What the hell was going on?
This was what his parents had all been about, he thought, as the reality he had kept at bay now slammed into him with the force of a freight train.
Hadn’t he seen the havoc emotion could cause? Hadn’t he been a casualty of their all-consuming love? They had abandoned restraint in the name of love and he—all of them—had paid the price.
He had sworn from an early age to exercise control over his life, but here he was now, worrying over a woman who hadn’t even done anything yet. Worrying at the thought of her swimming in that dark ocean, prey to currents, eddies and whatever dodgy sea creatures might be lurking just below the surface.
It was an alien experience and he didn’t like it. It made him edgy and unsettled.
His original plan for a flying visit to a country he’d had no interest in seeing had been scuppered at the starting block. Instead of reining in the situation, he had found himself going along for the ride, curious to see where it would lead.
What did they say about curiosity killing cats?
He had allowed lust to dictate the pace of a relationship with a woman who worked for him. Yes, the situation was an unusual one, but she was still his employee, and he had always had very clear ideas about having any sort of physical relationship with someone who worked for him.
And yet, he had fallen into bed with Mia with only the merest of reservations.
He’d managed to persuade himself that this was a different life. Somehow. He’d successfully managed to convince himself that this was a much-deserved holiday, under which banner it had been okay to push aside all dissenting inner voices.
He’d slept with her and she’d stayed in his bed and he’d wanted her there. Sleeping next to him, warm and responsive to his touch, always there when he wanted her.
And this four-day trek across the islands? He’d sensibly written that off as an important way of getting to grips with what his sister had been after when it came to the hotel. Sure, by then, he’d also seen it as a good way of having Mia to himself, of indulging a need that had tailgated him from behind and thrown him off course when he had least been expecting it.
Everything neatly wrapped up as acceptable because he deserved a holiday…deserved some time out…
Roll the clock on, and here he was, worrying about her, looking at her and imagining all sorts of nonsense, his stomach clenched into a tight knot.
He felt as though he had hit some kind of crossroads.
Where did he think this was going to go? he asked himself. They lived in different countries. He had to return to London. He couldn’t put his life on hold indefinitely and there was no way he was going to contemplate the unthinkable—there was no way he would contemplate asking her to return with him. He didn’t want a woman in his life on any sort of semi-permanent basis. Never had, never would. They’d shared a handful of days together…but he would never allow himself to get so wrapped up with any woman that he couldn’t consider a life without her.
Mia couldn’t quite make out the expression on his face but, with a sort of sixth sense she seemed to have developed when it came to him, she knew that something was wrong.
What?
‘It…it was just a thought,’ she stammered. ‘I mean, the business of going for a swim…’
Scrambling to try and work out what was going on, she chanced a smile and held out her hand to him, desperately wanting to feel the warmth on which she had become dependent.
He stood up and when he didn’t take her hand she let hers drop to her side. A coldness was spreading through her.
‘I didn’t tell you,’ he drawled. ‘I heard from Izzy.’
‘What? When?’ She was swamped with relief because it must be whatever conversation he’d had with Izzy that had thrown him off-balance. Had he been waiting to talk to her about it once their hectic day came to a close?
‘Pretty much as soon as we got back here.’ He began walking towards the hotel, leaving the motorbike where it was, only glancing at it in passing. He would ask someone to ride it to the courtyard and secure it. His hands were shoved into his pockets and she hesitated to take one because something didn’t feel right.
The hotel was brightly lit, the trees rustling in the breeze and shadows cast by the moonlight. The air was cooler but still balmy, still humid.
‘Are you going to tell me what she said? Is she okay?’
‘She won’t be returning just yet.’ He carried on walking straight through the foyer, where several guests turned to them and smiled. In a small hotel, you quickly got to know who your fellow travellers were.
They were heading straight up to their bedroom suite. It was an expansive space with billowing voile curtains, a mosquito net draped over a super-king-sized bed, an overhead fan and lots of bamboo furniture that complemented the rich patina of wood everywhere.
‘It’s time we had a talk,’ he said, as soon as the door was shut behind them, and the coldness she had felt earlier returned with force. But she held on to her composure, because surely she’d known that this moment would come, sooner or later?
‘Has she said why?’ Mia sat on a rocking chair by the window, but then leaned forward, tense with nerves.
‘She’s…somehow got herself involved with trying to save my mother’s nanny from being evicted from her house. Long story short, she decamped to my mother’s house in California. Should have put two and two together and worked that out for myself but…’ He shrugged. ‘She’ll be back, and I’m willing for her to have a revised role when it comes to the hotel.’
Mia hadn’t heard from her friend for a while and she breathed a sigh of relief that everything was okay. She wasn’t surprised that Izzy had adopted a noble cause. She had a tender heart and a hugely caring disposition.
‘That’s all good, then, isn’t it? It must have been awesome talking to her, having her call you.’
