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Guy sat on the deck of his yacht, willing away the shame that he felt at his outburst in Meena’s office. He never should have accused her of being unprofessional. But he had been so shocked when he had received the email telling him that his application had been denied that he hadn’t stopped to think. He had marched straight round to her office to have it out with her.
Would he have reacted that way if they hadn’t kissed the last time that he had seen her? He couldn’t deny that the kiss had affected him. He’d barely been able to think about anything else since it had happened.
So when Meena’s name had popped up in his inbox he had thought, for a second, that maybe she wanted to talk about what had happened that night. He had thought that maybe he wanted to talk about what had happened that night, rather than give in to his instinct to ignore anything that came remotely close to emotional introspection. But then he’d read the message and understood that it had meant nothing to her. That she’d sent him this boilerplate message crushing all his plans for the island without even a single personal word to him.
Well, that told him everything that he needed to know about what she thought about that kiss. Good. He hadn’t meant to kiss her anyway. And if she’d just been satisfying her curiosity then it had meant nothing to him either. There was no reason for either of them to mention the kiss, or their past together.
But he had to fight this ruling on the permits. So he had emailed her boss, knowing that it was a petty thing to do to Meena, calling her decision into question and asking that they reconsider.
When his phone rang, he was only half-surprised to see Meena’s name on the screen. It was inevitable, really, that they would have to speak again in order to sort this out.
‘Yes?’ Guy asked, his voice tart and impersonal.
‘Hello, Guy,’ Meena said, and he winced at the formality in her voice. ‘I’ve been asked to give you a call to see if we can reach a compromise on your application. My boss agrees that we cannot approve your plans as they are and has asked me to see if we can find a compromise. It may mean significantly altering your plans, if you are amenable to that.’
Amenable? He couldn’t believe that just a few days ago he had sat on the beach with her in the moonlight, remembering the first time that they had made love, and had then shared a kiss so intensely emotional that it had been haunting him ever since. And now they were going to haggle over bureaucracy and blueprints. He wondered, not for the first time, if any of this was worth it. If he should just forget his plans completely and go back to Australia, where he would never have
to see her again. Never be reminded of what they had had, and lost, on Le Bijou.
He shook his head, because he knew that was impossible. He’d tried it before. Tried burying those feelings. And it hadn’t worked. That was why he’d come back in the first place. To try to do something different. To do something proactive to sully the memories he had of Le Bijou. And what had he done instead? He’d made new memories. Made it harder than ever to forget.
‘Fine,’ he said eventually into his phone, because he was as determined as he had ever been to get this development built. ‘Tomorrow. My office. Nine o’clock.’
‘I can’t make that, I’m afraid. I’ll be excavating the possible nest on Le Bijou. But I can come afterwards.’
‘No need. I’ll meet you on Le Bijou.’
‘Guy, I’m not sure that that’s a good—’
‘Nine o’clock. I’ll see you there.’
CHAPTER NINE
MEENA WASN’T SURE what to expect when Guy’s speedboat skittered to a stop the next morning. Would it be the fiery anger he’d shown her the last time they’d spoken in person, or the ice that she’d heard on the phone?
Well, either way, she was prepared for him. She had all her red lines drawn clearly in her mind for what would and would not be acceptable to the Environmental Agency. And if she could just find some evidence of live hatchlings this morning, even if they hadn’t made it to the sea, that would be everything that she needed.
That was probably why Guy had invited himself along, she told herself. Nothing to do with what had happened the last time that they’d been on Le Bijou together. He probably just wanted to be sure she wasn’t going to plant evidence or do something else nefarious with the nest.
She shuddered at the thought of having to compromise her ecological principles just because of Guy’s money. She recognised that her superiors in the St Antoine government had their own priorities. But if she didn’t speak to him about this, then someone else would. Quite probably someone who cared a lot less about damage being done to Le Bijou than she did. She couldn’t trust anyone else to value the environment of that island as much as she herself did. So, as much as the idea of compromises pained her, she would be the one to make them.
Unless, of course, Guy had had a huge change of heart overnight and was prepared to scale back the resort to the point where it would no longer have a significant impact on the environment. Not likely, she acknowledged, preparing herself for a fight.
‘Good morning, Guy,’ she said as politely and formally as she could when he walked up the beach to where she was waiting for him, avoiding meeting his eye.
‘Meena,’ Guy said, nodding. ‘Let’s get on with it. I need to know what I finally have to do to get this report going my way.’
‘What you need is plans that don’t harm the environment of Le Bijou.’ Meena didn’t even look at him as she spoke. What was the point? It was the same thing that she had been saying for weeks. It wasn’t her fault that Guy wasn’t getting the message.
‘Because this island is important to you,’ Guy countered, trying to make this personal. She wasn’t going to rise to it. She was here to do her job and that was the end of it. She dropped onto her knees on the sand and started digging carefully at the nest site, scooping sand with her hands, reaching further and further into it up to her wrist, then her elbow, until she was almost lying on the beach, her whole arm reaching into the sand.
‘Because Le Bijou is protected by the government of St Antoine,’ she pointed out, still looking down into the hole because she didn’t trust herself to look at him.
‘And that’s the only reason you rejected the application?’ Guy asked, still determined to make this about them rather than about her job. He had no right. ‘Because I thought we had been working towards a solution.’
She couldn’t answer. All she could think about now was the nest and why, after she had dug down so far that practically her whole arm was disappearing into the sand, she didn’t have even a small piece of egg shell to show for it. She concentrated on widening the hole, wondering whether she had got the location wrong. Whether the marker she had used had moved somehow.
