by Joanna Neil
She raised a brow. ‘How do you know all that? Have you been talking to Ross?’
He smiled. ‘Of course. He talks about you every opportunity he gets.’
‘Oh, dear.’ She brooded on that for a moment or two. She’d never given Ross the slightest encouragement to think of her as anything more than a friend, but somewhere along the way he must have started pinning his hopes on something more developing between them. Judging by what Connor was saying, she would have to put a stop to it, and sooner rather than later.
He was watching her as she thought things through. ‘He thinks the world of you and would do anything for you, but we both know that you don’t really feel the same way about him, don’t we?’
She stiffened. ‘I like Ross. I think he’s a wonderful person.’ She didn’t appreciate the faintly challenging note in Connor’s tone. It annoyed her that he should imply she had come here with an ulterior motive.
‘Yes, he is…’ Connor agreed, ‘but that still doesn’t explain why you abandoned everything to come out here with him.’
She sipped her coffee, giving herself time to gain a little more composure. ‘You think I was sick of working for a living and gave up on it to follow him, don’t you?’
‘Isn’t that a possibility?’ He studied her thoughtfully. ‘The idea of coming to a sun-soaked island where you could relax and forget your cares must have had huge appeal.’
She smiled briefly. ‘Of course it did. But you’re forgetting…in my case I’m actually here to work. Ross gave me the opportunity to try something new and I jumped at it. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Do you?’ Her chin lifted and a hint of defiance shimmered in her green eyes.
‘When you put it that way, no…of course not.’ His glance wandered over her face, lingering on the perfect curve of her mouth, the fullness of her lips made moist by the coffee and accentuated by the inviting, cherry-red lipstick she was wearing. After a moment or two he pulled himself up and shook his head as though to clear it. ‘I dare say a lot of people would envy you being able to simply take off and leave everything behind.’
‘I guess so.’ She might have said more, but his pager went off just then, and he frowned as he checked the text message. ‘Jack Somers has finished the preliminary tests. We can go and talk to him now.’
‘That’s good.’ Her stomach muscles tightened in nervous expectation.
They went to find the registrar in his office. ‘I have the CT scans here,’ he said, bringing up the films on his computer screen. ‘You’ll see there are a couple of fractured vertebrae and there’s a lot of inflammation around that area.’
Connor winced. ‘It’ll mean an operation, then?’
Jack nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’ He glanced at Alyssa. ‘We’ll get him prepped for surgery as soon as possible, maybe within the hour. The surgeon will stabilise the spine with metal rods and screws and do what he can to ease the pressure on the spinal cord. Unfortunately, it’ll be some time before we know what the outcome will be regarding him regaining any movement in his legs. There’s so much swelling that it’s hard to see exactly what damage has been done.’
‘I appreciate that. Thanks for letting us know.’ Alyssa was saddened, looking at those films. How would Alex take the news, having been an active, athletic man? He was in his prime, with a young family to support, and it grieved her to think of how this would affect them.
Connor added his thanks and they left the office, going over to the trauma room where Alex was being tended by two specialist nurses. Alyssa spoke to them and watched for a while as they set up drips and programmed the medication pump. He was still unresponsive, but he was being well looked after, she felt sure.
There was nothing more they could do there and she went with Connor to the car park a few minutes later.
‘Time’s slipping by faster than I imagined,’ he said, looking briefly at the gold watch on his wrist. ‘Maybe we should go and get some lunch and come back later to see how he’s doing once the operation is over.’ He glanced at her. ‘We could go to Benvenuto, if you like. It would be a shame to let Ross’s lunch reservations go to waste, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t know. I…’ His offer caught her unawares. Until that moment she hadn’t even realised she was hungry, but now he mentioned it there was a definite hollow feeling in her stomach. Even so, it made her feel uncomfortable to think of deserting Ross and going out to lunch with Connor instead. ‘Is there no chance he could join us? Perhaps I should give him a call…’
‘I already did that.’ They had reached his car, a low-slung, highly polished sports model, and now he pulled open the passenger door and waited for her to slide onto the leather upholstered seat. ‘I spoke to him while you were talking to the nurses. He agreed it would be a shame to let the booking go to waste.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She frowned. ‘I suppose he’s still busy dealing with the accident reports? Did he say how it was going?’
