by Julia James
She had lost all claim to anything personal with Luke. That was all over now—brief as it had been. She’d walked out on him. Now all she was to him was a temporary employee. And that was what she had to remember. She was here to sell her interior design skills in exchange for rent, that was all.
Keep it professional. He doesn’t want anything else than that. He’s made that brutally clear.
As she trailed after him, picking her way through the debris, and then stepped inside the building, she heard herself gasp in shock and dismay at the ravages within. Furniture was overturned, curtains were hanging off their rails, crockery was smashed, and there was a fetid smell of hot, humid, overpowering damp. The place had clearly been drenched, both by the pounding rain and the storm-surge of the sea, and even in the months since the hurricane it had not dried out.
She followed Luke across the huge atrium, her heart sinking at the destruction all around her, stepping carefully through the debris on the floor—bits of furniture, shards of crockery, shreds of curtains, wind-strewn sand—gritty under the soles of her shoes. Dismay filled her. How could anyone think to make something of this place again? Surely the wreckage was complete and it was impossible to restore?
All she wanted to do was get out of there as fast as she could. There was nothing worth saving. The whole place was rotting.
Gingerly, watching every step she took across the littered broken flooring, trying not to inhale the gagging smell of damp and decay, she made her way towards the arching curve of the far side of the atrium where it opened onto the gardens—or what had once been the gardens.
Avoiding a louvered ceiling-height shutter, hanging from its hinges, she stepped out onto the terrace beyond, lifting her eyes and blinking in the bright light after the odoriferous gloom of the interior.
And her breath caught again, her eyes widening in amazement.
The garden might be strewn with palm trees, and vegetation had been hurled across the paths and lawns, but in this lush climate Nature had reclaimed her domain, throwing out vines and foliage to soften the fallen trunks, and vivid blossoms, crimson and white and vermillion pink, to festoon the emerald greenery. And beyond—oh, beyond glistened the brilliance of the azure sea, dazzling in the hot sun. The whole scene was radiant with light and vivid colour.
‘It’s fantastic!’ she breathed in wonder.
She could see in an instant why the hotel had been built here, right at the sea’s edge, fringed with sand so silver she could barely look at it in the bright sunlight. The contrast with the rank, ruined interior could not have been greater. Talia could feel her spirits lift, her face light up with pleasure at the sight.
‘Not bad, is it?’ Luke had stepped up beside her. His voice was dry and he was gazing around.
She turned to him. There had been something in his voice, in its very understatedness, that made her exclaim, ‘I can see why you want it! It’s worth any price!’
His eyes came to rest on her and she could see that for a second, just the barest second, he reeled. But then his gaze shuttered and she could tell that he was deliberately blanking her again.
‘I don’t get sentimental over projects,’ he said tersely. ‘That doesn’t make me money. What makes me money is buying something at a good price and adding value. That’s the opportunity here. The company that owns it wants shot of it, and if I can get it at the right price, and get the refurb costings right, it will make me money. That’s all I’m interested in.’
How sad, Talia thought. What a shame that this place would be all about money. Where was his heart? Where was his soul? Where was the man she’d spent that incredible night with? The one who had lit up her whole world with his ideas, his passion, his determination?
‘Even at the lowest possible cost a refurb will be expensive. More so than a new build because of the clearance costs.’
He glanced at her again. ‘Go around the place—and watch your step. Meet me back here in forty-five minutes. Don’t keep me waiting.’
He strode off, heading down to the shore, already on his phone.
Talia watched him go, watched his assured, powerful stride carving through the debris in the devastated gardens. There was a heaviness inside her. His blunt words had had a bleak familiarity to them. She knew that attitude, all right. It was her father’s. Minimum cost, maximum profit. That was all he’d cared about, too.
It was chilling to see it echoed in Luke.
Then, with a little shake of her head, as if to clear all such thoughts from it, she went back inside and started her tour.
She fished out her notebook from her tote and started to jot things down—rough measurements to begin with, and then a sketchy layout of the ground floor guest areas as she walked, watching her step, through the desolate rooms.
As she did so her mood changed. She wasn’t quite plunged automatically into professional mode, but she did find that, despite the desolation and destruction, the same lifting of her spirits was hitting her as when she’d seen the vista of the sea beyond the gardens.
If she looked past the devastation and ruin to the structure of the building she could see that this was, indeed, a beautiful space. With imagination and enthusiasm it could be made impressive again.
Ideas started to flow and her pen moved faster over the paper. She turned pages one after the other, and took copious photos on her phone of rooms and vistas.
She headed upstairs, ideas still pouring through her, a sense of excitement filling her. For the first time she was being given an opportunity to use her own creativity, to craft her own vision! Being allowed to give her ideas full rein and not have them ignored and dismissed by her father was a liberation.
Time flew by, and only when she saw Luke waiting for her down in the desolate atrium, with a dark expression on his face, did her mood crash again.
‘When I say forty-five minutes that is what I mean,’ he informed her tightly.
Talia’s apology died on her lips.
