Page 12 of Stuck in Paradise with You

Don’t tell your mom.

Pleasetell meMomisn’t here.

I’m thrown so completely, heart palpitating-ly, sweat glands leaking-ly, that I hardly register the other three children, all dressed up, who come to join us for dinner. Nor the arrival of Ella, Joe’s wife, or the two crew who picked me up from Tortola earlier and who will be taking us sailing apparently on Wednesday.

The only thing I do manage to process is that I need to come up with some kind of lie to get out of being trapped on a boat in the middle of the ocean with Luke and hisfamily.

I cackle at the me of a few hours ago who thought this nightmare couldn’t get any worse. It just got a hell of a lot worse.

Surely, there’s a point in this terrifying dream that’s equivalent to me tripping over a curb or falling from a cliff and I get to wake up with a start and realize this was all in my imagination.

I should be so lucky.

I’m somehow forced to sit opposite Luke at the long table. On one side of him is Noah and on the other, Alisha.

Alisha. Alisha.The pair of them flirt and touch openly, clearly a couple. But neither one of them is wearing a wedding ring – not that I’ve been focusing too much on finding this out – and I can’t remember Luke’s wife’s name but I don’t think it was Alisha.

I was anA, though. Alisha. Alicia. Alice. Anna.

Anya!I’m sure it was Anya.

So Noah is Luke’s son but Alisha isn’t his wife. Or, at least, the estranged wife I thought Luke had separated from but was actually just taking a break from. A break he used to screw me, make me fall disastrously head-over-heels for him, then run away from me to another state, where his wife was waiting to take him back.Could Noah even be Luke and Alisha’s son?

If so, Luke dumped me to go back to his wife, then traded her in for another model too. And almost immediately, if mycalculations are correct. Who knows, maybe I wasn’t his only play toy?

Sounds like Luke.

Now who’s sleeping their way to the top?

After seven years of unravelling that narrative about me in the office because of him, I can’t believe I’m seeing Luke do it now.

Why am I here?

Why didn’t Luke cancel when he knew Eric was sick? Why did he bring me here to flaunt his family in front of me?

To show me what I’ve missed out on?

Except I didn’t give it up by choice.

I never had any say in how things ended between us.

I look out to sea, feigning admiring the view through blurred vision, until the pressure behind my eyes subsides and I start to think more clearly.

It’s a few days; I just have to get through it.

Besides Callum and our pug, my career is my life. I won’t let Luke kibosh it. Not again.

‘Have you seen the news about the storm, Joe?’

The question comes from Jenny, the woman who zipped me over here by speed boat and who’s sitting to my far left. She’s throwing the question to the opposite end of the table, my far right, where Hettich is sitting, being served first a plate of food fresh off the grill.

I’m grateful for the diversions of both the heavenly aromas of butter and garlic and Jenny’s question.

‘If you believe the news, Jenny, I’ll be the first man to land on Venus,’ Hettich replies.

‘Mars, honey,’ Ella says, strapping their youngest child – the minion – whose highchair is between me and Ella, into a full cloak-style bib and handing her a corn on the cob. ‘Women are from Venus.’

Miraculously, I laugh along with the rest of the table.

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