A pang of jealousy bit Claudia hard in the chest.
‘They look good together.’
Claudia looked up, all the way up, to find Luke looking down at her. He was in boardies as well—dry this time, thank goodness—and his chest was covered with a form-fitting T-shirt. She resolutely ignored the wetter, less dressed image of him that floated in her mind’s eye but his eyebrow kicked up and he looked at her as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.
‘Yes, they do,’ she said and hoped like hell the words didn’t sound as squeaky as they’d felt leaving her throat.
She was relieved when he broke eye contact, handing her a frosty bottle of beer. She took it gratefully as he stepped over the log and lowered his butt, plonking down beside her.
Claudia shifted to make some room for him.
Or put some space between them, anyway.
She looked back at the fire, which had settled from a blazing inferno to a dull roar, as they both took some swallows of their beers, neither saying anything for a few moments. Until Luke mentioned the elephant sitting next to them at the fire.
‘I was hoping you’d join me in the pool today. Just like old times.’ Luke had been acutely aware of her eyes on him today and his blood had flowed thick and sludgy through his veins as her gaze had continued to linger.
Claudia kept her eyes firmly fixed on the flames that danced before her. Why had he hoped that? Surely after a sleepy grope he knew they’d progressed far beyond the innocent pool games they’d played as kids? Even through the glass of the window she’d felt the pull of him, had been aware of him like no other man.
‘I don’t do much swimming these days,’ she dismissed.
‘What, not even in that magnificent ocean right on your doorstep?’
She shook her head. ‘Too busy.’
Luke took a swig of his beer ‘That’s a shame...I seem to remember you looked good in a bikini.’
Claudia faltered, her pulse flickering madly in time with the flame as she glanced at him. What was she supposed to say to that? Since when did you pay any attention to how I looked in a bikini? Or, not as good as you do in wet clingy boardies?
Or maybe, more aptly, don’t flirt with me?
‘I leave the bikinis to Avery,’ she said, dropping her gaze to the fire again. ‘There’s too much to do at the moment to bunk off for a cool dip.’
Luke tutted at her dismissal. ‘The clean-up’s essentially done,’ Luke said. ‘I’m sure you could have squeezed in a quick, dirty swim.’
Claudia, who almost choked on her beer, was shocked into looking at him again. He laughed at her scandalised look, then winked. ‘I was referring to the state of the water.’
She narrowed her eyes at him, wondering how many beers he’d consumed. Maybe the jet lag was hitting him in one large wallop and taking over his mouth.
Either way, she chose to ignore his comment and the direction he seemed to want to steer the conversation. ‘The outside is largely complete but there’s still a long way to go,’ she said. ‘We have to keep moving forward.’
Luke sighed at her determination to stay serious. He’d hoped as he’d sat beside her that she’d loosen up a little—relax as everyone else was doing.
But no. The uniform should have been a clue.
‘So what’s next?’ he asked as he reached down and absently petted a mellow Hull.
Claudia took a mouthful of her beer before she answered. ‘Back to the drawing board. Starting again. Working out how much I can do with the insurance money.’
‘It’s not going to cover it all?’
Claudia shook her head. ‘It may have been enough twenty years ago, not today. Hell, it’d probably have been enough for just a normal cyclone but...’
Luke took a swig of his drink and watched Claudia’s toes, painted a cute shade of pink, wiggle in the sand.
‘So you want to talk about where we go from here?’
He felt her tense beside him and her toes stopped their wriggling. ‘I’m not selling to some consortium, some...giant hotel chain, Luke.’ She glared at him and Luke couldn’t decide if the flare in her eyes came from her sudden well of pissed off, or the fire.
‘If you’ve stopped by to butter me up about that you might as well keep on going.’
Luke knew it was important to stay calm and frankly he was too wrecked from a week of hard yakka to get into an argument. ‘Okay, so what are we going to do?’
‘The Tropicana has been here for forty years. Our parents ran it together for twenty of those years. And it will be again.’
‘Complete with Tiki Suites, salsa nights and lei stringing?’
Luke felt her hostile glance shoot bullets of disapproval straight into his chest.
‘Yes. What’s wrong with those things?’ she demanded. ‘I know they probably don’t seem very sophisticated to Mr Hotshot Ad Exec, but the Tropicana has always been a family resort—that’s the way our parents wanted it. And that’s the way it’s going to stay.’
‘And what about you, Claude? What do you want?’
Claudia frowned. Where was the man who had teased her about a bikini before? He was looking at her as he had by the pool earlier, as if he was trying to see all the way to the inside. And now, as then, it discomforted her.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean if you were given a bottomless bucket of money and told you could build whatever you wanted—anything—what would you build? Not what our parents wanted, not what the town wants, not what’s always been. What Claudia Davis wants.’
Luke watched her intently as she opened her mouth to say something and then shut it again. Conflict crinkled her brow. Wisps of blonde hair had loosened from her ponytail and the ocean breeze blew them gently across her face. The firelight played across her features complementing their fineness but it also illuminated her internal struggle, backlit her doubt.
