Now that the decision was made, she wanted this holiday so badly that if it were taken away from her she might just cry for a week. She hated wanting something this much. She didn’t want this to end in disillusion, disappointment…heartbreak.
She stilled from slicing a cucumber, a smile pushing up through her. Her holiday wouldn’t be taken away from her. Josh wouldn’t let that happen.
She made a mental note to hug him the next time she saw him.
CHAPTER THREE
Josh pulled his hands away from Erin’s eyes. “You can look now.”
He grinned at the astonishment that flitted across her face, before taking her arm and hauling her across to the nearest door. “Your bathroom, madam.”
“There’s a spa bath!”
Her pleasure hummed across his skin, warming him. “And this is madam’s bedroom.”
Her eyes went wide as she took it all in—the king-sized bed, the luxurious furnishings. “No.” She drew the word out. “All mine?”
“All yours.” He towed her into the sitting room, waving at the kitchenette on the way past. Opening a set of glass sliding doors, he led her out to a balcony. “And this is your view.”
Her mouth dropped open. She gripped the railing and leaned so far forward he grabbed a handful of shirt to anchor her. “That’s really my view?”
“White sand, palm trees, turquoise seas.”
“Tick. Tick. Tick,” she breathed.
He wanted to high-five someone when the tight set of her shoulders loosened a fraction. She’d barely spoken on the plane trip earlier in the day. No doubt Eunice had been making her pay for her so-called desertion. It’d explain the dark circles beneath her eyes and her pallor. But at this current moment in time her eyes were bright, and he’d take what he could get
“My room’s there.” He pointed to the next balcony along. He took her hand. “C’mon, there’s more to see yet.”
“Shouldn’t we unpack first?”
“No.”
He led her back down to the resort’s foyer with its enormous Christmas tree decorated with tiny resin pineapples, surfboards, bananas and cocktail glasses. Erin pointed at it. “It’s perfect.”
“So’s this.” He turned her towards the bar. “Cocktails.” He pointed at the rows of bottles behind the counter before seizing a menu from a holder. “Buck’s Fizz, Hawaiian Sunset, Tropical Mojito, Planter’s Punch.” He slotted the menu back into place. “We’re going to try them all while we’re sitting there…”
He turned her to face the large glass concertina doors that stood wide open to the deck and garden. The crystal clear water of the enormous pool—complete with bar tables and stools—glittered in the sunlight. It had a waterfall at one end. Frangipani trees shaded it here and there. Her mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.
Josh didn’t wait for her to speak, but wrapped his hand about hers and led her across the lush gardens and in a dozen steps they were on the beach. He slapped his free hand to the trunk of a tree. “Palm tree.”
“Tick,” she said faintly.
He pointed to their feet. “White sand.”
She nodded and swallowed. “Tick.”
He lifted a palm skywards. “Sunshine.”
“Tick.”
With each uttered Tick she sounded more and more bemused.
“Shoes off,” he ordered.
She slid her feet out of her sandals and an expression of bliss flitted across her face. He nodded, relishing the warm softness of the sand against his feet too.
Her nostrils flared. “This place even smells tropical.”
It smelled of salt and sun and frangipani, and Erin smelled sweet, like vanilla sponge cake. Hunger suddenly roared through him. Whoa! Frowning, he let go of her hand.
She set off to the water’s edge. “Warm,” she murmured. She gestured out in front of her. “Aquamarine.”
He grinned. “Tick and tick.”
“I…”
Her face suddenly crumpled and she lifted her hands to cover it. A knife slid in between his ribs. “What’s wrong?” What had he forgotten? He’d planned this all so carefully and…
Damn it! “Erin?” He tried to pull her into her arms, to comfort her, but she wouldn’t let him, planting a hand on his chest to hold him off. He watched her shoulders shake with a growing sense of helplessness. “I…I thought you liked it.”
She nodded vigorously, not looking at him.
“You do like it?”
She nodded again.
