Page 21 of One Forbidden Night In Paradise (Hot Winter Escapes)

‘Robyn comes from Hawaii.Pokeis practically the national dish out there. Basically it’s meat and fish and vegetables and fruit chopped up into tiny pieces. That’s whatpokemeans in Hawaiian—to chop up.’

She stared down at the neatly chopped rainbow arrangement of rice, beetroot, edamame and avocado. ‘It’s so pretty.’

‘And delicious.’ He held out a fork. ‘Here, eat.’ She did, and he watched with some amusement as she sampled each of the various components.

‘Good?’

She nodded. ‘The flavours are incredible.’

They were. And he’d thought he was hungry, but weirdly he found that his appetite seemed to have disappeared, so that it was a struggle to even lift the fork to his mouth.

‘So do you come from Hawaii too?’

He glanced across the table, momentarily caught off guard, not so much by her actual question but by her sudden trespass into the personal. Most of the women he knew didn’t ask him much about himself. But then most of the women knew all they needed to know.

‘No, I come from Minnesota, from a small town near Lake Superior. And you?’

She hesitated. ‘A village in the Peak District.’

Shifting back on the stool, he held her gaze. ‘We have something in common,’ he said softly. ‘Except I left and you stayed.’

Now she frowned. ‘I didn’t come from Edale. I was born in Sweden, and then I lived in Ireland. I didn’t move to England until I was four.’

‘Why Sweden?’

She shrugged. ‘My mother is Swedish.’

That explained the colour of her hair. As his gaze touched her head, he remembered how the silken strands had felt in his hands.

‘And what about your dad?’

‘English.’

She didn’t blush this time, but she glanced away as if she didn’t want him to see her eyes and he knew that she was hiding something. Holding something back. He couldn’t see the barricades she’d raised between them, but he could sense them. So that was another thing they had in common.

He watched her chew on her lip. He shouldn’t care, and yet he found himself wanting to prise her apart like an oyster.

‘You didn’t say what you do back in England, job-wise I mean,’ he said at last. But then the last time they met, neither of them had been interested in small talk. There was a silence as both of them separately acknowledged that fact.

She cleared her throat. ‘It didn’t come up.’

He met her gaze. ‘No, I suppose it didn’t,’ he said softly.

A faint flush suffused her cheeks. For a few seconds, she didn’t reply and then finally she put down her fork. ‘I don’t really have a job. I help out in the university bookshop and sometimes I do a bit of tutoring but I’m actually working on my PhD.’ She looked up at him almost defiantly as if he might challenge her. ‘It’s on “accidental” reefs.’

The phrase was familiar but not in any detail. ‘And what does that mean, exactly?’ He was interested.

Jemima hesitated. ‘I suppose in layman’s terms it’s when a wreck becomes a reef. Basically from the moment a vessel sinks the ocean takes over. It starts to form a new underwater habitat. Over time, fish colonise the wreck. Algae and corals grow on the surface and the currents draw in clouds of plankton, which attract fish, which in turn entice sharks and other larger predators. Eels and groupers move into the darker spaces. The wreck creates a whole new ecosystem.’

He stared over at her, captivated by the light in her eyes. ‘Why “accidental reefs”?’

‘I did a degree and a masters in ecology, and one of my lecturers had a lot of bottom time. He got me interested but it was my sister who badgered me into doing the PhD.’ She gave him a small, careful smile. ‘She’s a force of nature. My brother is too.’

It was a habit of hers, he’d noticed, to introduce her siblings into the conversation when things got too personal and he found himself wondering why she used them as a shield.

‘I thought the general consensus was that wrecks are a menace, even some of the older ones.’

He was interested enough in the topic but it was Jemima herself who was holding his attention. She listened, an unusual enough quality in itself. But she was also assessing and evaluating what he said, whereas most people tended to value only their own viewpoint. No wonder she was doing a PhD.

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