Page 41 of Stuck in Paradise with You

When we’re rounded up to get back on the boat, I hang back, floating around on a noodle until everyone else is onboard. I might as well savor it because I’ll be flying home as soon as Joe confirms the plane for me tonight.

Reluctantly, I swim up to the platform and climb the metal steps. At the top, I follow Henry’s feet up to his outstretched arm and take his hand as he helps me up.

‘The shower’s just there,’ he says, inclining his head.

I nod. ‘I remember.’

As the crew prepare to set sail, I close my eyes and lean my head back under the shower, rinsing the salt from my body and hair.

18

LUKE

Give me strength.

She’s basically in underwear under the head of the shower, her long hair flowing down her back, to the neat arch where her body nips in and subtly curves out again.

I’m not watching her, I’m just… noticing, that’s all. Noticing how that body I used to be so familiar with could bring another man to his knees. If I’m honest with myself, irrationally resentful that it could.

One of the interior staff opens the doors to the salon and the dogs come outside, providing a well-timed switch of focus.

‘Good dogs,’ I say, fussing them as I, discreetly I hope, take one last look at Carrie over the rim of my shades.

She was different out there, in the water. Swimming, diving, like she didn’t have the weight of the world on her shoulders. As if she forgot that Joe was her client. She was smiling and joking, pretending to be a crocodile with Toby attached to her back as she swam, playing along with being a shark out to get Noah’s flippers.

I found myself wanting to be part of their fun.

‘Are you checking me out?’ Carrie gripes, pulling a towel across her front.

Oops.

‘What?’ I ask, as if I’m incensed, rather than caught in the act. ‘Got a pretty big opinion of yourself there, Carrie.’

Even from behind closed lips, it’s obvious she grits her teeth. ‘Me?Please. Why don’t you go perform an Olympic dive off the top of the boat again, Greg Louganis?’

I snort. Full-blown snort. And right before she remembers that she cancelled me entirely from her life and hides her face behind her towel, I catch her grin too.

Playful mockery was part of our repartee once. Feisty, charged fun. Like two old friends in a bar. I used towantto come to work in the mornings just to find out what smartass remark she’d throw at me. That was long before either of us made so much as a move on the other physically.

But once Carrie has wrapped herself in her towel, she heads to one of the tables on the aft deck, which has been laid out with infused waters and fresh-cut watermelon, and that resting bitch face she wears these days is back in situ.

And why in the good Lord’s name is Henry here, again?

‘Do you want to change out of your wet stuff in one of the bedrooms?’ he asks her.

Oh wouldn’t you like to get her in a bedroom, I internally quip, for my own benefit. But they do, in fact, head inside together to a bedroom and I almost snap my spine leaning backward to get a view of the pair of them, counting the seconds that they’re behind the door together. One, two, three?—

‘Luke, we’re going for a family siesta,’ Ella says, leading the kids and Joe into the salon.

Alisha appears at my side, a book in her hand. ‘I’m going to get out of the heat for an hour too.’ Then she pats my cheek and tells me, ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’

‘Is there anything you wouldn’t do?’ I tease.

‘Wouldn’t you love to know, Chalmers?’ she counters, chortling her way to a bedroom, extra pizazz in her swaying hips as she goes.

Why am I still watching the bedroom door where Carrie is getting changed? Did Henry come back out?

I slip on a t-shirt and surreptitiously switch my wet shorts for a dry pair, then help myself to a bottle of beer and head up to the lounge area on the top of the boat. I tell myself I’m going up to lay out in the shade and relax but there’s an insanely annoying devil on my shoulder telling me I’m actually going in search of Henry, to make sure he’s not with Carrie.

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