertain the notion of wearing all those brightly coloured items of clothing again, not when they would always remind her of a time that had come and gone in the blink of an eye.
Then she had an early night and tried to plan her return to work the following Monday without a broken heart stamped all over her face. The last thing she felt she could deal with was sheepish, embarrassed, inquisitive looks from concerned colleagues.
Fate had other ideas when it came to giving her a break, and now here she was...