‘He’s still talking to the insurers and working on his report. Then at some point he’ll have to meet with the director and work out how they can reschedule the filming. Everything’s been put on hold for the next couple of days. Everybody’s too upset to go on right now. He’s spoken to Alex’s wife, and arranged for a car to take her to the hospital.’
‘I’m glad he did that.’
Connor slid into the driver’s seat and set the car in motion, while Alyssa sat back, thankful for the air-conditioning on such a hot day. Connor had a light touch on the controls and it seemed as though the car was a dream to handle, smooth and responsive, covering the miles with ease. If it hadn’t been for her worries, the journey to the marina would have been soothing and a delight to savour.
Instead, she tried to take her mind off things by looking out of the window at the landscape of hills clad with pine forest, which soon receded into the distance and changed to a vista of lush orange groves and thriving banana plantations.
‘We’re almost there,’ Connor said a little later, pointing out the blue waters of the marina in the distance. ‘I expect the place will be quite busy at this time of the day, but Ross reserved a table on the terrace, so we’ll be in the best spot and able to look out over the yacht basin.’
‘That sounds great.’ She made a face. ‘I’m actually starving. I hadn’t realised it was so long since breakfast.’
‘Hmm. I’m not surprised.’ He looked her over and smiled. ‘I doubt you can really give what you have to eat the term “breakfast”. Fruit juice and a small bowl of cereal is more like a quick snack, I’d say.’
She looked at him in astonishment as he drove into the restaurant car park. ‘What do you mean? How do you know what I eat?’
He slipped the car into a parking space and cut the engine. ‘I’ve seen you from the upper deck—you often go out onto the terrace to eat first thing in the morning, don’t you? You’re a lot like me in that. I like to be out in the fresh air so that I can take stock of my surroundings and, like you, I drink freshly squeezed orange juice. It makes me feel good first thing in the morning. Though how you can expect to last for long on what you eat is beyond me.’
He came around to the passenger side of the car and opened the door for her. She frowned. ‘I usually take a break mid-morning and catch up with a bun or a croissant,’ she said in a rueful tone. ‘Of course, with everything going on the way it did today, that didn’t happen.’
‘You should enjoy the food here all the more, then.’ He locked the car and laid a hand on the small of her back, leading her into the restaurant.
Alyssa was glad of the coolness of the interior. His casual, gentle touch felt very much like a caress to her heightened senses, and the heat it generated seemed to suffuse her whole body.
A waiter showed them to their table out on the terrace, and once again the heat of the sun beat down on Alyssa’s bare arms. Her cheeks felt flushed and Connor must have noticed because he said softly, ‘At least we’ll be in the shade of that palm tree. There’s a faint breeze
sifting through the branches—couldn’t be better.’
‘It’s lovely here.’ She sat down and absorbed the beauty of her surroundings for a while until gradually she felt herself begin to relax. On one side there was the marina, with an assortment of yachts bobbing gently on the water, and on the other there was the sweep of the beach, with a magnificent stretch of soft, white sand and a backdrop of low scrub and palm trees.
In the distance, the coastline changed yet again, becoming rocky, with jagged inlets, peninsulas and lagoons. There, the trees were different, smaller, and she could just about make out their twisting trunks and branches laden with sprays of yellow flowers. ‘Are those the logwood trees I’ve been hearing about?’ she asked, and he nodded.
‘That’s right.’
‘I heard the wood yields a rich, deep reddish-purple dye,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen some lovely silk garments that were coloured with it.’
‘Yes, it’s used quite widely hereabouts. The flowers give great honey, too, so I guess it’s a useful tree all round.’