Dragging in a breath that made her whole body shudder, she pulled her hands from her face to press her palms to her cheeks. Her sobs—if that’s what they were—had been silent and her eyes were dry. “It’s perfect,” she hiccupped. “It’s all so very, very perfect. I… It’s… I can’t believe I’m standing on a tropical beach on holiday. That we get to stay here for the next seven days.”
It occurred to him then that the circles beneath her eyes had darkened and although she smiled at him with a brightness that had a strange ability to blind him, her smiles didn’t reach her eyes.
Why hadn’t he noticed her exhaustion before now? He was supposed to be her friend!
Her gaze suddenly sharpened. “Don’t you dare look like that! You’ve done nothing wrong.” She gestured around. “This is all utterly perfect. I can’t begin to thank you.”
Before he realized what she was about, she’d enveloped him in a hug—a fierce body-to-body hug.
“Thank you, Josh.”
Her breasts pressed against his chest. Her arms wrapped around him and her chin rested on his shoulders, her hair tickling his cheek. He slid his arms around her back and her warmth filtered into him, along with a growing awareness of the slim strength that contrasted in an oddly erotic way with her soft curves. A tic started up in his jaw, the pulse of it reverberating in his groin. Erotic? What on earth…?
He and Erin hugged all the time. Hugging Erin wasn’t erotic.
You’ve never hugged her on a tropical beach with a balmy breeze playing across your skin and recreation on your mind.
Where Erin was concerned, he didn’t have that kind of recreation in mind, thank you very much!
Her grip loosened and he moved back so quickly she glanced up with a frown in her eyes.
Don’t let her know where your mind just wandered. He’d banished those sorts of thoughts about Erin when he was eighteen years old. He had no intention of letting them resurface again now. He knew what she wanted and it wasn’t him. He’d respect her wishes now the way he’d been respecting them for eight years.
She pressed her hands together, her frown deepening. “Is everything okay?”
“Sure it is. I just…” He rolled his shoulders. “I’m just not convinced all’s well with you.”
Oh, right, put it back on her. Very chivalrous.
She pushed a strand of hair that’d worked its way loose from her ponytail back behind her ear. “I’m just tired. Mum put me through the wringer this week and I guess it’s worn me out more than I thought.”
Christmas in the Timms household had been its usually jolly self then.
“You should’ve let Dad know.” Josh had been standing there when his father had extracted that promise from Erin.
“It was nothing I couldn’t handle.”
The fact, though, that she’d even mentioned her mother was testament to her exhaustion. Erin never complained about her mother.
She shrugged and sent him a tiny smile. “I feel as if I could sleep for a week.”
Maybe a good night’s sleep would put them both to rights. “How’s this for a plan? We eat takeaway fish and chips on my balcony tonight—” He’d noticed a little takeaway place farther along the beach when their cab had driven them in “—and then we have an early night. We sleep for as long as we want and spend tomorrow on the beach?”
“Sounds like an excellent plan.”
They turned to walk back towards their shoes. Erin took his arm, but that crazy hyper-awareness hit him again. He
swallowed, trying to ignore the sensations pounding at him. Did he imagine it or did his discomfort filter through to her? Did her touch become stiff, losing its easy familiarity?
When she let him go to put her sandals back on, she didn’t take his arm again.
He was relieved.
And then he cursed himself, before pulling in a breath. He’d be back to normal after a good night’s sleep. It’d been a crazy hectic week, that was all.
But tomorrow they started their holiday for real.
Erin spread her towel on the sand and took a deep breath of the still, salt-laden air. The sun had only just edged up over the horizon, but a wisp of low cloud helped to mute the blinding light, turning the sky and beach multiple shades of pink, orange and yellow. In another hour the low cloud would’ve burned off, the sun would be a brilliant yellow in an equally brilliant sky of blue—and she’d need to don both her sunglasses and a hat. She stared out at the fiery path of water that reached from shore to horizon and something inside of her lifted. “Utterly, utterly glorious,” she whispered.
