Because pushing your body to the limit was one thing. Pushing your emotions to the breaking point at the same time made it… a whole lot more intense, honestly.
And as far as the type of soreness I was currently experiencing, let’s just say this wasn’t exactly stiffness from having surfed too much. Speaking of which…
I turned in bed, my hands automatically reaching for the man who had been there when I fell asleep. And I found emptiness. Wrinkled sheets, some residual warmth—but not much—and no pillow at all.
The happy haze that had been surrounding me evaporated like dust in the wind, and I narrowed my eyes. Because I’d seen this particular view before. An empty bed where there should have been a man. A missing pillow where a head should have been laying. A blank space where there should have been… well, something. No, I didn’t know what I wanted from him yet—not exactly—but I knew it was more than an empty space in the morning.
I didn’t even know how I felt about him yet, but I knew that I needed him there with me when I woke up—if only to reassure me that this thing was actually happening, and that I wasn’t imagining it.
And after the last week, after all that had happened between us, it was just too much. My heart started breaking when I saw that emptiness. Because I should have known better. I should have.
I’d gotten sloppy over the week, and I’d started letting those boundaries slip again. I’d built up a wall to protect myself and then, at the first sign that he could freaking cook, I’d taken it down, brick by brick. I’d watched him fall again and again as I taught him to surf, and each fall had softened my heart just a little bit.
Softened it until I’d forgotten who I was dealing with.
I closed my eyes and groaned, hating that lack of trust. Hating the feeling that I should have known better. Because I knew Damon, and I’d seen already that he wasn’t going to be who I wanted. Not in this context. Not when it came to my heart, and what it needed.
Not when it came to actually staying steady for me.
How had I forgotten that I knew that?
Because I should have known better than to crawl back into bed with him. Should have remembered what had happened before, in Hawaii.
I jumped out of bed and stormed toward the living room, the speech I was going to make already rolling through my head. No, I might not have had any coffee yet, but the words were appearing like magic at the front of my brain, presenting themselves like they knew I needed them right now.
Like they knew I needed something to support me now that Damon had disappeared on me again.
Yes, sure, fine, maybe I was being a little bit dramatic. Maybe I was overreacting. I mean he’d just gotten up and left bed. Maybe he was going to surprise me with breakfast or something. Maybe he just couldn’t sleep anymore, and didn’t want to wake me up.
Maybe.
But can you blame me for not wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt?
Besides, when I found him, he wasn’t making breakfast at all. Instead, he was sitting on the couch, propped up against the very pillow he’d taken from bed, his phone in his hand and his eyes wide with excitement.
I felt that dip in the stomach that I suspect every girl gets when she finds the man she loves looking at his phone with more enthusiasm than he looks at her, and came to a jarring stop right inside the doorway, eyes narrowed and lips pursed.
“Something so interesting that it got you right out of bed?” I asked, my tone sharp, though my voice was still slightly fuzzy from sleep.
He totally missed all that—of course—and looked up at me with eyes gleaming.
“The island is open again,” he said quickly, moving to get to his feet. “And that means we can go see the governor. Take a shower and pack your things, Aub. We’re not trapped anymore. Life can go back to our normally scheduled programming. Thank God.”
I just stood there like a big dummy, trying desperately to switch gears. I’d come in here ready to tear into him for leaving me alone in bed—again—and had instead been told that the island was open again and we would be returning to business as usual.
Which meant that this sweet little interlude was over. It was back to the real world for us, and Damon was obviously ecstatic about that idea. The problem was, I couldn’t tell whether I was happy about having to leave this little hut and our isolation… or heartbroken.
And mixed up with that was the question of how I felt about him being so overjoyed at the thought of leaving.
Because this was an exact echo of what had happened in his kitchen that morning. This was just another way of him telling me that our time together wasn’t even worth remembering. Not when the real world was beckoning.
Chapter 19
Aubrey
Within an hour we were in a cab and heading for town—and I couldn’t help but feel that we were rushing not only toward the governor, but also away from whatever it was we’d been building in that little house.
Away from the possibility of us being anything more than what we’d ever been.
Though I didn’t know that for a fact, because Damon seemed to have no wish to discuss it. And I wasn’t exactly going to bring it up. Hey, Damon, you know how we slept together again last night? Think maybe we should… I don’t know, talk about that before we just jump back into reality with both feet?
Um, no. I’d tried that before. It hadn’t turned out well.
I tried not to let it bother me, though. After all, I’d been furious with Damon about an hour ago, at least in my head, and had been casting accusations right and left about his inability to commit. And if I believed all of that, then why would I even want to have a relationship with him?
Short answer: I wouldn’t. All that stuff in the villa had just been something we did to pass the time when we were stuck together. Nothing more. So why did it hurt so badly to know that we were driving away from it without even acknowledging the magic that had been starting to happen?
