Her Diamond Deal with the CEO
Autore
Louise Fuller
Letto da
15,7K
Capitoli
12
CHAPTER ONE
STEADYING HERSELF ON the pale golden sand, Ondine breathed in deeply. Dipper’s Beach was too narrow and steep for the tourists who flocked to the Florida coastline so, aside from the occasional crab and the seagulls that stalked the shoreline, it was almost always deserted.
But she preferred it like that.
It was the first time in nearly three weeks that she wasn’t working so she could have had a lie-in this morning. Only her brain had jerked awake as it always did, one minute before her alarm went off. She could have rolled over and gone back to sleep, but she loved the early mornings when the sun was turning the sky above her beach house shell-pink. It was the one time of day she could call her own. When she wasn’t working.
She squinted upwards. At work, there was never time to pause or linger. But here on the beach nobody would be trying to catch her eye or snapping their fingers. There was just the sun, the sky and an endless blue sea.
Her gaze narrowed on the shimmering water framed between the grass-edged dunes.
As a child, she was average at most things but swimming had been her ‘superpower’. The one thing she’d excelled at in a family of high achievers. Every day she’d trained before school and almost every weekend she’d swum in competitions. Briefly, ludicrously, she’d even imagined herself stepping onto a podium but then she’d got injured and nowadays she swam for pleasure and for her job as a lifeguard at Whitecaps, the exclusive beachside hotel in Palm Beach favoured by the wealthy and beautiful.
Not that she got a chance to use her skills very often.
Unlike the public pool where she’d worked before, most of the Whitecaps residents preferred to lounge by the pool rather than swim in it, and the same was true of the hotel’s private stretch of beach.
It was her second year at the hotel and now, as well as being a lifeguard, she worked most evenings as a waitress in the bar and restaurant. Her mouth twisted. She didn’t hate either of her jobs; it just wasn’t how she’d pictured her life. Two jobs. Two divorces. Living in some rented beach shack—
But the tips were phenomenal, and thanks to Vince, her useless second ex-husband, that mattered more than job satisfaction.
Thinking about the pile of brown envelopes sitting on her kitchen counter, she felt her stomach knot. Sometimes, normally after a particularly exhausting shift, she tried to work out how many glasses she would have to collect before she would be debt-free. Mostly though she was too tired to do anything but eat a bowl of pasta or, more lately, cereal and go to bed.
‘Hola, Ondine. Cómo está hoy?’
Spinning round, Ondine smiled at the elderly woman with pristine grey hair who was walking towards her. Dolores was her nearest neighbour and even though she was eighty-one years old, she walked her fawn-coloured chihuahua, Hercules, along the beach twice every day.
‘Are you swimming today, chica? But you have the day off, no?’
‘Hola, Dolores. Hi, Herc.’ She double-kissed the older woman’s cheeks, then reached down to stroke the little dog’s velvety ears. ‘I’m not in until this evening, but I thought I’d get up and have a swim, and now I’m glad I did.’ Her eyes tracked down the empty beach. ‘It’s so beautiful and peaceful today.’
‘Not so peaceful last night.’ Glancing out to the beautiful white yacht anchored close to the shoreline, Dolores clicked her tongue disapprovingly so that the dog’s chin jerked upwards. ‘Such noise. Music and shouting. All kinds of goings-on. Some people are so thoughtless.’ She sniffed. ‘Anyway, you enjoy your swim, chica.’
‘Thanks, Dolores. See you tomorrow. Bye, Herc.’ She smiled as Dolores waved the chihuahua’s tiny paw.
Out at the sea, the yacht danced lightly on the waves.
Once upon a time it might have impressed her, but she worked in Palm Beach. There were as many yachts as there were palm trees.
Unzipping her hoodie, she pushed her shorts down her thighs and kicked off her flip-flops. The sand was like warm sugar and for a moment she just stood there, wiggling her toes. ‘That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.’ That was something her mum used to say but it was hard to feel rich when your kitchen counter was piled high with unpaid bills.
Her feet stilled. She should have kept a closer eye on Vince. She knew he liked to spend money but she hadn’t wanted to admit to herself that she had messed up again. Married the wrong man, again.
