by Fiona Harper
‘No...nothing.’
She closed the safe and stood up. Marco came in close behind and wrapped his arms around her, pressing his cheek against hers. ‘What do you want to do?’
She felt every muscle in her body sag. Of course she couldn’t have the perfect night with the perfect man! What had she been thinking? She just wasn’t that lucky.
‘The only thing I can do,’ she said sadly. ‘I’m going to have to call hotel security. Someone must have come in while we were in the pool. My ring has been stolen.’
* * *
GEMMA WANDERED THROUGH THE ground floor looking for Will. It was very quiet now most of their guests had gone. Polly and the boys had reappeared in the nightclothes, but their early morning must have been catching up on them, because they’d now finished running round their house like maniacs and were happy to curl up on chairs and sofas in the living room, accompanied by assorted soft toys, and watch a film.
She looked in the kitchen, but all was still, no noise except the swoosh of the dishwasher. She turned to go, but a gust of cold air hit her, and she twisted to see where it had come from. The lights were on low in the conservatory, and no one was in there as far as she could see, but one of the doors at the far end was open.
She walked through the conservatory and peeked outside. ‘Will?’ she called softly, not quite daring to shout.
There was a noise to the left of the conservatory door, as if something had rubbed against one of the red brick walls of the house. Gemma was only wearing thick socks, but she couldn’t see a thing while she was standing inside with the lights shining around her, so she stepped out onto the patio and started to walk in the direction of the noise.
It wasn’t more than a couple of seconds before she found Will leaning up against the wall, one knee up, foot braced behind him. He turned his head as she came closer, but didn’t say anything.
‘What are you doing out here?’ she asked, shivering slightly.
‘I needed some fresh air,’ was all he said. ‘Preferably cold fresh air.’
Oh, hell. Him too? She’d been hoping she’d be able to convince herself the lip action had more to do with chivalry than anything else.
But that didn’t mean she needed to do anything about it, right? She cleared her throat. ‘Doris says...’
What Doris had said came rushing back into her mind, but it wasn’t the bit about being ready for Will to take her back home. Quite a man...
And he was. There lay her problem, she thought, as she watched her breath puff white into the December night and disappear.
Will stood up and walked to the edge of the patio, stared out into a night where low purplish-grey clouds blocked out the moon and stars. Gemma slipped in behind him and took up his place on the wall, hoping he’d have left some residual heat.
She had a horrible feeling that this man had the ability to make her want to reach for her running shoes more than anyone she’d ever met. There was no point in trying to hide from him. He’d already seen the worst of her. Surely it was only a matter of time before he realised this was a mistake?
‘Doris says what?’ he asked finally, and Gemma suddenly realised she’d trailed off and had never finished her sentence.
She swallowed. ‘Doris says she’s ready when you are.’
He turned and looked at her. Gemma felt her insides wobble like the jelly on Doris’s trifle. She’d once described Will as boring, dull. Then why was her pulse racing? Why was her breath stuck in her chest? She’d called him ‘nice’, damning him with faint praise, and had made fun of his mild-mannered temperament. But there was nothing mild or mannered about the way he was looking at her now. Nothing at all.
Nice, lawn-mowing, helping-with-the-dishes, taking-six-months-to-tell-a-woman-he-liked-her Will was gone. Or maybe that version of him had only been her invention. He started walking towards her. Gemma was tempted to back away, but unless she could dissolve through the red bricks pressing into her back that wasn’t going to happen.
‘And what about you, Gemma?’ he said as he kept walking. ‘Are you ready?’
Gemma opened her mouth, and quickly discovered she’d run run out of to put in it. ‘I... I...’
‘That’s what I thought,’ he said as he closed the last few steps between them. Then he pinned her up against the wall and finished what they’d started under the mistletoe.
* * *
IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT when they finally returned to Juliet’s villa. Marco walked her to the door but didn’t come in much past the threshold.
They’d gone down to reception to talk to the concierge, and then hotel security had been called. She’d spent ages talking to them, explaining what the ring looked like and what she’d been doing all day, and when they revealed that there had been rumours of thefts at other high-end resorts both on Martinique and in the Grenadines, only a short plane hop away, and they’d seen no option but to call the police.
Of course, the two officers had arrived in St Lucian time, wandering in after she and Marco had been waiting for almost two hours, and then she’d had to go through it all again with them. Right from the beginning.
Marco had been amazing, sitting with her through it all, listening intently to all the information gathered, asking questions if something hadn’t been clear. She’d never seen him so businesslike and focused before. It was a whole new side to him. One that made her wish they could have a future beyond the beach and the palm trees, beyond the end of next week.
She’d told him more than once that he should go back to his villa, but he’d refused. Even now she knew he was here to take care of her, make sure she got back to her villa okay, rather than to take advantage of her—which is what she’d been planning to do to him.
He looked at her, his eyes full of sympathy instead of heat. ‘Don’t be sad. There will be other rings.’
