Page 13 of One Forbidden Night In Paradise (Hot Winter Escapes)

So there’s your answer, she told herself.It’s time to leave.

It was harder than she thought to extract herself from Chase’s arm, to abandon the delicious warmth of his body. She dressed, holding her breath, her heart beating in her mouth as Chase shifted in his sleep. Picking up her sandals, she tiptoed to the door, then turned back to the bed.

She was never going to see him again. And yet she would never forget him either. But then she knew that right from the start. She hesitated, torn between panic and her need to be polite. There was an envelope on the bedside table and a pen. She hesitated again, then began writing. Leaning forward, she rested the note on the bedside table and then she turned and crept back out of the cabin and into the pale dawn light.

‘Excuse me, boss.’

Chase swung round, his forehead creasing. ‘What is it?’

His first officer, Alex, was standing at his elbow. ‘We just got an update on that depression. It looks like it’s getting bigger, and it’s going to come pretty close.’

‘So?’ He frowned, his eyes narrowing with poorly concealed irritation. ‘We’ve had closer and bigger storms.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Alex paused. ‘Thank you, sir.’

He felt rather than saw Alex retreat. Behind his back, he could sense the other crew members on the bridge catching each other’s eyes and that only added to an irritation he knew was both unfair and disproportionate.

But then he had been tetchy since he stepped foot on the bridge. Not because of the storm. Storms he could handle. What had made him so testy was waking this morning to find his bed empty even though Jemima Friday should never have been in his bed in the first place. Mouth twisting, he replayed the events of the night before. He shouldn’t have gone over to talk to her at the Green Door. That was his first mistake. No, his second, he corrected himself. His first was pretending he worked at the Cycle Shack.

He scowled down at the electronic charting display screen, his jaw tightening. So many mistakes, all equally out of character. He didn’t sleep with women he met in bars. And the one and only time he’d had one-night stands was right at the very beginning after Frida’s death when his grief and guilt were so agonising that it hurt to breathe. He couldn’t have coped with affection or intimacy then. He had simply wanted oblivion and the easiest way to achieve that goal was to self-medicate with alcohol. Lots of it. And, to wash it all down, meaningless sex with strangers.

Outside the window, a gull was soaring through the sky. He had read somewhere that a gull’s wing was about as near as nature got to perfection. Hard to disagree with that, he thought as he watched it drift effortlessly on the thermals, noting the more rounded shape of its silver-grey wings. Wings that were almost the same colour as Jemima’s eyes.

The gull wheeled away, and he stared at the empty sky.

There had been nothing meaningless about sex with Jemima. On the contrary, even now, hours after he was inside her body, his own body was still twitching with the memory of their fever dream of a sexual encounter.

And hard and aching for a round two that wasn’t going to happen.

Only apparently the memo from his brain detailing the one-night status of last night had gone missing en route to his groin.

His fingers twitched against the screen. What the hell had he been thinking? He hadn’t needed to approach her at the bar. He could have ignored her.

Should have ignored her and he definitely should never have asked her to dance. And when they went outside, he should have got Aliana to call a cab and sent her back to her hotel. But he hadn’t done any of those things.

Instead, he had taken her back to the boat. Not theMiranda. At least he hadn’t lost his mind completely. For some reason, Jemima thought he was a fisherman and he had seen no reason to disabuse her of that fact, so he’d taken her to the boat he kept down by the shoreline.

He had bought the boat as a favour. It was not worth fixing but he liked to spend a few hours whenever he was on the island just tinkering with it. Or sometimes he would stay up and fish on those nights when he couldn’t sleep.

The tension in his body spilled over his shoulders. He hadn’t slept much last night. Waking, he had almost thought he had dreamt what happened but then he’d seen the note. It took every ounce of willpower he had not to reach into the pocket of his shorts and pull it out. Not that he needed to. He could remember every word.

Thanks for a wonderful night. Tight lines. J.

Tight lines. He chewed on the words angrily.

He knew the phrase. It was something a fisherman might say to a mate instead of wishing him good luck.

His lip curled as he remembered her insistence that last night be a one-night-only thing. Coupled with her unannounced and unexpectedly precipitous departure this morning, it was clear that Jemima Friday had friend-zoned him. And he didn’t know why it should be getting under his skin, but every time he replayed those words inside his head a fresh surge of fury would rise up inside him.

When even was the last time a woman had given him the brush off? He was more accustomed to his dates trying to make what amounted to friends with benefits into something more serious.

Not Jemima.

And much as he disliked admitting it, that annoyed him. She had been so eager and responsive last night. Then again, when they had first met at the Cycle Shack he’d had her down as the shy, sensible type. Only how did that square with the woman he’d met at the Green Door who said she wanted to get naked with him? Heart accelerating, he wondered which Jemima was the real one.

He felt a tic of irritation pulse across his skin.

The only correct answer to that question was who cared? And yet, frustratingly, he found that he did care.

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