‘At any rate, if you recall I had begun the process of auditioning for someone to take over the financial side of the operation…’
‘I know you said that Nat’s interviewed a few candidates.’
‘He has but I was holding off for my sister’s decision one way or another. That decision has been made and an offer has been tendered to a highly respected chartered accountant with a background in the leisure industry. He should find the process of dealing with all the various supply chains easy to manoeuvre.’
Mia nodded but she was wondering where this was going and why she had such a bad feeling about the direction of the conversation. Was it the flat coolness in his eyes? Or was she imagining that?
‘So,’ he went on, ‘you could say that my time here is officially at an end.’ He lowered his eyes and then looked at her without expression.
Mia’s heart slowed down. This was how it had always been going to end. Not with a bang, but a whimper. No great fireworks, no storming off after a heated argument, no revelations and tears. Just a quiet ending to something that always had a timeline attached to it. It was up to her to deal with it because she had gone into this with her eyes wide open.
‘Well…’ She floundered, trying hard to contain the burst dam through which her emotions were pouring. ‘It’s great that everything’s been settled.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘And you’re right. All good things come to an end.’
‘And this has been good. Really good.’ Rueful smile for rueful smile.
There was a heartbeat of a pause, then Mia resumed the conversation. She was frozen to the spot, and breaking up inside, but thankfully her voice was steady.
‘Yes, it has been,’ she said politely. ‘And I should thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘For…’ She sighed and meant every word when she said, ‘For getting me out of my hibernation. I’ve said this before to you—the failure of my marriage affected me a whole lot more than I could ever have anticipated. I went
into hiding, and then you came along and you led me out, and I will always be grateful to you for that.’
‘Grateful…’ Max murmured.
‘You’ve done me a huge favour,’ she said brightly.
‘And you could do me a huge favour now,’ he growled with an edge of harshness to his voice that she just didn’t get. Because what the heck did he have to be annoyed about? Wasn’t he about to head back to his high-powered life with its sophisticated women? Back to what he knew? He probably couldn’t wait. She’d done her bit and now he’d probably had his fill of down time for the next five years. Leopards never changed their spots.
‘How so?’
‘By coming here.’ He didn’t give her time to answer. He moved towards her and cupped the nape of her neck and drew her towards him. Their bodies were still sticky from the heat and the humidity. He kissed her. Long and hard and with a hunger that was like nothing she’d felt with him before.
He propelled her back towards the bed, holding her so tightly that it was very nearly painful.
And then everything in a rush. Clothes shed… His hand on her breasts, her thighs, between them… Just time to fumble for protection but barely breaking away from his devouring embrace…
He lifted her off her feet and she wrapped her legs around him, felt the powerful thrust of his erection hard inside her as he backed them towards the wall.
She heard herself cry out on a guttural sob of release, a long shudder tearing through her, and afterwards she clung on. Just for a while. Just for her time to say goodbye in that embrace. Tears would come later.
CHAPTER TEN
MAX STARED OUT into an impenetrable night. Two weeks. Two weeks, three days and he could probably count the hours if he put his mind to it.
In short, a lifetime since he had boarded that plane back to London, and back to his precious comfort zone, without which he had been convinced he could not live. Life was work. Work allowed him the control he craved. He knew where he was in the complex, cut-throat world of making money and he liked knowing where he was.
That was what he had told himself when he had left Hawaii, and he had kept feeding himself the same lines, over and over and over.
Izzy was still away, playing Good Samaritan to their mother’s elderly nanny and friend. They had now spoken several times and a cool layer of ice he had not really known existed was rapidly thawing. He had gone to Hawaii to drag his sister out from wherever she was hiding, to find out what the hell she thought she was playing at and to return to London, mission accomplished, within the week.
Instead, his life had been turned on its head.
He now had more insight into his sister than he had ever had before. She would be returning, but with a new, creative role and his absolute trust that she would do a fantastic job taking the hotel down a completely different direction from the one he had originally had in mind.
The new accountant was settling in with flying colours. He’d had frequent communications from Nat, in which details were given of each and every aspect of the hotel in laborious detail.
And Mia…?
Nothing. Not a word. Zilch.
He had walked away and she had cheerfully waved him off. That last night on the island, in that special bubble that had been about to burst, had been incredible. If something inside him had been strangely painful, he had successfully managed to sweep the feeling under the carpet, because he had already begun his mantra on the importance of returning to real life.
Besides, he could remember thinking, it wasn’t as if she had kicked up a fuss that what they had shared was coming to an end. She had shrugged and smiled and been philosophical, and had behaved in exactly the way he should have been cheering about. Instead, he had been inexplicably disgruntled by her nonchalance.
But that too he had swept under the carpet, consigned, he’d thought, to oblivion, with his comfort zone back in London already within striking distance.
