Stuck in Paradise with You

Chapter 16

16

LUKE

If I could force someone overboard with my eyes, Henry would be taking a deep dive to cool off.

What the hell has gotten into him?

I’ve always thought he’s a decent enough guy but today…

Has he thought that maybe Carrie doesn’t want him to brush against her every time he walks past her chair? That she doesn’t need him to stroke her arm and laugh overzealously at her un -funny jokes? And maybe, just fucking maybe, she thinks he’s an obnoxious dick when he winks at her from the swim platform while he’s rising off the sea toys and splashing enough water on himself that his polo is clinging to his svelte frame? What does he think he is, a Chippendale?

‘Are you okay there, Luke?’ Carrie asks from where she’s sitting opposite me at the dining table, having just set her cutlery down after finishing a dish of grilled mahi-mahi.

She leans back in her seat and her dress pulls across her chest, the neckline opening a fraction wider and giving me a sneak peek at her shimmering, hot-pink bikini beneath. I try not to look. Try not to give her the satisfaction. Because something tells me the subtle shift in position is intended for me; it’s supposed to tease me, either because, one, she’s had two glasses of champagne and is now sipping from a glass of wine, which always used to make her tantalizingly confident, or, two, because she fecking knows Henry is flirting with her and knows that it’s pissing me off.

Why? Damned if I know. It’s not like I have any right over her, or any claim to her. I never did. That’s not how we were. It never felt like I was older or in a more senior position or like I had more say in anything we did than she did.

I taught her things by day, and by night she opened my eyes to all kinds of random facts. Like hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards – she whispered that into my neck one night as we were falling asleep and once her breaths had slowed, I whispered back that she was my hummingbird.

She told me that dogs have a unique nose print and no two will ever be the same – she told me that as we lay in my bathtub, her back to my chest, effervescent salts fizzing around us. In response, I kissed her temple and told her I didn’t believe there was anyone else quite like her in the world.

She showed me how to laugh at the mundane, the sublime and the ridiculous, in a way I had forgotten – as if I were a teenager again.

We were equals. She wasn’t mine.

But for whatever reason, Henry is grating on my very last nerve.

‘Why wouldn’t I be fine?’ I snap without meaning to, my clipped tone betraying my cool fa?ade. Because she might not have been mine, but I was always hers.

She shrugs. Fecking shrugs. Then she smirks, sips from her wine glass, and says, ‘You’ve been tugging on your hair and your nose has been twitching all through lunch, the way it used to after a long day and late night in the office.’

I’m aware of the eyes of everyone else at the table – Noah and Toby included – on me. I rub the tip of my nose reflexively, irritated that Carrie knows me well enough to spot my stress tells.

The only saving grace is that the skin of her neck is turning crimson and I’m guessing she just thrust herself right back into a memory of our late nights in the office. I’d love to see behind the shield of her shades and I’m thankful that my own are in place.

‘Maybe you’re just wishful thinking.’ I fix her with a stare and behind our lenses, I know she’s returning the look.

‘Ha. My work life got a lot smoother without you in it, Luke.’

‘Yet here you are, working for me, again.’

She rolls her jaw tightly and inside, I’m laughing myself to death.

‘On that note, and before you two start quarrelling across the table,’ Joe says. At his words, I watch Carrie swallow so hard, it’s a movement deep in her neck, right down to where her collarbones begin. I have to look away. ‘I’ve been ruminating on something since we got here and I want to run it by you both for your views. Whether you think it’s a flier, how we would structure it efficiently if you do.’

‘That’s our cue to go, Alisha,’ Ella says. ‘We’ll leave this trio to the mundane.’

‘I’m all ears,’ Carrie says, brightly yet matter-of-fact. Happy to be on professional territory, I think. But… this isn’t her job; it’s mine. I’m Hettich’s sounding board. I’m his CFO.

‘We can chat this through first, buddy,’ I tell him. ‘Let Eric know if there’s anything we need to put his way afterward.’

The shape of Carrie’s cheek changes and I know she’s biting down on her gum. It’s one of her stress tells.

‘I’m more than happy to be a sounding board,’ she says, smiling at Joe. ‘Off the clock.’

