Falling Again for Her Island Fling

by Ellie Darkins

  She blew out a breath, hoping that it would take the heat in her face with it. ‘I... I’m glad. That helps,’ she told him. And she meant it. It was a relief, if she was honest, to know that it had been important enough to her for Guy to know that. They must have talked about it, for him just to come out and say it like that. And he still knew her, to know that that was what she was wondering.

  It was so strange, she acknowledged, the asymmetry of their relationship. He knew so much about their past. But they had both made so many assumptions, got so much wrong, that their last few years hadn’t been so different really. They must both have been wondering what had happened to the person who they had loved that summer. She must have been as much a mystery to Guy as he had been to her.

  And she was keeping a secret too, a huge one. Because Guy hadn’t mentioned anything about the pregnancy. She was demanding honesty from him but couldn’t offer it in return and she couldn’t pretend that that didn’t make her uncomfortable. But if he didn’t know... She thought of the pain that she had felt, finding out that she’d lost a baby. And she’d not even had any context for that knowledge. She hadn’t known whose baby it was. Hadn’t known whether she had been happy or anxious to know that she was pregnant. Hadn’t known how she had felt about the father.

  Guy had all that.

  That baby would have a meaning to Guy that she might never be able to understand. And she had a choice about whether or not he should know. An option that had never been open to her—to keep something from him that could only hurt him. She had been angry when she’d realised that Guy had been doing the same thing to her, hiding things that he thought would hurt her, but, faced with telling him about the baby that they had lost, she knew why he had made that decision. Who would choose to deliberately hurt the person that they cared about? Especially if it was all in the past. If there was nothing that they could do about it.

  She could spare him that.

  She didn’t want to think too hard about why it seemed so important to her to protect Guy from pain. What that meant about how she felt about him. It could be purely human compassion, she considered, but knew that she was lying to herself. Regardless of the reason, she knew that she would do it. She would carry the memory of their baby by herself as the only person in the world who knew and cared that that life had existed, even for such a short time. She would treasure it, keep it safe, and she would spare Guy the agony of imagining what might have been, as she had so many times over the years.

  Or at least she wished that it could be as simple as that. But it could never be, not between them. She sat on the ground beside Guy and looked out over the water.

  ‘Do you want to hear more?’ Guy asked, both their eyes fixed on the reflection of the moon on the gentle waves of the sea, the hush and swoosh of the water over the sand the only other noise in the night.

  ‘Yes,’ she breathed, wondering how much of her history she was going to rediscover tonight.

  ‘We sat here,’ Guy said, something wistful and distant in his voice. ‘Right here. We camped, just like tonight.’

  Meena held her breath, wondering how far this was going to go.

  ‘We’d been struggling to find somewhere to meet,’ Guy continued. ‘You were living at home with your parents. We didn’t want to meet anywhere in the resort, because we were worried about your boss finding out. It wasn’t worth risking your job over. So we came out here, in your boat.’ He fell silent, staring out over the water, and she wondered if that was it. If that was all he was going to tell her.

  ‘That was the first time,’ he went on, and she knew exactly which first time he was talking about.

  She felt a shiver completely at odds with the still sweltering temperature.

  ‘We’d been...close...before. But that night...was something else.’

  He didn’t say it, and he didn’t have to. She knew exactly what he meant. She could almost feel it. Flashes of memories, or dreams, came back to her. His hands were on her beneath her sweatshirt. Her heart was beating faster, her breath coming shorter, and heat was rising in every part of her body.

  Was that real? she wondered for the millionth time. Were those real memories, pulled up from a deep, damaged part of her brain that she couldn’t reach when she was awake? Or were they pure fantasy, drawing only on an overactive imagination and out-of-control libido? That was one answer she’d never get, she supposed. Guy couldn’t tell her what it had been like to be her in that moment. What she might have felt for him. How she might have felt when he had been inside her.

  She looked out over the water, wondering if he was remembering it as she was. Or as she was trying to. Could he remember the touch of her fingers on his skin? The feel of the sand beneath them, the rush of the waves their soundtrack?

  And then she remembered that he wanted to destroy everything that he remembered about this island. He was going to build a generic luxury resort here, in the place that he told her had once been so special to them, and it was like ice down her spine.

  That was how much it meant to him, she reminded herself. The night that he was recalling here. He wanted to pour concrete over it, bury it. Destroy it, so that he no longer had to be troubled by it.

  She must remember that, she told herself. They hadn’t come out here tonight to reminisce. They were here to complete her environmental survey so that Guy could continue with his work of building over everything that they had shared here.

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ she said, hearing the frost in her voice and wondering if Guy would recognise it. Had he had cause to hear it back then, she wondered, or had everything always been happy between them? A simple summer romance that never would have weathered the slightest storm. ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter any more. I don’t want to hear anything else,’ she said.

