Jessica Hart - Honeymoon with the Boss

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.

TOM 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.