And then her phone buzzed.
A weight slammed back to her shoulders
Ignoring the phone, she glanced up and down the shoreline. Only a few larks like her had ventured down to the beach at this early hour. Most holidaymakers were still tucked up tight in bed.
What to do—to walk for a while or to sit and watch the view in front of her change as the morning lengthened?
Her phone buzzed again, informing her she had oh-yet-another text message. How she’d love to throw it into that clear mauve water and watch it sink from view.
Biting back a sigh, she turned to survey the resort Josh had chosen. It looked like something from the pages of a glossy magazine: The lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. She started to turn when a movement in nearby bushes caught her attention. She tiptoed over, parted the fronds of a large fern…
Oh! The eyes of a mother cat glowed yellow in the shade and she sent out a warning growl as she stood over her three kittens. Very carefully, Erin let the fronds fall back into place. She glanced along the corridor of resorts and shops that lined the road that ran the length of the beach.
Shops? With a nod she set off towards them.
She returned to the mother cat and her kittens in under ten minutes. Unwrapping the barbequed chicken she’d bought, she pulled off a piece of breast meat, before parting the fronds again and offering the food to the cat. A low rumble started to leave the cat’s throat again, but it was cut off when she caught the scent of the food.
“You’re a pretty little thing.” Erin kept her voice low and soothing. “And you must be hungry. A woman needs to keep up her strength when she has babies to feed.”
Hunger overcame the cat’s fear. It reached out and took the food from Erin’s fingers, but retreated several paces to eat it. Erin remained still, but she kept talking to it all the while. She pulled more chicken meat from the carcass and poured some water into a plastic bowl.
As she expected, the cat emerged looking for more food. It glanced at Erin who immediately closed her eyes—cats hated being eyeballed—and kept talking in soothing undertones. While it busied itself eating, Erin gave the kittens a quick once over. They couldn’t be more than a week old. But they were in decent shape considering how rough they’d been living.
Mother cat finished the food, and sniffed around for more. “In a little while, lovely girl.” She made sure not to show her teeth as she spoke—a sign of aggression in the cat world—and holding out her hand, she closed her eyes to slits again and cooed at the cat. Amazingly, the cat bussed her hand, and then her knee.
“Poor little lady,” Erin murmured, running her hands over its thin body. “You’re used to people, that much is evident.” She couldn’t find any injuries, which was something at least. “But we can’t let you go on sleeping rough like this, can we?”
She settled half of her towel into the cardboard box she’d begged from the shopkeeper and carefully lifted each of the kittens into it. Without prompting, the mother cat leapt in after them. Erin held her breath waiting to see if she’d take a kitten into her mouth and try to leap back out of the box again, but she simply settled down to feed her kittens.
“Round one to me,” Erin murmured, bringing the rest of her towel over the box to shelter the little family inside.
She lifted it and set off for her room. She made it as far as the resort’s lobby.
“Ms. Timms, is there anything I can help you with?” The concierge came bustling up, a pleasant smile fixed to his face, but his gaze sliding to the box.
“Yes, I expect you can.” She smiled brightly at him before leading him back to his workstation. “Did you know that Mr. Halliday and I are vets?”
“Uh…”
“And I’ve just found this mother cat and her kittens, obviously strays, sleeping in the bushes outside. So what I’m going to do is take them up to my room and ring the closest pet rescue agency to come and collect them.”
His eyes bugged.
She glanced at his nametag. “You’re not doing a very good job at hiding your shock, Mr. Levido. How long have you been a concierge?” In his world, wasn’t the guest always right?
“I’m, uh, filling in for Mr. Thomas and…”
And obviously nobody had told him what to do in the event a guest insisted on taking an animal up to her room.
“She’s very well behaved and I promise there’ll be no mess.” On impulse she set the box to his counter and lifted a corner of the towel so he could peer inside. “She’s a sweet little thing.”
