Page 90 of Stuck in Paradise with You

She sighs.

‘It’s fine, Carrie. Our dirty secret won’t be disclosed by me.’

‘Thank you.’ She shifts her tone to something breezier as she points to her black t-shirt with the Charithonia staff logo on the breast pocket. ‘I’m technically staff now, and I don’t want to be seen as fraternizing with my guests.’

Unfortunately, I’m not feeling quite so breezy. Not when her joke has nailed the exact reason she doesn’t want anyone to think there’s something going on between us.

Because… ‘I get it. Work means that much to you.’

‘Luke.’

Her words land on my back as I make to leave the room and head outside to wait for her, before she can see DISAPPOINTMENT spelled out on my face. ‘It’s a shame Hettich doesn’t have the same work–life boundaries you do, huh?’

My own words cut me to say, because the implication is, it would have been better if she hadn’t come here at all.

There’s not even a cell in my body that believes that.

39

CARRIE

‘Morning, girlie,’ Alisha sings, surprisingly bubbly given the circumstances. She’s fluttering around the dining table in the main house with Sanza on her hip and using her free hand to help Monique lay out plates of pastries, cold cuts and cheese. ‘The uniform looks good on you.’

‘In which case, let me help you.’ I take two jugs of juice from a side table that’s loaded with food from the kitchen and set them into the middle of the table. ‘You really didn’t have to do this, especially today.’

‘Nonsense,’ Alisha says, waving her now free arm after setting down a tray she was carrying. ‘We all have to eat, and it’s not as if we won’t be working for it today. How did you sleep?’

Only now do I really glance around the room and amongst the faces we started the day with yesterday. It’s surreal the way everyone is working, sitting around the table drinking coffee or eating, normally, as if there wasn’t a hurricane outside. Luke and Joe are standing together in the wall of windows overlooking what, just a day ago, was a plush terrace.

As if he senses me watching them, Luke turns, the same stern look on his face he gave me before he left his pod. I turn mylips up gently, tentatively, and mouth,I’m sorry. He held me all night and didn’t try anything else. He was there for me when I needed him and, while the sentiment remains – I just can’t be fraternizing with my client’s CFO in front of my client’s CEO, who happens to own the Hettich empire – waking up in Luke’s arms this morning was idyllic.

I panicked, again. I was afraid,amafraid, and that’s not a position from which to put everything on the line. But I really don’t want us to be bitter. Worse, to not be speaking. I don’t want to see him hurt. I also don’t want to give away that something, though God knows what, is happening between us. Something I’m terrified of. Something reckless. And something I absolutely need to confront said CEO about.

So when Luke dips his head and gives me just the slightest smile in return, it dials down my inner mayhem by a notch.

I take a seat at the table between Jenny and Ella, who is plating up fruit and pancakes for Toby.

‘I see the lovebirds kissed and made up, then,’ Ella says, giving a flick of her head in the direction of Luke and Joe.

‘More like Luke has decided it wasn’t such a bad plan after all,’ Jenny says, smirking in my direction.

‘You knew?’ I ask, aghast.

‘Most of us knew, honey,’ Ella says. ‘Henry is usually shy and he was all over you, playing the flirting game because Joe told him to, until Joe saw how serious his game had become and stepped Henry down.’

I literally gasp. ‘That’s— This is, like, some kind of violation of some kind of rights I have, surely? And Henry was basically employed to flirt with me? That’s… mortifying. And wrong.Sowrong. And… can I really only get a hot guy to flirt with me if they’re beingpaidto do it?’

Jenny laughs. ‘I don’t think Henry needed much convincing, Carrie, believe me. And if all of this had gone badly, I thinkthere’d have been a lawsuit or three you could have brought, but, alas, all’s well that ends well, right?’

I feel my eyebrows shoot so high, they might have temporarily abdicated my face. ‘For the record, nothing has ended well and, client or not, Joe has some major explaining to do.’

Jenny and Ella exchange a look that says something akin toyikes.

I need pastries. Comfort pastries. For so,somany reasons today. There’s one of my absolute favorites, a pain au raisin, left on the tray that has my name written all over?—

An arm reaches across me and grabs my beloved pastry. I know that arm, I know the cologne in the air around me, and sure enough, when I spin around in my seat, I see Luke looking smug-as-hell because heknowspains aux raisins are my favorite. Given I had one nearly every day we shared an office together for more than a year, I think the evidence is unequivocal.

‘You wouldn’t,’ I say, scowling as he pauses, his lips almost touching my pastry.

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