It would be a shame to let Ross’s lunch reservations go to waste, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t know. I …’ His offer caught her unawares. Until that moment she hadn’t even realised she was hungry, but now he mentioned it there was a definite hollow feeling in her stomach. Even so, it made her feel uncomfortable to think of deserting Ross and going out to lunch with Connor instead. ‘Is there no chance he could join us? Perhaps I should give him a call …’
‘I already did that.’ They had reached his car, a low-slung, highly polished sports model, and now he pulled open the passenger door and waited for her to slide onto the leather upholstered seat. ‘I spoke to him while you were talking to the nurses. He agreed it would be a shame to let the booking go to waste.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She frowned. ‘I suppose he’s still busy dealing with the accident reports? Did he say how it was going?’
‘He’s still talking to the insurers and working on his report. Then at some point he’ll have to meet with the director and work out how they can reschedule the filming. Everything’s been put on hold for the next couple of days. Everybody’s too upset to go on right now. He’s spoken to Alex’s wife, and arranged for a car to take her to the hospital.’
‘I’m glad he did that.’
Connor slid into the driver’s seat and set the car in motion, while Alyssa sat back, thankful for the air-conditioning on such a hot day. Connor had a light touch on the controls and it seemed as though the car was a dream to handle, smooth and responsive, covering the miles with ease. If it hadn’t been for her worries, the journey to the marina would have been soothing and a delight to savour.
Instead, she tried to take her mind off things by looking out of the window at the landscape of hills clad with pine forest, which soon receded into the distance and changed to a vista of lush orange groves and thriving banana plantations.
‘We’re almost there,’ Connor said a little later, pointing out the blue waters of the marina in the distance. ‘I expect the place will be quite busy at this time of the day, but Ross reserved a table on the terrace, so we’ll be in the best spot and able to look out over the yacht basin.’
‘That sounds great.’ She made a face. ‘I’m actually starving. I hadn’t realised it was so long since breakfast.’
‘Hmm. I’m not surprised.’ He looked her over and smiled. ‘I doubt you can really give what you have to eat the term “breakfast”. Fruit juice and a small bowl of cereal is more like a quick snack, I’d say.’
She looked at him in astonishment as he drove into the restaurant car park. ‘What do you mean? How do you know what I eat?’
He slipped the car into a parking space and cut the engine. ‘I’ve seen you from the upper deck—you often go out onto the terrace to eat first thing in the morning, don’t you? You’re a lot like me in that. I like to be out in the fresh air so that I can take stock of my surroundings and, like you, I drink freshly squeezed orange juice. It makes me feel good first thing in the morning. Though how you can expect to last for long on what you eat is beyond me.’
He came around to the passenger side of the car and opened the door for her. She frowned. ‘I usually take a break mid-morning and catch up with a bun or a croissant,’ she said in a rueful tone. ‘Of course, with everything going on the way it did today, that didn’t happen.’
‘You should enjoy the food here all the more, then.’ He locked the car and laid a hand on the small of her back, leading her into the restaurant.
Alyssa was glad of the coolness of the interior. His casual, gentle touch felt very much like a caress to her heightened senses, and the heat it generated seemed to suffuse her whole body.
A waiter showed them to their table out on the terrace, and once again the heat of the sun beat down on Alyssa’s bare arms. Her cheeks felt flushed and Connor must have noticed because he said softly, ‘At least we’ll be in the shade of that palm tree. There’s a faint breeze sifting through the branches—couldn’t be better.’
‘It’s lovely here.’ She sat down and absorbed the beauty of her surroundings for a while until gradually she felt herself begin to relax. On one side there was the marina, with an assortment of yachts bobbing gently on the water, and on the other there was the sweep of the beach, with a magnificent stretch of soft, white sand and a backdrop of low scrub and palm trees.
In the distance, the coastline changed yet again, becoming rocky, with jagged inlets, peninsulas and lagoons. There, the trees were different, smaller, and she could just about make out their twisting trunks and branches laden with sprays of yellow flowers. ‘Are those the logwood trees I’ve been hearing about?’ she asked, and he nodded.
‘That’s right.’
‘I heard the wood yields a rich, deep reddish-purple dye,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen some lovely silk garments that were coloured with it.’
‘Yes, it’s used quite widely hereabouts. The flowers give great honey, too, so I guess it’s a useful tree all round.’
The waiter handed them menus, and they were silent for a moment, studying them. Connor ordered a bottle of wine.
‘I can’t make up my mind what to choose,’ Alyssa said after a while. ‘Everything looks mouth-wateringly good to me.’
‘I thought I might start with conch chowder and follow it with shrimp Alfredo and marinara-flavoured pasta,’ he murmured. ‘They do those dishes particularly well here.’
‘Hmm … I think I’ll go along with that, too.’ She smiled and laid down her menu.
The waiter took their orders, and Connor poured her a glass of wine and asked about her family back home.
‘Do you have any relatives in the UK? I know you have your cousin Carys in Florida.’
‘My parents are living in London at the moment,’ she told him. ‘I don’t have any brothers or sisters.’
He frowned. ‘I imagine they must miss you, the more so since you’re an only child.’
‘Possibly.’ She thought about that for a moment or two. ‘But they’re really quite busy … My mother runs a boutique and my father is a businessman, a director of an electronics company. I don’t think they’ll really have time to worry about what I’m getting up to. And of course I’ve lived away from home for a number of years, since I qualified as a doctor.’
‘Hmm … that sounds like quite a … sterile … relationship.’ He studied her for a while, pausing the conversation as the waiter brought a tureen of chowder to the table and began to ladle it into bowls.
Alyssa tasted her creamy soup and mulled over Connor’s remark. ‘I don’t know about that,’ she said. ‘It was always that way, for as long as I can remember. In my teenage years I was what people called a latchkey kid, coming home to an empty house because my parents worked late. I didn’t mind back then. In fact, I never thought much about it. I learned to fend for myself, and there were always friends that I could be with, so I wasn’t lonely.’
He’d hit on something, though, the way he’d described her relationship with her family. Her eyes were troubled as she thought it over. Sometimes she’d missed that intimacy of family closeness that her friends