  Despite what she’d said about having to fill in the gaps, the reminder that Guy wanted to destroy those memories took the shine off any new information. The past was important, but so was the present. And she shouldn’t get confused between the two. She was in danger of doing that, she realised. That was why Guy had wanted to keep this from her, after all. Because he assumed that if she knew what had been between them in the past she wouldn’t be able to keep herself from bringing that relationship into the present. From expecting him to act like someone who had loved her, rather than someone she simply had to work with. He had been right. She had to remember the boundaries between them.

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ Guy said, still sounding thoughtful. ‘But, sitting out here like this, I guess it doesn’t feel that way.’

  Her gaze shot across to his, trying to catch the expression on his face in the moonlight. What was that supposed to mean?

  ‘Well, that’s the point of bulldozing this place, I guess,’ she reminded him. ‘So you don’t have to remember any more.’

  He sighed and shook his head.

  ‘I thought that was what I wanted.’

  Meena held her breath, waiting for him to say something more, to explain, but he didn’t. She couldn’t leave it at that, though.

  ‘Does that mean it’s not what you want now?’ she asked hesitantly, not sure whether she wanted the answer.

  ‘I’d forgotten how it felt to sit here like this,’ he said on a sigh. ‘To be the only people on this island. To be so alone, in a good way. All I could think about was...what had come after.’

  ‘When you were alone in a bad way?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘I thought that I didn’t want this place to exist any more. But I’m not sure that that’s true now. I think... I didn’t want it to exist if I couldn’t have it.’

  ‘Guy, we’re not—’

  ‘It feels petty now,’ he interrupted her. ‘And I don’t want to be petty. What we had was special. Even though it’s over, it doesn’t mean I have to tear through here to try and assuage my ego.’

  ‘I don’t think yo
u’re being petty,’ she said gently.

  ‘You don’t think I’m doing the right thing,’ he countered. There was an edge to his voice that hinted at self-reproach.

  ‘I don’t,’ she agreed, surprised at the self-awareness Guy was offering. She hadn’t expected this tonight. Hadn’t expected him to be honest with her about how painful he found their past. She had assumed that she had meant little to him. But if that were true he wouldn’t be hurting like this now. ‘I don’t think you’re doing the right thing. But that doesn’t mean I think you’re being petty. I think you were hurt, and you had every reason to feel that way. You thought that this would make you feel better. But I don’t think it will.’

  ‘I don’t know any more,’ he said. ‘But it’s too late now anyway.’

  Meena shook her head. ‘Please don’t say that. It doesn’t have to be, not for Le Bijou.’

  He looked at her, surprised. ‘You don’t understand my business, Meena. It’s not as simple as you think.’

  ‘No,’ she said simply. ‘I don’t understand. But I know that no harm has been done yet—you could stop this, if you wanted to.’

  ‘I never said that I wanted to.’

  Meena sat up a little straighter at the bite in his tone. She had thought that they were getting on better, and here was the payoff, she guessed. He opened up and then snapped back shut when he realised what he had done.

  ‘Guy, if all this has been to punish me, then consider it done, okay? Even the thought of what you’re planning to do here breaks my heart. Is that enough? Will you stop now?’

  ‘It isn’t about punishing you, Meena. It was never about that.’

  ‘Then what? Because whatever you think, this is punishing me. It’s hurting me. And I don’t believe you think that it’s the right thing to do.’ She held his gaze, refusing to let him look away, challenging him to tell her that she was wrong.

  ‘You tell me what the right thing to do is, then,’ he replied at last. ‘Because I’ve already sunk millions of dollars into this development. I have a whole team waiting to get started on it. You tell me what I’m supposed to tell them. That I’ve changed my mind because I’ve been reminiscing with an old girlfriend?’

  ‘If you think I’d care about what you’re going to tell them, or about the money, Guy, you don’t know me as well as you think you do.’

  He huffed out a small laugh, breaking the tension between them. ‘I didn’t think you’d care about that at all, actually.’

  She managed a small smile, pleased that the atmosphere was gradually easing. ‘Do you mean it?’ she asked. ‘Would you really stop it, if you could?’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  ‘We don’t have to decide anything tonight,’ Meena reminded him, not wanting the conversation to turn hostile again. ‘We’re meant to be watching for the hatchlings.’

  ‘I’d almost forgotten,’ Guy acknowledged.

  Meena fixed her eyes on the sand, looking and listening intently for any sign of activity on the beach.

  Guy moved closer, so they were sharing the same line of sight down to the beach, and she was hyper aware of the heat of his body beside her. Her own skin was still stickily warm, and the knowledge that Guy was so close was doing nothing to cool it.

  ‘Does it help?’ Guy asked, settling beside her, his gaze following hers out over the sand towards the water. ‘Knowing more about what happened?’ His voice was soft, almost sensuous, and Meena repressed a shiver.

  ‘It helps,’ she agreed, intensely aware of the heat of his body beside her, the bulk of him. It seemed so familiar from her dreams, as if she could strip his shirt off and know every line of his body from memory. He turned and caught her looking. She held his gaze, caught in the stream of energy that seemed to flow between them. It must have been because they were talking about their past, she thought. That was what had charged the atmosphere like this. There was definitely something between them, something pulling her towards him, that hadn’t been there before.

