Cinderella's Adventure with the CEO
Author
Suzanne Merchant
Reads
15.3K
Chapters
18
Could an unexpected flirtation on the Turquoise Coast be the start of this Cinderella's change of luck? Left homeless and unemployed, Beth just wants to escape. And when a friend offers her an isolated villa on the idyllic Turquoise Coast, this Cinderella can't believe her luck! Until her solitude is interrupted by the arrival of handsome CEO Jensen. It's clear he's fleeing demons of his own, yet they soon find themselves gravitating together as the spark between them grows… Can Beth step out of her comfort zone and into the adventure of a lifetime…?
CHAPTER ONE
NO ONE KNEW where Jensen Heath had gone. And that was exactly how he wanted it. Five weeks earlier, when he’d walked through the prison gates a free man, declared the victim of a miscarriage of justice, he’d contacted nobody. Returning to his city penthouse, he’d stood at the wide glass windows and studied the view. A new building had altered the skyline in the past year, but far below, the grey ribbon of the Thames had continued to wind its timeless path towards the sea. The vista was virtually unchanged, and yet to him it would never be the same again. He’d become a different man, one who viewed the world through a lens distorted by anger and bitterness.
He’d turned away, packed a cabin bag with a few essentials and called the concierge, asking for a taxi to Heathrow.
The rattle of the chain and then the splash of the anchor hitting the water sounded thunderous, disturbing the still of the night. Jensen returned to the wheel in the cockpit and shifted the gears into neutral, allowing Sundance to drift astern until the metal spikes dug into the seabed and tugged her to a gentle stop. The throb of the engine, a muffled counterpoint to the soft wash of the sea on the beach, died away as he hit the ‘off’ button.
Jensen exhaled into the almost-silence, listening for anything out of place. An owl hooted somewhere in the belt of trees behind the beach, and the water, which he knew would be like warm silk on his skin, lapped at the hull. He was tempted to slip over the side for a swim but chose instead to simply absorb the atmosphere.
This was the place he’d dreamed of when the nights had been disturbed by the clang of a metal cell door, the snapping shut of a grille, voices raised in argument somewhere nearby. It felt miraculous that he’d found his way back, sailing solo from Piraeus in Greece; that he’d plotted his course to bring his boat to the narrow entrance between two embracing headlands on the Turkish coast, and then slipped her through the gap, into the cove he’d come to think of as belonging to him.
Managing the forty-foot ketch on his own had been a challenge, at times. Some of the sailing had been hard, and the way he’d pushed the boat to her limits had taken its toll, not just on the boat but on his body, too. Yet he’d relished the days when the wind and weather had demanded his full attention, leaving no room for the memories of his unjust incarceration, and the anger they stirred up, at times when he had space to think.
He stood and stretched, aware of the slight stiffness that had crept into his muscles and joints over the past few weeks. An old injury made his left shoulder ache. Twenty-five years ago, shouting the odds on the trading floor, he’d been supple and strong, working hard all hours of the day and playing even harder in the few left at night. Success and wealth had allowed him to slow down a little. And yes, he admitted wryly to himself, age had played its part.
He tidied the cockpit and then dragged his thin, rolled-up mattress from the locker on the foredeck. Stretching out on his back, his hands behind his head, he watched Sundance’s masts describe an arc against the starry sky as her hull rocked in the slight swell. There was a luxurious double berth in the cabin below, but after a year of imprisonment he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to sleep in a confined space again.
The cramped cell, the constant noise, and the lack of decent food or exercise had been no surprise, he thought. But the psychological impact had shocked and shaken him. He’d considered himself to be mentally tough and resilient, and to find those strengths called into question had been frightening. Doubt had eroded his self-belief, making him question his worthiness. Losing the love of his family, friends and, most devastatingly of all, his daughter had seemed like confirmation that he no longer mattered in a world that had moved on without him. The frustration of being wrongly accused, and of not being believed, had been almost unbearable.
As he’d grown used to the prison routine, his confusion and disbelief had crystallised into anger. He’d kept a grip on his sanity through the long days and nights by planning the voyage he would take when he won his freedom; by imagining how it would feel, guiding Sundance through the narrow inlet, into these calm waters again.
