hand.
Willing the blush she could feel creeping up her cheeks to fade, Imogen sat stiffly on the luxurious seat as Tom jumped easily down into the boat and took his place beside her. She couldn’t let herself get into a state whenever he touched her! The next three weeks were going to be difficult enough as it was.
Three weeks alone with him.
What on earth was she doing here? It had made a warped kind of sense that day in London when she had agreed to come. Tom had needed to get away. She would help him save face. It was a purely business arrangement.
True, Amanda hadn’t seemed convinced. ‘Business?’ she said when Imogen told her that she would be away for three weeks. ‘On a tropical island?’
‘It’ll be just like being in the office,’ Imogen said. ‘But with better weather.’
‘Sure.’ Amanda’s tone reeked scepticism.
‘It will,’ she insisted. ‘I’ve got to take my laptop. I’ll have to work.’
‘And when you’re not working and there’s just the two of you alone in paradise? It sounds like this Tom Maddison is pretty hot,’ said Amanda. ‘How are you going to keep your hands off him? And don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it!’
‘I haven’t!’ And she hadn’t. Not since Tom had announced that he was getting married, anyway.
‘Honestly, Amanda, the man has just been jilted at the altar,’ Imogen went on a little huffily. ‘He won’t admit it, but he’s really hurt. The last thing he needs is me making things awkward for him! Besides, this is my boss we’re talking about.’
‘So?’
‘So there’s no question of anything like that. Tom’s too churned up about Julia and I’ve got more sense. OK, he is quite attractive,’ Imogen conceded, ‘but he’s out of my league, I know that.
‘Even if he wasn’t in love with someone else, I wouldn’t consider it,’ she went on. ‘Tom Maddison doesn’t even have a nodding acquaintance with his emotions. Look at how he’s suppressing everything now! A relationship with a man like him would be asking for trouble. I’d end up miserable, and I’ve had enough misery, thank you very much.
‘Quite apart from anything else, it would be unprofessional,’ Imogen finished primly. ‘It’s a well-paid job, and if I can stick it for another two or three months I’ll have enough money to take off for a year. There’s no way I’m risking that for the sake of a quick fling. No,’ she told Amanda, ‘I don’t think I’ll have any trouble keeping my hands to myself!’
Now her words rang a little hollowly in her ears. It had been easy to say in London. She had been so confident then, but that was before he had touched her, before the nerves beneath her skin had started jumping and jittering with awareness of him. Before that long flight, sitting right next to him.
They had travelled first-class, of course, and to Imogen, used to cheap package holidays, it had been absolute luxury. She had been thrilled, playing with her chair, opening her free bag of toiletries, accepting a glass of champagne.
Only she would have enjoyed it more if Amanda had been with her, say. Tom wasn’t the kind of person you could have a giggle with.
Understandably enough, he was looking forbidding when he’d come to pick her up from her flat in a chauffeur- driven limousine that had whisked them out to Heathrow. Conversation so far had been confined to practicalities about passports and boarding times. There had been no speculation about what to buy in Duty Free, no testing of perfumes or loitering in the bookshops. The First Class Lounge was very comfortable, but it wasn’t much fun, Imogen had decided.
Tom had sat down and opened his laptop and, apart from take-off and landing, he had worked steadily. To Imogen, it seemed as if the anger and hurt over Julia’s rejection was still buttoned up tightly inside him. She desperately wanted to help him but she didn’t know how. With anyone else she would offer a hug, but she hesitated even to lay a hand on Tom’s arm.
Which was difficult when it was just
Afraid that Tom would see her staring, she’d forced herself to look at the magazine she had bought instead, but her eyes kept straying back to him. His gaze had been fixed on the computer screen and, with the piercing grey eyes shielded, it was easier to study his face. He had surprisingly thick, dark lashes, but the uncompromising angles of cheek and jaw offset any suggestion of softness, as did his mouth, which was set in a stern, straight line. Every time Imogen’s eyes had come to rest on it, she got a squirmy, fluttery feeling inside.
In the end, it had been a relief to get off the plane and have something else to look at but, as Imogen sat in the boat, the reality of the situation began to sink in. She was about to spend three weeks alone with a man she found unsettlingly attractive, who just happened to be (a) her boss and (b) in love with someone else, and therefore doubly out of bounds.
Imogen adjusted her sunglasses and tried to wriggle the tension out of her shoulders. Perhaps Amanda was right and it was all going to be a terrible mistake.
But how could it be a mistake when the sun was warm on her skin, and the sea so clear that she could see every ripple in the sand beneath the boat? When she could hear the water slapping gently against the hull and smell the bleached wood of the jetty?
She could be in London, making the most of Tom’s absence by catching up on her filing. She could be fielding phone calls and dealing with the emails stacked up in her inbox and chasing up those expenses with the Finance department.
Instead, she was here, with Tom, very distinct beside her, his austere profile outlined against the tropical sky. Eyeing him surreptitiously from behind her glasses, Imogen felt as if she had never seen him properly before. He had put on his sunglasses, which made his expression even more inscrutable than ever, but everything else about him seemed preternaturally clear in the light that bounced off the water: the texture of his skin, the line of his cheek, the faint stubble darkening his jaw after the long flight, the edge of his mouth.
She wished it would curl in a smile sometimes.
The boat started slowly, making its way out to the gap between the reef, but once on the open water the throbbing note of the engine deepened to a throaty roar as Ali accelerated and they skimmed over the waves.
The sun glittered on the water and, in spite of the wind-shield, Imogen’s hair blew crazily around her face. It was so exhilarating that she could feel her fretfulness unravelling with every bounce of the boat and, without thinking, she smiled at Tom, who looked startled for a moment until, incredibly, he smiled back.
‘OK?’ he shouted over the noise of the engine, and she nodded vigorously as she tried to hold her hair back.
‘It’s wonderful!’ she said, trying to ignore the breathless flip of her heart at his smile.
Although it had only taken a matter of minutes to reach the island in the powerful boat, it felt as if they had entered another world, one that made the laid-back resort seem a frenetic metropolis in comparison. When Ali cut the engine, the silence hit them like a blow.
‘Welcome to Coconut Island,’ he said.
From the little wooden jetty, Imogen could see the curve of a blindingly white beach, overhung with the coconut palms that cast a jagged shade. A lagoon the colour of a glacier mint and as clear as glass was encircled by a reef, but beyond that there was just the Indian Ocean, stretching out to a horizon smudged with a few billowing clouds. They had been promised seclusion, and seclusion they certainly had.
Set back from the beach and half hidden by a tangle of tropical foliage, from the outside the house was a simple wooden structure with a thatched roof, but inside it was furnished with exquisite style and discreetly fitted with the latest technology from top designers.
The attention to detail made Imogen’s eyes pop as Ali showed them round. Outside, there was an infinity pool, a Jacuzzi and a second fabulous bathroom, open to the sky, with a wet area, a waterfall shower and a bath that would hold two easily, all perfectly designed with natural materials to blend into the foliage.
Inside, there was an immaculately equipped kitchen. There were polished wooden floors, long luxurious couches and low tables. There were huge ceiling fans, and a sound system the like of which Imogen had never seen before.
