Page 29 of One Forbidden Night In Paradise (Hot Winter Escapes)

His jaw tightened.

It was her fault that he was feeling like this. Jemima had broken the rules. Worse, he had broken his own rules, inviting her out for a day of diving for no other reason than because he wanted to. Just as he had wanted to stay sitting there with her at breakfast. Talking. Eating. Catching her eye. Because it reminded him of all the things he had forced himself to forget. The kind of intimacies that went further than sex.

Catching sight of his reflection in the mirror, he stopped pacing. For a moment, he stood there, breathing unsteadily, replaying the moment when he had checked her buoyancy vest. It had taken every ounce of willpower he had not to lean in and press his lips against the soft hairs at the nape of her neck.

He jerked his head back, his gaze darting to the mirror. But it wasn’t his reflection looking back at him now. It was Jemima, her grey eyes wide, not with hunger, but shock and misery.

Swearing softly, he turned away.

She was soft and sweetly serious, he thought, remembering her slightly incoherent outburst the night before. It wasn’t so much what she’d said that had surprised and unsettled him. It was because he sensed that she wasn’t just talking about the wider world but something deeper, something intrinsically personal to her. He had seen it in that quiver to her mouth. Something, most likely someone, had hurt her. Was that why she was here, thousands of miles from home? Was she running away from the hurt?

There was no point in running, he wanted to tell her. Pain was like your shadow. You could never escape it. You could lose yourself in drink or drugs temporarily, but to have any kind of life the only solution was to shut the door on your feelings. All of them.

That was the price you had to pay.

But that wasn’t right for someone like Jemima, he thought, picturing her small, tense face, hearing the emotion in her voice as she talked about saving the world. He didn’t know how old she was but in that moment she had seemed young, too young to be around someone as jaded as him.

She was also not his problem.

Not his problem, he repeated. What he needed was some fresh air to clear his head. Maybe stretch his legs. Which was how, an hour later, he found himself standing outside her cabin.

Of course, he’d told himself he was just going to say goodbye and no hard feelings, act like a grown-up, right up until he stopped in front of her door, but now that he was here he felt as if every second since he’d walked into Joan Santos’s house had been leading up to this moment.

He took a slow breath, then tightened his hand into a fist and rapped his knuckles against the wood.

CHAPTER SIX

‘JUSTAMINUTE.’

He heard movement inside the room and then the door opened and Jemima was there. She had changed out of the wetsuit and her body looked stiff beneath the blouse and shorts. Behind her glasses, her eyes looked suspiciously bright. His stomach twisted. As if she’d been crying. Over her shoulder, he could see her bag at the end of the bed.

‘I’m nearly ready,’ she said quickly. Her voice was strained. It betrayed too much, and he felt something claw at him inside. ‘I just need to grab a few last things.’

Chase stared at her, his pulse beating a drum roll through his limbs. If he had any sense he would say goodbye right about now and walk away, but...

A memory of Jemima, standing naked in front of him, quivering like a wildflower in the moonlight, slid into his head overlaid with that flush of rose pink that stained her cheeks wherever she met his gaze. Instantly, any sense he had was forgotten.

‘That’s not why I’m here.’ He hesitated. It had been a long time since he’d had to explain his behaviour to anyone. Who would he explain himself to? Robyn. His COO. But also there was nothing to explain because he had made sure that he always did the right thing.

Only he hadn’t done the right thing with Jemima. In fact he had done the very opposite, letting his imagination override what was actually happening.

‘About earlier, on the dive boat. I might have overreacted.’ He frowned, remembering how, in the moment, panic had put an aggressive edge on his voice. ‘Actually, I know I did. It’s what I do. My business is all about worst-case scenarios and any dive is chock-full of those.’

And not just dives. Life was dangerous and unpredictable and unfair and devastatingly cruel. Heart contracting, he thought back to the face of the police officer who had told him about the crash. She had been so young; around Jemima’s age probably. He could remember the tremor in her voice and how she couldn’t meet his gaze. Her eyes kept flickering away from his face as if it hurt to look at him.

He could feel Jemima’s gaze on his face now.

‘It happens all the time. Just last month I came across this boat, anchored up, guys on deck leaning over the sides. We got closer and it turned out they’d lost a couple of divers.’

His pulse slipped sideways, pulled on an unseen current. Of all the possible explanations, why had he picked that one to share? But it was too late to backtrack.

‘Apparently it was supposed to be a short, deep dive and the guys who went down were very experienced. Only they hadn’t resurfaced. The skipper went to take a look but there was no sign of them. It was only when he got back up they noticed that neither of the divers had taken their digital compasses.’

He could tell from the look on her face that Jemima understood the significance of that fact. How without a compass it would be near impossible to reorient yourself to the position of the dive boat.

‘All of us were just staring at the water and then one of my crew spotted this tiny glint of silver way, way off in the distance. It was a good kilometre from the dive boat but we went to investigate and there they were. One of them was wearing a watch. He was aiming it at the sun. That’s what we saw.’

‘Were they okay?’

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