Page 7 of Her Diamond Deal with the CEO

For a few, unravelling seconds, her heart clenched. It was the first time he had used her name, and for some reason it sounded different when he said it. He made her feel different.

She gritted her teeth. He wasn’t her responsibility. There was nothing in the American Lifeguard Association training programme to prepare her for having a man like Jack Walcott in her house. But there was a tension in his voice, a strain that wrenched at something inside her so that she heard herself say, ‘Fine. You can come back to my house.To sleep.And it’s just for a couple of hours.’

‘Thank you,’ he said softly.

She could do this, she thought as the car moved forward. It was just a couple of hours, and then Jack would leave and life would go back to how it was before.

As soon as he lay down on the bed, Jack fell asleep.

He slept, and he dreamed only it didn’t feel like dreaming. It felt as though he were still awake, and he were on the yacht again, turning to run and jump, only Ondine was frowning at him in that precise, focused way of hers, her blue eyes steadying him as she took his wrist and felt for his pulse and then her hands were sliding over his shoulders, mouth fitting against his, warm and soft and—

Rolling onto his back, he blinked open his eyes.

The curtains were drawn but there was a gap the width of a tie and he could see the sun hanging high in the sky like an orange waiting to be picked and squeezed.

Feeling suddenly thirsty, he sat up, his gaze moving slowly around the room.

Aside from its tidiness, which was probably due to the absence of its usual occupant, it was a typical teenage boy’s bedroom. Miami Dolphins posters were tacked to the wall. There was a desktop computer with a bunch of games piled up beside it and a life-size replica skeleton dangled from the ceiling. Left over from Halloween, he thought as the curtains lifted in the breeze.

His eyes moved to the bookshelves, skimming over the sci-fi novels and academic textbooks to lock onto a framed photo. He stared at it for a moment, feeling his body tense, and then he got to his feet and reached over to pick it up.

He scanned the faces intently. There was no doubt who they were. Mum. Dad. Oliver. And Ondine. His fingers tightened against the glass. They were on one of those log-flume rides, the kind where you meandered along a waterway, rising up a hill before dropping at speed. The photo had been taken seconds after splashdown and their eyes were wide with shock and the thrill of it.

They looked happy.

They looked like a family.

He stared down at the photo, envy cut through with a twist of bitterness filling his gut. He had a family, two really since his parents’ divorce and yet he wasn’t a part of either of them. And he felt the misery and the shame of it rush over his head, pulling him under—

His gaze snagged on Ondine’s face and he could almost feel the grip of her hand on his shoulder. She was strong, stronger than she looked. She had confidence in her body too as if she trusted it to do what she wanted it to. And once she had agreed to let him stay, she had been as calm and pragmatic as she had been on the beach and at the hospital, he thought, remembering how she had shown him into her brother’s bedroom.

‘You need to sleep.’ She reached past him and folded back the duvet. ‘You’re exhausted.’

‘What are you doing?’ he asked as she dragged an old rattan armchair across the room.

‘I’m keeping an eye on you.’ Picking up a paperback book from the bedside table, she sat down, frowning at the cover.

‘You don’t have to do that.’

She gave a delicate shrug. ‘I told the doctor I would.’

Their eyes met, hers wide and wary; he could see her pulse hammering against the pale, thin skin of her throat and he knew that she was remembering the moment in the hospital when he told that same doctor she was his wife.

‘And you always do what you say you will.’

It wasn’t a question, but she acted as if it were. ‘Yes. If I say I’m going to do something, I do it.’

‘For better, for worse, Mrs Walcott,’ he murmured as he lay down.

Her expression shifted briefly, her face contracting or retreating in a way he couldn’t put a finger on, but then that smile curved her mouth and she sat back in the chair and opened the book. ‘Go to sleep, Jack.’

He had no memory of his eyes closing, but he could remember Ondine sitting in the armchair, the book in her hand.

But the chair was empty now. He felt a ripple of anger scud across his skin, and a disappointment that felt disproportionate. What happened to ‘if I say I’m going to do something, I do it’?

His shoulders tensed. But should he really be that surprised? Plenty of people, people who had a far stronger duty of care for him than Ondine, had made promises they couldn’t or wouldn’t keep.

When it came to him anyway.

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