by Jessica Hart
It was empty, except for a laptop open on the dining room table, a cursor winking reprovingly at her, but the smell of coffee drew her to the kitchen tucked away behind a room divider, where she found Tom shaking freshly ground beans into a cafetière.
‘Good morning,’ she said, suddenly shy.
‘Morning,’ said Tom.
Imogen clearly thought nothing of hugging her friends goodnight, and he was a little nervous in case she greeted them the same way in the morning, so it was a relief to discover that she limited herself to a smile. He had been braced to resist another hug, but he didn’t fancy his chances of keeping his hands to himself, especially not when her blue eyes were clouded with sleep, her hair was tousled and she was wrapped only in a strip of cloth that would unwind at the merest brush of his hands.
Tom concentrated fiercely on the coffee. It was all very well resolving to be friendly, but much harder to remember when she stood there, smiling, looking dishevelled and unaccountably desirable.
Friends shouldn’t smile like that, he thought crossly. PAs definitely shouldn’t. If Imogen hadn’t been both, it was the kind of smile that would make him want to take her straight back to bed.
Luckily she was his PA, so Tom turned firmly away to pour boiling water into the cafetière.
CHAPTER SIX
‘H OW did you sleep?’
Extraordinarily, his voice sounded almost normal. It would be hard to guess that his throat was tight and his heart was slamming against his ribs.
‘Like a log, thank you,’ said Imogen. ‘What about you? Was the sofa very uncomfortable?’
‘It was fine,’ said Tom, who had spent a restless night feeling edgy and hot and confused.
‘Good. I was feeling guilty about having that comfortable bed.’
She told herself that was what had kept her awake long after Tom had switched off the last light. He had lain out of sight around the corner, but she had still been desperately aware of him.
It was all very well to talk about being normal, but normal would have been to be lying in this bed together, holding each other, touching each other.
Making love.
But they had decided to be friends instead. Friends was much better than being normal.
Wasn’t it?
Of course it was.
In the kitchen, there was an awkward pause. ‘Want some coffee?’ said Tom after a moment.
‘Thanks.’
Fastening her sarong more firmly around her, Imogen perched on a stool at the breakfast bar. ‘How long have you been up?’
‘A couple of hours. I slept late this morning. I’m usually awake about five.’
‘That’ll be why you’re always at the office before me,’ said Imogen, who was a night owl and had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of sleep by a piercing alarm every morning in order to get to work on time.
But as soon as the words were out, she wished that she hadn’t mentioned the office. It was too bizarre to be sitting here in her sarong, watching Tom make coffee, and remembering that he was her boss and she was just his PA.
Then again, perhaps she should remember that more often. Last night, it had been all too easy to forget.
‘You’ve been working,’ she said, nodding at the laptop in the other room.
‘I thought I might as well see what was going on.’ There was a faintly defensive edge to Tom’s voice. ‘The world hasn’t stopped just because we’re here. There are still things to do, and I’ve got to-’
He stopped. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Are you asking me as a PA or as a friend?’
‘As a friend,’ said Tom after a moment’s hesitation.
‘OK, then I think you’re mad,’ she said bluntly. ‘You need a break, Tom. If I were you, I’d take that laptop to the end of the jetty and toss it into the lagoon.’
‘What?’ He looked absolutely horrified at the thought.
‘This is supposed to be a holiday. You shouldn’t even be thinking about work. Why don’t you just relax?’
‘And do what exactly?’
‘You said you would teach me how to snorkel,’ she reminded him.
‘Hmm.’ He had said that, Tom remembered, but he wasn’t buying the idea of relaxing for three weeks. Who did she think he was? ‘What would you have said if I’d asked you as my PA?’
‘Certainly, Mr Maddison, what would you like me to do first?’
His mouth twitched. ‘I don’t remember you ever being that demure in real life!’
‘Of course I was,’ said Imogen, pretending to bridle. ‘I’m the perfect PA.’
‘You think so?’