In the solitude of this safe anchorage was where he wanted to be. Sundance had taken a battering and it would take weeks to repair some of the damage and make her properly safe again. He’d treated her gently over the past few days, aware that another gale might be more than she could withstand.
The prospect of being forced to spend a month or more in this magical place was soothing. Here, he could confront the recent past with a level head and clear mind. While he worked to repair his beloved yacht, he could work on his own recovery, too. He needed a plan to put his shattered life back together in some sort of shape that would fit his changed future.
Beth Ashton put the copper coffee pot on the hob and ignited the flame beneath it. Then she padded in her bare feet across the tiled floor and slid the glass doors open, breathing in the scent of the herbs she’d planted in pots on the terrace and the ones that grew wild beyond it.
Two cups of Turkish coffee per day were her self-imposed limit, but the one she relished was the first one in the morning, sipped on the stone terrace as the sun rose over the headland to the east, reliably ushering in another perfect day. Wrapping her hands around the mug, she stepped out into the warm morning, and stopped.
Something was different. She placed the mug on the table and listened. Scanning the tree-covered slope that dropped away towards the beach, she tried to identify what had changed. Then it came again: the unmistakeable metallic tapping of metal rigging against a mast. Coffee forgotten, she peered through the scrubby trees and dense bushes, but one of the beauties of this place was the way the beach remained hidden from view until the last moment, when the stony path ended and the azure water and pristine shore burst into sight, dazzling in their perfection. She couldn’t see anything.
During the weeks she’d spent at the villa, she hadn’t seen a single vessel in the cove. The entrance, almost hidden, was narrow, requiring a level of navigational skill beyond most holidaymakers who might have hired a boat for the day. There were other bigger, easy-to-reach beaches up the coast.
Curious, and a little irritated at the interruption to the habitual rhythm of her day, Beth pulled the sarong she’d left by the pool around her, knotting it at the front. She slid her feet into her flip-flops and began to pick her way down the path towards the beach.
The tap-tap sound of the rigging grew louder but there were no accompanying voices, or the splash of swimmers. She slowed, and stopped in the shade of the pine trees that fringed the beach.
The yacht was elegant. Its sleek white hull, punctuated with portholes, swung gently on an anchor chain. She thought the design, with the foremast taller than the aft, meant it was called a ketch. The sails were tightly furled and there was no sign of life on the deck. Had the occupants already swum ashore and scrambled up the path, past her villa while she slept? A knot of unease tightened in her abdomen at the thought. She stepped out from under the trees and raised a hand to shade her eyes, wishing she’d thought to pick up her sunglasses.
A movement made her draw back sharply. A man, tall and wide-shouldered, had risen from the deck and now stood looking, or so it seemed, straight at her. She held her breath, hoping he hadn’t seen her, not wanting to be noticed.
The only interactions she’d had since arriving five weeks previously had been with Omer in the village shop, relying heavily on the use of her phrase book, and the young girl who brought her lemon tea at the outside tables of the little café. The thought of a conversation with a stranger troubled and unnerved her. She squinted to see if she could recognise the flag at the stern of the boat, but it hung, limp and unmoving, in the early light, hiding its identity and, presumably, that of the owner of the vessel.
He, if he was the owner, remained motionless for a little longer. Then he moved to the stern. He extended his arms above his head and dived, in a graceful arc, cleaving the water with hardly a splash, and disappeared.
Something about the powerful lines of his silhouette and the clean execution of the dive kept Beth riveted to her spot. She scanned the glassy surface of the water but when he emerged it was in a completely different place from where she’d anticipated. The sound of his deep intake of breath carried to her across the water and she saw a shower of droplets sparkle in the low rays of the sun as he shook his head and then swam slowly back towards the ladder that extended down the side of his boat.
Was he alone, she wondered, as she watched him haul himself up the ladder onto the deck and lean against the foremast, looking towards the shore again. Surely a boat like that required more than one person to sail it. Perhaps his companion, because he must have one, was still asleep. Perhaps there was more than one. She imagined a noisy, young crowd plunging into the water, swimming ashore and playing raucous games of volleyball or cricket on what she thought of as her beach.
