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‘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.