Her eyes fixed on the yacht, her heart thumping heavily against her ribs as she remembered the end of her first marriage. Garrett’s infidelity had been humiliating, devastating, but she could have coped, had been coping. Only then, three weeks later, before she had plucked up the courage to tell them she was getting divorced, her parents had died in a car crash.
She shivered in the warm breeze. Overnight, she had become an orphan, and her fifteen-year-old brother’s guardian. She’d moved back to Florida to look after Oliver, and a month later, she’d met Vince at the hardware store. He’d made her laugh and when he’d asked her out, he’d made her laugh again. When he’d taken her out, he’d made her feel sexy.
It was a textbook rebound relationship, but that hadn’t stopped her saying yes when Vince had proposed. A year later, the marriage had been over, confirming, as if she’d needed further proof, that she was not the marrying kind. This time her pride had taken less of a hit but she’d lost her home, and she was still paying off the credit-card bills.
The one small sliver of silver in the cloud of debt was that Oliver’s college fund was tied up in some savings plan. She felt some of the tightness in her chest loosen. Unlike her, Oli knew exactly what he wanted to be and he had the brains and the determination to make it happen. Right now, he was volunteering at an outreach clinic in Costa Rica before he started medical school in September.
She frowned, her gaze snagging on the yacht.
There was someone on deck. Not someone. A man wearing a dark jacket and trousers, his white shirt loose around his throat. She watched as he crouched down and picked up a bottle, shook it and then raised his arm, crooking his elbow as if he was about to hurl it into the sea.
‘Don’t you dare,’ she whispered.
As if he had heard her, the man looked up, and she felt a flicker of something hot and tingling like electricity snap up her spine. He couldn’t see her face. She knew that because she couldn’t see his, but she could see his powerful body silhouetted against the sky, sunlight clinging to his outline, gilding him in a wash of clear gold like a character in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.
The bottle dangled from his fingertips and then he let it fall onto the deck, straightened up and shrugged off his jacket with a conscious carelessness that made her whole body stiffen with dislike and envy.
Her mouth curled into something midway between a sneer and a scowl. It was the same gesture favoured by the hotel’s trust-fund-financed clientele when they tossed tips onto the bar or used towels by their loungers.
Picturing their expensive winter tans and inherited Rolexes, she narrowed her eyes on the man as he walked across the deck. And then her pulse jerked as without warning he spun round and took a running jump over the rippling sea. There was a moment of absolute silence as he flew through the air and then he hit the water with an audible splash.
What the—?
She felt her body tense, her hand reaching up automatically for the float over her shoulder. Except it wasn’t there because she wasn’t at work.
Swearing softly, she moved towards the curling waves at the shoreline. She had spent the whole of spring break watching privileged young men clown around in the water. But did they have to do it when she was off duty?
Eyes fixed on the spot where he had disappeared beneath the waves, she began counting the distance in strokes as the seconds passed.
Surely he should have surfaced by now.
She was running into the sea before her brain understood the implication of that thought, barely registering the water as it splashed over her thighs, and then she was swimming, her body slicing through the surf, eyes scanning the waves, all of her training no longer theoretical but becoming in an instant so real that there was no room for panic or emotion.
What was that?
She saw a flash of gold, and then just as quickly it was gone again.
Breathing in sharply, she ducked beneath the waves, and her heart gave a huge leap forward just as the man had done moments earlier. There he was, his white shirt dazzlingly bright beneath the water, his hands reaching up.
Seconds later she reached him, her arm moved automatically around his chest and she pulled him to the surface, tilting back his head and kicking towards the shoreline. Breathing unsteadily, she dragged him onto the sand and now she saw the front of his shirt was not white but patterned.
No, not patterned. Those were bloodstains.
Over the sound of her heartbeat, she heard the voice of her instructors. ‘Always start with your ABCs. Check the airways. Two breaths as soon as the victim is stable in the water or on land, then move into thirty compressions.’
