Stuck in Paradise with You

Chapter 11

11

LUKE

‘I had some calls to make,’ Carrie says when she comes back into the meeting room, where I’m now alone and sitting back in my seat next to hers. ‘Shall we get back to it?’

I feel my eyes narrow on her. Something’s happened. There’s a shift in her mood from the woman who was laughing half an hour ago, though probably just back to the ice-queen version of her that I thought for a moment might be thawing under the Caribbean sun.

‘I ordered us lunch,’ I say, internally smug because I add, ‘Sushi but no sashimi salmon, only tuna. No egg and extra ginger.’

As fleeting as the break in her fa?ade is, I notice it. Yeah, I remember that too . She hates the texture of raw salmon. She likes eggs but hates omelets with sushi. And though we debated it every time we ordered in sushi to my place or for supper on late nights working in the office, she uses pickled ginger as a side to her meal, rather than a palate cleanser.

‘I’ll take mine to go once we’re finished here.’ She takes her seat and starts fidgeting with things on the desk, shuffling pages this way and that. ‘I’d rather plough on and get this done.’

I roll my jaw tightly. ‘Thank you, Luke, for being so thoughtful. I am hungry and I appreciate your efforts.’ My words drip in sarcasm like syrup from a pancake as I twist my pen through my fingers, back and forth.

She glowers at the pen until the force of her silent insistence makes me still. ‘You didn’t make the sushi, Luke; you made a request.’

A thoughtful request. ‘Let me ask you something, Carrie. When did you last let your hair down?’

Finally, she looks up from the pen I’ve pressed to the desk and tells me, ‘My hair is down.’

Literally speaking, she’s got me there. Figuratively, I’d bet she wouldn’t know relaxed if it bit her on the ass.

She wouldn’t recognize the girl who sat astride me on my sofa and set down a challenge to see which of us could eat the most wasabi paste before crying tears of menacing green heat.

‘Luke!’ Noah shouts when he sees me heading down the steps to the beach where he and his siblings are playing. The dogs stand from where they were lying in cool sand where they’ve dug divots. Jessie bounds toward me and Woody stands his ground, barking at me, though his wagging tail is betraying him – he likes me.

‘Hey, girl.’ I bend to scratch Jessie’s ears, just the way she likes it.

‘Luke, Aunty Alisha said you’ll play football with me,’ Noah says. He means soccer, but Joe is a Brit who loves his football and outright refuses to call it by its name, no matter how many times he’s confused the heck out of me.

I really can’t be bothered. I feel physically and mentally drained after being locked in a room with Maleficent all day.

I was so tempted to eat her lunch out of spite, but I managed to get a handle on myself long enough for her to ask for it to be refrigerated and brought to her pod later.

But I need to set it all aside, shake it off, because I don’t get to hang out with my godson as much as I’d like. So, I ruffle his thick mane of dark hair, just like I did Jessie’s ears, and tell him, ‘Absolutely, buddy, that’s why I’m here.’

Ella and Alisha are digging holes with the two girls and I end up drawing out a soccer pitch by dragging my feet through the sand. As I’m doing so, Henry and Jenny (water crew), Glen (gardener), Roy (handyman) and Dionne (housemaid) appear with Joe, already roped into the game with Noah, Toby and me, so we have one team of four and one of five.

It occurs to me for a nanosecond that maybe we should have invited Carrie down to the beach with us. Not that I knew everyone would be here, but since we are, I don’t want her to feel like an outsider. If nothing else, she could have evened out the numbers.

She used to play lacrosse in college and was always pretty handy in corporate sports events at our firm. Though, who knows if she’d play these days. It’d be hard to run around with a metal stanchion up one’s ass.

Almost reflexively, I locate her pod on the hill, any shred of compassion I fleetingly felt gone. She was horrible today. I don’t want to use the B word, but she was acting like a gigantic B word.

‘She’s having some food, then she’s getting a massage,’ Joe tells me, trying and failing miserably at doing keepy-uppies with the soccer ball.

‘Who?’ I ask, stroking my neck as I feign nonchalance.

‘The woman you’re pining after,’ Joe says, now trying to flick the ball from the sand with his feet and ultimately kicking sand over Ella and his youngest, receiving a verbal battering from his wife in response. No one puts Joe in his box quite so well as Ella. She’s whip-smart and razor tongued.

Once everything has calmed, I tell him, ‘There is no pining happening from anyone, to anyone, by anyone. Carrie’s my distant past and very much not my present or future.’

‘Riiiiiight, yeah.’ He picks up the ball and starts jogging with high knees to the center of our small pitch. ‘Funny how you know who I’m talking about.’

I follow him and snatch the ball from his arms, handing it to Noah, who’s waiting on the center spot opposite Henry for kick off.