His face softened as he looked down at the little family.
“You wouldn’t happen to know anyone who’d want to give them a home, would you?”
That question was always a long shot, but she never failed to ask it.
“Well…”
Her glance sharpened. “You do?”
“My mother lost her big old marmalade stray two months ago. He was a mean-natured old thing, but a lamb for her. She’d had him for fourteen years, and heaven only knows how old he was when he showed up on her doorstep. I’ve been telling her she should get another cat, but…”
Erin pursed her lips. “Do you think if we presented her with a charity case—an emergency charity case because it’ll be hard to find someone at this time of year who can take this little family in—that she might reconsider?”
He’d reached for the phone before she’d finished speaking.
“What are you rescuing now?”
She turned to find Josh striding towards her. He looked summer holiday perfect in board shorts and a T-shirt with a towel casually slung over his shoulder. A sigh rose through her.
He peeked inside the box and then took both her arms and inspected them. “Not a single scratch?”
“She’s obviously used to people. And…?” She turned back to the concierge.
“My mother will be here in ten minutes.”
She could’ve hugged him.
Josh’s grin widened. “You’ve found a home for her already?”
“Looks like it.”
Mrs. Levido arrived in eight minutes. She was sixty-two years old with a severe white bun and a stiff knee, but one look at the little family in the cardboard box and her face broke out into a huge smile. “I will take them home and get them settled, and then I will ring the vet and demand he make a house call this afternoon.”
Perfect!
“Well done,” Josh congratulated her as they made their way down to the beach.
“Mrs. Levido will give them a wonderful home.” She thought of her own mother. “I wish…”
Her phone buzzed. She bit back a sigh.
“You wish?” Josh prompted.
She made herself smile. “I wish them all well.”
Erin wore board shorts and a sea shirt, and she still sported those dark circles under her eyes. In the bright morning sunlight, her skin took on a pale translucence that highlighted its fragility.
J
osh’s chest clenched.
Her smile…?
Well, it was better than yesterday, but surely they could improve on it. “I ordered bacon and eggs from room service.” He spreads his towel beside hers. “Someone cooked my breakfast of choice and brought it to my room. I love this place.”
She laughed. “I had a mango. You probably haven’t even noticed that we have complimentary bowls of fruit in our rooms. Sitting right on top in pride of place, glowing with golden goodness, was a big, fat, luscious mango. And you know what?”
“What?”
“They replenish the fruit bowl every day. That means six more mangoes feature in my future.”
It was his turn to laugh. “You can add the ones from my fruit bowl too if you want.” Mangoes were an expensive rarity in Belltrees. He rested back on his towel. “If you could eat only one fruit for the rest of your life, what would you choose?”
Beside her, her phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen, read the incoming text and some of the light went out of her face. She put the phone back down. “Apples.”
He sat back up. “Apples? Why apples when you could have mangoes or strawberries or peaches?” She loved all of those things. Apples were so…
“I grant you that mangoes are one of the most divine foods on earth, but you can’t throw one into your bag—or your truck—to snack on later. They bruise too easily. A mango is not a food you can eat on the run. An apple, though, can take you a long way.”
An apple was so darn practical! When had she stopped reaching for the more exciting things in life? When had she started settling for apples?
Her phone buzzed again and he forced back a frown. “I left mine in my room.”
Her gaze slid away. “I didn’t. Habit I guess. You want to go for a swim?”
He leapt to his feet. “Race you!”
They swam. They lazed on the beach. When the sun became too much they sought the shade from a grove of palm trees. At midday a waiter brought them the feast he’d ordered earlier and they sat cross-legged on the sand and ate prawns and salad followed by cheese and crackers. And all throughout it, Erin’s darn phone buzzed with a regularity that set his teeth on edge.
Erin smiled and laughed, chatted and joked, but not a shred of tension left her body. Josh could feel his own shoulders coil up with a growing sense of frustration.
Hot Christmas Nights Page 11