Her body was shuddering from the swim and the adrenaline but her mind was clear. Sliding two fingers under his chin, she tilted back his head, pinched his nose, put her lips to his mouth and put a breath in, waited then put a second breath in—
The man coughed, and she rolled him onto his side, and he lay there, breathing raggedly, his hand fluttering against the sand.
‘It’s okay, you’re okay.’ She squeezed his shoulder. ‘You got into trouble, but you’re safe now.’
Was he? She stared down at him, her heart beating like a train. The bloodstains looked shockingly vivid against the white cotton and she began unbuttoning his shirt, her hands rough with fear as she checked for injury.
‘What are you doing?’
His voice was hoarse from swallowing seawater but hearing him speak cut through her panic and steadied her.
‘You have blood on your shirt. I need to—’
He waved his hand dismissively. ‘You don’t need to worry about that. There was a fight last night, I tried to break it up—’ Now he touched his mouth and she saw that there was a cut on his lip that she hadn’t noticed before. ‘Got punched for my efforts—’
He shivered, his arm dropping to cover his eyes and, frowning, she reached over and grabbed her hoodie and laid it over his chest. ‘Should have had you there,’ he mumbled. ‘You must be pretty strong to pull me out of the water like that.’
‘It’s my job. I’m a lifeguard.’
So do your job, she told herself, tearing her gaze from his curving mouth. Taking his wrist, she felt his pulse. It was steady, she thought with relief. ‘Do you have any alcohol or drugs in your system?’
‘What?’ He frowned. ‘No, nothing—’
Remembering the bottle, she stared down at him uncertainly, but he was breathing and his pulse was firm and they could check him over at the hospital.
‘Okay, well, everything is going to be fine. All you need to do is stay where you are. I’m going to go get some help—’
She didn’t want to leave him alone but the chances of help turning up on the beach were slim to none. Her shoulders tensed. If only she had brought her phone, but it was sitting on the kitchen counter.
‘No.’ His hand clamped around her wrist, surprisingly strong. ‘I don’t need help. I have help. You’re a lifeguard—’
‘But I’m not a doctor.’ She spoke calmly but firmly as she’d been taught. ‘Look, I just live over there. I’m going to run back to my house and call the EMS and they’ll come and check you out.’
For a moment she thought he was going to argue. It was a fairly common response. People, men particularly, were often embarrassed at being ‘rescued’ but medical opinion on the protocol for post-near-drownings was clear. Anyone requiring any form of resuscitation needed to be evaluated by a healthcare provider, even if they appeared alert with good breathing and a strong pulse.
‘Fine. Whatever.’ He let go of her arm, waving his hand in the same dismissive way as before.
Reaching for her shorts, she pulled them on and got to her feet. ‘I’ll be five minutes, tops. Just sit tight and try not to worry. It really is just precautionary. My name is Ondine, by the way.’
‘Jack.’ He shifted back against the sand, his eyes still closed. ‘Jack Walcott.’
I know who you are.
She almost spoke the words out loud and her face felt suddenly hot.
Jack Walcott was the heir to the Walcott energy empire. He was also a guest at Whitecaps. In a hotel filled with beautiful, indolent people, he was the most beautiful. A baby-faced billionaire with dirty-blond hair, eyes the colour of pirate gold and a face of such absurdly perfect proportions and symmetry that it was hard not to simply stare and keep on staring.
And he knew it.
How could he not? Jack Walcott was movie-star-gorgeous with a smile that could tip the planet into meltdown.
Her mouth thinned. He was also hedonistic, self-indulgent and arrogant. Lolling on a lounger in a pair of plain blue swim shorts designed to highlight his smooth gold skin and curving muscles, he had looked straight through her. And on the days when he’d eaten in the restaurant, he hadn’t so much as glanced up from his steak when she’d brought him the mustard he’d requested. To him, she was just staff. One of the many minions paid to meet his every need.
But he would have to be in a trance or unconscious not to notice the effect he had on people. How they craned their necks to watch him walk by, elbowed their neighbours, whispered behind their hands.
Her eyes dropped irresistibly to the contoured lines of his stomach, and now she didn’t just want to stare, she wanted to touch, stroke, scratch—
She felt her fingers twitch and, aware of the impropriety of her response, she clamped her hands tightly to her hips and got to her feet.