‘It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, Joe.’ I’m rattled because I’m rattled and it’s plain as day that I’m rattled.

Maybe I need a massage.

‘How come she’s having a massage?’ I ask, receiving the ball from Henry and passing it with the side of my foot on to Noah, whist Toby tries to intercept but instead falls in a heap on the sand, jumps up, brushes himself off, and keeps on running. He has Joe’s unrelenting energy.

Jenny has taken the ball from Henry and passes it to Joe, who dribbles toward me. I soften my knees, ready to tackle him.

‘Because she wants to leave and Greta was still around after my massage earlier, so I persuaded Carrie to have a treatment, relax and think on it. I can’t get the jet down from New York until tomorrow anyway, and there isn’t a commercial flight sooner.’

He kicks the ball, hoping to find Roy, but I stick out a foot and take it back, dribbling until I can kick it through the air toward Dionne, who uses her hands to catch it and bring it down to her feet.

‘Daddy! Dee touched it with her fingers!’ Toby shouts.

‘Don’t worry about it, buddy. You get a free pass now to touch it with your fingers too. Use it to your advantage,’ Joe tells his son. Then to me, he says, ‘She blamed wanting to leave on the storm but I’m pretty sure the only storm in her teacup is you, big fella.’

The ball comes to me from Glen and I steady it beneath one foot, unable to play and think at the same time. ‘So she’s leaving tomorrow now? Instead of Friday?’

I don’t know why I feel blindsided by this but I do. It’s a good thing. A great thing. All my issues with her can depart on the plane she leaves on. Fly away and disappear into the clouds, just like she did last time.

‘You bothered?’ Joe asks.

‘Paha. No.’ I sound as petulant as Toby. ‘It’s not that I’m bothered. It’s just… she was supposed to be here until Friday, that’s all. Something might come up, from our meeting today. I might think of something, a question, and it’s always easier to bat these things out face-to-face.’

‘Aha, yeah.’

As I glower at Joe, Toby sneaks up behind me and kicks the ball from under my foot, but Noah steals it from him and is running with it toward our goal line. Jenny darts forward to play keeper.

‘Well, I haven’t put the wheels in motion to get the jet, yet.’

Great, now I look like I want him to keep her here.

‘Yeah, well, you should. Good riddance. Get Eric back.’

I like Eric. Balding head, hairy neck poking out of the top of his crinkled shirts, pretentious yet dull man with whom I have no past and in whom I have no romantic interest.

Noah scores and everyone on the beach cheers, regardless of whose side we’re on. He runs by me and I offer him a fist pump.

We take the ball back to the center and kick off again. Toby wins the kick-off but his time with the ball is short-lived because Noah tackles him and kicks the ball to Henry, who passes to me. I pass back to Noah, who runs around Joe, leaving him tangled in his own feet and falling on the floor.

I hotfoot it to the other end of our pitch, out on the sideline nearest the sea, the hillside and resort in my view. I shout for the ball, arms in the air. Noah passes to Henry.

Then I’m stunned to stationary, rooted to the spot, arms frozen in the air, by the sight of a tall redhaired woman, with curves everywhere a man could wish for. She steps out of her infinity pool and onto the decking of her pod, overlooking the beach and our game, wearing only an emerald-green bikini, her long wet locks flowing down her naked shoulders.

Bam .

‘What the fuck?’ I’m struck flush in the face by the soccer ball. My legs buckle beneath me and I’m left in a heap on the floor, holding my nose.

‘Watch your language!’ Ella shouts, not at all concerned that I might have broken my nose.

I can hear Noah and Toby laughing as I groan and roll onto my back, opening my eyes to see Henry hovering over me. ‘Sugar, sorry, Luke. You asked for the ball.’

‘Is it broken?’ I ask, daring to peel my hand away from my nose. Thankfully, my shades have remained intact, though their digging into my nose hasn’t helped.

‘Men,’ Jenny says, now also leaning over me, hands on hips. ‘It’s a soccer ball, not a shot put. You’re fine.’

I feel myself scowling. Maybe she’s right, my nose is unlikely to be broken, but my pride… I can only bear to look through one eye up to Carrie’s pod. She’s no longer there and I really hope she didn’t see.

It’s not like I was ogling. I was just… distracted. Any normal human being would see movement overhead and take in his surroundings. It’s… astuteness.

‘Don’t worry,’ Joe says, offering me a hand to help me up. ‘She only laughed for a minute.’

Ignoring his hand, I let my arms fold across my face as I moan. ‘Hettich, I need to get off this island.’

‘Not you too. How many massages is this old flame going to cost me?’

Then he walks away and I know there’s no getting out of this. Tomorrow, I’m going sailing with Carrie. Stuck together in an ever-smaller paradise.

Fan-fucking-tastic.