Page 19 of Stuck in Paradise with You

Henry gestures along the pebbled walkway in the direction of the main house. ‘There’s a purpose-built office and meeting rooms behind the main house, next to the gym. Have you seen the gym yet? It’s fully stocked.’

I’m certain he’s familiar with the gym. He isn’t muscly in that way a slightly older man can be but he’s toned, for sure.

‘No. Though I did have a short sea swim this morning.’

‘The sea is sublime on a day like today.’Sublime?Not that he isn’t right; it’s just an odd choice of word. Then again, it suits hisBritish accent. A bit Jude Law trying to impress on a first date.Funny.

‘It was lovely.’ Or it could have been, if the entire experience hadn’t been ruined by Luke’s presence. If my mind hadn’t been boiling over with raging fury like a reluctantly pressure-cooked vegetable in a soup.

‘The calm before the storm,’ he says, raising one eyebrow.

For a moment, I think,What have you heard?Then I remember the conversation last night over dinner, about anactualstorm.

‘Do you think so? Should I be worried?’

He leans his head to one side. ‘Yes. No.’

We walk past what looks like a small concrete utilities hut or pump house or similar with metal slatted doors, then reach a glass-walled building with a garden as a roof that makes the structure look like a little glass pop-up in an otherwise undisturbed nature conservation.

Henry holds open the front door for me to step inside and we walk along a tiled corridor, my nude heels ticking against the surface like a clock, taunting me with a countdown to a meeting I really don’t want to go to.Tick tock, tick tock.

‘I studied meteorology at university,’ Henry tells me. ‘I’m taking a break here, of sorts, earning some money to pay off my student debts and applying for weather jobs.’

We pass two fully kitted out office spaces, either side of the corridor, each with a desk three times the size of mine back in New York. On top of each of them are two large white computer screens and behind them, swanky cream leather chairs.

‘But I don’t need a post-grad to tell you that this is going to be a disastrous hurricane. It’s all over the news now. Two of the three storms we were talking about at dinner last night have merged and it’s a near mathematical certainty that the third will join.’

My feet have stopped moving. This is bad.

‘Don’t worry, though, we’ll be safe, even if Isabel hits. Joe had this place built to withstand a cat five hurricane.’

Still not feeling terribly warm and fuzzy here.

‘Under the main house, there’s a bunker made of reinforced steel and concrete. It’s the Hettich panic room. We’ll ride her out down there.’ He speaks with those curved lips and shiny white teeth showing again, like we’re talking about a new rollercoaster at Disney Land.

Is he being flippant?‘This sounds horrific, Henry.’

‘Cool, too, though, right? I mean, it’ll be quite a story, seeing and surviving a cat five.’

While I’m proverbially scooping up my jaw from the floor, Henry continues forward, until he stops at another glass door, knocks twice and holds it open for me. ‘It’s this one,’ he says, as if our life-threatening weather conversation didn’t just happen.

‘Ah, right.’ Finally, my feet take instruction from my brain again, hurrying along to the door.

Inside, Joe Hettich is stretching by a wall of windows to the outdoors, wearing bright-pink sweatbands around his forehead and wrists, a lime-green running vest, and Lycra shorts. He pulls one foot behind him, up to his butt, and with his free hand, presses his index finger to his nose –for balance?

If I wasn’t completely thrown by my conversation with Henry, I’m definitely bamboozled by Hettich’s show.

I sense Luke’s presence, see him like a shadow in my blind spot, but I don’t acknowledge him.

‘Thanks, H,’ Joe tells Henry, who leaves, closing the door behind him.Leavingme.Here. Withthesetwo. ‘Hey, Carrie. How did you sleep? Was everything okay for you?’ He swaps legs to stretch his quads on the other side and I finally risk a quick glance at Luke, who is smirking. A smirk that feels less arrogant, more knowing, as if we’re sharing an unspoken conversation.Like we used to. It’s an expression that has the effect of liquifying me, like it used to.

Is this normal behavior?I ask with my eyes, hoping he can’t see the tiny vibrations I’m feeling in my abdomen.

Happily, though, the distraction has momentarily made me forget that I don’t want to be in the same room as Luke, and I respond to Joe. ‘I slept well, thank you.’

It’s an outright lie. I slept terribly – strange bed, yards from the man who shattered my heart, discombobulated from seeing him again, wishing I had turned down this trip and stayed home with Eddie, no matter what it might cost my career.

‘The bed is extremely comfortable.’

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