Page 34 of Her Diamond Deal with the CEO

‘You can’t swim,’ she said quietly.

He didn’t reply but again he didn’t need to. She could feel the truth in the sudden escalation of tension in the air around them.

How could that be possible? But sadly, she knew that it was not just possible but statistically unremarkable. Around half the population of the US could either not swim at all or not well enough to save themselves, although Jack was wealthier than the statistical average.

She looked over to where he sat, staring straight ahead without expression. But he didn’t need her to tell him that.

‘How far did you get in learning?’

Silence, then, ‘Not far.’

‘Does anyone know?’

His face was shuttered. ‘No. It never came up.’ A pause and she could feel him reaching for a plausible explanation. ‘My parents split up when I was young. It was quite messy.’ Another pause. ‘I had two sets of nannies, and I went to a lot of different schools. I think it just got missed off the to-do list. And later on, it seemed too late to do anything about it.’

Out at sea, the fishing boat was just a tiny bobbing dot. Watching it, she replayed the moment when she had looked out to sea and seen Jack run across the deck and leap.

The memory winded her. ‘But you jumped off the yacht.’

A muscle flickered in his jaw. ‘I know.’ There was a note to his voice she couldn’t place and as if he’d heard it too, he got to his feet. ‘I didn’t plan to. And I wasn’t drunk or high. It was a stupid impulse thing. I was tired and I’d had enough of everyone and I wanted to get off the yacht, and I was looking at the water and it suddenly seemed ridiculous that I couldn’t swim. I mean, how hard could it be?’

Now he looked winded.

As the silence stretched away from them she held herself still. He was staring down at his hands, hiding his eyes, she thought, but then she saw that they were trembling.

‘Not hard. If you know what you’re doing.’ She kept her voice matter-of-fact. ‘And it’s even easier if you’re not wearing clothes.’ She hesitated, then took hold of his hands. ‘Everyone is a beginner at some point, Jack. You’d learn in a heartbeat. You just need someone to teach you. And I can do that. If you’ll let me.’ She said the words out loud this time.

She watched him, waiting, on edge suddenly at how badly she wanted him to trust her. At the shoreline, the waves seemed to hover mid-air, their white caps quivering. As they toppled over, Jack shifted his gaze and when he looked back, his beauty took her breath away all over again.

‘Okay.’ He nodded, his mouth curving up at the corners, and in the past she would have got lost somewhere between that crooked smile and the beating of her heart, but she knew now that some of his smiles, this one, for example, were designed to distract, to divert attention away from what was going on inside that beautiful, sculptured head.

‘You can teach me to swim. On one condition. You let me teach you how to play croquet.’

The lightness was back in his voice now so that it was hard to tell if he was being serious, but she decided to play along. ‘Deal!’

Picturing the flawless, rectangular green lawn, she added, ‘Although I’m not sure where croquet is going to fit into my life.’

His gold eyes locked with hers. ‘But this is your life. Our life,’ he added, after a moment.

It was just words, she told herself, but suddenly her heart was thumping inside her throat and all she could think about was his hands on her body, and the clench of her muscles around his hardness.

They were standing a breath apart, his hands still entwined with hers, and they stayed like that for what felt like a long time, not moving, not speaking, just staring at one another as the air around them shifted, and tightened, pressing against them, pushing them closer—

‘We should probably be getting back,’ he said, dropping her hands and taking a step backwards. ‘Otherwise Sally will think something’s happened and we don’t want her sending out a rescue party.’

It wouldn’t make any difference if she did, Ondine thought, panic beating like a gong inside her chest as they headed back to the house in silence, because the only thing she needed rescuing from was herself, and her body’s senseless yearning for the man walking beside her.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘COMEON,JACK. Don’t phone it in. Keep pushing, keep pushing. There you go—and rest.’

Breathing out heavily, Jack lowered the hex bar to the floor of the gym and released his grip on the hot metal. His skin was coated in sweat and it felt as if every muscle in his body was screaming abuse at him. Splaying out his fingers, he let his head fall back against the wall, his eyes narrowing on his personal trainer’s impassive face.

At home, Mark was a family man, the father of twin girls and a devoted husband. In the gym he was a soft-spoken but relentless taskmaster.

As if to remind him of that fact, Mark said quietly, ‘Thirty seconds left. Use the time. Stay focused.’

They worked for another ninety minutes. After strength training they did mobility drills, followed by a session with the punchbag, finishing off with a cool-down and then finally it was over.

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