you need, send her an email,’ Harry went on. ‘She’ll bring it with her when she comes here with Mickey this weekend.’
Elizabeth sat in frozen suspension.
Her heart stopped.
Her lungs seized up.
Her mind stayed plugged on one horribly chilling thought.
Lucy...coming with Michael...to her island escape from them.
No escape at all!
HARRY saw her eyes glaze. She sat completely still. He knew this was a crunch moment. He waited, silently speculating on how she would react to the bombshell when she snapped out of the shock wave.
Would pride dictate that she welcome Mickey and her sister onto the island, keeping up the pretence that seeing them together did not hurt her?
Mickey was totally unaware that Elizabeth was hung up on him. So was Lucy. Neither of them would be looking for signs of hurt. It was quite possible to get through this visit, leaving them none the wiser, especially if Elizabeth was willing to let him be the man she was interested in. Which had to bring them several steps closer, Harry thought, willing her to choose that path.
Alternatively, since her escape from Mickey and Lucy had just been scuttled, the island no longer represented a safe refuge for her. And Harry knew he’d gone too far too fast last night, which was certainly ruffling her feathers. She might throw in this job, walk down to the back beach, wait for the helicopter to come in and fly out on it, take a trip somewhere else, not caring what anyone thought—wipe her hands of all of them.
Except she couldn’t quite.
Lucy was her sister.
Lucy depended on her to be her anchor and Elizabeth took responsibility seriously. She wasn’t the type to cut free. Not completely. But she might want to for a while.
Harry needed to stop her from walking out on him. Having her here on the island was his best chance with her. It gave him time to keep challenging her, wear down her resistance, make her realise they could have something good together.
* * *
Elizabeth felt totally numb. It had been such a struggle, holding herself together in front of Michael and Lucy yesterday, a struggle coping with what Harry made her feel, a struggle learning how to manage this resort as fast as she could. Now the whole reason for so much effort, the whole reason for being here was slipping away from her.
She couldn’t bear to play out yesterday’s scenario with Michael and Lucy again this weekend. It was too much pretence, too much pressure, too much everything with Harry hanging around, ready to take advantage of any weak moment, and she’d be tempted to use him again as a buffer. It was all horribly wrong and the worst part was she was trapped here—trapped by her own deceit.
If she walked out on the job after pretending to like being with Harry, how could she ever explain that to Lucy? It wouldn’t make sense. Telling her the truth wasn’t fair. It would cut into whatever happiness she was finding with Michael, tarnish it because it was causing her sister unhappiness, which Elizabeth knew Lucy would never knowingly do. Underneath all her ditziness was a very caring heart.
Having taken a deep breath and slowly released it to get her lungs working again and feed some much-needed oxygen into the hopeless morass in her brain, she squared her shoulders and looked directly at Harry Finn—her rescuer and tormentor. There was no devilish twinkle in the blue eyes. They were observing her with sharp attention, alert to any give-away signs of what she was thinking and feeling.
He had demonstrated yesterday how perceptive he was, and remembering how accurately he had read the situation, Elizabeth felt a strong stab of resentment that he hadn’t acted to protect her this time.
‘You could have dissuaded your brother from coming, Harry,’ she said accusingly.
‘How?’ he challenged. ‘By saying you don’t want him here? Mickey wants to see if you’re managing okay. Both of them do.’ His mouth lifted in an ironic tilt. ‘I did spring the job on you, Elizabeth.’
‘You could have said all the villas were taken—no ready accommodation for them,’ she argued.
He shrugged. ‘I’m not in the habit of telling lies. Besides, Mickey has a motor-cruiser. They’ll be arriving in it and could just as easily sleep in it. A head count of guests at dinner would have told him we have two villas vacant this weekend and he might have confronted me about it, raising questions. Would you have liked to answer them?’
She grimaced, accepting there was no way out of this and there was no point in protesting the arrangements already made. ‘Which villa did you put them in?’ she asked flatly.
‘Mickey requested a pavilion villa if available. Since one of them is vacant from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon, I’ve obliged him.’
A pavilion villa...honeymoon paradise!
She turned her head away, evading Harry’s watchful gaze. Flashing through her mind were images of Michael and Lucy enjoying an intimate weekend—making love on the king-size bed, cooling off in the infinity pool, drinking champagne as they watched the sunset. It was sickening. She couldn’t help thinking, It should have been me with Michael. Me, not Lucy.
For two years she had been dreaming of having just such a romantic weekend with him. Why couldn’t he have found her as wildly attractive as he obviously found Lucy? Harry had no problem in seeing her as sexy. He would have whizzed her off to bed in no time flat. Almost had last night.
‘They’re not coming in until Saturday morning,’ Harry said quietly. ‘It will only be for one night, Elizabeth.’
As though that made it better, she thought savagely. Lucy would be parading her happiness with Michael from the moment she landed to the moment she waved goodbye, and during that two-day span it was going to be one hell of an uphill battle to keep pretending happiness with Harry.
Unless...
A wicked idea slid into her mind.
It grew, sprouting a whole range of seductive thoughts, becoming a plan that promised a way to get through this weekend reasonably intact.
Harry would view it as a night of fun and games, the playboy triumphant. He wouldn’t care about what she was using him for since he’d get what he wanted. And she wouldn’t be hurt by it because she was the one directing the play, the one in control of what was to happen.
She could set aside her principles, be a butterfly flying free for one night. Maybe it was what she needed to do, use it as a catharsis, releasing all the emotional mess in her mind and heart and wallowing in purely physical sensation. Harry had proved last night he could drive up her excitement meter. Why not experience how far he could take it?
If it was good...if it was great...she could face Lucy and Michael without the horribly hollow sense of missing out on everything, especially since she would have already had what they were going to have and where they were going to have it. That part of it should kill off any sense of jealousy and envy, which were horribly negative feelings that she didn’t want to have towards her sister. Lucy was Lucy.