‘I’ve got some letters to dictate to you,’ he continued. ‘While you’re here you might as well do some secretarial work for me, as well. We’ll do it in the car.’
‘Er... I don’t take dictation,’ she said. It wasn’t a refusal, only a description of her secretarial limits.
‘Tough,’ he said.
She stared after him, her heart sinking. His mood was black, that was obvious, and she could only assume it was because the state of the hotel was worse than he’d realised.
As for acting as his secretary, well... She sighed inwardly. If that was what he wanted she would do her best. After all, to have stayed on at the villa paying rent would have cost her a fortune—whatever work she did here for him he was therefore entitled to, even if it wasn’t what she was trained for.
So she did the best she could, taking down his dictation as he drove. But not only did the SUV jolting over the potholed roads make it difficult to write, but the complex legalese and financial figures he dictated at high speed tested her meagre abilities to the limit. The fact that she was only exacerbating his bad mood by asking him to slow down or repeat himself was patently visible.
By the time they finally arrived back at the villa there was a headache around her skull like a steel band in full swing.
Luke turned to her. ‘There’s a government minister I have to see. Those letters need to be typed up this afternoon. There’s an office set up in the villa somewhere—the staff will show you.’
Talia nodded dumbly, heading up to her room to shower and change. Was this distant, terse man really the same man as the one she had encountered that fateful evening at the party? How could he be?
She felt her throat catch and hurried into the bathroom. Beneath the flow of water, she was only too conscious of her nakedness—a nakedness she had so briefly gloried in with the man who now looked right through her...
Memories rushed back into
her head of when his gaze upon her had not been cold, nor indifferent. But these were memories she did not want and could not afford. She sighed grimly. She couldn’t afford much at all.
Enveloping herself tightly in a bath towel, she emerged, steeling herself. What did it matter if Luke now looked right through her and gave her orders and instructions as if nothing had ever happened between them? It would simply remind her of what she shouldn’t forget, even for a moment. That she was here for one purpose only—to work as he directed, so that her mother could have some reprieve from the loss of the final piece of her stricken life to which she was still so desperately clinging.
A knock sounded at the door and she went to open it. One of the soft-footed maids came in with a lunch tray, carrying it through to the balcony, on which a little table and chair had been set up under an awning. Talia threw on a sundress, and followed her.
She felt her spirits lift again in the heat and brightness after the dim cool of the air-conditioned bedroom.
Thanking the maid, she felt suddenly hungry and fell to eating. She’d hardly had time for breakfast—which had been served up here in her room—before she’d been informed that Mr Xenakis was waiting for her, and jet lag had also confused her hunger cues. Now they were fully restored, and she ate with relish the food that had been provided for her: chicken salad, cane juice, and fresh fruit.
As she ate, she gazed out at the vista. And such a vista! Now, for the first time, she could really appreciate where she was.
The villa was set on a slope, high above the sea, which was several miles away across lush countryside, and the beautiful gardens she’d seen from the carriage sweep were wrapped around the back as well.
Was that...? Ah, yes. Her eyes lit up. There was a large turquoise pool, glinting at the rear of the villa. And as she gazed in delighted appreciation she knew, instinctively, that the colour palette for her design ideas was right in front of her: the deep cobalt sea, the turquoise pool, the emerald vegetation, the vivid crimson of the bougainvillea and fragrant frangipani. All would be called upon.
Enthusiasm fired her, and she longed to make a start on her colour boards and sketch out the vision that danced inside her head. Her ideas began to fizz and bubble in her imagination.
But that was not what she’d been instructed to do this afternoon. There were Luke’s letters to type up first.
The office she was shown into by the stately butler—whose name, he informed her upon enquiry, was Fernando—was chilled with air-conditioning and had no outside light coming in. The windows were high set, with venetian blinds over them. An array of high-tech equipment hummed to one side, and a huge PC sat on the desk.
She took her place in front of it and got out her notebook. She sighed, hoping she would be able to decipher what she’d scrawled so hectically.
It proved hard going, and she knew, with a sinking heart, that she was making a poor fist of it. She did her best, all the same, though she was painstakingly slow, not being able to touch-type, and found the keyboard complicated to operate when it came to tabulating the many figures Luke had thrown at her.
Finally, she was done, though there were gaps and queries in every letter and attachment. She could only hope that Luke would make allowances for the fact that she was not a trained secretary and they had been going over a bumpy road while she was trying to write it all down.
The headache, which had cleared over lunch in the fresh air, was now back with a vengeance. With a final sigh of abject relief, she closed down the word processing software and got up, her back stiff and sore from hours of hunching over the keyboard.
Then her face brightened.
The pool! She would freshen up with a dip—that, surely, would clear her head and loosen her stiff limbs. And she would ask the Fernando if she could have a coffee, and a long juice drink.
