‘Ellery doesn’t matter,’ he said curtly.
Blatantly disbelieving him, if the look on her face was anything to go by, she turned away again and this time Aidan did throw his hands in the air. Dammit, couldn’t she see that he was trying here?
He took a calming breath as she zipped her largest suitcase and tried another tack. It was either that or shove the cases off the bed and lay her on it. Somehow, he thought in a moment of black humour, he didn’t think she’d be too receptive to that.
‘I read the notes you took on the school.’
She paused before zipping a smaller case. ‘Please, I don’t want to know what you think.’
Unable to stand by and watch her leave he gripped her shoulders and spun her towards him. ‘They’re good.’
She shrugged him off and moved to the window. ‘You don’t have to say that. I know you planned to send a professional out.’
‘I don’t say things I don’t mean. Not only did you notice that the manager had skimped on the teacher’s quarters but you picked up the fact that the children need more art supplies and updated books. And yes, I was planning to send in a surveyor—and I still will for the structural soundness of the building—but he wouldn’t have picked up on all the areas the manager had tried to cut back on.’
Her brows drew together. ‘Why would he try to cut back on a school? That’s detrimental to the kids.’
‘He’s ambitious and he was trying to bring the whole thing in under budget to impress me.’
She pulled a face. ‘That makes sense, I suppose.’
‘Not on a community project. But he’s learned his lesson now and won’t do it again.’
‘You sacked him?’
‘No,’ Aidan retorted, somewhat put out by her ready assessment that he would fire someone without giving them a second chance.
‘I explained that while I expect the resort to be profitable I don’t expect people to suffer to make it that way.’
‘Oh. That’s … nice.’
‘I’m not an ogre, Cara.’ So why did he feel like one right now? ‘Please stay.’
She wrapped her arms around her torso as if she were cold. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ She glanced towards the sparkling ocean beyond her window. ‘I don’t know what I want right now.’
Aidan took a step towards her. ‘You can have whatever you want.’
She turned back to him and the vulnerable expression on her face stayed him. ‘Maybe in your world, Aidan, but not in mine. I nearly lost a contract because of what happened last weekend. I still might. People are always judging me and finding me inadequate and the fact is that they’re right. My own mother couldn’t even stand me.’
Aidan heard the lost note in her voice and his brow furrowed. ‘She said that?’
‘Not directly. The only time I can ever remember hearing my mother’s voice is on a video recording.’
‘A video recording?’
‘Gee, you really don’t read the gossip columns, do you? She left when I was a baby.’
Realising that this was an incredibly sensitive area for her, he tread carefully. ‘Why?’
‘I was difficult.’
His brow drew together. ‘As far as I know, mothers don’t usually leave their babies because they’re difficult.’
‘I was horrible.’ Her hands around her waist bunched the fabric of her T-shirt. ‘I cried all the time. I wouldn’t sleep. Apparently I was terrible at taking solids…. ’
Aidan recalled some of the press around the time her parents had separated. He’d been a lot younger so it was hazy but he remembered their break-up had been shrouded with talk of alcohol and women and bad business deals. None of which was Cara’s fault. ‘You can’t seriously blame yourself for her leaving.’
‘No. I know she had postnatal depression. I know her and my father were having troubles.’
Aidan moved beside her as her very real distress pierced deep inside him. ‘Cara, you didn’t make her leave.’
‘I just said I know that.’ She threw her hands up between them as if to ward him off. ‘She wanted a different life and I wouldn’t have fit into that. It’s fine.’
Like hell it’s fine. He reached out and gently drew her chin around so that she was looking at him. ‘You didn’t make her leave, Cara.’
She batted his hand away and crossed the room. ‘You don’t know that. If I’d been better, if I’d been prettier …’
‘If you’d been smarter, or stronger. If the world had been square …’ He watched myriad emotions chase themselves across her face. Pain, despair, loss … hope? ‘It’s not logical, Cara. Your mother was an adult with six other children. No one knows why she left but her.’
‘Well, if it wasn’t me, then why couldn’t my father stand me, either?’ she asked challengingly. ‘Why could he never look at me? Oh, I know the answer to that. Because I look like her and he hated that she left.’
Aidan thought about the ways she turned in on herself when she was really hurt. The way she revamped her image every now and then.
It was an attempt to hide, he realised, a way of protecting the little girl who had grown up with selfish parents.
‘I loved him,’ she said almost too quietly for Aidan to hear. ‘I still love him.’
It took Aidan two strides to reach her and then he stopped thinking and drew her into his arms. She stiffened for a heartbeat and then buried her face against his neck. ‘I wasn’t going to cry any more.’
‘It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re okay.’
A broken sob caught in her throat and Aidan reached down and kissed her. It was the most natural thing in the world to do. ‘You’re okay,’ he murmured gently.
The kiss was soft. Tender. And he steadfastly ignored the way holding her made his heart clench inside his chest. This was about her, not him.
You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay.
Aidan’s soft words went round and round inside Cara’s head like an out-of-control merry-go-round picking up speed.