‘I’ll be right back, Jack,’ she said quickly. His eyes stayed shut.
She ran across the sand and was halfway up the dunes when something made her look back over her shoulder to check on him. Her mouth fell open. Jack Walcott was not where she’d left him. He wasn’t even lying down. He was walking along the beach, her hoodie draped across his shoulders, moving with a slow, languid grace that made her feel light-headed. Swearing under her breath, she ran back towards him.
‘Hey—’
He turned, his blond hair flopping across his forehead. His shirt was almost dry now so that instead of sticking to his skin it was lifting in the breeze, revealing even more of the spectacular body beneath. She glared up into his face to stop herself from looking.
‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’
His eyes narrowed into the sunlight.
‘Oh, yeah, my bad. Here.’ The gold signet ring on his little finger glinted as he unpeeled her hoodie from around his shoulders and draped it over hers.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ she snapped, and now finally he looked at her. Really looked at her in a way that made her feel suddenly and intensely conscious of herself, of the rise and fall of her breasts, the heavy thud of her heart, the tightness of her skin.
The gold of his eyes was steady but then something rippled beneath the flawless features, like the tremors that preceded an earthquake, almost as if he could feel her reaction, as if he was feeling it too—
Afterwards, she would wonder who made the first move. Perhaps he leaned forward or maybe she lost her footing but one moment she was glaring up at him, the next their lips were brushing and there was an emptiness in her stomach like hunger, only it was a hunger she had never felt.
His mouth was soft and warm and teasing and, dissolving with desire, she felt his hand slide round her waist and then heat was seeping through her limbs so that it was impossible not to melt against him, unthinkable not to press her body against the hard muscles of his chest.
His lips parted hers, stirring her, and she kissed him back, tasting salt and a hunger that matched her own and all the while her body was melting, her defences softening—
She breathed in sharply, and, heart hammering, she stumbled backwards. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
It was a good question, particularly because it meant that she didn’t have to ask herself what she was doing kissing someone she had just pulled out of the sea. ‘You can’t just go around kissing people.’
Tilting back his head, he looked down at her. ‘To be fair, you kissed me first,’ he said softly.
‘What I did was give you CPR. Now what are you doing?’ she said breathlessly as he began backing away from her.
‘I’m going back to my hotel.’
‘No, you’re not.’ With an effort, she fought to keep her voice under control. ‘You shouldn’t be going anywhere, particularly on your own. That’s why I told you to stay where you were.’
He shrugged. ‘I got bored.’
Bored?
She could feel her nostrils flaring, and her heart was banging hard against her ribs. ‘You need to see a doctor.’
‘I am.’ He frowned. ‘Or rather I was.’ He stared down at her, his beautiful mouth changing shape again, the corners curving up into a mocking smile that made her heart beat painfully fast. ‘As of last night, I’m pretty sure I’m single again.’
She spoke without thinking. ‘If you treat your partners with as little respect as you do your own welfare, I can’t say I’m surprised.’
He stared at her in silence.
‘Is that right?’ The smile had vanished. ‘I thought you said I needed a doctor, not a psychiatrist.’ He made another of those dismissive gestures; he seemed to have an endless supply of them at his fingertips. ‘Look, I’m sure you mean well, Odette, but I’m really tired, and right now I don’t need a lecture, I just want to go to bed.’ As if to prove his point, he yawned, extending his arms above his head, his spine curving like a cat.
‘It’s Ondine not Odette, and right now, you shouldn’t be on your own,’ she said stiffly.
His eyes were looking directly into hers. ‘In bed?’
She felt her cheeks grow hot. In fact, her whole body felt as if it were on fire.
‘I couldn’t agree more.’ The gleam in his eyes made the air leave her lungs. ‘Are you offering to join me?’ The mocking smile dented his cheek again. ‘If so, we should probably go back to your place. It’s closer.’
‘I’m not offering to join you, and there is no “we”,’ she snapped.
