be dining in an hour. Don’t keep me waiting.’
It was all he said before he disappeared into a room in which Talia could glimpse a desk and IT equipment. He shut the door behind him with a decisive click.
With a sigh, Talia followed the luggage upstairs.
Bleakness filled her, and a weariness that came not only from the long flight. It went much deeper than that…
I’ve lost him—lost him for ever… And I must abandon any hope of winning him back.
She had to accept what Luke was making so chillingly clear—he had no interest in her any longer. Not as the woman she’d been at that party. There could be no second chance.
Wearily, she showered and started to get ready. A maid had unpacked for her, and as Talia selected a dress to wear she deliberately chose one her father had approved of. He had always wanted her to wear only fussy, over-styled clothes, and this knee-length dress in a pastel shade of pale blue did not suit her—but it would signal to Luke that she was well aware she was no longer of any personal interest to him. From now on she must remember that she was here only to work. Nothing more than that.
A tightness clutched around her heart, but there was nothing she could do about it.
He doesn’t want me any more.
That was the truth—bleak, unvarnished—and she had to face it.
Luke sat at the head of the long table in the villa’s dining room, his gaze focusing down the table to where Talia was sitting, immobile and expressionless. His face tightened. Inside him he felt the emotions he’d become all too familiar with, scything inside him. How could he still find her so beautiful?
Just as she had that day in his office in Lucerne, she looked nothing like the way she had at that party—there was no wanton wildness about her at all, no tightly sheathed body, no exposed shoulders and bare arms, no swaying walk from five-inch heels.
Now, she was dressed for the evening, in a knee-length cocktail dress that was high-necked and long-sleeved—as if, he thought with an illogical spurt of anger, she were deliberately hiding her figure from him. Her hair was caught in the same plain coil at the back of her head that it had been in on the flight, and she had not put on any make-up, let alone jewellery.
A thought flickered in his mind. Maybe there wasn’t any jewellery left for her to wear…
After all, she couldn’t even afford to pay rent on a single one of Gerald Grantham’s many properties. There probably wasn’t much jewellery these days.
She would be feeling the lack of it.
His eyes flickered over her, unconsciously changing her concealing gown to something much more to his taste. Something that would show her voluptuous cleavage, ripe for adornment with something glittering and expensive.
He tore his mind away. She wasn’t here to look alluring. That was the last thing he should want her to do. It had been hard enough to have her sitting beside him hour after hour on the flight over and make himself blank her presence. It had been next to impossible not to turn his head and drink in that beauty that had caught his breath as it did again now, even when she was wearing the unflattering dress. But he must not yield to such a dangerous temptation.
She’s here to work, to earn the right to go on living in a villa she can no longer afford.
It was time to remind her of that. Even more, to remind himself.
The staff were setting plates in front of them and pouring wine as Luke spoke. ‘I’ll be visiting the site first thing tomorrow morning,’ he said abruptly, lifting his fork and starting to eat. He was hungry after the change in time zone and it was past midnight on his body clock. ‘Because of the heat and the jet lag we’ll make an early start.’
He saw her swallow and take a drink from her glass. ‘Where is the site?’ she asked. ‘And what kind of property is it?’
It seemed to be an effort for her to speak, and that annoyed him. Why she should be radiating tension on all frequencies was beyond him. She was the one who’d rejected him. It had been her choice to leave, not his.
It was pointless to wonder, yet again, whether he was clinically insane to have brought her out here with him. He’d oscillated continuously in the twenty-four hours he’d given her to make her mind up, between cancelling his impulsive offer and raising the stakes on it. When she’d walked up to him in the airport lounge he’d felt that toxic mix of emotion writhe in him again, and he’d been plunged into confusion once more.
It filled him still, but he was hammering it down, refusing to face it. He had been insane to bring her here—truly mad to subject himself to her presence—but it was too late to change his mind. She was here and he would have to deal with it. Whatever strength of mind it took, he had to make this Caribbean project work and then get on with the rest of his life.
I can make myself indifferent to her. I can expose myself to her presence and get her out of my damn system.
His jaw set. That was what he must focus on. This time he would set the finish date: she’d stay here for a fortnight, work solidly to pay her rent, and would leave when he dismissed her. This time he would call the shots—not her.
And by the time she left—had been dismissed by him—he would have worked her out of his system. She would mean nothing to him and he would watch her being despatched from his life, on his terms, with all the indifference he was currently trying to present to her. But by then it would be genuine indifference—not the feigned, deliberate impassivity he was treating her with now.
He answered her finally, in the same clipped tone of voice he’d used for all their brief exchanges so far.
‘It’s a hotel in the south of the island, where the Caribbean coastline meets the Atlantic. It’s where the hurricanes hit if they reach this far. As they did last year.’
She’d started to eat, but looked up as he spoke.
He went on dryly. ‘Don’t worry, we’re out of hurricane season now. But last year the tip of the island was struck by a particularly vicious one—climate change is, as you probably know, fuelling their force and their frequency. The area we’re visiting got a hammering.’
‘Is the hotel still worth refurbishing?’ she asked frowningly.
‘That’s what I’m checking out,’ he said. Dryness had turned to terseness.
She was speaking again, her voice diffident, as if she were unsure whether to speak at all, and that irritated him more.
‘How badly damaged is it?’ she asked.
‘The external construction has borne up well—it was built to resist wind shear. But the interior has been blasted totally. It needs complete renovation.’
For the first time there was a spark of animation in her face, lightening her features. ‘What do you have in mind?’ she asked.
Luke’s mouth thinned.
