Page 25 of One Forbidden Night In Paradise (Hot Winter Escapes)

Chase’s voice pulled her back into the moment and she turned, smiling stiffly. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it but don’t let me keep you.’

There was a beat of silence and he leaned back in his chair, his eyes narrowing against the sunlight. ‘I’m taking the boats out into open water. The ocean opens up its secrets after a big storm so it’s a good time to go hunting.’

She nodded. ‘So I’ve heard.’

When she was about four years old her parents had moved to the west of Ireland. After a storm, people used to go down to the beach at Streedagh to look for gold because rumour had it that when the Spanish Armada retreated, some of the boats got separated from the fleet and they ended up being smashed on the rocks off the coast there.

They hadn’t lived there long. The lure of the pub had caused the rows between her parents to become even more frequent and explosive and they had moved back to England after just a few months.

Chase was watching her idly but something in his gaze made her feel like a bird with a cat’s paw on its tail. ‘Why hear it from other people? Come and see for yourself.’

‘What? Go with you, you mean? No, I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ she protested. More time with Chase? After what had so nearly happened last night? No. Definitely not.

‘Why not? It’s just a regular day trip but without all the hassle.’

Why not?

She stared at him in silence, a roaring noise in her ears as she replayed that moment in the kitchen when they stood staring at one another with the tension between them pulled to snapping point.

He leaned forward and she suddenly got a glimpse of that authority she’d seen at the beach house. ‘You said you wanted to dive.’

‘I do.’

‘But what? You’d rather be doing easy duck dives with a bunch of clueless tourists?’

She felt her temper flare. ‘I didn’t say that. But I don’t have any equipment.’

‘But I do. Come on, Jemima.’ His use of her name made her stomach flip over. ‘You want to dive, so let’s go take a look at your “reefs”.’

The glitter in his green eyes made her want to reach out and touch his face and some of her anger dissipated. It would be madness to agree but, then again, surely there was no real risk of anything happening with the two of them wearing wetsuits and fins.

‘Okay, then,’ she said slowly.

‘Great.’ Pushing back his chair, he got to his feet.

‘What are you doing?’

He grinned then, one of those slow, curling smiles that wrapped around her throat so that it was difficult to catch her breath. ‘Going fishing! Come on.’ And as he pulled her to her feet she felt a sudden rush of excitement just as if she were standing like a surfer on the shifting edge of a wave, her body quivering with tension and anticipation.

In less than ten minutes, Chase had chivvied her out of the house with an even more streamlined set of belongings and into a dune buggy and then they were bumping across a track towards what he called the dock. She was expecting some kind of basic jetty but as they turned a corner her mouth dropped open.

There were not one but six jetties and everything looked custom-made. That thought was confirmed a moment later when Chase said, ‘We only finished the construction work on the floating decks two months ago. They’re state of the art, designed to handle a storm surge of ten feet.’

She nodded but she wasn’t looking at the jetties. Her eyes were fixed on the boats moored beside them on the turquoise water, in particular the largest one, a stunning white yacht, actually make that a superyacht, she thought, breath catching, as her eyes travelled the length of the boat from the stern to the bow. ‘That’s theMiranda,’ Chase said softly as he slowed the buggy to a stop and switched off the engine.

She felt her pulse miss a beat. ‘AfterThe Tempest?’

He nodded. ‘Seemed appropriate.’

Their eyes met and she felt a flutter of happiness rise up inside her. Then feeling suddenly exposed, she glanced back to the gleaming white yacht.

‘She’s beautiful.’

‘I think so.’ He seemed pleased. ‘And that one is theUmbra. She’s the support vessel, the workhorse. Not as pretty but her beauty lies in her functionality. That’s where we keep the dive store and all the tools—you know, the DPVs, the submersibles, the amphibious plane. Oh, and there are some of the usual toys for just letting off steam: jet skis, hydrofoil boards.’

The submersibles? An amphibious plane?

The words were still echoing inside her head as they made their way through the yacht. She smiled politely as various crew members were introduced. Her head was bursting with all this new information, and most, if not all of it, seemed to contradict her first impression of the man she’d met at the harbour. A man she had thought was just some local fisherman who now turned out to be the owner of a fleet of boats as well as an island.

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