She chewed on her bottom lip, contemplating the question as if he’d just asked her to tell him the meaning of life in ten words or less. The firelight glowed in the moisture she was creating and his gaze dropped to her mouth briefly before returning to the fire, tuning into the background noises of surf, laughter and hula music.
He drank his beer and waited quietly for her to figure it out. Was the question really that difficult?
Claudia contemplated the rim of her beer bottle, conscious of the time ticking away. She didn’t know. She’d been so caught up in her parents’ vision it had become her own. And she loved the kitschy, retro feel they’d created. But was it what she wanted?
What did she want?
She rubbed absently at her neck again and the muscles protested. ‘A day spa,’ she said on a whim. ‘A place for people to be pampered.’
Luke blinked, both surprised and excited by her answer. ‘Yeah?’
For a brief moment their eyes met and the spark in his caused a flutter of possibility inside Claudia’s chest. But reality intruded and snuffed it out. She shook her head. ‘The people we attract here can’t afford that kind of decadence, Luke. We’re the affordable alternative.’
‘Can’t we be both?’
Claudia frowned. ‘Being good at one thing is better than being half-arsed at two.’
‘So then let’s not be half-arsed. Let’s be some kind of hybrid resort where we cater to both ends of the market.’
‘I think that’ll be really confusing to the market, don’t you? High-ticket clients aren’t going to want to be bothered by a bunch of screaming kids and salsa lessons on the beach.’
Luke shrugged. ‘So we keep them separate—we have enough land. Why shut ourselves off to another, potentially very lucrative, source of income?’
Claudia could feel that flutter again and her pulse picked up slightly as her imagination started to run a little wild. Avery wou
ld be great at managing and running a spa business. Temptation shimmied possibilities in front of her—typical that Luke would be an integral part of that, enticing her with firelight and his strange but lovely accent like a big, fat, juicy apple.
She dragged her gaze off him and looked into the fire. Bad enough that he’d reminded her of how she’d perved on him in the pool today, but now he was waving a shiny new future in front of her.
Get behind me, Satan.
Luke was encouraged by Claudia’s contemplation, the little flare of interest he’d seen in her gaze. He nudged his thigh against hers and a quiver of something hot and sinful spread all the way up to his groin. ‘Just think about it, Claude. You don’t have to rush into anything.’
Claudia looked down at his thigh, all warm and muscled in the firelight. And tempting. Oh, so tempting. It was hot against hers and she didn’t think it had anything to do with the fire. Did he feel it too or was it just her? She wondered what he’d do if she slid her hand onto it. If she slowly moved it upwards.
Right. To. The. Top.
She blinked as the image formed in real time in her head and stood abruptly, shocked by the ferocity of the urge to follow through. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said, looking straight ahead. Not down at him. And his eyes. And his smile.
And his outrageously sexy accent.
Luke smiled at the stiffness of her stance. ‘Good,’ he murmured.
Claudia nodded. ‘Right, well...I think I might turn in,’ she said, still not looking at him.
Luke chuckled. ‘Sweet dreams.’
Claudia swallowed as she thought about the dreams she’d been having this last week.
Not one of them sweet.
‘See you in the morning,’ she said with as much nonchalance as she could muster before she fled the beach for the safety of the Copacabana Suite, far away from men with sexy accents and delectable thighs.
FIVE
Claudia barely slept a wink. It was as if Luke had tripped some switch in her brain and a hundred different possibilities for what the Tropicana could be had bombarded her. And frankly it was a relief to think about something other than the way Luke’s hand had felt on her breast. The way his boardies had clung to him in the pool.
The way his thigh had sizzled against hers.
By the time morning rocked around, her head was buzzing. And she needed to share! Avery and Jonah weren’t on her radar—she’d walked in on them too many times to know that spontaneous bursts of shared creativity were off the table.
But the one man who had inspired them was just through a connecting door and he was in there alone.
She rose at six, climbed into her uniform—the skirt for a change—and made copious notes. When she was all spent she took to the floor, pacing it until the clock ticked over to seven—a perfectly reasonable hour. After that, all propriety was off. She rapped once on the door before pushing it open, knowing in her gut that Luke wouldn’t have locked it.
The room was like a black hole when she pressed inside but that didn’t deter her. It was only eight in the evening in the UK—still a perfectly decent hour. She marched over to the curtains from familiarity alone and yanked them back with a harsh squeal along the railing. Another impossibly sunny day greeted her and was surprisingly buoying.
Luke’s eyes scrunched up as he stirred. He rolled on his side and prised open an eyelid to check the time on the clock beside his bed. ‘What the hell?’ he groaned, rolling on his back, knowing it was Claudia in his room without having to sight her. ‘There better be another cyclone on the horizon,’ he griped, ‘because I thought this was our day of rest.’
‘Sorry,’ Claudia chirped although she didn’t sound very sorry at all.
‘Shut the curtain,’ Luke said. ‘Nowhere has the right to be this bright so early.’
‘You’re such a city boy now,’ she scoffed as she acquiesced and closed half the curtain.
‘I’m still on London time,’ he protested.
‘Whatever, city boy,’ Claudia dismissed. ‘Wake up. I’ve been up all night and it’s all your fault.’
