dressed quickly in a small silk skirt, several variations of which she had purchased during her time in Australia. She had brought them with her because they could be rolled into a small ball and unrolled back to their pristine state—and a blue T-shirt. She would have worn slippers but, not knowing what sort of destruction she would find outside, stuck on her flip flops as an afterthought.
The body of the place seemed intact, as she hurriedly left the bedroom and made her way to the front door. Somehow debris had found its way in, but there appeared to be no structural damage. When she ventured out, the scene was slightly different.
Rose stood and gaped. Raging storms were not part of the English weather pattern. She had never witnessed firsthand what destruction their wrath could unleash so it was a shock to look around now and see the uprooted trees, the branches transported and scattered across the lawns, the detritus of building work that had managed to escape its confines and be blown to all four corners. It seemed incredible that the sun was now shining and the sea was blue and calm in the distance. From her vantage point, she couldn’t see the beach but she could imagine that it was as littered as the gardens higher up here were.
Then, glancing to her left, she spotted Gabriel, deep in conversation with two local men who were gesticulating and laughing. He wasn’t looking in her direction and Rose took a few seconds to appreciate his immense physical appeal. He was wearing a pair of low-slung khaki shorts and an off-white T-shirt with some indecipherable logo on the back. He looked casual, relaxed but, at the same time, totally in command. The two dark men were both shorter than him and were nodding now and pointing. Even from here, Rose could read the deference in their body language.
She took a deep breath and walked over to where they seemed to be inspecting the distant horizon, not forgetting that her role on the island was one of a practical nature, even if last night had blurred it wildly beyond recognition.
She also couldn’t allow herself to forget that sex, for Gabriel, was not an indication of anything meaningful, at least not according to her definition of meaningful. He might not even want to remember what had occurred between them the night before and, even if he did, he certainly would not expect her attitude towards him to have changed substantially.
Either way, Rose was going to be braced for all eventualities.
Most of all, she was going to be adult about everything. She had slept with her boss and, yes, it had been blistering, but that didn’t mean that she would allow it to scramble her brains.
She got closer and hid her growing anxiety under an easy smile.
As soon as Gabriel smiled back, she knew that at least he wasn’t going to look at her with disgust at her behaviour the night before and, when he pulled her towards him and slung his arm over her shoulder, Rose tried hard not to read anything into it. This wasn’t about love and commitment, it was about a man whose needs had been satisfied and who anticipated further satisfaction of those needs.
She remembered just how blissfully satisfied her own needs had been met and relaxed into his casual embrace. After a while, it seemed natural to be pressed against him and she actually began paying some attention to what was being said.
It seemed that however frightful the destruction appeared to her, the island had actually only received the tail-end of the hurricane. The brunt of it had swung away from the small island, reserving its devastation for American shores. Hence no real loss of buildings and the roads, or rather the one main road and its few tributaries, were intact. Electricity would be back up and running by mid-morning, they were assured, and the clean up programme would only take a couple of days.
It was treated as more of an irritation than anything else. When she worried aloud how the gardens would be cleared of the debris, she was told that it would be taken care of. Most of the workforce would be back by the following morning and they would see to it that everything was sorted.
Wilson, the foreman, was neverendingly optimistic about the timescale involved in the clearing up and even more optimistic about completion of the project. While the boss man was over, he said, they could go through what was left to do, although if he had a look around he would see that there was very little. They could take a boat over to the mainland, choose some of the fixtures and fittings. By Christmas, he told them, everything would be ready. They could come and have a little holiday there, enjoy the sunshine.
Rose thought that by Christmas the chances of them still being together bordered on the unimaginable, although Gabriel, ever diplomatic, was making all the right noises.
By the time they had concluded their conversation with Wilson, Rose was beginning to feel hot. And very hungry. It was nearly eleven. They had not actually got to sleep until the early hours of the morning and she had slept the sleep of the drugged. Heaven only knew what time Gabriel had got up!
‘I’m sorry I got up so late,’ was the first thing she told him as they headed back towards the villa. ‘You should have woken me up.’ Just in case he thought that she might want to start taking liberties now that they had slept together.
‘You look very sexy,’ Gabriel told her, spinning her to face him and pulling her close. ‘Did you bring that skirt to turn me on?’
‘Of course not!’ But she barely had time to protest when his mouth crushed hers and her body reacted automatically. She thought, in a daze of sudden, fierce desire, that it was as if she had now been programmed to respond to him. He kissed her and she kissed him back, hungrily, greedily. His hand grazed her breast, like it was doing now, and her nipples became acutely sensitive, so sensitive that she had to stop herself from pushing his hand under her T-shirt so that he could touch her right here and now, in the middle of the garden and in sight of whoever happened to be around.
‘You’re wearing a bra,’ he murmured into her ear. ‘Very bad. In this hot weather, the constriction to the blood circulation could be downright dangerous.’
Rose laughed huskily. ‘Would you recommend that I take it off?’
‘Without further ado. Right now, in fact.’
Rose went red and looked around her. Daring and sexy was fine in the safety of a dark room at night, but daring and sexy in the middle of the day, in full view of spectators, was a different matter.
‘There’s no one around,’ Gabriel drawled, placing both hands on her bottom and grinding her against him. ‘In fact, you could wear your birthday suit here safe in the knowledge that you would be free from prying eyes.’
‘What about Wilson and the other chap who was with him?’
‘Gone. And because we’re on a hill top, we have a commanding view of anyone coming up, not that anyone’s likely to. They’ll all be too busy cleaning up after the storm. They’ll have put their binoculars away for the moment.’ He slid his hands up, under her T-shirt, and efficiently unclasped her bra. When he saw her shocked expression, he grinned wickedly. ‘Not something else you haven’t tried, Rose?’
‘There isn’t much opportunity to strip off in my back garden,’ she told him, ‘not unless you want an audience.’
‘So you’ve never made love in a public place?’
‘No!’
‘Close your eyes.’
‘What?’
‘Close them and go with the flow…’
She did, helplessly allowing him