Because I was a romantic at heart, I told myself firmly, turning away from Damon in the cab to stare out my window and give my mind a moment to process things. Because I had always wanted the freaking happy ending, and this was no different. I’d come into this trip still halfway in love with him, and more than a little bit wounded and vulnerable after what had happened in his house. My soft insides had been only partially protected. So it wasn’t a big surprise that my heart had taken any opportunity it could find to continue down that path.
But that path was blocked now. Plain and simple. And I had to keep it blocked off if I wanted to keep moving forward. I had to reroute. Which was exactly what I was going to do.
I just had to convince my freaking emotions to follow me rather than sticking back here with Damon.
It took us ten minutes to get to our destination—another resort on the beach, this time a large hotel that specialized in executive suites, all with ocean views—and I smirked to myself. Damon was obviously the one in charge of the accommodations on this trip. We’d hurried into a cab to get to… another hotel that was ten minutes away from the first one, so we would be closer to the governor’s office. A drive we could have made in… ten minutes.
It meant moving our entire operation. Packing up all our bags and moving to another place where we had to unpack and settle in. It was stupid. And it just confirmed to me that Damon had wanted to get out of the house where we’d been close to becoming a couple. I didn’t know why. But I was starting to see very, very clearly that last night hadn’t meant any more to him than that first night had.
“Get it together, woman,” I muttered as I got out of the cab and went around the back to collect my suitcase. “This is who he is. Your job is to get yourself out of here without any further damage. Then get to Australia and get on with your life.”
Plan settled, I turned and headed toward the hotel, my suitcase bumping along behind me as I promised myself again and again—and then once more, for good measure—that this hotel might only be ten minutes away from the vil
la, but that was ten minutes closer to being smart about Damon Parker.
Ten minutes closer to leaving him for good.
Chapter 20
Damon
I didn’t even try to talk to Aubrey about what had happened back on the beach. Or in the villa. Or in my bed.
Especially not in my bed.
No. We had come here to do one thing and one thing only: Get to the governor. Get that business done, and then be on our way. And once that became an option again, it also became my primary focus.
And with that in mind, I knew I couldn’t talk to her about anything else. Not yet. Once we were on the plane, I’d talk to her about what had happened between us… and what I wanted when we got back home. But I didn’t want to talk to her about any of that until we had quiet and privacy. The woman had proved that she deserved all of my attention, and I didn’t want to talk about the future I hoped we might have until I was able to do with it all of my focus on her.
Yeah, okay, even trying to explain it to myself was making me tie the whole thing in knots—which made me wonder about it. Why was I working so hard to explain to myself why we had to wait?
Why was it so freaking hard to explain that, when it seemed so simple? Why was I repeating myself again and again when I tried to do it?
Because I was overthinking it, I told myself firmly. I needed to put it out of my mind and get the business done. Stop making everything so complicated when it was all pretty simple.
I mean, it had been simple for the last week. Aubrey and I had fit together like two puzzle pieces. It didn’t have to get all twisty.
We checked into our suites—separate but connected, thanks to Janice, my second assistant, who had finalized the reservations I’d emailed her while Aubrey was sleeping—and on the way up, in the elevator, quickly went through what we were going to meet with the governor about.
“Easy, right?” Aubrey said when I told her we needed to get something together. “You’re the longest-standing provider on the islands. You’re the one who knows the infrastructure, the people, and what works here. It’s not going to be popular for someone else to suddenly take over and start to screw with things. At the end of the day, people don’t like change.” Her voice caught a little bit on that line, and I glanced at her, wondering if she was getting sick.
Wondering if I should worry that I’d been kissing her so much over the past day. Because if she was sick, I probably was, too.
I stopped that particular thought in its tracks and sent it scooting right back to the darkest corners of my mind, where it had come from. There were a lot of things to think about right now. Kissing Aubrey wasn’t one of them.
No matter how good it had been.
“And the governor certainly isn’t going to want to deal with the people complaining if they’re suddenly missing their afternoon soap operas or their favorite nightly shows,” she finished up. “It’s an election year, right?”
She glanced at me but didn’t even wait for a response before she started talking again—mostly, I assumed, because she already knew the answer to that question. She was just using the question format to remind me. Which was completely like her.
“So he wants to keep the people happy,” she continued. “Changing up their TV programming isn’t going to do that. Plus messing with the pricing, no doubt. And there would almost inevitably be an interruption in the service. Sure, the lines are already there—thanks to our infrastructure—but any change of companies would mean an interruption while they took over those lines.”
The silence that followed was so abrupt that it took me a second to catch up with the fact that she’d actually stopped talking.
