how to fail. She said that we all fail at some time in our lives, and that what counted was not how much money we earned or how much status we had, but how we responded to failure. It was a test of character, she said. Did we let ourselves be beaten, or did we pick ourselves up and start again?’
Tom frowned. He had never let himself consider failure at all.
‘And you bought this?’
‘Well, it was very uplifting at the time,’ said Imogen, almost apologetically. ‘Especially for those of us who were more used to failing than succeeding. But I’ve got plenty of experience of failure now. I have to admit it would be nice to try success some time for a change!’
Tom was still brooding over the idea of failure. ‘If you set yourself clear goals, there’s no reason not to succeed,’ he said.
‘That depends on your goals, doesn’t it? You can’t make someone else love you,’ she said a little sadly. ‘You can’t control how other people will react. If you’re going to have any kind of relationship at all, you have to accept that you’re not always going to succeed. There’s no other option.’
‘Unless you give up on relationships altogether.’
‘But that’s a failure too, isn’t it?’ said Imogen.
Her words seemed to reverberate over the shimmering lagoon.
Tom stirred uneasily. He wasn’t used to failure. He didn’t like it. He didn’t know what to do with it.
But he had to face it. His relationship with Julia had been a failure. He knew it. Imogen knew it. Everyone knew it.
Humiliation burned in the pit of his stomach and he glared out at the horizon, his shoulders tense and hunched.
‘So what did you learn from not getting your boyfriend back?’
Imogen didn’t appear to notice the harshness in his voice. ‘I learned that I don’t want to compromise,’ she said. ‘I’ve accepted that Andrew doesn’t love me any more. My friends have been telling me that I should get out there again and meet someone else, so I’ve been trying. I go out on dates, and I really do try to be positive, but I haven’t met anyone who could even begin to make me feel the way I felt about Andrew. Every date feels like yet another failure now, so I’ve decided to stop looking.’
‘You’re giving up on men?’
‘No. I’m giving up thinking that I might settle for something less than perfect.’
There was another long silence, broken only by the rippling of the lagoon and the faint sough of the wind in the coconut palms and, from somewhere in the island, the harsh screech of a bird.
Tom was thinking about what Imogen had said. Julia had tried to settle, he realised. He had only ever been second-best for her. The thought was bitter. Julia had made the right decision in the end, but it had left him feeling a failure.
That was how Imogen said she felt after every disastrous date. Funny, he had never thought of her as having a life of her own before. She had just been a PA and now…
Tom glanced at her. Her eyes were on the horizon, her expression dreamy or perhaps just wistful. She wasn’t classically beautiful, like Julia, but there was something appealing about her. Tom couldn’t put his finger on it. It might be that lovely lush skin, or the generous curve to her mouth, or perhaps the blueness and brightness of her eyes.
Now…now she was more than just a PA. Tom didn’t know exactly what she was, but she was more than that.
Almost as if she could hear him thinking, Imogen turned her head to find him watching her and, as her clear, lovely blue eyes looked into his, Tom found himself struggling to breathe normally.
This was ridiculous, he told himself crossly. It was only Imogen.
‘You’re getting burnt.’ He said the first thing that came into his mind, and touched a finger to her shoulder where her skin was pink. ‘Sorry,’ he said as she flinched.
Imogen swallowed. ‘It’s just a bit sore,’ she said, not wanting to admit how aware she was of his touch. ‘You’re right, I’d better go into the shade for a while.’
Clambering inelegantly to her feet, she brushed the sand from her legs and pretended not to notice as Tom straightened beside her. Suddenly, he seemed very close, his chest broad, his shoulders powerfully muscled, his hips lean in the plain swimming shorts he wore, and her mouth dried.
‘I might have a snooze,’ she said, stepping back as if it would help her suck more oxygen into her lungs. ‘It’s all catching up with me now.’
‘Why don’t you go to bed for a couple of hours?’
Imogen managed to shake her head. She would never be able to relax in that bed, imagining what it would be like if things were different, if she could stretch out and wait for Tom to join her underneath that fine sheet, if he were to pull off those shorts and let her run her hands over that smooth, muscled body…
With some difficulty, she wrenched her mind away. ‘I like it down here,’ she said.
‘Up to you.’ Tom shrugged, plainly unbothered. ‘I’ll see you later, in that case.’
Imogen’s body was buzzing with a mixture of exhaustion and a prickly awareness, so she didn’t really expect to sleep when she lay on the lounger in the deep shade, but tiredness rolled over her like a wave the moment she closed her eyes, and when she opened them again it was to discover that it was nearly two hours later.
Groggily, she got to her feet, still squinting at her watch in case she had made a mistake, but the lengthening shadows told their own story. It looked as if she had had that snooze after all.
Vaguely aware of a lingering embarrassment, without really remembering why, Imogen made her way back to the house. The sun was low on the horizon and the sea lay flat and still while in the undergrowth unseen insects were warming up for a rasping, sawing, shrilling concert to mark the end of the day.
Tom had moved his laptop to the dining table and she could see him studying the screen intently. How many times had she seen him wear exactly that focused expression? Imogen wondered. The line between his brows, the pugnacious set of his jaw, the stern line of his mouth…they were all completely familiar to her after working with him for the last few months.
So why did the sight of him feel like a fist colliding with her stomach, driving the air out of her lungs and leaving her jolted and jarred with the sudden shock of it?
It must be the jet lag catching up on her, Imogen decided, and drew a steadying breath as she put a foot on the veranda steps.
Tom looked up when she appeared in the doorway.
‘That was a long snooze.’
‘I didn’t mean to sleep that long.’ Imogen was glad to see he had put on a shirt and shorts. He looked cool and comfortable while she felt hot and drowsy and crumpled after her sleep. At least discomfort helped her shake aside that odd feeling of shocking familiarity.
‘I think I’ll have a shower,’ she said. ‘I’m still feeling a bit dopey.’
‘You look it.’
His voice was cool, his glance faintly disapproving, and Imogen let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. It was a relief to realise that he was once more Tom, her irascible boss, a man impatient of weakness or frivolity.
So they had chatted in the shallows for a bit? What else were they supposed to do when they were all alone on a tropical island? Tom might have told her more about himself than she had ever known before, but he had just been making conversation and that wasn’t the same as being intimate, no matter what it had felt like.
She certainly wasn’t going to start being silly just because she had seen what a good body lurked beneath those suits he always wore. It had just been tiredness making her uncomfortably aware of him as a man rather than a boss, Imogen told herself. She would just have a cool shower and change into something sensible, and they would be back to their normal professional relationship in no time.
The light was fading rapidly as she made her way out to the bathroom. It was open to the sky and the subdued lights made the curving walls and clever tiling look wonderfully romantic. The lack of a door made Imogen a little uncomfortable, but Tom knew where she was, she reasoned. He was hardly likely to come barging in on her and, with no one else on the island, she could hardly ask for more privacy.
She turned her attention to the shower, peering at the controls in the dim light. There were no screens, no
