Page 48 of Her Diamond Deal with the CEO

His grandfather would see he was changed too. Utterly changed, and that was what he needed to focus on right now. That, after all, was what all of this was about. And this was his turf. He knew these people. He understood the rules. He knew how to leverage his looks and his charm and his status. He could make this work.

Making his way through the country club, he felt almost euphoric. He knew most of the guests by name, and those he didn’t were unimportant. And he couldn’t remember why he had wanted Ondine not to get dressed up.

As if she knew what he was thinking, she glanced up at him and he felt her blue gaze like a punch. She looked exquisite in a simple white dress that perfectly offset her sun-kissed limbs. Her hair was in some kind of low bun and she was wearing a fascinator in the shape of an oversized flower. And he was enthralled. Watching her smile and talk, as though this were something she did every day, only deepened his fascination.

He had thought she would be out of her depth. But Ondine was as strong a swimmer on land as she was in the water. She was making it look easy, he thought as she turned towards him again, her eyes catching fire as they met his. He felt her gaze burn through him, the lick of heat making his stomach drop so that it was the most natural thing in the world to pull her against him and kiss her hungrily.

‘Everything okay?’ he murmured.

She nodded. ‘Everything’s fine.’

His hand touched the nape of her neck, and then his eyes snagged on a woman’s profile in the crowd. Tilted up to the sunlight, her eyes resting adoringly on the tall young man by her side, and suddenly he couldn’t seem to make his breath reach his lungs. He stood frozen in the middle of the shifting mass of people, waiting for her to notice him, but after a moment she said something to an older man standing beside her and they all turned and moved as one towards the clubhouse.

And with every step they took, he could feel himself losing shape. As if he weren’t part of the world, as if nobody could see him.

He felt a rush of panic, and then Ondine’s hand found his, and that was better. He tightened his grip so that the ring on her finger pinched his skin, and some of the numbness in his chest retreated, and he felt present and connected again. But he needed to move and, looking down at Ondine, he said, ‘We should go find my grandfather.’

It turned out that the Palm Beach Polo Club was actually an exclusive members-only country club. But then titles could be misleading, Ondine thought as Jack led her through the chattering groups of immaculately dressed men and long-limbed women.

Look at her: she was Mrs Jack Walcott. But her marriage was a sham, a pretence designed to reinstate her husband in his grandfather’s good books.

And she had known that right from the start. Only somehow she had forgotten that their marriage wasn’t real.

It wasn’t only the sex. Or the baby. Or the way he had been there for her when she was throwing up and half crazy with hormones. Or even how he had comforted her, twice now. Holding her close and pushing the past back where it belonged. Because he had done that; he was the reason why she wasn’t angry with Garrett and Vince any more. She just hadn’t realised that yesterday.

At the centre of it all was Jack. He had changed her. Awoken her. Freed her. He had led her out of the dark, baffling woods back onto the path.

She glanced up at his handsome face.

But only so that she could meet John D. Walcott IV. He was the reason she was here. But yesterday, in the moment when Jack realised that he was the father of their baby, she had lost sight of that. She had fallen into the silence between her heartbeats.

She thought back to how he had held her close, close enough that she could feel the tension in his body as if he might break into a thousand pieces. Somehow they had made it up to the bedroom and even as he’d been pulling her close she had been sliding her hands over his beautiful, strong body, some deep-buried instinct telling her that she must hold onto him. That if she just kept holding onto him, then they could make it work as he’d said.

She wanted to believe him, but the next day, he’d got up while she was sleeping. Today he’d let her lie in, so that there had been no time to talk before they’d had to leave. And now, they were back in Florida.

Gazing down at the pristine rectangle of grass, Ondine felt a sharp pang, almost like homesickness for the croquet lawn at Red Knots. After the tranquillity of Whydah Island, the country club felt more like a nightclub. It was so noisy and there were so many people milling around her.

Actually, it was Jack they were milling around. He was at their centre too. A glittering, dazzling sun. All laughter and light. The most heavenly of bodies around which smaller, duller planets orbited. And it wasn’t hard to see why. Her breath caught in her throat. He looked gorgeous in a pale blue linen suit and tan loafers.

Jack, though, seemed oblivious. ‘We should go find my grandfather.’ His gaze shifted to a point past her shoulder, eyes narrowing, body straining forward in that unmistakable way of someone seeing the person they were looking for in a crowd. She felt his hand tighten around hers, she tensed for the moment of reckoning when she would finally meet John D. Walcott IV, but then he turned abruptly and began towing her in the opposite direction.

‘He’ll probably be down by the pony lines.’

‘Pony lines?’

As he turned to look at her, she felt her stomach flip. It was almost as though he didn’t recognise her. But he was the one who had changed, she thought, her stomach somersaulting now as she glanced up at his high, hard cheekbones and softly curving mouth. Not outwardly. And not to anyone who didn’t know him. But she was so attuned to his every move, to each and every breath he took, and there was a tautness to him as if he was holding himself in check. The relaxed, carefree man of the last few days had vanished, and with shock she realised that he was acting again.

‘It’s where the ponies wait. He likes to go and see them before the match. I think it reminds him of when he used to play. Although he only stopped playing a year ago.’

‘But he’s in his eighties!’

‘And very stubborn. He only stopped because he has osteoarthritis in his shoulder. He still rides, though.’

Watching his face soften, she felt her heart slip sideways. It was one of the many things she didn’t understand about Jack Walcott. That he could lie to a man he so clearly adored. Then again, up until today he’d only had to manage that contradiction over the phone. Now he was going to have to lie to his grandfather in person. They both were.

Only right now, she couldn’t think about her part in those lies. This was about Jack. She had to stay focused for him. Her stomach cartwheeled. And for Oli. This was about him too, his future, and it shocked her to think that she had forgotten that momentarily. No, not forgotten, she corrected herself. It was just that at some point between signing the marriage certificate and flying down to Florida, it had stopped being Ondine and Jack conspiring for their own ends and become two people whose goals were inseparable and symbiotic.

‘It’ll be okay.’ She squeezed his hand and, after a moment, his fingers tightened around hers. ‘We can do this. Together. We can show him that you’ve changed.’

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