by Jessica Hart
It wasn’t her fault that, for the first time in his life, he didn’t know exactly what he wanted, and being unable to focus on a goal left him feeling restless and faintly uneasy.
They did try. They sat across from each other at the table and began by checking their email, but it was hard to care very much about strategic audits or core competencies or competitor analysis when outside the ocean was murmuring against the reef and the sun was slicing through the fringed leaves of the coconuts. Somewhere a bird called raucously and a tiny, almost colourless gecko ran up the wall and froze as if astounded by the sight of two humans staring silently at their computer screens.
Tom couldn’t understand it. Until now, work had always been his refuge. He was famous for his ability to focus, in fact, but the words on his computer screen were dancing before his eyes, and his attention kept straying to Imogen across the table. Had she always had that little crease between her brows when she studied the screen? That way of tucking her hair behind her ears?
Sensing his gaze, she glanced up and caught him staring at her. ‘Did you want something?’ she asked.
Tom scowled to cover his mortification. ‘We ought to discuss the new acquisitions strategy.’
‘O-kay,’ said Imogen cautiously while she racked her brain to remember what he was talking about. Her mind was full of colourful fish and the sunlight on the sea. She couldn’t even remember what an acquisition was, let alone how you ever had a strategy for it. London and the office seemed to belong to a different world altogether, a world where Tom Maddison was brusque and brisk and besuited, not lean and long-legged and sleekly muscled.
Not the kind of man who could make her heart turn over just by sitting at the helm of a boat with his hair lifting in the breeze from the ocean and his steely eyes turned to silver in the light.
Tom started talking about some new executive vice president while Imogen searched her inbox desperately for the relevant email, until he stopped abruptly.
‘Oh, to hell with it!’ he said, throwing up his hands in a gesture of defeat. ‘It’s too hot to work. Let’s go and swim.’
‘I’ve often wondered how people who live in lovely climates ever get any work done,’ said Imogen a little while later. They were sitting in the tattered shade of a leaning palm and she curled her toes in the soft sand as she looked out over the lagoon. ‘It’s bad enough at home when the sun shines. The moment it comes out, I always feel like turning off my computer and spending the afternoon in the park.’
Tom raised a brow. ‘Nice to know you’ve got such dedication to your work.’
‘I’m only a temp,’ Imogen reminded him, unruffled by his sarcasm. ‘Temps aren’t supposed to be dedicated. It’s different for you. You’re responsible for the whole company. If you get it wrong-or decide you’d rather spend the afternoon in the park-then it’s not just you that’s out of a job. A lot of other people will lose their jobs too.’ She made a face. ‘I’d hate to have that kind of pressure on me, which is why I’ll never have a hugely successful career.’
‘Don’t you have any ambition?’ said Tom, unable to completely conceal his disapproval.
‘Sure I do, but it’s probably not the kind you would recognise. My ambition is to be happy,’ she said simply. Picking up a piece of the dried coconut husk that littered the sand beneath the trees, she twirled it absently between her fingers. ‘To see the world, forget about Andrew and find someone who will love me and who wants to build a life with me.’
Imogen glanced at Tom. She could tell that he didn’t understand. ‘What about you?’ she said, pointing the piece of husk at him as if it were a microphone. ‘What’s your ambition?’
He didn’t have to think about it. ‘To be the best.’
‘Yes, but the best at what?’
Tom shrugged. He would have thought it was obvious. ‘At whatever I’m doing,’ he said with a hint of impatience. ‘If I’m running a company, I’m going to make it the leader in its field, I’m going to win the most lucrative contracts and earn the highest profits. It doesn’t matter what the race is for, I’m going to win it.’
‘What happens when you don’t win?’
‘I try again until I do,’ said Tom. ‘The winner is always the one in control, and I never want to be in a position where anyone else can tell me what to do.’
Imogen tossed the husk back into the sand. ‘No wonder you don’t believe in love,’ she said, remembering their conversation the night before.