He tilted his head back. ‘I’m just messing with you—’
‘Because this isn’t a big enough mess?’ She glared at him. ‘You might feel fine now, but lung complications are surprisingly common after near-drownings. Chemical imbalances can develop, irregular heart rhythms can occur—’
‘Okay, okay.’ He held up his hands. ‘I get it. But you don’t need to call an ambulance. I have a car at the hotel. I can drive myself.’
Fighting an urge to roll her eyes, she shook her head. ‘No, you can’t.’ And he probably wouldn’t, she thought, remembering how he had walked off down the beach the moment she had turned her back. ‘Which is why I’m going to take you myself.’
He was frowning down at her, his eyes searching her face almost as if she had suddenly started speaking gibberish. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘I told you. You need to see a doctor, and I don’t trust you to do the right thing.’
‘Impressive,’ he said softly. ‘It usually takes people way longer to work that out about me.’
Their eyes met and, ignoring the lurch of her pulse, she said, ‘You need some shoes. We can pick some up at the house. And I’ll grab my phone. Then you can call whoever you need to call to tell them you’re okay. It’s this way.’ And without waiting, she turned and stalked away across the sand.
Five minutes later they were juddering along the road in her old in-need-of-a-clean Honda Civic. Beside her, Jack filled his chair; filled the entire car, all long muscular legs and square shoulders.
‘If I didn’t need to go to the hospital before, I will now,’ he grumbled, wincing as she accelerated past a pizza delivery scooter. ‘This feels like I’m riding a jet ski on dry land.’
‘It needs new shock absorbers,’ she said crisply. ‘But you won’t have to put up with it for long.’ There were four hospitals within driving distance of her house, but she knew without asking which one to take him to. Solace Health was the private medical centre favoured by the rich and famous. There were orchids on the reception desk and, instead of disinfectant, it smelled of orange blossom and money.
‘Do you mean the Solace?’ He frowned. ‘Isn’t there another hospital?’
‘Yes, but they’re further away. And they’re not private, which means there’ll be more people there. Which means you’ll have to wait,’ she added, when he didn’t react.
He shrugged. ‘I don’t mind waiting.’
She stared at him impatiently, remembering the imperious way he clicked his fingers at the poolside, but before she could respond he reached over and plucked her sunglasses from her nose and slid them in front of his eyes. She blinked as his fingers grazed her cheek. His touch was as light as the grass that brushed against her bare legs out on the dunes, only the grass never made her skin grow hot and tight.
‘I’d rather wait than go to the Solace.’ He frowned. ‘They know me there. Know my family. I don’t need any more drama.’
That she could believe, she thought, as they returned to the car an hour later.
She had told herself that it was his money and air of entitlement that made people react to him as they did, but, slouched against the reception desk in borrowed flip-flops and with half his face hidden behind her sunglasses, Jack Walcott had still created a stir. There was something about him that had made the air in the waiting room shiver with anticipation.
The doctor, a tired-looking man with greying hair, had given Jack the all-clear. But then he’d turned to Ondine and said, ‘You need to keep an eye on your husband, Mrs Walcott. He needs rest but I would sit with him while he sleeps. Any difficulties in breathing, change in colour or if it’s hard to wake him up, come straight back in.’
‘She will—won’t you, honey?’ Jack had said, his eyes gleaming. ‘She’s a great wife. I’m a very lucky man.’
She should have corrected him but instead she’d found herself nodding. ‘Yes, I can do that.’
‘I’ll drop you back at Whitecaps,’ she said now, reversing out of the space. ‘You have someone there who can keep an eye on you, don’t you?’
His eyes rested on her face. ‘How do you know where I’m staying?’
She swore silently but there was no way to backtrack. ‘I work there,’ she said finally, looking up to meet his gaze. ‘I recognised you.’
He leaned back, his pupils flaring. ‘I thought you seemed familiar.’ His forehead creased. It gave him a puppyish air that she found immensely irritating. Or rather she found it irritating the way her body responded.
‘I’m one of the lifeguards,’ she said stiffly. ‘You probably saw me at the pool or the beach.’ Hands tightening around the wheel, she turned into the oncoming traffic. ‘Or maybe in the restaurant.’
