Stuck in Paradise with You

Chapter 3

3

LUKE

My luggage has been taken to my pod and I’ve been handed a rum punch at one of Hettich’s poolside bars. I’ve been coming out here to see Joe three or four times a year for the last four years, since the inception of his private resort, yet it still wows me every visit.

Charithonia island – named after his wife’s favorite butterfly, which is native to the Caribbean, same as her – is a small island nestled among the British Virgin Islands. It’s exclusive to Joe, his family’s main residence offshore, ten guest pods each with its own infinity pool and hot tub, and a small cluster of housing which is home to a highly efficient army of staff. When they aren’t here, Joe and his wife, Ella, split their time between London and New York residences.

Kicking my feet up onto a footstool, I take a swig of the kind of rum punch you can only get under the sunshine of this stunning part of the world. It’s been a baptism of fire taking over the role of CFO for the Hettich group. A dream role, in many respects, and one I never would have imagined reaching eight years ago, when I was gunning to become the youngest ever partner of my accountancy firm, but one that comes with a proportionate amount of stress for the title.

Leaning my head back, the sun warming my face and bringing spots to my eyes even behind my shades, those stresses feel happily far away for a minute or two.

‘Chalmers!’ Joe’s voice is loud, always a holler, and comes from somewhere behind me.

Joe and I met at Princeton a disgustingly long time ago – he was studying for a second degree and me my first. He was best man at my wedding – if only I’d listened when he offered to cover for me if I wanted to make a run for it the night before, then I wouldn’t have winded up a divorcee before I was even thirty. In our eighteen years of friendship, Joe has gone from running a small business from his college bedroom to having a global empire. We are worlds apart. While I was getting divorced and fundamentally stalling my career, he was building airplanes, investing in innovative technology, and becoming a world-renowned philanthropist.

But he’s the kind of man who knows exactly where he came from – a rundown town in West Yorkshire, England – and who his real friends are.

And boy has he paid me back for years of friendship. In a way I never would have asked for, by making me his CFO, but I’m extremely grateful. Work is kind of my solace, my distraction, my other half and family.

I stand as Joe bounds down stone steps from his palatial home to the large infinity pool and welcomes me with his big arms and stiff chest, near winding me as he thumps my back. His tasseled sombrero falls off his tightly curled hair, staying attached to him by a band under his chin.

‘You made it. Good to see you, matey,’ he says.

It’s only Monday and… ‘You saw me on Friday in the office,’ I tell him.

‘This is true. But there’s nothing like seeing you at home. What are we drinking, old boy? Rum punch?’ He signals to Monique, a member of his kitchen staff who is surreptitiously hovering in the distance, gesticulating that he’d like a drink. ‘Pretty please with a cherry on top!’ he calls to her. Then turning back to me, he asks, ‘The brewing storm didn’t put you off, then?’

I raise my brows as we come to sit again on opposite sides of the table, though both facing the view of the crystal-clear waters below from our elevated location on the hilly island. There isn’t a sign of a storm in the sky as far as we can see across the Atlantic.

‘The news is saying it could turn into a hurricane over the next couple of days,’ I tell him.

‘Pfft. They always say that. Drama-lamas. I’ve spent many a hurricane season out here and they always fizzle out or go off course eventually. Nothing to worry about.’

Looking to the horizon, I’m inclined to agree.

Once Monique has served Joe a drink, which he slurps with satisfaction through a straw, he says ‘So…’ in the way every conversation no one wants to have begins. ‘The word in the office is that you’re single, again, matey. What happened to Lauren – or Laura or Layla?’

‘Lou. And we just ran our course. No story.’

As I speak, Ella, Joe’s wife, appears, floating down the steps toward us in a floor-sweeping, turquoise kimono and holding what looks like another three rum punches.

‘When are you going to settle down, Luke Chalmers?’ she asks. ‘From the kitchen,’ she adds, setting down our drinks on the table and coming to sit on Joe’s lap, her arm draped around his neck. These guys have built a business together, had four kids together, and never lost their youthful romance. It’s special, admirable and enviable.

‘Settling doesn’t come off for everyone,’ I tell her.

‘Not if you stick to a two-months-and-you’re-out rule,’ she says, chomping a glazed cherry from the top of her drink.

‘I don’t have a rule.’

‘Mmmhmm. Name one woman since your divorce that you’ve been with for more than two months.’