‘I’m reliable, aren’t I? And discreet. So discreet, in fact, that you hardly knew I was there half the time. What more do you want from a PA?’
‘I knew you were there all right,’ Tom said. ‘You were always talking to someone.’
But he knew what Imogen meant. He hadn’t really been aware of her. It was hard to believe now that he had worked with her for six months and never realised that her eyes were that blue, or her skin that soft. How could he not have noticed her body before? He must have been blind.
All that time Imogen had been there, and he hadn’t given her more than a passing thought. The office was never going to be the same again, Tom realised with a sinking heart. Now that he had noticed her, he wasn’t going to be able to stop. He wouldn’t be able to walk past her desk without knowing how soft and generously curved she was beneath whatever prim PA outfit she might be wearing.
Without remembering how dishevelled she looked when she had just got out of bed, with her hair all mussed. Without thinking about the way those dark blue eyes danced when she was teasing him, about the feel of her and the scent of her when she hugged him.
Tom rolled a shoulder uneasily. The office had always been the place he felt most comfortable, but it looked as if that was all going to change. Perhaps it was just as well that Imogen would be leaving soon.
‘Is there a problem?’ Imogen had been watching his face more closely than he realised.
‘Problem? No!’ he said quickly.
‘So are you going to listen to me as a friend or as a secretary?’
‘Both,’ said Tom, taking a firm grip of himself. ‘I’ll teach you how to snorkel and we’ll go out to the reef, but it’ll be very hot by the time we get there so we won’t be able to spend too long. When we get back, I want to do some work and I don’t want to hear anything about switching off or relaxing or any of that stuff. Deal?’
‘Deal!’ Imogen jumped off her stool and grinned at him. ‘I’ll go and get ready.’ Her eyes were bright and blue, and she looked so pretty and so vivid that Tom felt his throat close.
He actually had to clear it before he could speak. ‘Have you got anything like an old T-shirt with you?’ he asked her, forcing his mind back to practicalities. ‘You should wear something over your bikini to stop your shoulders getting burnt.’
‘Old T-shirts are about all I have got,’ said Imogen cheerfully. ‘I’d have had much more of a problem if you’d asked me to wear something smart.’
It didn’t take long to put on a bikini and a T-shirt and she was back a few minutes later, eager to get going.
Tom had been checking the snorkelling equipment and mentally lashing himself. Somehow things had got off track in the last twenty-four hours. He’d come to Coconut Island to save face, to get away from the pitying looks that were bound to follow him once it became known that Julia had jilted him practically at the altar, and to do some work. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
He just hadn’t counted on Imogen being quite so…distracting. It was time to take control, Tom decided. Yes, she was more attractive than he had realised, and yes, the friends thing made sense while they were here but, when it came down to it, she was still his PA. If he wanted to get any work done here, and once they got home, he had better start remembering that. He needed to get things back onto the friendly but impersona
l footing he had originally intended.
So it should have helped that Imogen turned up in a baggy old T-shirt unlike anything Julia would ever have worn. He had always been drawn to women who were well-groomed and dressed with style, so the faded T-shirt ought to have been enough on its own to remind him of all the reasons he shouldn’t, couldn’t, didn’t find his PA remotely attractive.
Only it didn’t work like that. All the T-shirt did was draw his attention to the swell of her breasts, to the curve of her hips and her bare legs. He watched Imogen slathering them with sun cream and found his mouth drying.
Friendly and impersonal? Yeah, right.
Tom forced his eyes back to the flippers he had been sorting through when Imogen had appeared. No staring, no imagining how it would feel to run his hands up and down those legs. No fantasising about peeling that T-shirt off her…
He could do it, Tom told himself sternly. All it took was a little self-control, and control was what he did best.
‘Let’s go,’ he said gruffly as he handed Imogen a snorkel and mask. ‘We’ll let you practice in the lagoon first, and then we’ll go out to the reef.’
He showed her how to put her face in the water and breathe through the snorkel, and when he was satisfied that she had the hang of it, he tossed the flippers and masks into the little dinghy and started the outboard motor.