A handful of minutes later she was plunging head-first into blissfully warm water, joyfully dipping her head under the water to feel her hair stream wetly down her back. Her spirits soared. Oh, this was joyous! She splashed around, frolicking like a child, delighting in the diamond sprays of water catching the late-afternoon sunshine, then pushed off the side, plunging in a duck-dive to the tiled bottom of the pool, dappled with sunlight. Then:
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
CHAPTER FIVE
THE STENTORIAN VOICE halted Talia mid-plunge and she floundered back up. Her eyes went to the edge of the pool as she brushed the strands of wet hair from her face.
Luke was standing there, glowering down at her. Talia blenched, grabbing the edge of the pool to steady herself. ‘I...I wanted a swim,’ she said.
She didn’t try to make her voice sound defiant—let alone entitled—but Luke seemed to take it that way. She could tell by the instant darkening of his eyes.
‘May I remind you,’ he bit out, and the sarcasm was blatant in his clipped words, ‘that you are here to work. This is not a holiday for you!’
She saw him breathe in sharply, lips pressing in a thin line.
Talia opened her mouth to tell him she knew that, and understood it only too clearly, but he forestalled her attempt at self-defence.
‘What’s happened to those letters I left you to type up?’ he demanded.
‘I...I’ve done them. That’s why I thought it would be OK to have a swim,’ she said falteringly.
Clumsily, she hurried to get out of the pool, wading up the steps. As she emerged she was burningly conscious that, even though she was wearing a plain one-piece suit, it was clinging to her body, exposing every curve and a lot of bare leg. She seized a towel and wound it round her body while her wet hair streamed water down her back.
His eyes were on her, she could tell, and she felt colour flare out across her cheeks as she dipped her head, squeezing water out of her long hair. She hoped he would go, so she could escape up to her room, but he was not done with her yet.
‘My PA said she’s received nothing,’ he retorted.
She looked confused. ‘You didn’t say anything about sending them anywhere. And I don’t have any contact details.’
He cut across her. ‘It will have to be done now.’ His mouth tightened. ‘Get changed and meet me in the office.’
He strode off before she could make any reply, and disappeared indoors. Hurriedly, Talia ran up to her room. The bad mood that had encompassed him as they’d left the hotel was clearly still clinging to him, and when she joined him again, as quickly as she could, she saw with a sinking heart that it had only worsened.
He was sitting at the computer, her work on the screen. At her entry he turned. ‘This,’ he said grimly, ‘is a complete mess.’
He lifted a hand to indicate the screen, where one of his long, complicated letters was displayed. There were half-sentences in red, to show where she wasn’t sure she’d taken down what he’d said correctly, and there were queries and question marks freely dispersed throughout.
Talia pressed her hands together. ‘I told you,’ she said, her voice as composed as she could make it—which was not very much, ‘I don’t take dictation and it was hard to write in the car because of the bumpy road. You gave me very little time, and these letters deal with matters I’m not familiar with.’ She swallowed. ‘I did my best,’ she said.
She could feel her throat constricting and sense tears building up behind her eyelashes. She was reminded of how once, when she was a novice designer, her father had given her instructions she hadn’t been able to carry out. His anger had wiped the floor with her. She had cried, and he had been even angrier. But she wouldn’t cry in front of Luke—she wouldn’t!
Gritting her teeth, she blinked rapidly, taking the seat that Luke was now vacating with a bowed head. He positioned himself behind her, so he could read the screen as well, and she felt the closeness of his presence overpowering her.
‘OK,’ he said tersely. ‘I’ll g
ive you the corrections.’
He did so, and her fingers stumbled on the keyboard, but she soldiered on, blinking away the haze in her eyes as she laboured over the intricate figures, the complicated tabulation they required, and then added headings for addresses and pagination as well.
It seemed to take for ever, and her head was aching again with the concentration and fumbling finger-work, but finally it seemed he was done. Done with the work and done with her. She hit ‘send’ on the set of documents, to the email address he’d dictated, and sat back, her hands falling nervously to her lap.
Behind her, Luke spoke in that remote, impersonal tone she was getting used to.
‘You can clock off now. And you can have the evening to yourself—I’m dining out. Tomorrow, make a start on your initial design ideas. As for any more secretarial work...’ his voice tightened. ‘I’ll use an agency.’
He walked out and, feeling crushed yet again, Talia slowly made her way upstairs to the sanctuary of her bedroom, lying for a long while flat on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.
The man she had once known so briefly, so incandescently, who had for a short few hours transformed the world for her, who had looked on her with passion and desire, had gone. Gone for ever.
A bleakness filled her. A sense of desolation. She felt her eyes haze over again, and this time she did not try and suppress her tears...her hopeless, flowing tears...
* * *
Luke was having dinner with one of the senior civil servants in the Department of Business Development, but he scarcely heard what the man was saying. His thoughts were elsewhere, circling round and round in his head like a vulture, and he could not banish them.
I can do this. I can do it and I will do it. I must. I will make myself immune to her and I absolutely will succeed!
But it was proving harder than he’d thought—damnably harder! Being with her again, tormented by all the memories of their unforgettable encounter, he’d felt his eyes constantly wanting to go to her, to drink her in.