The waiter handed them menus, and they were silent for a moment, studying them. Connor ordered a bottle of wine.
‘I can’t make up my mind what to choose,’ Alyssa said after a while. ‘Everything looks mouth-wateringly good to me.’
‘I thought I might start with conch chowder and follow it with shrimp Alfredo and marinara-flavoured pasta,’ he murmured. ‘They do those dishes particularly well here.’
‘Hmm…I think I’ll go along with that, too.’ She smiled and laid down her menu.
The waiter took their orders, and Connor poured her a glass of wine and asked about her family back home.
‘Do you have any relatives in the UK? I know you have your cousin Carys in Florida.’
‘My parents are living in London at the moment,’ she told him. ‘I don’t have any brothers or sisters.’
He frowned. ‘I imagine they must miss you, the more so since you’re an only child.’
‘Possibly.’ She thought about that for a moment or two. ‘But they’re really quite busy…My mother runs a boutique and my father is a businessman, a director of an electronics company. I don’t think they’ll really have time to worry about what I’m getting up to. And of course I’ve lived away from home for a number of years, since I qualified as a doctor.’
‘Hmm…that sounds like quite a…sterile…relationship.’ He studied her for a while, pausing the conversation as the waiter brought a tureen of chowder to the table and began to ladle it into bowls.
Alyssa tasted her creamy soup and mulled over Connor’s remark. ‘I don’t know about that,’ she said. ‘It was always that way, for as long as I can remember. In my teenage years I was what people called a latchkey kid, coming home to an empty house because my parents worked late. I didn’t mind back then. In fact, I never thought much about it. I learned to fend for myself, and there were always friends that I could be with, so I wasn’t lonely.’
He’d hit on something, though, the way he’d described her relationship with her family. Her eyes were troubled as she thought it over. Sometimes she’d missed that intimacy of family closeness that her friends had seemed to take for granted, especially when her career had started falling apart and her love life had taken a dive. She hadn’t felt able to share her innermost secrets, even with her best friends, but it would have been good to be able to turn to family in her hour of need.
She told him a little about her mother’s fashionable boutique, and how she would try on the latest designs and try to persuade her mother that she could be a good advert for the shop by wearing the beautiful creations.
‘She didn’t fall for that one very often, unfortunately.’ She smiled, and hesitated while the waiter cleared away the first course. ‘Do your parents live close by?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘Reasonably so. They live in the Bahamas, but on different islands. I see them quite often, but never actually together. They divorced some years ago and my father remarried recently.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She frowned. ‘It must have been hard for you to cope with that…for Ross, too.’
‘Yes. It was difficult for Ross, especially. He was about eleven at the time, and very impressionable. Of course, you grow up hoping that your parents will stay together for ever, and when it doesn’t work out that way you struggle to come to terms with all the fallout.’
‘I understand how that must be a problem.’ Her gaze was sympathetic. ‘I’ve been lucky, I suppose, in that my parents are still together.’
The main course arrived, and they were quiet for a while, savouring the delicate flavours of pasta and shrimp, and then they both marvelled at the way the chef had brought his magic touch to the ingredients. The pasta was made with tomatoes, garlic and herbs, and was particularly good.
‘I can see why this place is so popular,’ Alyssa murmured, spearing a shrimp with her fork and raising it to her lips. ‘This is delicious.’ She loved the flavour of the Alfredo sauce, made from a blend of white sauce and cream cheese.
Connor watched her, his glance following the gentle sweep of her hand and hovering around the full curve of her mouth. He topped up her glass with wine, a light, fruity complement to the superb food.
‘It is,’ he agreed softly. ‘But, you know, there are lots of good experiences to be had on our island. Sightseeing, sailing, maybe even exploring the coral reefs…though I expect you know all about those.’ He lifted his glass and swallowed some of the clear liquid. ‘Have you had time to look around and get to know the place?’