Of course, he would miss her. She had occupied a unique place in his life. For the first time, he had dared to stop being the man the rest of the world feared. He had dropped the shutters safe in the knowledge that it was a temporary situation, no harm done.
But now, here he was, staring through the windows of his multi-million-pound penthouse. Finally, he had to admit in the still of the night what he had known all along.
He missed her.
He thought about her all the time. He could barely focus on his work.
He remembered everything about her, from her smile and her laughter to the way she could prise information out of him so that it had always felt good to confide.
He remembered the way she felt and moved and curved against him, and the feeling that they had somehow belonged together.
But for all that, when the crunch had come, the barriers had been raised and he had pushed her away. Why? Because he had been scared. He had remembered his parents and the way their love had been so all-consuming that everything and everyone had been filtered out. Poor decisions had been made, responsibilities abandoned.
The second he had felt the shift of quicksand underneath his feet, he had responded with knee-jerk speed. No way had he been going to let someone get under his skin. That could only spell disaster.
He’d been a coward. He hadn’t been man enough to admit to himself that he’d fallen in love with her, but subconsciously he had recognised those feelings, and had reacted by running away because to love was to love control of your life.
It had been safer to escape.
Fact was, he had fallen in love with Mia almost from the start. He’d told her that she was refreshing, but not once had he stopped to consider how much he adored that, how little he’d minded her consistently trampling over the barriers.
At every turn he had made excuses for feelings that had grown and grown until he had been forced to confront them on that last day together.
Izzy’s decision to stay on in California was the catalyst he had used to propel him back to London. His time in Hawaii was at an end and he had to return to his wonderful life in London—which, he’d discovered, wasn’t worth living because the one person he wanted in it was thousands of miles away.
Thing was…did she love him?
She did. Didn’t she? So much tenderness… And when she’d looked at him…
He’d never asked, never implied that he felt anything for her at all except lust. He’d promised nothing and had reminded her on more than one occasion that what they were having was a holiday fling. He’d encouraged her at every turn to look forward to walking away, even if he hadn’t always come right out and said so, because he would return to London and that would be the end of them.
He’d been a fool, but even fools deserved second chances. They at least had to try and get them.
He finished his drink and it took less than an hour for arrangements to be made to take him back to Hawaii.
He’d surprised her once. He would surprise her again.
The sun was fading but it was still very hot. Mia could feel the stirrings of a headache. Nothing new there. For the past two and a half weeks, she had felt under the weather, as though somehow all the energy had been sucked out of her and, just like that, she’d deflated. A slowly leaking balloon, lifeless and drifting on the wind.
Out here, the beach was packed with people. Tourists, locals, old, young, fat, thin—all out enjoying the sun and the sea and the surf. She could smell all different kinds of food in the air, their aromas blending and mixing and vibrant. Music was playing. The kids she had just finished teaching were babbling and laughing, and she knew that she was going through all the right motions but her heart wasn’t in it.
Her heart had been left behind on another island, broken up into pieces when Max had calmly told her that what they had was over. Things had been settled with the hotel in Hawaii and there was no longer a reason for him to remain
.
She’d smiled and smiled and smiled, and told herself that she should have been braced for this, because it was always going to end, and it wasn’t as though she hadn’t had ample warnings. They’d made love, had breakfast together and carried on talking, both adults, cool and composed—but for her every minute spent in his company had been a shard of glass piercing her heart.
Somewhere deep inside she wished she’d had the courage to say what she was thinking, to tell him how she felt, but in the end what would have been the point?
She would have to carry on with her life, just as she’d carried on with her life after her marriage had crashed and burned. Only with Max…
She could never have foreseen how deeply she would fall in love with him. Nothing had prepared her for that because he was so unlike the kind of guy she had ever imagined herself falling for.
Just went to show—life had a nasty habit of throwing curve balls.
She was a million miles away when she knew, sensed, that someone was behind her.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end but she kept on walking away from the beach and back towards her bicycle, a good ten-minute walk away.
She only felt a tug of apprehension when she realised that whoever was following her was speeding up, moving alongside her, ignoring the fact that she was walking fast, eyes down, body language rejecting any attempts at conversation.
Her fists were clenched, and she wasn’t expecting it when suddenly someone’s hand was on her arm.
She swung round, absolutely enraged that anyone would dare lay a hand on her, try to stop her. Basically, that was called assault, and in her frame of mind, with all the unhappiness and misery pent up inside her, she was ready to punch.
She raised her eyes and stopped dead in her tracks and her mouth dropped open and she stared at the last person she had ever expected to see.
He’d accosted her once before on this very beach and she had to blink to make sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her.
They weren’t. He was standing right there in front of her, his back to the sun and as tall, dark and gloriously, sinfully handsome as she remembered.
Forbidden Hawaiian Nights Page 14