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She shook her head. ‘Too busy.’
Luke took a swig of his beer ‘That’s a shame...I seem to remember you looked good in a bikini.’
Claudia faltered, her pulse flickering madly in time with the flame as she glanced at him. What was she supposed to say to that? Since when did you pay any attention to how I looked in a bikini? Or, not as good as you do in wet clingy boardies?
Or maybe, more aptly, don’t flirt with me?
‘I leave the bikinis to Avery,’ she said, dropping her gaze to the fire again. ‘There’s too much to do at the moment to bunk off for a cool dip.’
Luke tutted at her dismissal. ‘The clean-up’s essentially done,’ Luke said. ‘I’m sure you could have squeezed in a quick, dirty swim.’
Claudia, who almost choked on her beer, was shocked into looking at him again. He laughed at her scandalised look, then winked. ‘I was referring to the state of the water.’
She narrowed her eyes at him, wondering how many beers he’d consumed. Maybe the jet lag was hitting him in one large wallop and taking over his mouth.
Either way, she chose to ignore his comment and the direction he seemed to want to steer the conversation. ‘The outside is largely complete but there’s still a long way to go,’ she said. ‘We have to keep moving forward.’
Luke sighed at her determination to stay serious. He’d hoped as he’d sat beside her that she’d loosen up a little—relax as everyone else was doing.
But no. The uniform should have been a clue.
‘So what’s next?’ he asked as he reached down and absently petted a mellow Hull.
Claudia took a mouthful of her beer before she answered. ‘Back to the drawing board. Starting again. Working out how much I can do with the insurance money.’
‘It’s not going to cover it all?’
Claudia shook her head. ‘It may have been enough twenty years ago, not today. Hell, it’d probably have been enough for just a normal cyclone but...’
Luke took a swig of his drink and watched Claudia’s toes, painted a cute shade of pink, wiggle in the sand.
‘So you want to talk about where we go from here?’
He felt her tense beside him and her toes stopped their wriggling. ‘I’m not selling to some consortium, some...giant hotel chain, Luke.’ She glared at him and Luke couldn’t decide if the flare in her eyes came from her sudden well of pissed off, or the fire.
‘If you’ve stopped by to butter me up about that you might as well keep on going.’
Luke knew it was important to stay calm and frankly he was too wrecked from a week of hard yakka to get into an argument. ‘Okay, so what are we going to do?’
‘The Tropicana has been here for forty years. Our parents ran it together for twenty of those years. And it will be again.’
‘Complete with Tiki Suites, salsa nights and lei stringing?’
Luke felt her hostile glance shoot bullets of disapproval straight into his chest.
‘Yes. What’s wrong with those things?’ she demanded. ‘I know they probably don’t seem very sophisticated to Mr Hotshot Ad Exec, but the Tropicana has always been a family resort—that’s the way our parents wanted it. And that’s the way it’s going to stay.’
‘And what about you, Claude? What do you want?’
Claudia frowned. Where was the man who had teased her about a bikini before? He was looking at her as he had by the pool earlier, as if he was trying to see all the way to the inside. And now, as then, it discomforted her.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean if you were given a bottomless bucket of money and told you could build whatever you wanted—anything—what would you build? Not what our parents wanted, not what the town wants, not what’s always been. What Claudia Davis wants.’
Luke watched her intently as she opened her mouth to say something and then shut it again. Conflict crinkled her brow. Wisps of blonde hair had loosened from her ponytail and the ocean breeze blew them gently across her face. The firelight played across her features complementing their fineness but it also illuminated her internal struggle, backlit her doubt.
She chewed on her bottom lip, contemplating the question as if he’d just asked her to tell him the meaning of life in ten words or less. The firelight glowed in the moisture she was creating and his gaze dropped to her mouth briefly before returning to the fire, tuning into the background noises of surf, laughter and hula music.
He drank his beer and waited quietly for her to figure it out. Was the question really that difficult?
Claudia contemplated the rim of her beer bottle, conscious of the time ticking away. She didn’t know. She’d been so caught up in her parents’ vision it had become her own. And she loved the kitschy, retro feel they’d created. But was it what she wanted?