She nodded, but maybe the stress of the situation and the late hour were getting to her, because a fat tear slid down her cheek. She looked at her toes. ‘There won’t be another one like that one,’ she told him. ‘It was my grandmother’s—her engagement ring. And I was...’ Oh, heck. Her voice had cracked and gone all scratchy. ‘It had great sentimental value.’
When she glanced back up, Marco was giving her the strangest look. He reached out and smoothed her hair away from her face. ‘Then I am very sorry about it. Maybe it isn’t stolen. Maybe it will turn up unexpectedly someplace?’
She nodded again, but more to thank him for being so supportive than because she believed what he was saying. ‘Thank you for being so wonderful this evening. I don’t know what I would have done without you.’
He gave her a wry half-smile. ‘You are a strong woman, Juliet. I am sure you would have managed just fine.’
She knew he was getting ready to take his leave. The moment that had been so ripe earlier had now passed. Instead of flinging her on to the bed and having his wicked way with her he was being all gentlemanly, damn him.
She might have done something about it if she hadn’t been half-comatose with tiredness and had a headache knocking at her temple, waiting to be let in. Also, she didn’t want her first time with him to be a half-hearted fumble before slipping into unconsciousness. If they were going to do it, it should be fabulous. Earth-shattering. Life-altering. She was just going to have to be patient.
‘Goodnight, Juliet,’ he said, and leaned in to kiss her softly on the lips.
She grabbed hold of his shirt and made sure he lingered a second of two longer. When they pulled apart, she sighed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, shaking her head.
He reached up and touched her face, running his thumb over her cheekbone. ‘There is always tomorrow...’
She leaned in and kissed him again. He was back to normal now, back in control, and while it was still lovely she missed that sense of rawness they’d shared when h
e’d hauled her out of the pool and carried her up to her bed. ‘See you in the morning, Marco.’
She watched him walk away. He turned as he reached the end of her path and waved, and then he was gone. Juliet let out a long, heartfelt breath then closed the door behind him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
GEMMA WAS UP AT seven on Boxing Day. She knotted her dressing gown firmly, shoved her feet in her slippers and marched downstairs to the kitchen. Once there, she rummaged through Juliet’s cookery books until she found a recipe for American pancakes, then set to work. Eggs, milk, flour, a little butter... It couldn’t be that hard, could it?
She decided the children must have some kind of pancake radar, because one by one they appeared over the next twenty minutes, yawning, then sat themselves at the kitchen table and waited. Unfortunately, they had to wait a rather long time.
It wasn’t the mixing that was the problem, Gemma decided, that was easy. It was the cooking that was the tricky bit, not helped by the fact that Juliet’s Aga had no temperature controls.
The recipe said to turn the pancakes over when the batter bubbled on top, but she started off by turning them too early, so the whole thing just flopped back into the pan in a gloopy mess, and then she left them too long, so the pan started to smoke. Polly turned her nose up at the scorched little offerings Gemma plonked in the middle of the table.
By the time she’d mixed up a second batch of batter, she was starting to wish she’d never thought of it.
It was all Will Truman’s fault.
What business had he of being all boring and grey and geography-teacherish one week and then morphing into some kind of knight in fricking armour, who kissed like a god, the next? No wonder she couldn’t concentrate on pancakes!
Just thinking about it made her ears heat up. She scrubbed her left one with her free hand, trying to erase the sensation, and scowled. She should have run when she’d seen him walking towards her like that, not stood there blithering, secretly waiting, heart thudding and palms slick.
The memory of the actual choreography of the kiss was fuzzy—what mouths and lips had done, where arms and hands had gone, the moment she’d stopped clinging onto the wall and pulled him closer. Those things were blurred by the recollection of how her body had responded, fizzing, tingling, sighing... Those things she remembered with startling clarity.
She did, however, clearly remember springing apart when they’d heard someone come into the kitchen. She remembered the shock and guilt slamming through her, and from the look on Will’s face, he’d been feeling the same way.
He’d taken Doris back down the road after that, and he hadn’t come back.
Much as she quivered to admit it to herself, Gemma had to face the fact that she liked him. A lot. Possibly even more than she had liked Michael in the beginning. And if things were different, if this was a different time or a different place, she’d have followed Doris’s advice and grabbed this chance. Unfortunately, she didn’t have that luxury.
While nothing had actually happened between Will and Juliet, something had been brewing. They all knew it.
So she would have to keep out of Will’s way for the next six days.
And she hoped to God she’d had her fair share of disasters this Christmas, because if anything else happened, there was no way she was roping him in to help out again. She would just have to muddle through on her own.
* * *
JULIET COULDN’T FIND MARCO anywhere. She’d expected to see him sitting on his terrace eating breakfast, or leaning on his balcony. When she knocked on his door there was no answer. In the end she went for a swim then wandered off to the hotel’s gift shop to look for presents for the kids. When she was on her way back she spotted him sitting at one of the tables that surrounded the main pool, an untouched coffee in front of him.
