Page 7 of One Forbidden Night In Paradise (Hot Winter Escapes)

Maybe he should give Emma a call. She would distract him. Emma was one of the women he hooked up with when he needed a date for an event or to feel skin against skin. She was beautiful and smart and he enjoyed her company in and out of bed. He could fly her down from New York. She would be here in two hours.

Only it was not something he’d ever done before. What if she got the wrong idea?

He frowned. This was her fault. That nameless woman who had somehow managed momentarily to make him forget the past. It was her fault that he needed a distraction.

But it wouldn’t happen again. There was no reason for their paths to cross during her holiday so he could forget about that brief flicker of attraction that had passed between them like electricity.

And even if she had been moving here for good, it wouldn’t change anything. He wasn’t looking for a relationship with someone who still blushed when she talked to a man. Because he wasn’t looking for a relationship at all.

Pressing the plunger down on the cafetière, Jem poured herself a cup of coffee and stepped out onto the deck of the beach house.

She had woken late, for her anyway. Holly and Ed were still at that point where they found it a struggle to wake before noon but she had always been a poor sleeper. But last night, lulled by the sound of the waves, she had fallen asleep instantly and woken as sunlight flooded the room.

The same sunlight that was now warming her skin.

She padded down the steps and wriggled her toes in the sand. It was just too perfect, almost as if she were in a film set on a beach. But maybe all holidays felt like this.

Her eyes narrowed into the sunlight. Truthfully she could barely remember her last holiday. Or perhaps it was another of those things she wanted to forget. She glanced back at the turquoise-coloured ocean. Either way, this was the real deal. Her toes twitched against the pale pink sand. Why, then, was she thinking of leaving?

Not just thinking. Her bag was zipped up, ready to go. She had packed it this morning after showering, scampering around the tiny house, snatching up books and shoes and sunblock, feeling not like the guest she was, but an imposter.

But why?

Green eyes holding hers steady, captive.Chase.

She steadied herself, but her breath kept jerking in her throat as she pictured him standing on the paddle board, his clean profile cutting a line across the crisp blue sky. She hadn’t chased him but she had done the next best thing, riding in circles even though the moped she’d been sitting on wasn’t his to rent.

And now the memory of that moment was chasing her away.

It crushed her to know that. To be such a coward. To not even be able to count how many other times she had let her fear of failure or of being a disappointment get in the way of living her life. There had been that job in Costa Rica restoring the coral reef. She was shortlisted but, having read up on the charity’s founders, she had dropped out of the running. They were clever, important people doing important work and she was struggling to finish her thesis so of course she had to withdraw her application. It was one thing to let yourself down but to let down other people would be unforgivable.

She bit into her lip. She wasn’t just scared of letting people down. She was scared of confronting them too. Look at how many confrontations she’d failed to have with Nick over his drinking. Only at the back of her mind, she was always terrified of what the consequences might be.

But if she left now, she would have to break her promise to Holly.Another promise.Neither of the twins understood why she felt so compelled to date such damaged men. To them it was just a baffling pattern of behaviour that needed to stop. They didn’t know it was a form of atonement, and how could she explain that without telling them what she was atoning for?

How each time she failed to save her current boyfriend there was more to atone for, and so it carried on.

It was almost a year since she’d ended things with Frank and sworn to her sister that she wouldn’t get so involved next time. That she would keep things casual. Only then she’d met Nick.

When she found him in bed with that woman, nobody saidI told you so, except Ed, but she knew how upset both he and Holly were, and this holiday was their treat. Could she really let a complete stranger chase her away from this paradise? Bermuda might be small but the chances of her bumping into Chase again were surely remote.

And Holly was right. This wasn’t just about having a holiday, it was about rebooting her life, tearing up the rules. Maybe not play with fire but why not strike a few sparks? For starters, she could take back the bike and swap it for one of those ice-cream-coloured mopeds, and later she would check out what was behind the Green Door.

But first she was going to unpack.

After returning the bike, she rode back to the beach house on the pistachio-coloured moped she had tried out with Chase, the wind whipping at the ends of her hair, feeling uncharacteristically cool and sophisticated.

He wasn’t all that. Probably if she met him again he would be underwhelming.

If only she knew where he was she could have ridden past him with her nose in the air but instead she spent the rest of the day on the beach, eating the fruit that Joan had left and swimming, this time wearing her bikini. She had also emailed Joan to ask her where she could go diving.

The diving course had been her last birthday present from her father. She didn’t count the cottage. You couldn’t include something you got left in a will. But other than a few dives off Cornwall she’d never really had a chance to test her skills in real life. That would be tomorrow’s challenge. Tonight she was going to go dancing.

Having washed her hair and left it to dry in the warm air, she pulled on a lightweight cream wrap dress and some tan sandals and, remembering Holly’s directive, she put in her contact lenses and then added some make-up.

Joan’s mirror was as tiny as everything else so all she could look at were sections of herself. But she was surprised to find that she liked what she saw. She dithered momentarily about whether to walk along the beach but in the end she decided to take the moped.

Had Sam not given her directions, she would never have found the Green Door. There was no sign but the door was green and she could hear the music jumping through the evening air even before she switched off the engine. As she pulled off her helmet, her eyes widened. The pubs at home got crowded but this was like a New Year’s Eve party. There were people spilling onto the beach, drinking and laughing under a canopy of lights and flowers, and everyone seemed to be smiling.

---