‘I believe in success,’ he said. ‘And it’s not just for me. I take a failing company, I turn it round and I make it the best and, as you pointed out, everyone who works there shares in that success. People are depending on me for their jobs, for their futures. If I fail, they fail too.’
‘They’ll still have jobs if the company has the second-highest profits,’ Imogen pointed out. ‘Not winning isn’t always the same as failing.’
‘It is to me. I’m not prepared to be second-best,’ he said uncompromisingly. ‘That’s why I won’t take a day off when the sun shines.’
‘And why you’re thinking about work when you’re sitting in paradise?’ She gestured at the view. Coconut palms bent out towards the water, framing the beach and the lagoon between their fringed leaves like an exquisite picture. Beyond the shade the light was hot and harsh, bouncing off the surface of the lagoon and turning the white sand into a glare.
Tom’s expression relaxed a little. ‘You started it,’ he said.
‘Did I?’
‘You were the one talking about switching off your computer.’
‘So I was,’ she conceded. She watched a breath of wind shiver across the surface of the lagoon and stir the palms above their head.
‘It’s hard to imagine that the office exists right now, isn’t it?’ she went on after a while. ‘While we’re sitting here in the sun, the girls are in Reception, Neville’s in Finance, the other secretaries are sending out for coffee…There are meetings going on and decisions being taken and things are changing without us.’ She shook her head. ‘It just doesn’t seem real.’
‘And when we go back, this won’t seem real,’ warned Tom.
‘Well, I for one am going to make the most of it.’ Getting up, Imogen dragged her lounger out of the shade. ‘I think I’ll spend a busy afternoon working on my tan.’
She adjusted the lounger so that she could lie flat and turned onto her stomach before groping around in the sand for the book she had dropped there. Wriggling into a more comfortable position, she smoothed out the page with a sigh of pleasure.
‘This is the life! I’m never going to be able to go back to work after three weeks of this.’
Tom watched her with a mixture of disapproval and envy. She had an extraordinary ability to enjoy the moment, he realised. It wasn’t something that he had ever been able to do. He was always too busy thinking about what needed to be done at work.
‘Careful you don’t get burnt.’
‘Yes, Mum!’ But Imogen pulled the beach bag towards her and rummaged for the sun cream. She supposed she should put some on. Sunstroke was no fun.
Squeezing some lotion into her palm, she slapped it onto her shoulders as best she could.
Tom hesitated, torn between the disquieting temptation of touching her the way he had been thinking about all day and a horrible fear that he might not be able to control himself if he did.
But she couldn’t reach her back herself, could she? He could hardly sit here and let her burn.
‘Would you like me to put some cream on your back for you?’ he offered stiltedly.
It was Imogen’s turn to hesitate. The thing was, she would and she wouldn’t. The thought of his hands on her skin made her shiver with excitement, but she was petrified in case he guessed quite how much she would like it.
But they were being normal here, right? She would burn if she didn’t do something about her back, and she wouldn’t hesitate to ask any other friend to rub cream in for her.
‘That would
be great,’ she said after a beat.
Reaching behind her, she unclipped the bikini top and lay flat, her arms folded beneath her face and her head pillowed on her hands. She was wearing sunglasses, but turned her head away from him as an extra precaution.
The squirt of the suntan lotion onto his hands seemed unnaturally loud, and Imogen found herself tensing in preparation for his touch. When it came, his hands were so warm and so sure that she sucked in an involuntary breath and couldn’t prevent a small shiver snaking down her spine.
‘Sorry, is it cold?’
‘No, it’s fine.’ Imogen’s voice was muffled in her hands.
Crouching beside her, Tom smoothed cream firmly over her shoulders and up to the nape of her neck, before his hands, slippery with oil, slid down her back, then up, then down again, spreading his fingers this time to make sure her sides were covered.