She walked up to him, suddenly feeling a little nervous. He was staring off into the distance and only noticed her when she was almost next to him. When he did spot her, however, he didn’t jump, he just turned his head and looked at her.
She pulled out a chair and sat down, hugging her bag of souvenirs to her middle. ‘Marco? What’s wrong?’
He stared at his coffee cup for a while, then looked up at her. ‘I had a message from my brother. My father is very ill. I have to leave tomorrow.’
‘Oh, no...’ She reached over and covered her hand with his. He’d been so wonderful to her in the short time she’d known him, it was the least she could do to offer some comfort in return. But at the same time as she felt a rush of warm empathy for him, a cold little niggle started up in her stomach. This meant they only had one more day together—maybe even less than that—and she hadn’t realised how much he was starting to mean to her.
‘I wish I could stay here with you instead,’ he mumbled, and once again she had the flash of the little boy he must have once been, looking lost and conflicted instead of supremely smooth and confident.
She leaned over and kissed his temple, closing her eyes, letting her lips soften against his skin, then pulled away. ‘I wish you could stay longer too,’ she whispered, ‘but family is important. I understand.’
He looked at her, and sadness flashed in his eyes before he pulled her to him. ‘I don’t want to go, Juliet. I don’t want to do this. I want to stay with you and have what we can have together, nothing to spoil it.’
She rested her forehead against his and breathed out shakily. ‘I want that too, but sometimes life isn’t about what we want, is it? Sometimes it’s about what we need to give. The trick is knowing how to balance the two.’
That made her sound very wise, but it had taken her more than forty years and an almost-breakdown to stumble across that particular piece of wisdom.
‘Maybe it’s time for you to give your family another chance? If your father is really ill then you need to go home and make peace with him while you still have time.’ Her throat grew thick. ‘I-I lost my father very suddenly, so I know what it’s like to wish you had a chance to say goodbye.’
She waited until he looked at her properly then carried on.
‘Go home, Marco—for yourself as much as them. I will miss you horribly...but I think you have to go and I think I’m going to have to stop being selfish and let you.’
A little bit of her still wanted to be selfish, the bit that was scared that if he left now she would never see him again, that all the promise this wonderful Christmas had brought would amount to nothing. She pulled in a breath through her nostrils and sat back in her chair.
He looked at her, his expression almost fierce. ‘And you would give up this—us—whatever it was you were going to get from me, so that I could go home and be happy with my family?’
She frowned. That was a strange way of putting it, but the sentiment was about right. ‘Of course.’
Marco swore and pushed back his chair, then he walked over to the edge of the pool and then back to the table, where he braced his arms on it, the tendons in his forearms straining against his skin.
She sat there for a few moments wondering what she’d said and what to do about his puzzling reaction. ‘We have one day, Marco. Let’s make the most of it. But before we do, I need to tell you something... I haven’t been entirely honest with you. You see, I’m not who you think I am.’
He’d been staring intently at the table top, but now he lifted his head sharply. ‘You are not Juliet Taylor from England?’
She gave him a weary look. ‘Unfortunately, I am—and that’s what I need to explain. I don’t want our remaining time together to be sullied with lies. I’m tired of pretending, tired of making everything seem perfect on the surface when really it’s messy and difficult underneath.’
‘I don’t understand what you are saying.’
She shook her head. ‘I know, but...here goes...’
She
put her bag on the table, stood up, then walked over to him and took his hands in hers. ‘I don’t work in the film industry—that’s my sister’s job—and I don’t get to meet movie stars on a daily basis or fly all over the world. I’m a neurotic housewife from Tunbridge Wells who has four kids and a worrying addiction to baking, and the only reason I’m at Pelican’s Reach is because my sister paid for the trip. I am a total fake, Marco, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but I was scared I would seem dull and uninteresting to you.’
He was completely frozen to the spot. His mouth moved and his brow furrowed deeper, and then he grabbed her hand and marched off in the direction of their villas.
* * *
SHE STUMBLED ALONG BEHIND him, hardly able to keep up with his much longer legs. When they got to her villa, he told her to open the door. ‘Come with me,’ he said, unsmiling, and led her down the steps from her bedroom into her living room. He stopped in front of the large wooden sideboard and opened one of its doors.
‘Check your safe.’
Juliet stared at him, frowning. What was wrong with the man? One minute they’d been opening up to each other, sharing things, and the next he turned silent and sullen and was making no sense at all. ‘What do you mean?’
Marco just gestured towards the safe. ‘I mean, open it. Check what’s in there.’ And then he turned and strode away to look out of the window.
Juliet crouched down in front of the safe, but her fingers hovered above the number keys. She really didn’t want to play with the game Marco was playing, but it seemed the only option to find out what was going on was to do as he said. She tapped in the number and the metal door sprung open.
She squinted, trying to see what was inside, but she’d just come out of bright sunlight and the safe was lined with dark felt inside a shady cupboard. She shoved her hand in and felt around, patting. She could feel her camera, her mobile phone and her passport... But there were also some things she couldn’t find.