The morning air sparkled as they puttered out towards reef. From the boat, the house was quickly swallowed by the foliage until the island seemed no more than a low smudge of dark green between the vast blue arch of the sky and the pale jade of the lagoon. Behind them, the engine spluttered water that glinted like diamonds in the sunlight and left a quiet, rippling wake.
Facing him on the hard seat, Imogen’s T-shirt was wet from her lesson and it clung in a most distracting way. Tom had been able to ignore it when he was explaining how to breathe through the snorkel, but now it was an effort to keep his eyes on her face instead.
Her hair hung damply to her shoulders, and her skin was bare and already slightly marked from the mask. She was pretty enough, but not stunning, Tom told himself, reassured that he could be so objective.
Barely had he decided that he could relax after all when Imogen lifted her face to the sun with a sigh of pure pleasure, closed her eyes and smiled, and his hand promptly slipped on the helm, making the boat swing round.
Imogen’s eyes snapped open at the sudden movement and Tom’s muffled curse. ‘What’s wrong?’
You are, Tom wanted to shout. You’re wrong. You’re supposed to just be my PA. Stop smiling like that. Stop looking like that. Stop making me notice you like that.
‘Nothing,’ he said curtly instead and pointed at the reef as if he had been planning to end up at that place anyway. ‘We’ll anchor over there.’
When the boat was secured, he handed Imogen her flippers and waited until her mask and snorkel were in place before he helped her over the side and into the water. He couldn’t do it without touching her, and he was very aware of her arm beneath his hand as he steadied her.
Imogen hung on to the edge of the boat, getting used to the feel of the mask clamped tightly to her face and the snorkel that filled her mouth awkwardly. She watched Tom put on his own flippers and drop neatly into the water beside her, and couldn’t help contrasting it with her own lumbering efforts.
Tom surfaced, pulling the snorkel from his mouth and pushing the mask up onto his forehead. ‘OK?’
He was very close. Through her mask, Imogen could see him in startling, stomach-clenching detail. His pale eyes were extraordinarily clear in the bright light, contrasting with the darkness of his lashes and the heavy brows. His hair was wet, and droplets of water clung to his face.
She stared at them, half mesmerised by the way they accentuated the texture of his skin, the lines creasing beside his eyes, the roughness of his jaw, and as a drop trickled down towards that firm, cool mouth, Imogen felt as if a hard fist had closed around her lungs and was methodically squeezing out all the air.
Confused by the snorkel, she pulled it out of her mouth so that she could draw a fresh lungful of air and felt immediately better.
‘OK,’ she confirmed, using her flippers to move away from him in what she hoped was a casual gesture.
He was too close, too overwhelming. It seemed impossible that this was Tom Maddison, that only four days ago they had been in the London office, and he had just been her boss.
He was still just her boss, Imogen reminded herself firmly.
‘OK,’ she said again.
‘Stay close,’ said Tom, pulling down his mask. ‘And don’t touch anything. Just look.’
Imogen nodded, took a breath and replaced the snorkel. She had a momentary panic when she put her face into the water, but then she remembered to breathe as Tom had taught her and the next moment she was floating in the water and looking down at a different world.
Entranced, she drifted along the reef, needing only the occasional gentle movement of the flippers to propel her through the water. It was cooler here, and a lovely deep, dark blue that somehow managed to be clear at the same time so that through the mask she could look right down to the bottom of the lagoon far below. If these were the shallows, how deep was the ocean on the other side of the reef?
Imogen had never seen so many fish before or such vividly coloured creatures. She was a city girl, and in her limited experience British wildlife tended to be brown and grey and black, colours that blended into a drab winter landscape. In comparison, the reef was startlingly bright, with a palatte to rival that of the most colourful of fashion designers. The fish swimming beneath her were coloured in blues, greens, yellows, reds and every shade in between, as if a child had been let loose with a box of crayons. They were extraordinarily patterned too, with bold stripes and pretty speckles and strange splodges in a spectacularly gaudy combination of colours.