She’s playing that card? Throwing him a freebie initial consultation.

‘You’re sitting on his multi-million dollar, fully catered yacht, Carrie; it’s hardly free advice,’ I gripe. It’s querulous and petulant but also true.

And it has the desired effect. Her professional fa?ade drops as she asks, ‘I suppose you’re being paid overtime?’

I narrow my eyes on her. ‘I have an equity stake in Hettich global; I don’t get paid in six-minute units.’

Screw you.

‘So the idea?’ Hettich says, reminding us he’s still at the table, though it takes long seconds before Carrie and I stop glaring at each other.

Something inside me has tightened and twisted and I think it’s loathing, but Carrie must be the only person in the world whom I hate so much, I can’t take my eyes off her. She’s a witch. Spellbinding and dangerous.

‘Go ahead, Joe,’ Carrie says, finally breaking our stand-off to reach into her over-packed bag at the side of the dining table and take out her laptop.

‘You brought your laptop?’ I ask, disbelieving.

‘Lucky, too, isn’t it?’ she says, one side of her lips quirked.

‘I suppose it’ll stop me needing to make notes.’ Then because her sanctimoniousness is eating me alive, I add, ‘Just like old times. You taking my notes.’

As the Bosun appears at the table, shielding me from the direct line of Carrie’s sight, I chuckle like an adolescent in sex ed.

‘Sir, with lunch wrapped up, we thought we’d head on out to our first stop. Drop anchor and get the sea toys out. Are you ready?’

Joe looks my way. ‘Are you sure you can play nicely?’ He thinks he’s funny and honestly, I do too.

Smirking, I tell him, ‘I’m always nice.’

As we sail the dazzling blue ocean, Joe explains his latest wish to diverge. This time into digital media advertising.

‘It’s a highly regulated space,’ I tell him.

‘Luke’s right,’ Carrie adds, though I think it physically pains her to say the words. ‘And we’d need to think about intellectual property, which entities are licensing to which within the group. For example, if the Delaware subsidiary…’

At some point, I forget that I’m in one of the most sought after financial advisory positions in the entire North American continent. In fact, I plain forget to advise. Because I’m lost in the poise and elegance of the expert tax advisor sitting across from me. In her knowledge and business acumen. In the way she has complete control of the situation. Command of her billionaire client.

I know that no matter what happened between us, what she did to me afterward, I did the right thing in leaving our firm and giving her fledgling career the chance to thrive.

‘What do you think, Chalmers?’ Joe is saying. I’ve a feeling this isn’t the first time he’s asked.

Shit . Where were we? Where were they ?

Carrie is watching me and I want to say something smart and insightful. Something full of wisdom, something she hasn’t thought about. But I’ll be damned if I can.

‘What would your primary concerns be if Hettich adopted a Delaware Holdco structure?’ she asks, for some reason surprisingly, letting me off the hook slightly.

I nod, then give myself another moment of pause, as if I’ve been pondering the discussion.

The only thing I’ve been pondering is her.

I’m fucked.

I manage to fumble and stutter my way through some vague musings that I think or hope are loosely related to the discussion Carrie and Joe were having and I’m thankful when we reach our first ocean stop, in a place that feels like the middle of nowhere but is actually a famous site for cave diving: just the menacing peaked rock heads of the structure protruding from the ocean and a small but picturesque sandbank.

‘I think I’ll go watch them drop anchor,’ I say, needing some air because, though I’m sitting on the aft deck of a yacht in the open water, I’m feeling hot and bothered and very claustrophobic.

As I’m watching a deckhand guide the captain above him to the perfect spot and release the anchor from the bow, Alisha appears by my side.

‘Have you told her yet, that you and I aren’t you and I ?’

‘Not yet.’ Nor am I ready to, because the mind screw of emotions I’ve been feeling for the last thirty minutes while I was supposed to be talking business was, at best, confusing, and at worst, fucking scary. ‘I will.’

‘Good. Because I think you two are either going to kill each other or shag each other’s brains out and either way, I don’t want to be caught in the middle.’

Hands in my pockets, I turn sharply to face her. ‘You’re going to have to think of another option.’

Though throwing Carrie overboard would be much less traumatic for me than delving into our past.