She’s got me there. Though there was one time. One relationship. One person. After my wife and I separated. It might only have lasted six weeks but under different circumstances, she might have been the?—

The sound of one of Joe’s speed boats – and then its appearance on the Caribbean Sea from behind the rock face of the island – stops me from completing the thought: she might have been the one . Good thing, too. I don’t need to go back there; I don’t need to have thoughts about?—

Rising from my chair to get a closer look, I think I’m seeing things, a figment of my imagination. It must be the heat, or the alcohol, making my mind play tricks on me. I for sure hope so. Otherwise, the woman I am staring down at as the speedboat pulls into the beach beneath us is…

‘Carrie?’ I spin around to look at Joe. ‘What the fuck is Carrie doing here?’

‘Carrie? Who do you mean?’ he says, his voice many decibels louder than it ought to be.

Who do I mean? Only the woman I was madly, utterly, undeniably, heartbreakingly crushed by seven years go.

‘Don’t mess with me, Joe. Is that Carrie Briggs down there?’ I can feel something I don’t like coursing through me. Panic? Anger? Something else? I feel jittery, my hands shaking, all the parts of me beneath my ribcage see-sawing. It must be anger.

Joe holds up his palms. ‘Yes, it is. I’m sorry to blindside you but I needed you to come and deal with this tax stuff and I wasn’t convinced you would if?—’

‘With Carrie ?’ My voice is verging on screechy. ‘Where the hell is Eric?’

The partner at the accountancy firm we usually deal with. Safe Eric. Pompous Eric who kisses Joe’s ass but who I absolutely have never lusted after.

‘He’s sick, couldn’t make it. I’m told Carrie is the next best thing at the firm and she agreed to come last minute.’

Ella rises from Joe’s lap. I don’t miss her scowling at him, however brief it is, before she comes to my side and looks down at the woman getting off the boat and walking barefoot, shoes in hand, along the wood-decked pathway off the sand and up the steps to the resort.

‘It’s been a long time, Luke. There’s nothing still there between you two, is there?’ Ella asks, not meeting my eyes, which is good because I don’t have to meet hers in return.

Instead, I can seethe or flip out in whatever manner I like as I watch my one ex, who used to make my heartrate soar the way it is right now, climb the stone steps in a smart white suit.

Looking a lot more womanly than the junior associate I fell for years ago.

‘Nothing,’ I manage. ‘Nothing there at all.’

Yet my head is screaming at me, I need to get off this island. Now.

She was one brief moment in time. But a cataclysmic one, nonetheless.

My feet are already backing me away from the rock’s edge. I’m already fleeing.

Until I back into Joe’s big frame, who’s now standing behind me. His cactus-print shirt might as well be real because it couldn’t cause me any more discomfort than I already feel.

‘I need you, Luke. This is a job for my CFO.’

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

One person on this island ruined my career once. Another, whose big, burly weight is behind me now, made it. I owe him.

I think I nod – I’ll stay . But I have no idea if my synapses are firing. I’m paralyzed by something, an emotion, and I don’t know what it is, but it feels awfully close to fear .

I shift my position to face Joe and Ella. ‘I need to… ah…’ What do I need? ‘Go… for a run.’ That will fix this. Burn off whatever I’m feeling. Shake off seeing Carrie again for the first time in seven years. If I can’t fix it, I can at least try to process the absolute predicament I am stuck in.

Joe eyes me, his brows low and knitted together. He knows the story of Carrie and me. He also knows me well enough to see my mind spiraling behind my controlled fa?ade, even though I hope he can’t.

‘You’re going for a run after one of Monique’s rum punches?’ Ella asks. ‘Are you mad?’

‘No better time for it,’ I say, hoping she doesn’t catch the tremor in my voice.

‘Before you do…’ Joe pulls an envelope from the back pocket of his lime-green shorts. ‘An invitation to dinner tonight. Troy’s finest Caribbean dishes and matched wines.’

I take the offering from him. ‘I’m already there.’

‘Great, because you’ve also left a very similar invitation for Carrie in her pod. CFO to tax advisor. We’ll see you both at eight. I like to get to know my advisors before they tell me things I don’t want to hear.’

‘Dinner.’ I gawk. ‘With Carrie.’ Fuck . ‘That saying about giving with one hand and taking away with the other springs to mind,’ I mutter, not quietly enough.

‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, my friend,’ Joe tells me, striding back to the table and gulping down his cocktail.

‘Did you just refer to yourself as God?’ I ask, my cardiorespiratory system calming now that I’m on safer ground, bantering with my friend.

Joe holds out his arms as if to say, Take a look around you . ‘This is my island.’

Ella rolls her eyes playfully and I chortle. ‘What a dickhead.’

But my lightness is fleeting because sixty yards away from us, Carrie has made it to the top of the beach steps, where she rotates on the spot, taking in the view from the highest point of the island.

I dart behind the nearest palm tree, knocking over a silver wine bucket in a stand as I go, and lean my shoulders back against the firm trunk as I try not to hyperventilate.

I’m going for that run.