She had always imagined that coral would be white and bony, but it, too, came in a bizarre range of colours and shapes as it dropped away into the depths. The sun bounced on the surface of the water, filtering down until it caught shoals of tiny fish, invisible until they flashed in the light. Tom touched her arm and pointed down and Imogen’s eyes widened at the sight of a huge green fish with a ponderous pout that seemed to be lumbering around the coral outcrops in comparison with the smaller fish that flickered around it.
Imogen was enthralled, but acutely aware at the same time of the sound of her breathing, abnormally loud and eerily laboured through the snorkel, of the feel of the T-shirt wafting around her as she drifted, and of Tom’s reassuring presence beside her.
Every now and then a fish would swim up to stare dispassionately into her mask but for the most part they seemed oblivious of the humans hanging in the water above them. There were fish everywhere, swimming along the reef with stately grace, some moving languorously amongst the coral, others darting, drifting, nibbling at tiny plants, flicking busily to and fro. Whole shoals moved as if they were one, accelerating at some unseen signal, and turning together in a shimmer of light.
Absorbed in the magic world beneath her, Imogen was disappointed when Tom touched her arm again and pointed back to the boat but, remembering the deal they had made, she followed him reluctantly.
‘That was fantastic!’ she said as she threw the mask into the boat and clambered awkwardly in after it, too excited by what she had seen to care what she looked like. ‘The fish are amazing. I can’t believe the colours.’
She talked on, squeezing the worst of the wetness from her T-shirt and tipping her head from one side to the other to shake the water out of her ears.
There was a big red mark on her face where the rubber mask had been clamped to her skin, but her eyes were shining and her expression so vivid with delight that Tom felt his throat tighten.
‘We can come out again tomorrow if you like, but you’ve had enough for today,’ he said gruffly. ‘You’d get burnt if you stayed out much longer.’
‘I think you
might be right,’ said Imogen reluctantly, twisting her legs round as far as she could. ‘I can already feel the backs of my thighs tingling.’
Tom couldn’t afford to let himself think about her thighs, or about the way that wet T-shirt clung to her body again. He started the motor with an unnecessarily vigorous jerk of the cord and for the umpteenth time reminded himself what he was doing there.
‘We’ve got work to do, too,’ he told Imogen, who was clearly having trouble mustering any enthusiasm at the prospect, although she nodded readily enough.
‘Of course,’ she said in her best PA voice.
Ali had been in while they were out, and the house was beautifully clean and tidy. The fridge was full of wonderful things to eat, and the bed made with crisp, fresh sheets. Imogen wondered if Ali had noticed that the bed was strangely unrumpled for a honeymoon suite.
‘It’s like living in a magic castle where jobs get done before you think of them,’ she said, helping herself to some fruit. ‘I wish I could take Ali home with me.’
‘I don’t suppose he’s checked the stock markets or caught up on all those reports yet,’ said Tom caustically. ‘There are still some jobs we’ll have to do ourselves.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Reminded of what she was supposed to be doing, Imogen licked pineapple juice off her fingers. ‘Is it OK if I have a quick shower first?’
‘Good idea,’ said Tom, who didn’t fancy his chances of concentrating on work if she was sitting there in that wet T-shirt.
It was time to be professional, he decided, opening his laptop a little while later, after he had had a shower of his own. In spite of the heat, he wished he could put on his suit and tie, instead of shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, which was the best he could do for now. He wished he were back in his office in London, in fact, where he was never distracted and where Imogen only ever wore…well, he didn’t know what she wore, but that was the whole point. He never noticed her there at all.
As it was, Imogen had appeared in loose trousers and a sleeveless top. She had done her best to find something appropriate to wear, Tom supposed grudgingly. It wasn’t her fault that her hair was still wet, or that her top only seemed to emphasise the shadow of her cleavage. Or that he couldn’t stop remembering the sheer delight in her face, the smoothness of her skin when he’d steadied her in the boat.
