Page 37 of Stuck in Paradise with You

‘How do you like the boat, Carrie?’ Joe asks.

‘Likedoesn’t cover it. It’s incredible, Joe. Thank you for having me here and letting me gatecrash your time with family and friends.’

‘It’s nothing. I like to know the people I’m working with,’ he replies, and I watch him have some peculiar unspoken exchange with Luke. The kind that makes me feel like I’m being talked about behind my back. A feeling I remember from school days.

I never had a lot of friends at school, or growing up. I never felt like people really got me. Not until I thought one person got me completely.

How wrong I was.

Next thing, Henry is standing by me at the table. He strokes my arm – pulling me out of my head – as he says, ‘Let meknow if you need or want anything, Carrie.’ He flashes me what is, admittedly, a most delectable half-smile, though it makes me cast my eyes to Joe warily.

I donotwant him to think I’m flirting with his staff.

Is that what’s happening here?

God, this really is like an episode ofBelow Deck.Below Deckmeets teen angst.

16

LUKE

If I could force someone overboard with my eyes, Henry would be taking a deep dive to cool off.

What the hell has gotten into him?

I’ve always thought he’s a decent enough guy but today…

Has he thought that maybe Carrie doesn’t want him to brush against her every time he walks past her chair? That she doesn’t need him to stroke her arm and laugh overzealously at herun-funny jokes? And maybe, just fucking maybe, she thinks he’s an obnoxious dick when he winks at her from the swim platform while he’s rising off the sea toys and splashing enough water on himself that his polo is clinging to his svelte frame? What does he think he is, a Chippendale?

‘Are you okay there, Luke?’ Carrie asks from where she’s sitting opposite me at the dining table, having just set her cutlery down after finishing a dish of grilled mahi-mahi.

She leans back in her seat and her dress pulls across her chest, the neckline opening a fraction wider and giving me a sneak peek at her shimmering, hot-pink bikini beneath. I try not to look. Try not to give her the satisfaction. Because something tells me the subtle shift in position is intended for me; it’ssupposed to tease me, either because, one, she’s had two glasses of champagne and is now sipping from a glass of wine, which always used to make her tantalizingly confident, or, two, because she feckingknowsHenry is flirting with her andknowsthat it’s pissing me off.

Why?Damned if I know. It’s not like I have any right over her, or any claim to her. I never did. That’s not how we were. It never felt like I was older or in a more senior position or like I had more say in anything we did than she did.

I taught her things by day, and by night she opened my eyes to all kinds of random facts. Like hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards – she whispered that into my neck one night as we were falling asleep and once her breaths had slowed, I whispered back that she was my hummingbird.

She told me that dogs have a unique nose print and no two will ever be the same – she told me that as we lay in my bathtub, her back to my chest, effervescent salts fizzing around us. In response, I kissed her temple and told her I didn’t believe there was anyone else quite like her in the world.

She showed me how to laugh at the mundane, the sublime and the ridiculous, in a way I had forgotten – as if I were a teenager again.

We were equals. She wasn’t mine.

But for whatever reason, Henry is grating on my very last nerve.

‘Why wouldn’t I be fine?’ I snap without meaning to, my clipped tone betraying my cool façade. Because she might not have been mine, but I was always hers.

She shrugs. Fecking shrugs. Then she smirks, sips from her wine glass, and says, ‘You’ve been tugging on your hair and your nose has been twitching all through lunch, the way it used to after a long day and late night in the office.’

I’m aware of the eyes of everyone else at the table – Noah and Toby included – on me. I rub the tip of my nose reflexively, irritated that Carrie knows me well enough to spot my stress tells.

The only saving grace is that the skin of her neck is turning crimson and I’m guessing she just thrust herself right back into a memory ofourlate nights in the office. I’d love to see behind the shield of her shades and I’m thankful that my own are in place.

‘Maybe you’re just wishful thinking.’ I fix her with a stare and behind our lenses, I know she’s returning the look.

‘Ha. My work life got a lot smoother without you in it, Luke.’

‘Yet here you are, working for me, again.’

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