Or maybe it was the fact that I was still staring at her lips, dreaming about how they’d felt on mine. God, I wasn’t going to be any good in that meeting if I couldn’t get my head in the game. I had to take my own advice and make this all about business.
I tore my gaze away from her lips to find her giving me a look that said she’d seen exactly what I was looking at, and didn’t appreciate it. Which… well, honestly, seemed kind of strange. Sure, the first time might have happened by mistake, after we’d both had way too much to drink and gotten carried away, but everything we’d done in the last week…
None of that had felt like a mistake. None of it had felt like it happened by accident. It had felt natural, like we’d been moving in that direction for years and had just finally gotten there. It had felt like…
It had felt like something we’d both wanted.
Something that I still wanted.
Hell, I wanted to shove her against the wall of the elevator right now and kiss her again. Everything in my body was screaming for me to do just that. Screw the governor. Screw the planning and the marketing and the people and their TV programs. Screw everything but Aubrey. Nothing else mattered. Nothing mattered as much as having her in my arms again, seeing that look on her face again when I first touched her.
Right, and that was another thought that was going right to the darkest corners of my mind.
Get yourself together, buddy, my inner voice snapped. You have a corporate enemy to defeat, remember?
That was what I’d decided this morning when I heard the island was opening back up. It was what I’d been telling myself ever since. And it worked, because if I’d ever been anything in my entire life, it was competitive. I’d be damned if I was going to let Josh Brody make a fool of me now, when I had so much in the palm of my hand.
So I took a deep breath, got my brain back in line, and started thinking through what Aubrey had said.
It was all sound. Brilliant. Simple but sophisticated, and impossible to argue with.
“I like everything you said, Aub, as usual,” I told her, thinking that the compliment would be welcome.
It was also tactical. I hadn’t forgotten that she was planning to leave me as soon as we got back to Hawaii. Maybe if I could show her how well we worked together, how much I appreciated her brain and her marketing abilities, it would change her mind.
This certainly seemed like the right way to go. I’d just prove to her that we were the best team around. That working for anyone else would be a waste. That I appreciated her more than anyone else ever would.
And if I could somehow wrap that up with the fact that I was starting to think that I wanted more with her, so much the better. Right?
Instead, she shot me a look that said anything but, her eyes large and glassy and looking like they were filling up with tears.
Wait, what was going on here? Who was this girl and what had she done with my trusty sidekick? How was my paying her a compliment somehow making her cry? Because that was definitely not what I’d been going for—and the fact that she looked like she was about to break down felt like it was very close to actually ripping my heart right out of my chest.
And God, this was getting too complicated for me to keep up with. When did my heart start getting ripped out of my chest by my assistant? How did we get here?
Before I could ask what was going on, the elevator dinged and we were on our floor.
“I’m going to my room,” Aubrey said in a rush, wheeling her suitcase out of the elevator. “What time do you want to leave for the governor’s office? I assume you’ve got an appointment.”
“We do,” I confirmed. “Janice has taken care of it.”
She said something under her breath that sounded like, “Of course she has. Because why would you actually need me?”
Then she moved quickly toward her door, shoved the key card into the lock, jerked the door open, and slammed it shut behind her.
Chapter 21
Damon
We didn’t talk during the entire cab ride to the governor’s mansion, and that was just fine with me. First of all, the ride was only about ten minutes long, because we weren’t that far from the mansion to start with. And secondly, I still didn’t know what on earth I’d done to upset Aubrey so much, or therefore how to fix it.
And I
might not have had a ton of experience with relationships, or keeping women happy, but I was smart enough to know that if you didn’t know what to say, sometimes it was better to just keep your mouth shut.
When we arrived at the mansion, the governor’s assistant met us at the door of the business wing, giving both of us warm smiles.
“Lovely day, isn’t it?” she said brightly. “You wouldn’t think we had a volcano actively trying to kill us. This way, please.”
She turned and strode through the door and into the waiting section, leaving both Aubrey and me staring after her in something that was slightly more than shock and slightly less than terror.
“Who talks about a volcano erupting so casually?” Aubrey asked under her breath.
“Someone who experiences it often?” I guessed.
“You’d think that would make them more nervous, not less.”
“Maybe it’s one of those things where you build up a tolerance. Like the sun. Your skin gets tan so you have better protection.”
She cast an amused glance my way. “I don’t think there’s a suntan that protects you from hot lava, Damon,” she murmured.
She took a step ahead of me and followed the assistant into the next office, and I grinned at her back. As far as I was concerned, if she was starting to tell jokes, it meant that she was getting close to being back to normal. And I had to admit that my heart was singing at the fact that she’d just smiled at me. It did things to my insides. And I was man enough to admit that I liked those things.
When I got into the office, I found Aubrey already seated in one of the large easy chairs that faced the governor’s desk. The governor, Mahoyu, was laughing at something she’d said.
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