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Maudlin tears of self-pity tried to push their way to her eyes and she looked down hurriedly at her plate. Mysteriously, she had managed to finish most of the food that had been put in front of her, although she couldn’t remember taking a single mouthful.
‘Of course.’
Leandro pushed his plate to one side and sat forward. It was dark in the restaurant, with only the light from hanging lanterns and from the moon illuminating the tables. But he thought her voice sounded suspiciously unsteady, and the way she was staring down at her plate...
‘Are you...’
‘I’m fine,’ she said abruptly. ‘I don’t usually have this much to drink. You were telling me about your plans to have a wife and children... I apologise. It’s none of my business.’
Her head felt thick and cloudy. The sounds of the insects were clearer at night, and along with the warm, slight breeze and the magical, lazy lapping of the sea on the sandy beach they acted as a soporific drug, lulling her into puzzling territory. Part of her knew that they should not be talking like this, shouldn’t be breaking down the barriers between them, but it just felt inevitable at that moment.
‘I should tell you that I think the meal was wonderful...’ She fought to drag the conversation back into familiar terrain. ‘How did you manage to get hold of Antoine? He’s a real find...’
‘You’re changing the subject.’
‘Because this is about work, Leandro. This isn’t a...a holiday... This isn’t about two people getting to know one another. I’m here because I had no choice and...and...’ She felt woozy. ‘I think I’d like some coffee...’
‘Of course.’
He ordered them both coffee before seamlessly continuing the conversation.
‘And why shouldn’t we make an attempt to get to know one another? Believe me, I’m the last person in the world to ever condone working relationships straying beyond sensible, acceptable boundaries, but making harmless small talk over a meal doesn’t constitute that. So you have a fiancé. Why the secrecy? Do you think that by talking about him you’re somehow going to cross enemy lines? You can’t say that you’ll be jeopardising your job or your references because you’ve handed in your resignation...’
He raked his fingers through his hair and wished she would stop looking at him with those huge, blue, dreamy eyes. She’d had a little too much to drink and the effect of the alcohol had been to soften her expression. She was leaning towards him, elbow on the table, chin propped in the cup of her hand. The blue dress—some sort of complicated wraparound affair—looked as though it was hanging onto its shape by the skin of its teeth. A couple of tugs and it would unwrap itself and drop to the ground in a pool of slippery fabric. His fingers itched to do just that—tug her free of it.
Her damned fiancé would have had a heart attack—several heart attacks—if he had been able to decipher the thoughts Leandro was having about his beloved girlfriend.
‘And, to answer your question about my intention to have a family of my own one day...’
He was irritated to find himself spurred into speech. It definitely wasn’t his usual style. And certainly not on a subject he had always been at great pains to avoid discussing with the opposite sex. Experience had taught him that leading questions about his long-term plans when it came to commitment usually ended badly.
But her attention was rapt, short-circuiting his common sense.
‘Yes?’
Leandro shook his head and stared out for a few seconds at the open water. The beach was semi-lit and the black surface of the sea was streaked silver from the light. In accordance with his strict instructions, staff were keeping themselves at a distance.
‘When the time is right and I meet the right woman,’ he said gruffly, ‘I won’t hesitate to tie the knot.’
‘Meet the right woman...?’ Emily emitted a low, mirthless laugh. ‘I never took you for the romantic sort...’
‘No, I know exactly the sort you took me for. You made that crystal-clear.’
‘Are you angry with me for telling you what I thought?’
‘Surprised. Too surprised to be angry. And yet you never stopped to consider that I might have been one hundred per cent transparent in my dealings with women...’
‘What do you mean?’ Emily shot him a perplexed frown.
This dangerous conversation was thrilling. Every muscle and tendon in her body felt stretched to breaking point. She didn’t want to carry on talking about this, delving into areas that should have been kept separate, and yet she just couldn’t seem to resist. She was literally holding her breath and hanging on to his every word.
‘I never led any of them on.’
He fixed his dark eyes on her face and thought he might have liked to let them linger there—but staring had its limits, and since when was he the kind of guy who stared?
‘I never made promises I didn’t feel I could keep. They knew what they were getting into from day one and I treated them like queens.’
‘And yet none of them was your special soulmate...’
‘You’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs... Is that what you did, Emily? Before you chanced upon Mr Right?’
‘I haven’t been on a worldwide search for a soulmate.’
Leandro looked at her, head inclined. Someone hovered, waiting to ask them how their meals had been, and he waved them aside without taking his eyes off her face. ‘Does that mean that your fiancé has fitted the bill before you’ve even had a chance to explore all possible options?’ he asked softly.
‘I suppose you could say so,’ Emily muttered.
She wiped her mouth and sat back, shakily aware of how close she had come to baring her soul to him.
‘And now, if you don’t mind, I’m a little tired.’ She backed that up with a delicate forced yawn. ‘So I think I’ll retire to bed. Perhaps you could tell me what our plans are for tomorrow? Meetings? I know the TV crew are coming, so I expect you’ll want to do...er...stuff in preparation...’
‘What sort of stuff?’
‘I don’t know!’ Emily snapped. ‘Stuff. Make sure the photos are taken from the right angles! I don’t know anything about how the media circus works in a case like this!’
‘Hardly a media circus. Some poor sod has landed the job of reporting on a fairly frivolous development on a tropical island. It’s not going to make headlines across the world. And, in answer to your question, I’ll let my PR team handle it. It’ll be their first big tourist push and it’ll be interesting to see how they cope. So tomorrow...why don’t you take a little time out? We can have a look around the island.’
‘Time—time out?’ Emily stammered.
‘It’s the weekend. Even I am not such a slave-driver that I would insist you work weekends...’
He summoned Antoine and whilst he chatted with him, complimenting him on the meal and asking detailed questions about various culinary options for picky tourists, Emily took time out to digest what he had said. A day of sightseeing. Just the two of them? He certainly hadn’t hinted at a convenient entourage of any kind.
Her mind was in a mild state of panic as she rose to her feet, to find that the effects of a little too much wine were far more pronounced now that she wasn’t sitting down.
With difficulty, she took small, concentrated steps alongside him as they made their way out of the restaurant to their respective cabins, and as luck would have it a sudden attack of dizziness in combination with a lack of familiarity with her surroundings worked in perfect unison to send her flying over a dip in the ground.
She had a few panicked seconds during which she attempted to steady herself, and then she was on the soft ground, blood gushing from her foot where it had scraped against a protruding stone.
She didn’t know which was worse. The stinging of her foot or the humiliation of being helped to her feet by Leandro and then, even more embarrassingly, finding herself swept up into his arms and carried to her cabana like a sack of potatoes.
‘Don’t struggle.’ He anticipated the protest she was about to make. ‘How the hell did that happen? No, don’t bother. You’ve had too much to drink.’
She might be tall but she was light. Her slender arms looped around his neck, and the soft feel of her body pressed against his made him grit his teeth together, because his body was again responding in ways that disregarded the constraints imposed by his head.
‘I’m fine to walk,’ Emily muttered half-heartedly.
‘Your foot is pouring blood.’
‘That’s an exaggeration.’
‘I’ll sort it out.’
‘Surely there must be a first aid...um...person on site?’
‘Not in place yet...’
Was that strictly true? Leandro was pretty sure that he could get all the medical help required at the snap of a finger—but, hell...what was the point for a little cut on a foot? Nothing he couldn’t handle. He’d never been queasy when it came to blood. In fact, he had once debated whether to go down the medical route but had decided against it. He positively liked a bit of blood!
