Page 33 of Her Diamond Deal with the CEO

All except the sea. That didn’t belong to anyone.

‘It’s amazing,’ she said quietly.

Jack nodded, the warm breeze stirring his fringe as he toed the sand with his shoe. ‘I think so.’

Shielding her eyes from the mid-morning sun, she let her gaze drift over the mesmerically shifting waves. The sea was different here...not blue like in Florida. In fact, it looked almost lavender-coloured.

‘It’s hard to believe that’s the same ocean as back in Palm Beach. That we could have swum in that water.’ As she spoke, what looked like a fishing boat chugged into view and she had a sudden, vivid flashback of Jack leaping into the air—

Beside her, she felt rather than saw him tense and she bit the inside of her mouth, wishing she could bite back her words. Was he seeing it too? Was he feeling the sudden shock of impact? The downward drag of the water, relentless, inexorable, his limbs weakening as the oxygen spilled from his lips.

‘Have you gone back in? Into the sea?’ She hesitated. ‘Since it happened, I mean.’

There was no need to specify what ‘it’ was, but Jack frowned almost as if he didn’t understand and then he shook his head. ‘Not yet. I haven’t had time.’

Hadn’t he? That seemed unlikely. Unlike her, he wasn’t working at the moment, and, aside from some fairly undemanding paperwork, the wedding had been a work of moments to arrange.

‘You have time now. Maybe we should go for a swim after lunch.’ Glancing over at the shifting water, she saw it again. His body beneath the waves, the glint of his signet ring.

‘Or we could just go for a dip in the pool.’ There were two. One was outside, shielded from the ocean breezes by fat laurel hedges, the other was indoors. With steps leading into the water, either would be the perfect place to regain your confidence. ‘It doesn’t have to be a big deal, it’s just I think the longer you leave it before you get back in the water, the worse it will become. It’s like falling off a horse. You need to—’

Up until that point, he’d kept silent, now though he cut across her. ‘I know the theory. In fact, I’ve fallen off plenty of horses, so you don’t need to labour the point.’

‘I wasn’t,’ she protested. ‘I just thought it might help if—’

‘I don’t need your help. More importantly, I don’t want it, so, if you’re done with your amateur sports psychology—’

His face was blank of expression but the hostility in his voice shocked her into speaking.

‘I’m not an amateur. I’m a trained lifeguard and a qualified swim instructor and, as it happens, I was on the national junior swim team for two years and we worked alongside sports psychologists all the time.’ She took a breath. ‘Look, I know what happened was shocking and horrible but, trust me—’

‘Trust you?’ He stared at her in silence, a stillness forming around his beautiful golden eyes, and then she almost jumped out of her skin as he laughed, a short, biting laugh that echoed around the empty beach.

‘You think I trust you? That I could ever trust you?’ He was shaking his head. ‘Then you’re not just devious and opportunistic, you’re deluded.’

Her chest felt as if it were bound in barbed wire. She stared at him, shocked, stung by the abrupt renewal of hostilities between them. She had thought they had moved on. That something had changed and softened between them, but now she saw that she had done what she always did: read motives into actions and then turned them into a better story than the one she was living.

‘I was just trying to be nice. That’s all, Jack. But I don’t know why I bothered because you’re really not worth it.’

She was suddenly, brutally tired of him and of the two of them and the wrongness of everything and, without waiting for him to reply, she spun away and began to walk back towards the dunes.

He was unbearable. Unreasonable. Unkind. Her heart pounded in time to her footsteps across the sand, then faltered. He was also the father of this baby. Later, she would wonder if that thought made her look over her shoulder, but in the moment, all she registered was the blank-page emptiness of the beach.

Jack was gone.

She had turned and, before her brain had time to catch up with the impulse of her body, was moving across the sand and then her footsteps faltered.

He was sitting on the fallen tree, his eyes fixed on the sand, his shoulders hunched in a way that pinched at something inside her. He looked like he had that day in Oliver’s bedroom when finally the shock of the day had risen like a wave and pulled him under.

And now he was drowning again.

He didn’t look up as she stopped in front of him, but for some reason that made her more determined to stay. ‘I know how hard it is for you to trust me because I feel the same way about you,’ she said quietly. ‘But I do want to help you.’ If you’ll let me, she wanted to add.

He flicked her a glance as if he’d heard her unspoken words. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Try me.’

His face was taut, and she knew that whatever it was, he couldn’t say it out loud. But then his stillness and silence reached inside her, pushing everything out except one tiny incontestable fact and she realised that she already knew. That, deep down, she had always known.

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