‘They have lifeguards in the restaurant. Wow!’ He raised one eyebrow. ‘Those soup bowls must be deeper than they look.’
He didn’t need any encouragement, she knew that, and she tried to stop herself from smiling but her mouth had a mind of its own and she felt it curve upwards despite her wishes.
‘I work as a waitress too. In the evenings.’
‘So when do you get time off?’
It was a simple question but he made it feel complicated. Flustered, she said, ‘Now. This is my day off.’ And instantly regretted it as his gold eyes fixed on her face, curious and assessing.
‘And you decided to spend it with me. I’m flattered.’
‘Don’t be,’ she said quickly, pressing the air conditioning button with fingers that were suddenly shaky and incompetent. ‘I’d do the same for anyone.’
That was true, she told herself firmly, only she could feel colour creeping over her cheeks and collarbone. Worse, she knew that Jack could see what she was feeling, but there was nothing she could do about that.
‘If you say so,’ he murmured. He shifted back against his seat, stretching out his legs. ‘So why do you have two jobs? Seems very greedy. I mean, I don’t even have one.’
There was an edge beneath the languid drawl she didn’t understand but then she didn’t want to understand Jack Walcott. Nor, more importantly, did he need to understand her.
She shrugged. ‘I have a lot of outgoings.’
That was the short answer. The longer, more humiliating version was that she had let an idiot be in charge of her money. But she wasn’t about to share that particular fact with Jack Walcott.
‘Why not focus on one job, and get promoted?’ He tipped his head back, letting the sun fall across his face. ‘Or you could marry the boss,’ he said, pushing her glasses back along his nose.
She glared at him. Spoken like a man who didn’t need to earn a living. ‘How wonderfully progressive of you. But I don’t want to marry my boss.’ She didn’t want to marry anyone. She’d made the same mistake twice. She didn’t need to do it again. ‘Besides, marriage only works for men.’
‘Not this man.’ His fingers tapped out a rhythm against the door seal. ‘I like my freedom.’
‘I’m sure you do. I’m just saying that statistically marriage is good for men. They live longer. And they earn more because people think they’re more dedicated, responsible, mature.’
Clearly they hadn’t met her ex-husbands, she thought, flipping the indicator stalk up with unnecessary force.
‘You mean, even when they’re none of those things?’
Jack was looking at her. His eyes were shielded by her sunglasses but she could feel his focus.
‘I suppose, yes.’
‘So how does flip-flop man fit into that?’
‘Who?’ She glanced over at him, frowning, momentarily distracted from the traffic.
‘The guy whose shoes I’m wearing.’
She had forgotten all about the flip-flops. ‘Oh, those...they belong to my little brother. He lives with me.’
‘Little?’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘I meant little in age, not size.’
Thinking about Oliver, she felt some of the tension of the morning drop from her body. He had been taller than her since he was thirteen years old. Now, at nineteen, he was six feet two, broad and handsome like their dad but with their mother’s smile. He was the one good thing in her life. The one thing she hadn’t messed up.
‘How does your boyfriend feel about living with your kid brother?’
She felt her body still. There was one of two ways she could answer that question. Tell him the truth, which was that she was single. Or tell him that it was none of his business, but if she did that he would think she was single anyway.
‘I don’t have a boyfriend.’ His blond hair was fluttering in the breeze and she tried to make her voice sound as casual as he looked. Oliver was the only man in her life right now, and, given her track record with men, it would be safer for it to stay that way.
‘But as we’re discussing partners, there is going to be someone who can sit with you while you sleep—’
‘Isn’t that your turn?’
‘What? No—’
Caught off guard, she glanced towards him, shaking her head, but he was already reaching over to take hold of the steering wheel, jerking it left into the oncoming traffic. There was a blaring, overlapping eruption of horns.
‘What is wrong with you?’ She pushed his hand from the wheel. ‘Do you have some sort of death wish?’
‘You were going the wrong way.’
‘The hotel is in that direction,’ she snapped.
‘Yeah, about that.’ Flopping back in his seat, he screwed up his face. ‘I could do with keeping this little episode off the radar so I was thinking I might come back to yours.’