Imogen made herself lie still but inside she was squirming with such pleasure that she was afraid that she would actually dissolve, leaving a sticky puddle on the lounger. At the same time she was rigid with tension caused by the need not to show it. She mustn’t sigh with pleasure, mustn’t roll over, mustn’t beg him not to stop…
Oh, God, he had started on the backs of her legs now…Imogen squeezed her eyes shut. Thank goodness she had had them waxed before she’d left.
Tom’s hands swept down her thighs in firm strokes to the backs of her knees, then on down to her ankles, before gliding all the way back up again. In spite of her best efforts, Imogen quivered.
She was sure that he must be able to hear her entire body thumping and thudding in time with her pounding heart. Part of her was desperate for him to stop before she disgraced herself by spontaneously combusting, but when he did take his hands away abruptly she only stopped herself from groaning with disappointment in the nick of time.
‘That should do you.’
If Imogen had been able to hear anything above the boom of her own pulse she might have noticed the undercurrent of strain to his voice but, as it was, all she could do was lie there and hope that he couldn’t actually see the heat beating along her veins.
‘Thank you.’ Her mouth was so dry, it came out as barely more than a croak.
Tom stood up. ‘I think I’ll get back to work,’ he said curtly. ‘No, you stay there,’ he added as Imogen lifted her head to ask if he wanted her to do anything. ‘There’s no point in wasting that lotion. I’ve just got a few things I want to be getting on with.’
‘Well, if you’re sure…’
‘I’m sure,’ said Tom. He badly needed to be alone, and the last thing he wanted was Imogen there, wondering why he was so tense or walking so stiffly! ‘I’ll see you later.’
There were things he needed to do but, no matter how hard he stared at the computer screen, Tom didn’t seem to be able to focus. His fingers were still throbbing with the feel of her body, so soft and smooth and warm, so dangerously enticing beneath his hands. Even though he had been able to see that she was rigid with discomfort, he had itched to turn her over, to brush the skimpy bikini away and explore every dip and curve of her.
It had taken every ounce of self-control he possessed to take his hands off her and step back.
Tom rubbed a hand over his face in exasperation at himself. Control, that was the key word here.
Control was what he was best at. It was what he was. He had never had any trouble controlling impulses before and there was no reason to start now. It was just the heat and the light getting to him, Tom told himself. Or maybe just a reaction to Julia’s rejection. That would be understandable enough.
He began to feel a bit better. Yes, all he needed was a little time on his own out of the sun. He would sit here and work, and he wouldn’t think about Imogen at all.
He would be fine.
CHAPTER SEVEN
T OM was still at his computer a couple of hours later when Imogen climbed the steps to the veranda. He looked up as she appeared in the doorway and, as their eyes met, the air quivered on the verge of tension before they both looked away.
‘Bored?’ he asked.
Imogen laughed and shook her head. ‘Hardly! I’m thirsty, though, so I came up to get a drink.’ She opened the fridge door to find the water. ‘How are you getting on? Is everything under control?’
‘It is,’ said Tom with satisfaction. There was his word again: control. It felt right.
He was feeling much more himself. He had read a couple of reports, and fired off some emails. Under normal circumstances, that would have been the work of half an hour, but it wasn’t bad, given the amount of time he had spent carefully not thinking about Imogen.
Imogen poured herself a long glass of water and leant against the room divider to drink it.
‘I was thinking I might try walking around the island,’ she said tentatively.
Left alone, she had found it impossible to concentrate on her book. She was horribly afraid that Tom might have guessed the effect that he was having on her and had been embarrassed. He hadn’t been able to wait to get away!
Not that she blamed him. If she had been rubbing lotion onto someone who squirmed like that, she’d have run a mile too.
He had only been putting a bit of cream on her, for heaven’s sake! It had been ridiculous to get herself in a state about it, thought Imogen, mortified. They were supposed to be friends, and friends didn’t go to pieces the moment the other laid a finger on them. She was determined to find some way to show him that she was back to normal.
‘Are you still working, or would you like to come?’