She shook her head, causing the bright curls to quiver and drift against her shoulders. ‘Not yet, unfortunately. Ross wanted to show me around, but he’s been very busy with the film, and for my part I’m still trying to get settled in and find my way around my new job. I dare say there will be time to do all those other things before too long. I have a couple more months on my contract here, so there’s no hurry.’
‘I could take you anywhere you wanted to go,’ he suggested. ‘It would be a shame to miss out on any of the delights of this beautiful island, don’t you think?’ His voice was silky smooth, reassuringly pleasant and somehow intimate at the same time.
‘I…uh…yes, I suppose so.’ Alarm bells started to ring inside her head. His offer was tempting, but why was he offering to show her around? He’d made it quite plain where they stood, on two sides of a dividing line, with Ross in between. ‘Um…it’s great of you to offer, but you really don’t have to put yourself out.’ She returned his gaze. ‘I’m sure Ross will be free soon enough to take me out and about, and even if he isn’t, I can manage some sightseeing by myself.’
‘But that wouldn’t be quite as enjoyable, I think.’ He leaned back in his chair as the waiter came to clear the table and take their order for dessert. He handed her the menu. ‘What’s your fancy? There are all sorts of dishes flavoured with coconut—as you might imagine, with the number of palm trees around—or bananas, of course. Or maybe you prefer chocolate?’
‘Do you know, I think I’d like to try the crêpes Suzette. Have you tried them?’
‘I have. They’re a good choice. I think I’ll join you. One of their specialties here is to bring them to the table and flame them in Curaçao and Grand Marnier and then top them with luscious, sweet, dark cherries.’ He smiled and gave the order to the waiter, then offered to top up her wine glass once more.
She covered the glass with her hand. ‘No more for me, thanks. I need to keep a clear head.’
‘Why do you have to do that? You’re not on duty any more, are you? Filming has stopped for a couple of days, so you can relax for a while. Why not take the opportunity to ease back from work and being on your guard?’ His dark eyes seemed to glint as he spoke, but it might have been a trick of the light. ‘Because you are on your guard, aren’t you?’ he murmured.
With him, yes, she’d been constantly on her guard, ever since the moment they’d first met. He knew it, and she couldn’t help but feel he was tormentin
g her with the knowledge.
‘I’ve always found it best to keep an eye on what’s going on all around,’ she said quietly. She’d been caught unawares with James, her ex-boyfriend, and she was determined nothing like that was ever going to happen again.
‘Hmm…I wonder why?’ His eyes narrowed on her, but she didn’t answer him.
Instead, she took an interest in the dessert dish that the waiter prepared with a flourish before placing it in front of her. She dipped in a spoon and tasted the mix of flavours. The crêpe Suzette was hot, with a melt-in-the-mouth sauce, and the smooth, cold ice cream served with it was a delicious contrast. Connor watched her for a moment, as though he was fascinated by her absorption with the food.
‘We both have some free time outside work,’ he murmured, ‘so perhaps you could think again about us spending it together…Maybe we could take a trip on a glass-bottomed boat so that you can see the coral close at hand. Would you like that?’
‘I’m sure it would be a delightful experience,’ she said softly, and he lifted a dark brow in expectation until she added, ‘but somehow I don’t think it would be right for you and me to be together too much outside work.’
‘You don’t?’ He studied her thoughtfully, taking time to taste his dessert. ‘Why is that? Are you afraid Ross might be concerned about what you’re doing?’
‘Not exactly…but I’m a bit puzzled. After all, if you really think there’s something going on between us, it’s a bit strange that you would think of asking me out.’ She finished off her dessert and laid down her spoon, resting her hand on the table alongside her wine glass and running the tips of her fingers over the delicate stem.
He shrugged. ‘I heard you say that you were through with romance, so maybe I’m taking that statement at face value. In that case, why should it be a problem for Ross if you and I were to spend some time together?’ He reached for her hand, taking it into his palm and brushing his thumb lightly over her smooth skin. Her heart began to thump heavily.