A horrible ball of mixed emotions grew inside her and threatened to engulf her. She felt sick. Unsteady. The urge to pull out of his embrace making her feel like she had live ants crawling all over her skin.
Inadvertently Aidan had hit on her worst fear. The fear that once someone looked inside of her, once someone saw the real her, they would find nothing worth keeping. Nothing worth loving. She had discovered that changing her looks and pretending she didn’t care what others thought was easier. Easier to cope with her parents’ rejection. And how Aidan was holding her. Kissing her. Making her feel special. Making her feel wanted. Her stomach twisted painfully. She couldn’t stand his touch because it made her want things she knew she couldn’t ever let herself want.
‘Aidan?’ Cara said his name shakily and placed her hands on his chest. ‘Stop, please.’
Slowly he raised his head and stared down at her.
Cara held perfectly still, afraid that if she moved she might actually break.
‘I know what I should do,’ he said huskily, ‘and I know what I want to do. They’re two entirely different things.’
His raw admission made her pulse quicken and her face feel hot. She experienced the same heady rush of emotion she did on a roller-coaster and it was as if she was back on one now and about to go over. She could see the crashlanding below, but, oh, the soft press of his mouth … The hard press of his body … She knew he would be the type of lover who cared about his partner and just once she’d like to experience what it would be like to be with a man like that. Just once she’d like to experience what real chemistry felt like.
Only she knew it was a chemistry that he didn’t want to feel and some deep instinct told her that this man had the potential to truly hurt her as she had never been before. That already she had made him more important than she should have and that right now she wasn’t in control of herself enough not to make the physical attraction between them more than it actually was.
&
nbsp; The last man she had been intimate with had ripped the stuffing out of her when he’d told her that she was too needy and she could feel those same feelings rising up inside her again. Those same feelings times one hundred.
She’d imagined herself in love with her last boyfriend but he had walked away and she hadn’t thought about him since. She suspected if she went any further with Aidan, she’d think about him for ever.
The knowledge gave her the strength to push against him. ‘I’m sorry, Aidan, please don’t …’
As the words left her mouth she knew that she was so weak in the face of the desire he incited in her that if he pushed it, if he leaned down and kissed her again, she wouldn’t stop him. She’d reach up and pull his head down to hers and forget all about the consequences and face them when they inevitably occurred as she faced down every other disaster in her life.
Only he didn’t push it. He took a deep breath and released her before turning on his heel and walking away.
She didn’t think she’d ever felt worse.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE CONFERENCE WAS OVER. All that was left to do was to organise his jet to make ready to fly him home. For some reason Aidan hadn’t done that, even though he knew Ellery had planned to meet with the AFL board this week. Of course he wouldn’t be successful in his bid to win the contract, but even so, Aidan had sent Ben back to Sydney already to get a read on the situation.
He should have taken everything Ellery had when he’d had the chance and he still didn’t have a handle on why he hadn’t. The old restlessness that had been with him more and more lately was back and he felt like he was trudging through a swamp as he made his way back to the bungalow.
Would Cara still be there?
After she had pushed him away yesterday afternoon he hadn’t seen her. Last night she’d claimed to have had a headache and couldn’t accompany him to the conference dinner. This morning she’d still been in bed when he’d left.
Sometime during the closing session he’d come up with the crazy notion of taking Cara home with him to Sydney but then sanity had prevailed and he’d discounted that. Now, if she was still here, he’d offer her the chance to stay on another few days.
He knew she didn’t have to be back in London until the end of the week, and given that she had to stay out of trouble to win the contract she seemed to desperately want, this was the best place for her.
Here, or with him.
A top-of-the-line sailboat caught his eye and he tried to recall the last time he’d been out on one. A memory stirred of him and three university mates pooling their resources and hiring a cabin cruiser for an hour around Sydney Harbour to impress their respective dates. Hell, had it really been that long? No. He’d been out on his corporate yacht many times since then. All on business … all entertaining key clients and political figures.
The cruiser he’d hired with his mates had been about fun. They’d laughed, drank beer, hell, he’d even danced! He shook his head. No one would expect him to do that now. Now he was a man who wore suits on a tropical island and allowed himself ten minutes for dinner if he wasn’t entertaining a colleague or a woman as a precursor to sex.
When had his life evolved to this round robin of preordained events? And was that healthy? It was one thing to have focus, quite another to be obsessed with that focus. Automatically his mind fell to Martin Ellery and the thirst for revenge he had carried around inside of himself for so long. Cara’s words about forgiveness came back to haunt him. Would she have carried around a bag of hate inside her heart as big as a hot-air balloon as he had? Would she have gone after Martin Ellery with the precise determination to ruin his life? Would she have made it her primary goal to be bigger, better and stronger than someone else just to beat them? He doubted it.
But he had. He’d pursued Ellery because it gave him a higher purpose.
Yeah, some higher purpose that was. God, he could be a sanctimonious bastard when he wanted to be.
