Page 48 of Stuck in Paradise with You

Henry hands Carrie her heavy bag, which he’s carried up for her, and he flashes her the kind of smile a guy would brandish in the middle of a sorority full of chicks on spring break.

You’re just a kid, I want to scream. An extremely buff kid.

But actually, he isn’t much different in age to Carrie when I fell for her.Damn it.The sooner she leaves, the better, if not only to spare me wanting to put superglue on Henry’s seat the next time we have dinner together.

Jenny cuts through my spiteful thoughts. ‘We’ll wait for confirmation from the pilot, then Henry and I will come and get you to take you by boat to Tortola.’

Carrie thanks them both. She starts thanking everyone for making her feel welcome – avoiding looking at me, I’m sure – and damn it, even the dogs look sad.

She wasn’t supposed to be here!I want to scream.

But I don’t. Instead, I subtly shift away from the group and as soon as I’m through the archway of the terrace and onto themain pathway through the resort, I pick up my walking pace, heading directly for the sanctity of my pod.

I want her to go.

I’ve wanted nothing more than for her to exit my life as swiftly as she was pulled back into it for the last three days.

But now that she’s going… I can’t bring myself to say goodbye.

21

LUKE

Seven Years Ago

There’s a note on my desk when I come back from my late-morning meeting – as she usually does, Carrie has covered it with a notepad and left a blank pink Post-it note on top to let me know it’s there:

MEET ME AT OUR HOTEL. ROOM 252 – 12p.m.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! x

We’d both been in and out of meetings, passing like ships in the night, all morning. Now she’s MIA and something tells me I’m going to thoroughly, meticulously, scrupulously enjoy the birthday gift she’s planned for me at noon.

I am literally tingling with anticipation.

Carrie and I have been seeing each other for six weeks. We haven’t been together in a hotel for three. We spend our time together in my apartment. Locked inside the safety of my four walls, we talk – really talk – we eat, we drink, we laugh – trulylaugh – we binge Netflix and we chill – the best, most glorious, head-spinningly hot kind of chilling.

The last time we used our hotel, we’d both been to the same business networking event. I’d had half an ear on conversations with colleagues and associates but the rest of me had been glued to Carrie. Watching her work the room, infiltrate conversations, garner laughs and smiles with her easy manner. I was so desperate to be the person she was entertaining, the man to receive her smiles, I couldn’t stand the thought of us leaving the event separately, having to work our way back to my apartment on our own.

It was close but too far away. I needed to be with her sooner. It didn’t have to be sex; it just had to be us. So I sent her a message, told her I’d be waiting in our hotel, watched as she read the message and felt my heartrate soar when she glanced up from her phone and found me from beneath hooded eyes.

I pick up her note from my desk and slip it into the pocket of my suit pants and, already breathing heavily, walk as surreptitiously as I can while bursting to run from my office and to Carrie in the hotel.

As I’m midway along the main corridor, flanked by offices either side of me, my phone chimes with a message. Keeping my face as straight as I can, knowing where I’m headed, I look at the message, expecting to see words, maybe even a picture, from Carrie.

But what I receive stops me in my tracks…

Happy birthday, Luke.

The words are accompanied by a picture but neither the words nor the image come from Carrie. Both the birthday wishes and the accompanying image of a baby scan come from my estranged wife.

It feels like my entire body falls from the tenth floor of the office block to the ground.

Anya’s pregnant?

We haven’t slept together in… There was one time. A last goodbye, the day she moved out of our home for good, to go back to Chicago to where her parents live. It was three months ago.

Three months.

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