Page 5 of Stuck in Paradise with You

‘Don’t mess with me, Joe. Is that Carrie Briggs down there?’ I can feel something I don’t like coursing through me.Panic? Anger? Something else?I feel jittery, my hands shaking, all the parts of me beneath my ribcage see-sawing. It must be anger.

Joe holds up his palms. ‘Yes, it is. I’m sorry to blindside you but I needed you to come and deal with this tax stuff and I wasn’t convinced you would if?—’

‘WithCarrie?’ My voice is verging on screechy. ‘Where the hell is Eric?’

The partner at the accountancy firm we usually deal with. Safe Eric. Pompous Eric who kisses Joe’s ass but who I absolutely have never lusted after.

‘He’s sick, couldn’t make it. I’m told Carrie is the next best thing at the firm and she agreed to come last minute.’

Ella rises from Joe’s lap. I don’t miss her scowling at him, however brief it is, before she comes to my side and looks down at the woman getting off the boat and walking barefoot, shoes in hand, along the wood-decked pathway off the sand and up the steps to the resort.

‘It’s been a long time, Luke. There’s nothing still there between you two, is there?’ Ella asks, not meeting my eyes, which is good because I don’t have to meet hers in return.

Instead, I can seethe or flip out in whatever manner I like as I watch my one ex, who used to make my heartrate soar the way it is right now, climb the stone steps in a smart white suit.

Looking a lot more womanly than the junior associate I fell for years ago.

‘Nothing,’ I manage. ‘Nothing there at all.’

Yet my head is screaming at me,I need to get off this island. Now.

She was one brief moment in time. But a cataclysmic one, nonetheless.

My feet are already backing me away from the rock’s edge. I’m already fleeing.

Until I back into Joe’s big frame, who’s now standing behind me. His cactus-print shirt might as well be real because it couldn’t cause me any more discomfort than I already feel.

‘I need you, Luke. This is a job for my CFO.’

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

One person on this island ruined my career once. Another, whose big, burly weight is behind me now, made it. I owe him.

I think I nod –I’ll stay. But I have no idea if my synapses are firing. I’m paralyzed by something, an emotion, and I don’t know what it is, but it feels awfully close tofear.

I shift my position to face Joe and Ella. ‘I need to… ah…’What do I need?‘Go… for a run.’ That will fix this. Burn off whatever I’m feeling. Shake off seeing Carrie again for the first time in seven years. If I can’t fix it, I can at least try to process the absolute predicament I am stuck in.

Joe eyes me, his brows low and knitted together. He knows the story of Carrie and me. He also knows me well enough to see my mind spiraling behind my controlled façade, even though I hope he can’t.

‘You’re going for a run after one of Monique’s rum punches?’ Ella asks. ‘Are you mad?’

‘No better time for it,’ I say, hoping she doesn’t catch the tremor in my voice.

‘Before you do…’ Joe pulls an envelope from the back pocket of his lime-green shorts. ‘An invitation to dinner tonight. Troy’s finest Caribbean dishes and matched wines.’

I take the offering from him. ‘I’m already there.’

‘Great, because you’ve also left a very similar invitation for Carrie in her pod. CFO to tax advisor. We’ll see you both at eight. I like to get to know my advisors before they tell me things I don’t want to hear.’

‘Dinner.’ I gawk. ‘With Carrie.’Fuck. ‘That saying about giving with one hand and taking away with the other springs to mind,’ I mutter, not quietly enough.

‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, my friend,’ Joe tells me, striding back to the table and gulping down his cocktail.

‘Did you just refer to yourself as God?’ I ask, my cardiorespiratory system calming now that I’m on safer ground, bantering with my friend.

Joe holds out his arms as if to say,Take a look around you. ‘This ismyisland.’

Ella rolls her eyes playfully and I chortle. ‘What a dickhead.’

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