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‘Mixed reviews.’
She felt the tension leaching from the atmosphere as they both laughed out loud.
‘Maybe we should talk about it, though,’ Guy said, his voice taking on a serious tone that made Meena inexplicably nervous.
‘What is there to say?’ Meena asked, avoiding meeting his eye.
Guy shrugged. ‘I think I should apologise. I shouldn’t have done it.’
Meena drew her eyebrows together. ‘I don’t remember it being done to me,’ she objected. ‘I’m fairly sure I remember joining in.’
Guy shook his head, and she knew that he was shaking off her words too. ‘But I knew that I shouldn’t be doing it even as it was happening. And so I should apologise.’
Meena swallowed. Just because she had been equally sure that the kiss had been a mistake, that didn’t mean that it was any less bruising to her ego to hear it out loud.
‘Let’s not mention it again, then,’ she said, making her voice extra bright to cover her feelings. But still, she was...curious. She knew her own reasons for resisting the urge that had tried to convince her to take that kiss further. The urge that was trying to convince her it was the right thing to lean in and kiss Guy again. But what were his?
He had wanted her. She might be inexperienced, but she had known that much from the second before Guy’s lips had touched hers. And he had had feelings for her once. So what had happened in the meantime to make the thought of a relationship with her so abhorrent?
She had broken his heart, she reminded herself, when she hadn’t come to Australia to meet him as they had planned. That would be reason enough for him to not want to go over old ground, she was sure. But it seemed like more than that. As if he was hiding something. As if there was something about himself that he didn’t want her to see.
‘It’s probably best,’ Guy said. ‘What happened between us all those years ago, it’s ancient history. There’s no need to drag it all back up again. The other night, that was just a...a slip.’
Of the tongue? Meena thought, remembering the English idiom. Interesting choice of words...
Guy’s eyes were fixed on her face, and Meena felt suddenly uncomfortable under his gaze, the way that he was studying her and the crease that had just appeared in his forehead.
‘What?’ she asked, against her better judgement.
‘I just don’t...’ He hesitated but then seemed to come to a decision. ‘I don’t understand how you knew,’ he said. ‘How you knew that we had been together before. I did nothing that would give it away.’
Meena fought to keep her expression under control, not to give away anything about how she had known that she’d had a lover that summer. That she’d been looking for him for all the years since. But, with thoughts of the miscarriage so fresh in her mind, it was harder than ever to pretend that it had never happened. ‘Well, you might have thought that you hadn’t. But you must have done, because I guessed. What other explanation could there be?’
She hoped that she sounded more confident than she felt...
Guy shook his head slowly and she guessed that she hadn’t quite pulled it off as well as she had been hoping. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, creasing his forehead once more as he looked at her. ‘But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing something.’
She shook her head in what she hoped was a casual manner. ‘You think I’m keeping secrets?’ She felt the blood rush to her face as she asked the question, because of course she was keeping a secret.
She wondered for a moment if she could just tell him about the pregnancy. In the years since it had happened, she had never told anybody. Had never spoken to anyone about it since the nurse who’d first told her that it had happened. She didn’t even know if her parents knew about it. They had never said a word if they did. With so much to focus on with her recovery, she’d buried thoughts about the baby as best she could. But, with Guy back in her life, it was suddenly impossible to do that any more, and she couldn’t help but think that everything she was thinking must be written on her face.
Guy was watching her through narrowed eyes, and she knew that he suspected that something was wrong. If he had had a sneaking suspicion before that she was keeping secrets from him, then he must be certain of it now.
But she was entitled to secrets, she reminded herself. She didn’t owe him her honesty, or anything else, for that matter. He was an associate and nothing more. That kiss on the beach of Le Bijou was a throwback to a different time. It didn’t change anything about who they were to each other in the present.
But she felt different from how she had before it had happened, she acknowledged. She couldn’t help it. She had wanted that kiss and, now that she knew how good it was to kiss him, to really kiss him, rather than just fantasise about it, she wanted more. And, from the heated look he gave her as he held her eye, she guessed that everything she was thinking was showing on her face.
Guy moistened his bottom lip, and with that tiny movement she was so very nearly lost. Because she knew that he was thinking the same as her. That he could taste her, as she still had the taste of him in her mouth. If she closed her eyes she could feel his hands skimming the curve of her waist, dropping lower, pulling her closer. She could feel the thud of his heart under her hand and hear the rush of blood in her ears as she had abandoned rational thought and let instinct take over.
She closed her eyes for a long moment, took a deep breath, and when she opened her eyes she was in control again. Memories of that night had been banished.
‘What happens next?’ Guy asked, and for a moment she thought that he was talking about them, and she was almost at the point of telling him that nothing happened next when she realised that he was trying to bring the conversation back to work. That he was talking about the permits. She felt another flush of blood to her face and hoped that Guy hadn’t noticed.
‘You submit revised plans,’ she told him simply, trying to get her mind back into the game. ‘Address all of the points in the environmental report and we will reconsider your application. If you meet all the requirements, the permits will be approved.’
His plans would probably be approved eventually, she knew. Guy wouldn’t stop until they were. And then he expected her to come and work here, to oversee the destruction of the island in the guise of trying to protect it. She had thought that accepting his job offer would be for the best. That Le Bijou needed someone to stand up for it, and she would be the right person. But, with everything that had happened here in the last week, she knew that she couldn’t be the person to do it. The memory of their kiss, the fresh raw grief of that empty nest: it was too much.
‘Even if they’re approved, though, I can’t accept your job offer,’ Meena added suddenly.
