Page 28 of Boss With Benefits

‘Lately, it’s borne the brunt of my extreme sexual frustration. I must have rowed the length of the Mississippi since I met you. The morning after we first kissed, I completed ten thousand metres in thirty-nine minutes and twenty-four seconds. It was a personal best.’

Thirty-nine minutes and twenty-four seconds of bunching muscles and bronzed glistening skin? she thought, gritting her teeth as she accidentally loosened her grip on the oar and down went the blade. That, she’d liked to have seen.

‘You just caught a crab. You won’t make any progress if you don’t concentrate.’

‘Then you should put on a shirt.’

He just grinned, dazzlingly, at which point she promptly fell in. While she dashed water from her eyes, he paddled over. In revenge, she wobbled his scull until he toppled in too, a move she paid for with a long, hot kiss that had them dragging the boats up onto the sand, then rushing into the boathouse and tumbling onto a pile of tarpaulin.

Happily, conversation was no longer a one-way street, in either direction. There seemed to be nothing he didn’t want to share with her. It was as if he’d kept everything bottled up for years, and now that he’d popped the cork he had no intention of sticking it back in. He told her more about his ancestry and his sister, with whom he was hoping for a better relationship. He detailed all the challenges he’d faced after taking over from hisfather, which sounded as though they’d been equally as tough careerwise as anything she’d undergone.

Because it was clearly a difficult subject for him, she didn’t press him on his mother’s death and the role he perceived he had in it, at least not initially. However, she became increasingly troubled not only by the thought that he blamed himself but also by the fact that he believed reacquiring Montague’s would absolve him of his guilt.

She wasn’t quite sure why she felt this way. She realised it wasn’t up to her to persuade him to see the situation in any way other than his, yet she was filled with the urge to try, because for some reason it just didn’t feel right. But how could she broach the subject? It wasn’t something she could just drop into conversation, and it was the one topic he hadn’t brought it up again.

The opportunity to do so arose the evening after the morning they’d spent rowing, when Adam took her by motorboat to a long curving beach on the northwest side of the island.

The sun had recently set and the darkening sky was streaked with orange, pink and red. As he switched off the engine and they glided through the shallows and onto the sand, she could see that a table had been set up beneath the spreading branches of what he had informed her as he’d driven her around the island a couple of days ago was a fofoti tree. It was draped with a white cloth, and on it were laid two places facing out to sea, complete with what she later discovered to be bone china crockery, polished silver cutlery and sparkling crystal glassware.

All around flickered dozens of candles and fairy lights wound through the branches above. To one side was a firepit in which bright flames danced. Two rows of tiki torches lined a path from the landing point to the table, and as he alighted to pull the boat farther up the shore, she thought that she’d never seen anythinglike it before. It was the sort of scene that sold holidays. It was the definition of paradise.

It was also extremely romantic, which meant she ought to be clambering back onboard and demanding he speed her back to the villa as fast as he possibly could, because what exactly was going on here? She wasn’t remotely interested in romance. She’d always avoided it like the plague because raised hopes and false expectations would do no one any good.

But instead, her heart was racing, her throat was tight and she was thinking that, whatever the reason for this intimate dinner à deux, would it really be such a bad idea to enjoy it? She’d never been wined and dined by a gorgeous man who repeatedly rocked her world. She’d never been wined and dined at all. And how many hopes and false expectations could be raised in a paltry couple of hours when neither of them wanted anything more? None. So when Adam raised his arms to lift her off the boat, she willingly went into them.

‘This must have taken a lot of effort to organise,’ she said, her heart beating a little faster than normal once they’d walked between the torches and sat down at the table.

He reached into a cool box and extracted the ingredients for two piña coladas. ‘Not particularly,’ he said, mixing the drinks with impressive skill. ‘We’ve exhausted the sights here, and I thought that since I couldn’t take you to Aruba for fear of discovery, I’d transport Aruba to you.’

Determined to keep a lid on the wild tangle of emotions swirling through her, Ella swallowed hard and sought to keep things light. ‘Is this how you seduce all the women you bring here? Because you needn’t have bothered, you know. That horse has bolted.’

‘I’ve never brought anyone here.’

She shot him a smile. ‘Not even one of your many,manydates?’

He raised one dark eyebrow in her direction and handed her a glass. ‘You read the article.’

‘Along with half the female population of the country, it would seem.’ She took a sip of her drink through the straw, the delicious flavours of rum, pineapple and coconut exploding on her tongue. ‘I can see why you were concerned about the effect of all that gossip on your reputation and why you were so keen to stop it.’

‘I couldn’t take the risk of it upsetting the holders of the Helberg shares that I’ll still need to acquire after taking Zane’s and Cade’s on Labor Day.’

This was the opening she’d been waiting for, she realised with a skip of her pulse. The chance to offer him a different version of events, perhaps. ‘I know you’re convinced that you’ll win it,’ she said, ‘but what if reclaiming Montague’s doesn’t give you the absolution you’re after?’

‘It will,’ he said, without even a second’s hesitation. ‘It has to. I’ve lived with the guilt of being responsible for my mother’s suicide for fourteen years. It’s crushing. It’s stopping me from pursuing a relationship with Charley. This is my one shot at redemption. I’ll never get another.’

‘I’m not sure you even need it.’

Momentarily stunned into speechlessness, Adam set down his drink and stared at her as if she’d sprouted horns. ‘Of course I need it. You even know why.’

‘I think you’re wrong,’ she said, more certain of it than ever. ‘I don’t think you’re responsible for anything at all. Obviously, no one knows the workings of your mother’s mind at the time, but you said yourself that she was fragile. If she went to Northumberland straight after having Charley and left her behind in London, it’s possible she may even have had postnatal depression.’

He sat back, his expression unreadable. ‘What makes you the expert?’

Ella ignored the note of warning that tinged his voice because she was on a roll. ‘Clearly, I’m not,’ she said, wishing he’d give her a chance at least. ‘Especially when it comes to maternal instincts. But that doesn’t sound like normal behaviour. It sounds as though her marriage made her miserable right from the start. Do you know if she’d tried it before?’

‘No.’

‘So she might have done. She might also have called a dozen people before you who didn’t pick up either. And even if you had saved her that time, she might have succeeded another. If what happened to her is anyone’s fault, it’s your father’s. I really don’t believe it’s yours.’

---