Page 19 of Her Diamond Deal with the CEO

No wonder she wasn’t sleeping.

The cause of her insomnia was nodding at something the steward was saying and rubbing the back of his neck in a way that made her feel hot and irritable and on edge.

Ever since she’d agreed to marry Jack, she had been desperately ignoring the real-time consequences of that decision. Mostly it had been easy enough. Work had been full-on and she’d even taken on extra shifts. Now, though, she was on her honeymoon and there was nothing to distract her from her thoughts.

She shivered on the inside. Except Jack.

He shouldn’t have kissed her like that. As if they were alone. As if it were real. And she shouldn’t have kissed him back. But then again maybe it was the jolt she needed to make her wake up and smell the coffee.

She felt her stomach twist.No, not coffee.She was running on adrenaline as it was, she didn’t need to add caffeine into the mix.

But she did need to wise up. There would be no more kissing except the closed-mouth variety. And they absolutely would not be having sex again. She would not allow one heated encounter to cloud the issue. Marrying Jack was about moving on, moving forward past this mess she’d made so that Oliver would have the future he deserved, the future her parents had planned for. Not making an even bigger, messier mess of everything.

As Jack said, this was just a job, and like all her jobs she would do it to the best of her ability. So she would play the adoring, lovestruck wife in public and keep things cordial but cool behind closed doors.

‘Darling, I’m sorry that took so long.’ She looked up, and her heart lurched as Jack sat down beside her. ‘Did you miss me?’

Glancing at the stewards, she pasted a smile on her face. ‘Of course.’

He stretched out his long legs. ‘Apparently, it’s forty-six degrees on Whydah. Honestly, we might as well have gone to Banff.’

They were en route to Martha’s Vineyard where they would pick up a launch to his family’s private island off the coast of Massachusetts.

Jack had wanted to fly to the Caribbean but then she had pointed out to him that she was supposed to have reined him in. ‘I thought you wanted to show your grandfather you could change, that you were changing,’ she’d said to him at one of their brief covert meetings. ‘That means not having a splashy honeymoon and drinking champagne for breakfast.’

Not that the air stewards knew that, she thought a moment later, hearing the pop of a cork. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured as the chief steward appeared, beaming, a foaming glass in each hand.

Lifting the glass to her lips, she took a sip, and frowned. Great—now her adrenaline was making the champagne taste weird. Maybe she would just go and brush her teeth.

‘I might just go and freshen up,’ she murmured to Jack. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

Astonishingly there was a bedroom on board and an ensuite bathroom. If only she could stay here for ever, or at least the rest of the flight, she thought, leaning forward to rinse out her mouth.

But it wouldn’t change anything. She glanced down at the plain gold band on her finger. They were married. And Jack had already spoken to his grandfather.

She had chickened out of telling Oli. But that was different. He was so far away, and alone. And besides, she was still trying to come to terms with what she had done. She let out her breath slowly, trying to steady herself. It was just a lot. Not just getting married, but this jet. The private island.Jack.Her pulse accelerated and she was back at the kiss at the courthouse again. There was definitely going to have to be some rules.

As she walked back into the bedroom, her stomach flipped and more annoyingly she felt her nipples tighten. Jack was stretched out on the bed, his sprawling limbs complementing the lazy-cat smile on his face.

‘What is it?’ she said, somewhat ungraciously she had to admit, but she felt oddly panicky at being suddenly and completely alone with him.

‘What do you think it is?’ His beautiful mouth curved down into a frown. ‘You’re my wife. We’re supposed to be madly in love. So why are you skulking in the cabin like some stowaway?’

‘I’m not skulking. I just needed a bit of space.’

‘Since when?’ Shifting against the pillow, he tipped back his head. ‘You didn’t seem to need any at the courthouse.’

Ignoring the treacherous warmth spreading through her limbs, she said coolly, ‘You seem to be confusing your needs with mine.’

He gave a short laugh.

‘So when you were pulling me closer, that was you trying to do what, exactly? Pick fluff off my jacket?’ He sucked in a breath. ‘Just admit it. You wanted to kiss me as much as I wanted to kiss you.’

‘What if I did?’ She was too shocked by his admission to be anything but honest with him. ‘That doesn’t make it right, and you know it. Yet you still acted on it.’

Dropping onto the bed, she kicked off her shoes. ‘And that there is your problem, Jack. That lack of understanding and childish disregard for anything but what you feel in the moment is why you’ve ended up marrying a complete stranger to get your life back on track. Because presumably your grandfather, and everyone who has the misfortune to spend time in your company, has had enough of you.’

His face was harsh like stone. ‘I cannot believe I thought we could make this charade work.’

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