Or perhaps, she thought, trying to put a positive spin on this intrusion, they’d move on when they realised there was nothing here for them. No ice cream or kebab sellers, or even a supply of fresh water. She shrank back into the deeper shadow of the trees and turned towards the path. She’d stay at home this morning; skip her usual morning swim in the sea and take it in the pool instead. By this afternoon, when she ventured back to the beach, she hoped she’d find solitude restored to the cove, with all trace of the unwelcome yacht and its crew erased.
Her coffee was cold. She threw it out onto the grass and began the process of making a fresh cup. She sipped at it, seated on the terrace, inhaling its intense, rich aroma, but the serenity she’d fought to cultivate over the past weeks eluded her. She’d arrived at the villa with her nerves in shreds, her life upended in a way she’d never anticipated, and her self-confidence pulverised.
The basic supplies she’d picked up at the airport had lasted a couple of days and it was hunger for something other than cheese crackers that had forced her to visit the village. There was a bicycle in the storeroom, the comprehensive villa notes told her, for cycling along the rough track to Sula. How long was it since she’d ridden a bicycle? Decades. She’d doubted she’d be able to balance for more than a few seconds. Balance was an important ability to maintain as one aged, and she practised it assiduously in her weekly yoga class and when pulling on her tights or socks in the mornings. But the idea of balancing on a bicycle had felt daunting. If she fell off onto the stony track and broke something, who would find her?
For the first time, she’d questioned the wisdom of accepting Janet’s offer of the empty villa, ‘for as long as you need it, Beth’. Had Janet simply been trying to move her on from the guest room she’d occupied for three weeks while her life imploded? She knew that wasn’t true, but since everything had begun to go wrong, she’d had difficulty in seeing the positive side to anything. If there was a positive side to being unexpectedly homeless and shockingly unemployed, she personally had failed to find it.
The house in Islington, where she’d lived, first with her parents, although she could barely remember her mother, and then with her father and stepmother, was no longer home. It seemed her father’s dying promise that it would eventually be hers carried no weight with her stepmother. She’d bequeathed it to her only daughter, Beth’s half-sister, who now intended to sell it.
It shouldn’t have mattered. It would have freed Beth up to move in with her lover; to take their relationship to the next level; to commit to each other fully. Only that hadn’t suited him at all, because it turned out he was fully committed already, to a wife in New York, on the Upper East Side.
The company where she’d steadily climbed the career ladder for twenty-five years, until she was appointed PA to a senior partner, had no longer felt like a safe place. How had she been so easily taken in? She’d resigned, with immediate effect, but as the heavy glass doors had swung closed behind her, she’d been engulfed in panic. Her home would soon no longer exist, and she’d left the job that had given her identity for so long. She’d felt invisible.
Fumbling for her phone with numb fingers, she’d called her best friend, Janet.
Several days after arriving at the villa, the thought of biting into a crisp slice of one of the watermelons she’d seen, stacked like footballs at roadside stalls, in the taxi ride from the airport, got the better of her. She’d wheeled out the bicycle and launched herself on a few trial runs across the dry grass behind the house. The bike had wobbled alarmingly, but she hadn’t landed face down in the dust, and so she’d loaded a shopping bag into the basket on the handlebars and set off down the track in search of food.
The enjoyment of her solitude had grown with each day and now the idea of having to engage with the visitor to the cove filled her with unease. How, she wondered, had she come to this? Had the crushing of her expectations and the loss of her job crushed her personality, too? Reluctantly, she admitted the truth. The energetic carer she’d been to her aged stepmother, and the capable PA in a challenging role, had turned into an indecisive, anxious shadow. She was supposed to be using this time to rebuild her life, but so far all she had done was withdraw further and further into herself, with no idea of how she was going to move forward. What would happen when she had to leave and return to London? She pushed the thought away and drained the coffee mug. Janet had said she could stay here for as long as she needed, and it was only early July.
But she made a decision to log on to the Internet later and start searching for a new job. Even though she had no plans to leave soon, she had to confront the reality of her future. And the more immediate reality of confronting the broad-shouldered man on the boat was too unnerving to contemplate just yet.