At another time, when he wasn’t exhausted from hard physical labour and the remnants of jet lag, Luke might have taken that as a compliment. Might have raised his eyebrow and shot her a little oh, really look. But he was having trouble prising his eyes open.
And this was Claude. He didn’t think about Claude in that context. Or he never used to anyway... Thinking about keeping her up at night was just plain wrong.
‘Come back in an hour and tell me then,’ he muttered, rolling on his side and plonking a pillow over his head.
Claudia glared at his covered head. ‘Hey,’ she protested, marching to his side and whisking the offending pillow away, tossing it on the ground. ‘I know you’re flying back to London tomorrow but I have ideas. Lots of ideas.’
Luke groaned. So did he. None of them sane. All of them X-rated. But she looked very awake. Very no-nonsense. Very determined. He sighed, resigning himself to his fate, pushing himself up into a semi-upright position against the head of the bed, his hands rubbing at his eyes.
‘Okay, fine,’ he said when he could just make her out through bleary eyes tortured by the kind of sunlight he’d never been privy to in his ten plus years in London. How quickly eyeballs forgot!
Then of course they were subjected to further torture by Claudia standing at the end of his bed in that horrendous uniform that somehow seemed to get sexier the more he saw her in it.
‘What have you got?’ he demanded with a gruffness that he was fairly sure had some kind of sexual genesis.
Claudia narrowed her eyes. He didn’t look very awake. ‘Do you need coffee?’ she demanded.
Luke snorted. There were about a hundred things he needed, including dragging her into bed and stripping her out of her awful clothes, pulling out that damn ponytail and kissing her till she stopped growling and started purring.
Coffee didn’t even rate.
Clearly his sanity was of much greater concern.
‘Just speak,’ he griped. ‘You woke me. And now I’m vertical and reasonably awake. So speak.’
Claudia tsked. ‘I remember a time when you would have been up and on your surfboard catching a wave somewhere by now.’
‘Claude.’
The warning in his voice told Claudia she’d stretched his patience long enough and she opened her mouth, prepared to get down to business, to launch into her spiel, and then his state of dress registered. Or, undress, to be exact. He was sitting up looking all big and broad with a very naked chest leading to a very naked abdomen and that very, very nice happy trail meandering downwards to what she began to suspect might be a very naked everything else.
‘Are you...wearing any clothes?’
Luke looked at her for long moments and didn’t answer and Claudia wished she could bite her tongue off. She hadn’t meant to voice her concerns but she was so used to speaking her mind around him she’d forgotten that they were all grown up now. That some things just weren’t said.
‘No. I always sleep naked. Why? Don’t you?’
Claudia snorted. ‘No.’
‘What, not even after sex?’
Heat rose in Claudia’s cheeks. She really didn’t want to discuss her sexual habits with Luke. ‘That’s none of your damn business.’
Luke couldn’t agree more. Thinking about sex and Claudia in the buff were not places he wanted his mind to wander.
Clearly he needed more asleep
‘You’re right,’ he sighed. ‘I apologise. Now can we please just get this over with?’
Claudia folded her arms across her chest as she stared at his. ‘I’d really prefer you to not be naked when I’m talking to you.’
And he’d prefer her to be a lot more naked than she was. Irritation n
eedled him. ‘Well, we don’t always get what we want.’
Claudia dragged her gaze up. Fine. Tiredness was making him belligerent. She’d show him she could be cool about talking to a naked man. Who was in bed. With bed hair. And a shadowy hint of stubble along his jawline.
She wasn’t some middle-aged prude. She was perfectly fine with nudity.
And bed hair. And stubble.
Luke rubbed his hand over his jaw, the rasp loud in the silence. He needed a shave. After some more sleep. ‘Claude, I swear if you don’t say something I’m just going to go to sleep sitting up.’
Claudia nodded. Speaking. She could do that. She cleared her throat. ‘I was thinking about...’ His bare chest was distracting in her peripheral vision. ‘The whole spa idea. About...’ He rubbed at his jaw again and the rasp went straight to her nipples. They tightened in blatant response, almost as if he’d scraped his chin over the sensitive tips, and she was thankful for the palm-tree pattern disguising their reaction.
Dear Lord, where was she? She cleared her throat again. ‘Catering to that end of the market.’
‘Yes?’
His slight accent dragged sticky fingers across her belly and she absently placed her hand on her midriff, pressing slightly to relieve the tingle. ‘I was thinking about how we could offer the spa customers a fuller service, including exclusive accommodation. Have you seen those deluxe tents with four-poster beds that sit on raised wooden floorboards and are draped in the most luxurious georgette screening? They open to the ocean and look like something out of Arabian Nights?’
Luke knew the type Claudia was talking about—one of his clients dealt exclusively in that style of accommodation—but her hand resting where it was had become very distracting. Her fingers drummed against her belly as she spoke and he was beginning to have very bad thoughts indeed.
Which was not conducive to his nakedness.
Also, this was Claudia!
He pulled his legs up, tenting the sheet. ‘I think it sounds perfect for the Tropicana—we have enough land to make it a really exclusive set-up.’
Harlequin KISS August 2014 Bundle Page 5