  Or maybe it had just been easier to ignore it before, when they hadn’t been talking about the fact that she had lost her virginity to him, perhaps in this very spot.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Guy asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ she replied, though she didn’t look away. Didn’t break the connection between them.

  * * *

  That look she was giving him was dangerous.

  It was knowing.

  It shouldn’t be—she’d told him that she couldn’t remember being with him, but that was not what her face was telling him. He knew that look; he remembered it well. It was the look she got when she was thinking about sex. About him. He should know. He’d seen it often enough. Looked for it, in fact, knowing that they could share a heated look and then she would seek him out later and find a way for them to sneak off together and meet somewhere. That look had led them to this island once. And here they were again, Meena with that look on her face, though he knew that she couldn’t remember what they’d shared here.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said with a smile that he couldn’t help forming, regardless of the danger they were heading towards. ‘Tell me.’

  She didn’t have to. He knew that she was perfectly capable of ignoring his command. It was a question of whether she wanted to share with him. He wasn’t sure that he wanted her to. Whether that was a good idea.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Meena said. ‘I have these...images...in my head, and I don’t know if they’re real or if I’m making them up.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me what they are? I’ll tell you if they’re real.’

  ‘I—I can’t,’ she said, and he knew that he had been right. She was thinking about sex. Which was interesting on so many fronts. Had she remembered something? If she had, that was huge. From what she’d told him, they would be the first memories that she’d recovered of that time before her accident. And if they weren’t really memories, if it was her imagination, that meant that she was fantasising about him. About them together. And that meant that their past was still very much in the present. He could feel it between them. How could he not when she was positively humming with sexual energy?

  ‘They can’t be memories,’ she said, shaking her head, her voice uncertain.

  ‘Why not?’ Surely there was the possibility that her memories could return. She’d acknowledged that to him before.

  ‘Because I don’t have any memories!’ she stated. ‘These are just...flashes. Feelings.’ Her voice trailed off, but he couldn’t leave this unfinished. It didn’t matter that he knew that he was leading them towards danger.

  ‘About me?’ he asked.

  She narrowed her eyes, clearly fighting with herself about whether to answer honestly. Or at all.

  ‘Yes, about you.’ She paused. ‘Always about you,’ she added with a sigh. Her body softened beside him and he ached to draw her into his arms. He could see the toll that it was taking on her, not knowing their past. Searching for memories that her brain couldn’t access. He knew how much strength it was taking her to ask him to fill those missing memories for her.

  ‘What about me?’ Guy asked. She needed this. She wanted this. Wanted to know the answers to these questions.

  He knew that he was strolling into danger. But he couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop himself. Out here, on this beach, on their beach, knowing that Meena was running X-rated fantasies of them through her mind, looking for clues that might tell her if they were real, the real world felt too far away. It could have been that night. It could have been the night that they had come out here and lain on a blanket just like this one, and she had loved and trusted him, and he had been deserving of that love.

  While they were here, he could make himself believe that he was that man again, could be that man again. That he could be deserving of her trust.

  He turned to her at the same moment as she turn
ed to him, and suddenly she was closer to him than she had been for the past seven years.

  His eyes never left hers as his arm curved around her back, watching for any sign that she wanted him to stop. Hoping that she would be the one to be sensible and put a stop to this, because he wasn’t sure that he could. His other hand still rested on the soft, worn cotton of the blanket they had spread on the sand beneath them. Meena’s eyes drifted closed and he watched those long, thick lashes as they brushed against her skin before she opened them again. When she met his gaze this time, there was something new in her expression. A determination and a fearlessness that he had seen before.

  He sighed, smiled. Knowing that he was lost. Helpless, as he always had been with Meena.

  She leaned in, those eyelashes sweeping shut again as she closed the distance between them. His hand came up to cup her cheek, holding her just before that moment when their lips would meet. Wanting to stretch this moment, to soak in it. In the promise of everything that was to come. To stretch that moment before their lives became so much more complicated.

  Their first kiss hadn’t been so considered. It had been furiously hot, between two young, inexperienced kids who had no idea what they were getting themselves into.

  He couldn’t launch himself in blind this time. He knew too much for that. Knew where this could lead. Knew how good this was going to be.

  And with that memory he groaned, slipped his hand through the thick curls of her hair and brought her mouth to his.

  At the first touch of her lips, he wanted to explode. To push her back on the soft cotton of the blanket and show her exactly what they had been missing out on for the last seven years. Instead, he shut off his imagination and channelled every firing neuron into the present moment. To fully experiencing the subtle friction of her lips. To hearing every nuance of the moan that escaped her as his tongue touched hers for the first time. His hand reached for the soft curve of her waist and he schooled it to stay gentle. To ignore the impulse begging him to squeeze her hard. To wrap both arms tight around her waist and never let her go. He dragged himself back to the present, drowning in the smell of her hair, the soft give of her flesh beneath his hands, and wasn’t sure he would ever be able to stop.