there’s still a long way to go,’ she said. ‘We have to keep moving forward.’
Luke sighed at her determination to stay serious. He’d hoped as he’d sat beside her that she’d loosen up a little—relax as everyone else was doing.
But no. The uniform should have been a clue.
‘So what’s next?’ he asked as he reached down and absently petted a mellow Hull.
Claudia took a mouthful of her beer before she answered. ‘Back to the drawing board. Starting again. Working out how much I can do with the insurance money.’
‘It’s not going to cover it all?’
Claudia shook her head. ‘It may have been enough twenty years ago, not today. Hell, it’d probably have been enough for just a normal cyclone but...’
Luke took a swig of his drink and watched Claudia’s toes, painted a cute shade of pink, wiggle in the sand.
‘So you want to talk about where we go from here?’
He felt her tense beside him and her toes stopped their wriggling. ‘I’m not selling to some consortium, some...giant hotel chain, Luke.’ She glared at him and Luke couldn’t decide if the flare in her eyes came from her sudden well of pissed off, or the fire.
‘If you’ve stopped by to butter me up about that you might as well keep on going.’
Luke knew it was important to stay calm and frankly he was too wrecked from a week of hard yakka to get into an argument. ‘Okay, so what are we going to do?’
‘The Tropicana has been here for forty years. Our parents ran it together for twenty of those years. And it will be again.’
‘Complete with Tiki Suites, salsa nights and lei stringing?’
Luke felt her hostile glance shoot bullets of disapproval straight into his chest.
‘Yes. What’s wrong with those things?’ she demanded. ‘I know they probably don’t seem very sophisticated to Mr Hotshot Ad Exec, but the Tropicana has always been a family resort—that’s the way our parents wanted it. And that’s the way it’s going to stay.’
‘And what about you, Claude? What do you want?’
Claudia frowned. Where was the man who had teased her about a bikini before? He was looking at her as he had by the pool earlier, as if he was trying to see all the way to the inside. And now, as then, it discomforted her.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean if you were given a bottomless bucket of money and told you could build whatever you wanted—anything—what would you build? Not what our parents wanted, not what the town wants, not what’s always been. What Claudia Davis wants.’
Luke watched her intently as she opened her mouth to say something and then shut it again. Conflict crinkled her brow. Wisps of blonde hair had loosened from her ponytail and the ocean breeze blew them gently across her face. The firelight played across her features complementing their fineness but it also illuminated her internal struggle, backlit her doubt.
She chewed on her bottom lip, contemplating the question as if he’d just asked her to tell him the meaning of life in ten words or less. The firelight glowed in the moisture she was creating and his gaze dropped to her mouth briefly before returning to the fire, tuning into the background noises of surf, laughter and hula music.
He drank his beer and waited quietly for her to figure it out. Was the question really that difficult?
Claudia contemplated the rim of her beer bottle, conscious of the time ticking away. She didn’t know. She’d been so caught up in her parents’ vision it had become her own. And she loved the kitschy, retro feel they’d created. But was it what she wanted?
What did she want?
She rubbed absently at her neck again and the muscles protested. ‘A day spa,’ she said on a whim. ‘A place for people to be pampered.’
Luke blinked, both surprised and excited by her answer. ‘Yeah?’
For a brief moment their eyes met and the spark in his caused a flutter of possibility inside Claudia’s chest. But reality intruded and snuffed it out. She shook her head. ‘The people we attract here can’t afford that kind of decadence, Luke. We’re the affordable alternative.’
‘Can’t we be both?’
Claudia frowned. ‘Being good at one thing is better than being half-arsed at two.’
‘So then let’s not be half-arsed. Let’s be some kind of hybrid resort where we cater to both ends of the market.’
‘I think that’ll be really confusing to the market, don’t you? High-ticket clients aren’t going to want to be bothered by a bunch of screaming kids and salsa lessons on the beach.’
Luke shrugged. ‘So we keep them separate—we have enough land. Why shut ourselves off to another, potentially very lucrative, source of income?’
Claudia could feel that flutter again and her pulse picked up slightly as her imagination started to run a little wild. Avery would be great at managing and running a spa business. Temptation shimmied possibilities in front of her—typical that Luke would be an integral part of that, enticing her with firelight and his strange but lovely accent like a big, fat, juicy apple.
She dragged her gaze off him and looked into the fire. Bad enough that he’d reminded her of how she’d perved on him in the pool today, but now he was waving a shiny new future in front of her.
Get behind me, Satan.
Luke was encouraged by Claudia’s contemplation, the little flare of interest he’d seen in her gaze. He nudged his thigh against hers and a quiver of something hot and sinful spread all the way up to his groin. ‘Just think about it, Claude. You don’t have to rush into anything.’
Claudia looked down at his thigh, all warm and muscled in the firelight. And tempting. Oh, so tempting. It was hot against hers and she didn’t think it had anything to do with the fire. Did he feel it too or was it just her? She wondered what he’d do if she slid her hand onto it. If she slowly moved it upwards.
Right. To. The. Top.
She blinked as the image formed in real time in her head and stood abruptly, shocked by the ferocity of the urge to follow through. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said, looking straight ahead. Not down at him. And his eyes. And his smile.
And his outrageously sexy accent.
Luke smiled at the stiffness of her stance. ‘Good,’ he murmured.
Claudia nodded. ‘Right, well...I think I might turn in,’ she said, still not looking at him.
Luke chuckled. ‘Sweet dreams.’
Claudia swallowed as she thought about the dreams she’d been having this last week.
Not one of them sweet.
‘See you in the morning,’ she said with