An image of Cara at the lunch table came into his mind. She was a graceful and natural hostess and it was clear she liked people. Accepted people for who they were despite the deep scars he sensed had been left behind by the combined abandonment of her parents. Picturing her as a young girl craving a morsel of her father’s affection made something heavy settle behind his chest. Something that made his hands clench tight. He hated to think that she had been hurt, that she was still hurt….
She was soft, he knew that now. Too soft, in some ways. And she was looking for love. For what Ben and Kate shared. But Ben and Kate were the exception, not the rule. And Aidan had seen firsthand what happened to a man when he chose love and it went wrong. It blinded him. Weakened him.
He stopped just as he reached the end of the path leading to their private bungalow. Cara was leaning on the deck and staring out at the ocean. Aidan’s eyes followed her line of vision and he saw a row of surfers in the line-up for the incoming waves.
It was an epic day. The waves were big and clean and sucking out into perfectly formed barrels. His palms itched to get out there. To cast his concerns aside for a moment and just be.
His eyes returned to Cara. She had on a bright T-shirt and a pair of lightweight trousers. Travel clothes.
A hoot went up in the water and he turned back to see a silhouette bottom turn into a perfect tube and suddenly his feet were carrying him swiftly up the steps to the bungalow.
Cut loose, she’d challenged him. He’d show her cutting loose!
Startled by his sudden appearance, Cara turned and gripped her hands together. ‘I’ve packed and—’
‘We’re not leaving right away.’
‘We’re not?’
‘No. I thought I might catch a few waves first.’
‘You surf?’ The look of surprise on her face almost made him laugh and he felt lighter than he had in days.
‘Sweetheart, I used to compete.’
Well, locally anyway, but she didn’t need to know that.
An hour later Aidan felt invigorated and alive, the blood pumping through his veins and the water streaming off his back as he pulled his board out of the shallows and headed onto the beach.
He knew exactly where Cara was. Hell, all the guys did. With her pink hair and gold-bikini-clad body standing on the edge of the shore she’d managed to distract the others enough that Aidan had caught some ripping waves—and missed some others when she’d stretched her hands over her head and waved when she had spotted him.
With adrenaline surging through his veins he loped towards her.
She scowled up at him, her hands on her waist, her legs apart. She looked like a veritable fishwife only so absolutely stunning a man would put up with anything just to be able to feast his eyes on her. ‘I thought you were going to be killed out there.’
He grinned. ‘I told you I used to compete.’
She shook her head, returned his grin. ‘Is it fun?’
Oh, yeah. It’s fun.
‘Why don’t you come and find out?’
Her eyes flew to his. ‘Out there?’
‘No. It’s too big out there.’ He shook his head. ‘There’s a little cove on the other side of the island that’s protected. There shouldn’t be too many people there on a day like today. Are you game?’
She gave a little quick step of glee. ‘Really?’
Spluttering salt water, Cara groaned disgustedly as she fell off the surfboard for the hundredth time. Aidan’s powerful arms caught her against him in an effort to prevent her from going under and she tried not to marvel at his strength. Tried not to enjoy his slick flesh sliding against her own.
‘This is harder than it looks,’ she complained tiredly.
Aidan’s eyes locked with hers. Heat sizzled along her cheekbones and arrowed straight to her core.
‘Try just feeling the push of the ocean and the sound of the wave behind you and don’t worry about getting to your feet.’
‘No, I want to stand up!’ And this time she vowed to concentrate
and not to get distracted by the way Aidan looked in board shorts and nothing else. ‘Buff’ wasn’t quite the word. The man had not an ounce of fat anywhere on his body and his muscles were hard and primed. And yes, she thought on a rush of air, he had hair on his chest. A light smattering that arrowed down to a fine line that bisected the middle of his washboard abs and thickened just before it disappeared beneath the low-slung shorts.
‘Okay, but you need to paddle harder.’
What she needed, Cara thought, was to close her eyes and forget all about how she had confided in him yesterday afternoon so that she didn’t feel quite so embarrassed by it.
She’d locked herself in her room after he had walked away from her and continued packing. She’d even picked up the phone to ask Dinesh to organise a speedboat to the mainland, wanting to get as far away from her horrible meltdown as possible.
Only, she’d gone for a long walk along the sleepy beach track and realised that if she left she’d be running away again. Running away without a plan. Because once she left the island the farce of her relationship with Aidan would be over and they hadn’t even discussed how they were going to ‘break up,’ and once she was back to her real life the press would descend on her like wolves going in for the kill.
Lost in thought a wave caught her unawares and she went under, the board rolling over the top of her as it got caught in the white wash. Kicking out from under it she burst to the surface as Aidan reached her.
God, she was never going to get this!
‘Are you okay?’
‘Ugh.’ She pushed her sodden hair out of her eyes and made a face. ‘Salt water really doesn’t taste that good, does it?’
He laughed. ‘You won’t make much of a surfer with that attitude. Have you had enough?’
Somehow she felt that if she were to give up now without having stood up just once on the board it would be a reflection of her whole life. A reflection of every other time she had failed to stand up for herself when people had judged her unfairly. Wondering if she wasn’t being a little bit dramatic she gritted her teeth anyway and gripped the rails of the board. ‘One more.’
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