Tom linked his arms above his head and stretched. ‘A walk sounds good.’ It sounded normal, easy, safe. Controllable. ‘I could do with stretching my legs.’
‘Great.’ Imogen finished her water. ‘I’ll get my hat.’
It was well into the afternoon by the time they set out, but it was still very hot, in spite of a breeze that ruffled the lagoon and made the palms sigh and rustle overhead as Imogen and Tom headed barefoot along the beach. Imogen had wrapped a sarong around her waist and her face was shaded by a soft straw hat. Beside her, Tom wore shorts and a loose short-sleeved shirt.
They walked in silence at first but, rather to Imogen’s surprise, it didn’t feel uncomfortable. They splashed around the point where the dense vegetation grew right to the shore and found themselves on the far side of the island. There was little sand to speak of there, but the water was so warm and clear that they were happy to wade ankle deep in the shallows to where the shore curved inwards once more.
Suddenly Tom stopped and shaded his eyes as he looked out to sea. ‘Look!’
‘What is it?’ Imogen’s gaze followed his finger until she exclaimed in delight. ‘Dolphins!’
In silence they stood and watched a whole pod of dolphins leaping out of the water with breathtaking grace. For Imogen, it was an extraordinary moment. It was as if she had never been fully alive before that moment, and she was aware of everything with a new and fierce intensity.
The sea was the bluest of blues, the heat hammered down, the light beyond the shade of her hat glared. She could feel the sand cool beneath her toes, the shallows rippling warm against her ankles and Tom, still and self-contained beside her, while further out the dolphins played, soaring into the air as if for the sheer joy of it, the water that streamed from their bodies glittering in the fierce sunlight.
Imogen could feel her heart swelling and her throat closed at the rush of emotion. The beauty and exuberance of the scene was so joyous it felt like an unexpected gift.
‘Quite something, isn’t it?’ said Tom.
Unable to speak, she nodded.
After a while the dolphins moved on. Imogen and Tom waited a few minutes in case they came back, but eventually they started walking again.
‘I’m sorry Julia’s not here with you,’ she said quietly at last, ‘but I’m glad I came. I’ll never forget that, or the reef this morning.’
Tom glanced down but could see little of
her expression beneath her hat. ‘I’m glad you came too,’ he said.
Imogen took a breath. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked. ‘I mean, really?’
‘About Julia? I’m OK,’ he said when she nodded. ‘And yes, really.’ He looked away from her, squinting slightly at the bright light bouncing off the water. ‘Maybe I should be thinking about her more,’ he said slowly. ‘I wanted to marry her, after all. I ought to be missing her, but the truth is that I’m not. We never actually lived together, so perhaps it’s because I’m not used to her being around.’
He fell silent, thinking about the woman who should have been exploring the island with him. What would it have been like to have been here with Julia? Somehow it was hard to imagine when Imogen was walking beside him, her face shaded by the wide brim of her hat. Her skin was glowing after a day in the sun and he could see the salt drying on her shoulders.
The bottom of her sarong was wet and kept clinging to her calves so that every few yards she had to stop and disentangle herself. As she bent, her tangled brown hair would swing forwards and cover her face until she pushed it impatiently behind her ear.
‘I think I miss the idea of Julia more than anything else,’ Tom went on at last. ‘She was so exactly the kind of woman I’d always imagined marrying: beautiful, very intelligent, glamorous, successful…’
All things she wasn’t, Imogen couldn’t help thinking.
‘Well, you’ve met her,’ he said, unaware of her mental interruption. ‘You know how special she was. I was tired of girlfriends constantly demanding attention, insisting that I rang them all the time, forever wanting to cross-examine me about my feelings…’
Tom shuddered at the memory. ‘They all seemed to think that I could drop everything at work to dance attendance on them and take them out to dinner or to Paris for the weekend, and if there was a crisis at work, they would sulk.’ He lifted a shoulder, irritable at the mere memory. ‘I couldn’t be bothered with any of that.
