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But would that help her, really? To know that she had been in love with a man who didn’t exist any more? No, it was kinder to say nothing, he told himself. Kinder—and safer—that she never knew what they had once had, and what they had both lost.
CHAPTER THREE
WHY HAD SHE invited him? Meena asked herself for the millionth time that day. It had been a stupid idea at the time, and felt even stupider now that she was sitting in her boat, in a rash-guard swimsuit and shorts, wondering if he was going to show up.
Of course he wasn’t. He had been awkward and uncomfortable for the entirety of their short acquaintance, so he was hardly going to be signing up for extracurriculars. And no wonder, considering the way that she had quizzed him the last time that they had met, making a near stranger uncomfortable by trying to use his memories to patch together her defective one. And it had all been for nothing anyway. He hadn’t known her then and didn’t care now.
She checked over her equipment one more time, including the battery and memory card on her underwater camera. Ideally she needed some close-up shots of the unstable areas of the reef so that she could make a more thorough assessment of whether the damage could be reversed. She was hoping that transplanting in new corals would stabilise it. But if the damage had already gone too far and the reef was starting to crumble she would have to rethink her options. The best way to decide was to get down there for another look. But if Guy didn
’t show she would have to make do with photographing from the glass-bottomed boat. Even seven years after her accident, when the chance of having a seizure was minimal, she wouldn’t risk being out in the water alone.
She needed to choose the best sites for transplanting in the coral pieces she’d retrieved after a storm a few months before, and had been growing out in the lab ever since. If Guy turned up and she had a buddy, then she could get her fins wet and take a closer look.
She looked along the beach, wondering how long she should wait for him, then shook her head; it was time to get to work. She steered her boat over to the reef, anchored carefully in the white sand, taking care not to damage the reef, and pulled out her clipboard and her camera, ready to make her observations.
As she took her first shot, she heard the steady buzz of motor. She looked up, shielding her eyes from the fierce morning sun, and spotted the company-branded speedboat rounding the far side of the island. Guy. She took a moment to calm her nerves and gather herself before he stopped on the beach. He didn’t know that she was still dreaming about him, and he definitely didn’t know about the X-rated images her brain was now happy to summon at will. The light, golden tan of his skin beaded with sweat. His eyes creased with intensity as he moved above her. His body a collection of hard planes that her hands had explored and come to know so well.
In her sleep.
It wasn’t real life. And he would never, ever find out about those dreams.
The speedboat pulled up to the jetty and she watched Guy climb down the couple of steps to the sand and then look around. He spotted her and gave a brisk wave as she pulled up the anchor and steered back to the shore. Guy came over and helped her to tie the boat to the small wooden jetty. He was dressed more casually than she had seen him before, in cargo shorts and a polo shirt, and she tried to keep her eyes on his face, well away from the extra skin that he was showing.
The last thing her brain needed was new material. It had done quite a good job of conjuring up a naked Guy from just the skin of his hands and his face, and that triangle of his throat where he left his shirt open at the collar. But it turned out her peripheral vision was doing a more than okay job of measuring him up: the golden-blond hair on his forearms that caught the morning sunlight. The strong lines of his calves above his beach shoes. Even his feet seemed familiar. Her brain had been remarkably thorough. And accurate. She had to give herself credit for that.
She must be retrofitting, that was all, she told herself. Her brain was seeing the real thing now and simply slotting the new images into her memories of her fantasies.
Of all the people to be unsurprised by what the human brain could remember and forget, it should be her. Her brain had forgotten everything: who she was, how to walk, how to feed herself. And then it had relearned or remembered almost all of it again. Even with the whole ‘missing summer’ issues, she couldn’t deny being impressed by what she and her brain had achieved between them. Summoning a perfect, naked Guy from just the glimpses she had seen so far proved that various important parts of her were functioning just fine.
She shook her head, trying to dislodge those thoughts before Guy could guess what she was thinking.
‘You made it,’ she said, offering him her hand to shake, trying to remember to be professional. She simply refused to be affected by the touch of his skin on hers. Nor to remember anything about her dreams inspired by the spark of electricity she felt. She was going to be working with him in her role at the Environmental Agency even if she didn’t take up his job offer.
Although, with Guy due to be far away at his Sydney office in a couple of weeks, she barely needed to know that he existed at all in order to do her job. That was for the best, she told herself. Being distracted by a man was in no way a part of her plan for her life. She was here to work, to protect as much of the islands that made up St Antoine as possible, and nothing else.
‘Do you have snorkel gear?’ she asked Guy, setting a professional tone. ‘I have some spares in the lockbox,’ she went on, trying to avoid meeting his eye, instead busying herself with equipment and checklists. ‘You can stay on the boat if you prefer; see the reef through the glass floor. It’s not a bad view from there, and then I can do the underwater stuff.’
‘I have my equipment in the boat,’ he said shortly.
‘Great.’ She kept her voice neutral, refusing to react to his brusque tone. There was no reason he should be anything but cold and short with her. They were business colleagues and nothing more, she reminded herself. ‘I always prefer to have a buddy in the water, even if I’m only snorkelling.’
‘I only have an hour.’
She tried not to bristle again at his tone. She had no reason to court his approval. She didn’t want to be his friend. In fact, the more brusque he was with her, the better. The last thing she needed was to think about getting close to this man. Any man, in fact.
She had already proved that she couldn’t trust herself to manage her own desires sensibly. In the space of a summer she had met, slept with and then lost her only sexual partner. A man who, it seemed, had been happy to take her to bed but less keen on sticking around after her accident, for her miscarriage or her rehab. If that was the kind of man that she chose for herself, she was better off single. Or even giving in and allowing her aunties to arrange an introduction to someone that fit the older generation’s idea of a ‘nice young man’.
But that didn’t exactly appeal either.
And what nice young man would want her, if they knew? A woman with a brain injury, with the scars of the accident still clear on her body and in her mind. Who had carried and lost a baby without even knowing who the father was.
She didn’t need to worry about that with Guy, at least. He looked at her with disdain, spoke with impatience and was in a hurry to leave the country. He hardly needed warning off. He clearly didn’t share the fantasies playing through her mind.
She checked over the equipment that he fetched from the boat. Guy might be experienced, but if he was accompanying her then she would be responsible for his safety, even if it was just a shallow snorkel for the most part. The equipment was top of the range, of course. Far superior to her own snorkel, mask and fins.
She glanced over at him as they both sat on the edge of the boat, steering the way over to where she had anchored by the reef before, and felt a stab of déjà vu. It wasn’t an unusual feeling for her; with an injury like hers she was constantly unsure of whether a memory was real or imagined. Before the accident, she would have just shrugged it off. But Guy had piqued her curiosity, telling her that he had attended the dive school when she had been teaching. Could they be sure that they hadn’t dived together before? There had to be some reason why she was feeling this way around him.
‘What?’ Guy asked when he turned and caught her staring at him.
