it.’
He heard Zoe blowing out a breath. ‘Jeez.’
‘I need to talk to her, Zoe.’
‘She’ll be back in a couple of weeks. You can talk to her then.’
‘I can’t wait that long.’
‘After five years, you can’t wait two weeks?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Do you still love her?’
Kit felt the totally unexpected question hit him like a punch to the chest.
Did he?
He’d spent the last five years thinking he didn’t, but who knew? Seeing her again last night had thrown everything he’d always assumed about their relationship and his life for the last five years into question, so how he felt about Lily or anything for that matter was now up in the air.
The only thing he was sure about was that they weren’t done. Quite apart from all the questions he had for her, he hadn’t apologised for what he’d done all those years ago and for basically blaming her for it. He hadn’t told her of the guilt he carried or asked her for her forgiveness, and the need to put all of this right burned inside him like a hot coal.
Last night had opened doors he’d never imagined would ever open again, and now—even if they were only slightly ajar—he wasn’t about to let them close. Not only did he seek redemption, he also had the feeling that he was hovering on the brink of a second chance with Lily here, and even though it had never crossed his mind before, had never been something he’d thought he wanted, he now realised he wanted it more than anything, and if that didn’t tell him that he still had feelings for her he didn’t know what would.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, erring on the side of caution because how he felt about Lily still needed further analysis. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, there are things we need to figure out. Please, Zoe.’
There was another long silence while Zoe presumably weighed up the pros and cons of telling him and he held his breath.
‘Oh, OK,’ she said eventually and Kit felt the tension drain from his shoulders. ‘But look, she really is working so you can’t go barging in there right now.’
‘When, then?’
‘She finishes next Sunday. Afterwards she’s staying on for a few days’ holiday until the following Saturday.’
He rubbed a hand along his jaw while his brain raced. He could wait a week, couldn’t he? It would give him time to think. Plan. Delegate. Figure out exactly what he wanted to say and how he was going to say it, and how he was going to persuade her to give them the second chance he thought they had. And actually, neutral territory, without any association to the past, might be just the thing.
‘Fine,’ he said, ‘I’ll wait. You have my word.’
‘Hmm,’ said Zoe, sounding as though she didn’t think his word counted for much.
‘Where is she, Zoe?’ he said, ignoring the sting of his ex-sister-in-law’s scepticism because right now he had more important things to focus on.
‘On her way to the Indian Ocean. Santa Teresa Island. She’s staying at the Coral Bay Lodge.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Look, Kit, Lily hasn’t had a holiday in years. She’s really looking forward to it. It took her ages to get over you. Tell me I’m not going to regret having told you where she’s going.’
‘You won’t regret it.’
He’d make sure of it.
As jobs went, this one hadn’t exactly been a hardship, thought Lily, settling on her sun lounger and preparing herself to test the customer service levels of the beach-bar staff, although this time for her own personal pleasure.
Some were, some weren’t. That was the way it went, and had gone, right from the start. MMS had started off offering customer satisfaction surveys before expanding to include services such as employee performance analysis, consumer demographic studies and bespoke training programmes, all in the name of driving service excellence. Their clients came in all shapes and sizes and temperaments.
This particular—easy—client had been with them since their inception and had grown with similar speed. Somehow, as the by-product of a much larger deal they’d ended up with a portfolio of assets that included the island of Santa Teresa. They’d offloaded the assets they didn’t want, but had decided to keep Santa Teresa with its once five-star luxury resort to see what they could do with it. They’d hired MMS to conduct a thorough analysis of how to turn the business around on the consumer side of things.
Normally MMS contracted the fieldwork out. In their business anonymity was key, and employing a small band of discreet, trustworthy, reliable freelancers to go wherever they were needed allowed Lily to concentrate on the marketing, sales and client side of the business and Zoe to focus on the numbers and data analysis.
On this occasion, however, the woman they’d hired to spend a week assessing the performance of staff and the overall consumer experience at the Coral Bay Lodge had slipped on ice and broken her ankle over Christmas and couldn’t fly. At such short notice, especially over the holiday season, they hadn’t been able to get anyone else so Lily had taken on the job.
Actually, she’d been heartily grateful for the distraction. January in London was typically on the quiet side and if she’d been there twiddling her thumbs she’d have had hours in which to dwell on everything that had happened on New Year’s Eve. Instead she’d been so busy working, concentrating on the details and reporting back to Zoe with her findings that she hadn’t given Kit a moment’s thought.
Well, hardly a moment’s thought, she amended, picking up the cocktail menu and wondering whether five in the afternoon was too early for a sundowner.
He had slipped into her head on the odd unguarded occasion, but whenever he did hot on the heels of it came the instant realisation of just what a bad idea Sunday night had been, how much what he’d done still hurt and how stupid and deluded she’d been to even imagine that him showing up on her doorstep might mean anything other than the need to scratch an itch.
Thank goodness the sex had been lousy or she’d be in serious trouble, she reflected, glancing down the long list of cocktails. If it had been as mind-blowing as she knew it could be, she’d now undoubtedly be wondering what she’d been missing all these years. What she’d been thinking when she’d decided to pursue relationships with men who didn’t affect her pulse rate.
She might also well be letting good sex get in the way of good judgement and telling herself that maybe she’d overreacted on Sunday night. She might be thinking that perhaps everything that had gone on between them before was now water under the bridge and why on earth shouldn’t they try again?
Despite the heat of the day Lily
