Honeymoon with the Boss

fooled for a minute.

‘I knew this would happen! You’re in love with him, aren’t you?’

Imogen opened her mouth to deny it and then admitted defeat. ‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘I am.’ But her voice cracked and, in spite of herself, her brave smile wavered and collapsed miserably. ‘But it’s hopeless, I know that. He doesn’t want me now.’

It didn’t take long for Amanda to get the whole story out of her. ‘I don’t think you should give up so easily, Imo,’ she said when Imogen had finished and was scrubbing her wet cheeks with a tissue. ‘It sounds to me as if this Tom wanted you just as much as you wanted him.’

‘That was on the island. He made it very clear that it was just a temporary thing.’

Amanda sniffed. ‘Hmm, well, in my experience, it’s not what men say that matters, it’s what they do, and he wouldn’t have been sleeping with you unless that’s what he wanted. It’s all very well to decide that you’re going to forget it ever happened, but it’ll be a very different matter when you’re working together. If you’re going to be remembering what it was like, chances are that he’s going to be doing the same.’

Was it possible? Imogen wondered. Could Tom be missing her too? Or had he already filed her mentally under ‘finished business’? He had emotions, she knew, but he kept them locked tightly away, the way he had learnt to do ever since he was a small boy, learning that his mother wasn’t coming back. It would be too much to expect him to suddenly get in touch with his feelings, or to assume that those feelings might be about her. It wasn’t that long since he had been hurt by Julia, after all.

But…

But perhaps Amanda was right and she shouldn’t give up all hope, Imogen began to think tentatively. Surely Tom couldn’t have kissed her like that, made love to her like that, if he didn’t feel anything for her? He had never actually said what he felt, but the physical connection between them had been real enough.

She missed him dreadfully. She missed his lovely, solid male body next to hers. She missed the sound of his voice, reverberating over her skin. She missed the smile in his eyes when he drew her to him.

If she could have that again, might that not be enough? Imogen wondered as she lay achingly alone in her bed. If she could hold him again, feel him again, this awful ache might not be so bad. Tom might not be ready to fall in love, but perhaps he would consider continuing the arrangement they had had on the island…

The idea slid into Imogen’s mind and stayed there, impossible to dislodge. But why wouldn’t it work? she reasoned. She wouldn’t ask for commitment. She wouldn’t expect him to tell her he loved her. All she wanted was to be with him.

She couldn’t blurt it out, of course. Tom would be horrified if she went all emotional on him. She would have to see what he was like on Monday, but if he had missed her a fraction of the way she had missed him, perhaps there was a chance…

It was enough to set Imogen’s blood fizzing at the thought of seeing him again as the lift slid upwards. She was sharing it with two others and, although she only recognized them enough to smile, she was burningly aware of their interested glances. They obviously knew exactly who she was.

She had already had a taste of the speculation rife in the office about what she and Tom had got up to while they had been away. The girls on the reception desk had welcomed her back, exclaimed over her tan and clearly not believed a word of her insistence that it had been no more than a business trip.

There would be more of that to come, Imogen knew. Perhaps she should wait until the intense interest had died down before she said anything to Tom about resuming the relationship they had had on the island. She certainly wouldn’t embarrass him by acting all doe-eyed around him.

In fact, she should make it clear that she was sticking to their agreement to pretend that nothing had happened until she had some sense of what Tom himself wanted.

Still, her heart hitched in anticipation as she nodded goodbye to the others, stepped out of the lift and hurried along the opulent corridor to her office. The trouble was that she had been thinking too much. Better to just go in and be herself, instead of preparing what she would say. She hadn’t had to prepare on Coconut Island, so why start now?

But, after all that, Tom wasn’t in his office. Bitterly disappointed, Imogen sat at her desk and spun slowly in the chair.

It felt odd to be back. The island still seemed real, and all this a not wholly comfortable dream. She looked at her watch. This time the week before they had been snorkelling. She had a sudden vivid picture of Tom surfacing beside her, pulling off his mask, flicking the water out of his hair and smiling at her. The sunlight bouncing off the water had thrown a rocking pattern over his skin, and his eyelashes had been dark and spiky and a startling contrast to the silver-grey eyes.

The memory pierced Imogen like a skewer and she swung her chair back to face her desk and switched on her computer. Distraction, that was what she needed.

Her inbox was dauntingly full. It was a long time since she had last checked her email on Coconut Island, since Tom had pushed his laptop aside and suggested a swim instead. Imogen could still feel the delicious coolness of the lagoon as she sank into the wa-

But she wasn’t supposed to be wallowing in those memories. She caught herself up guiltily and scowled at the computer screen as she forced herself to concentrate. Working doggedly through the messages, she did so well that she didn’t even notice that Tom had arrived and was watching her from the doorway.

It had been the longest weekend of Tom’s life. He had spent it in his sterile apartment, trying to work out what was so different now and, when he did, it came as a shock.

He was lonely.

Tom was furious with himself. He had never been lonely. On the contrary, he’d always felt most comfortable on his own, but now…now he was used to Imogen being there. He missed her sweetness and her warmth, and without it he felt cold and somehow empty.

He told himself that he just needed a couple of days to adjust. He thought that he had, but the sight of Imogen at her desk left him feeling literally gutted, as if a great fist had reached inside him and wrenched out his entrails.

Engrossed in her emails, she looked composed and unfamiliar, as if she had never laughed in the sunshine, never rolled on top of him and let her hair tickle his bare chest, never teased him with soft kisses.

Never stood on that sandbar and promised to love him for ever.

The suit, the hair pulled back from her face, the air of efficiency all spelt a clear message. She was sticking to the agreement they had made. She was pretending that the past three weeks had never happened and that she was just his PA once more.

He should be grateful, Tom knew. Imogen was making things easy for him. This was his chance to step back and decide how he really felt, but all he could think was that she was making it impossible for him to stride over to the desk, yank her up and into his arms and kiss her the way he really wanted.

That would be madness, of course. It would be a ridiculous, rash, risky way to carry on. It would mean he had lost control altogether, and control was all he had to hang on to at the moment.

So in the end all he did was wish her a good morning from the safe distance of the doorway.

Imogen’s head jerked up and Tom was momentarily comforted by the blaze of expression in her blue eyes, but it was so quickly veiled that he wondered if he had imagined it just because he wanted to see it so much.

‘Good morning,’ she replied with some constraint. ‘Did you have a good weekend?’

Her cool politeness sent ice creeping over Tom’s heart. It was just as well he hadn’t grabbed her and kissed her.

‘Yes, thank you,’ he replied, equally polite, equally cool. There was no point now in confessing to Imogen that he had spent his entire time missing her. ‘And you?’

‘Fine, thanks,’ lied Imogen.

There was an awkward pause.

‘You’re in early,’ said Tom eventually.

‘I wanted to get on with things,’ she said. ‘There’s lots to do.’