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But they hadn’t gone very far when Claudia’s room door opened and Gloria and Lena walked in. Claudia and Luke sprang apart as if they’d been hit by a taser. Gloria and Lena’s conversation stopped abruptly as they stared open-mouthed at their respective children.
‘Oh, Lena,’ Gloria gasped, turning to Claudia’s mother. ‘It’s finally happened.’
Lena grabbed Gloria’s hand. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Finally.’
Gloria moved into the room, making a beeline for her son. ‘We’d always hoped, didn’t we, Lena?’ she said. Lena nodded. ‘But you went off to London and then you got married and you didn’t want to manage the resort with Claude and we thought...well, it looked like it was never going to happen and now...’
Luke watched, horrified, as the two women approached with huge beaming smiles. He glanced at Claudia, who was thankfully covered and looking just as stunned by the events of the last minute. What a freaking disaster. Why the hell was her door open? If their mothers had been a minute later God only knew what kind of a state he and Claudia would have been in.
It certainly wouldn’t have been vertical.
He cringed thinking about it. It was bad enough standing here at thirty-two, caught with his hands all over Claudia and a raging hard-on in front of his glowing mother; he didn’t need to think about how much worse it could have been.
At least kissing was more easily explained. Hopefully.
Claudia glanced at Luke as their mothers kept raving about what a wonderful couple they’d always known she and Luke would make. Luke looked as if he was about to throw up.
She knew how he felt.
This was bad. Very bad. Exactly what they’d wanted to avoid—involving two people who wouldn’t understand it when Luke left to go back to London.
She had to do something, say something—quick.
‘This is not what it seems,’ Claudia said.
SEVENTEEN
Gloria and Lena stopped talking abruptly and a spike of guilt at bursting their bubble poked Claudia right in the centre of her chest.
‘Okay,’ her mother said although clearly she didn’t believe Claudia. ‘What is it, then?’
Good question Luke thought as he glanced down at Claudia. How on earth could either of them explain away what their mothers had seen? Convincingly.
‘Luke and I were just sharing a good-luck-for-opening-day kiss,’ she said.
‘That didn’t look like a good-luck kiss to me,’ Gloria said and winked at Lena.
‘It got a little out of hand,’ Claudia admitted, ‘but we’re both exhausted from working so hard and nervous about tomorrow... It was...pure reaction...just one of those strange isolated moments that sometimes happen when people work closely together on something and the stakes are high. That’s all.’
‘That’s all?’ her mother repeated, clearly unconvinced.
‘It happens all the time in advertising, doesn’t it, Luke?’ she said, nudging Captain Silent-pants for help.
Luke nodded. It sounded crazy but maybe they could convince their mothers if they stuck to her ridiculous isolated-reactionary-incident-brought-about-by-exhaustion story. ‘That’s right.’
‘Oh? Kissed a lot of your colleagues, have you?’ his mother asked.
Luke cleared his throat. ‘Some,’ he said lamely. Lying to his mother was more difficult as a grown man than it had been as a teenager.
‘There is absolutely nothing between us,’ Claudia said. ‘Nothing. Just old friends who let something go too far because we were exhausted and...overwhelmed and it won’t happen again, right, Luke?’ she asked him.
Luke nodded vigorously. ‘It won’t.’
Gloria and Lena glanced at each other and grinned a little. ‘Okay, sure,’ Gloria said. ‘That makes sense. A one-off.’
‘Won’t happen again.’ Lena nodded.
Luke narrowed his gaze. ‘It won’t.’
‘Okay, sure,’ Gloria said, and Lena nodded her agreement.
Claudia sighed. They both looked suspiciously bright-eyed and Claudia’s dismay grew. She and Luke didn’t need the pressure of their parental expectations. They both knew nothing short of the royalesque wedding their mothers had apparently been planning for the last twenty years would satisfy Gloria and Lena.
Their thing was over before it had even begun.
Dead in the water.
‘Was there a reason why you barged in without knocking?’ she asked her mother.
Lena tutted at her daughter’s sass. ‘The door was unlocked.’
‘I haven’t been locking it with the hotel empty.’
‘We just wanted to let you both know that if everything goes smoothly the next two days we’ll be setting off on Wednesday.’
