yes was muffled but audible nonetheless.
“Uh, yeah, they are.”
“Great. Maybe next time you’ll ask them why they’re here first before calling me up with a non-crisis. Put them in the old bunkhouse.”
The bunkhouse was left over from the days when the island had been a cocoa plantation, though it had been updated and renovated since then. The building was rarely used, but it would serve perfectly for the next two weeks. Most of the permanent employees had either bungalows at the back of the property, like hers, or living quarters close to the job, like their chef, who had a rather large apartment above the kitchens.
Great, now she had workers but no supplies for them to actually do anything.
Blowing at a wisp of hair that had fallen into her eyes, Marcy flopped back into the executive chair behind her desk, not sure whether she wanted to scream, cry or start smashing things. Probably a little of all three.
Her to-do list was a mile long. Nothing was going right.
And she had no doubt that the minute Simon realized she was leaving tomorrow he would blow a gasket. Not that her departure should surprise him, since she’d told him in person, sent him an email and reminded him a dozen times over the past few weeks.
However, if there was one thing she’d learned about Simon Reeves, it was that his brain was like Swiss cheese and his hearing was more than selective … as in nonexistent.
But that was another thing that was his problem, not hers.
Pulling up the document she’d been working on, Marcy looked at the detailed instructions she’d written in an effort to help Simon through the next two weeks—and if the interview went well, to help her replacement. Part of her had wanted to leave him with nothing, but that just wasn’t her style. She’d put too much time and effort into the resort to see Simon ruin it the minute she walked out the door.
The document was currently sitting at twenty-two pages. Marcy was a little worried the sheer size of the thing would prevent Simon from reading it.
She stared at it for several seconds. Cut it down, or leave it as is? It was an argument she’d had multiple times over the past few days. Ultimately she came to the same conclusion she’d come to numerous times. Once again, what Simon chose to do or not do was not her problem.
And hopefully, if things went according to plan, wouldn’t ever be again.
SIMON FOUGHT THE URGE to grab the first thing and throw it at the door when a loud knock blasted through his office. The scene he was writing wasn’t working and he couldn’t figure out why. Frustration rode him hard and probably wasn’t helping the situation. Neither was the bustling noise that even here, behind the closed door of his private office, couldn’t be disguised.
The staff was happy at the prospect of having two weeks off. Frankly, he was happy to see them leave, at least for a little while. Having the place virtually to himself was going to be a godsend.
He was months behind on the deadline for his current manuscript. It was so bad that he’d actually unplugged his phone and uninstalled the mail program from his computer to avoid email from his editor and agent. If he didn’t finish this thing in the next two weeks he could probably kiss his career goodbye. Again.
Thanks to Courtney’s betrayal three years ago, the resulting plagiarism scandal and his fruitless attempts to prove the work was really his, his career had already dangled by a thread once. He really didn’t want to go through that again.
Île du Coeur and Escape were supposed to have provided him the space and seclusion to rebuild his career. Instead, they’d both become a huge time-suck.
Buying the place had seemed like a brilliant idea. He had the capital to purchase the island, and the resort would provide the necessary revenue stream for upkeep. A manager should have taken the responsibilities off his shoulders, leaving him free to lock himself inside his office to write.
Should have. Somehow things hadn’t exactly gone the way he’d hoped.
The problem was that not a soul on the island—not even Marcy—knew who he was. And he liked it that way. It protected his work. He wrote under a pseudonym and always had.
He’d wanted a clean break from the life he’d left behind. Wanted to start again and pretend the entire affair had never happened. Unfortunately, it was difficult to forget being betrayed by someone you loved.
That sort of deception tended to color your opinion of people. Always making you wonder who was going to stab you in the back next.
“Simon!” Marcy’s voice exploded through the wood of the door along with the rattling of the knob that he’d locked for just such an occasion.
Knowing from experience that she wouldn’t leave until he listened to her, Simon minimized his documents, brought up a gaming program he used to make everyone think he was just wasting time in here, and walked across the room. Yanking open the door, he lounged inside the jamb, one arm stretched across the gaping area so that she’d either have to stay on her side of the door or duck underneath his arm. She wouldn’t do that. One good thing about Marcy—she avoided coming into contact with him at all costs.
In the beginning he’d been happy. The last thing he had time for was a romantic complication with his manager. She was there to work and make his life easier, and from his experience, mixing business with pleasure rarely made anything easier. But the more she avoided him, the more he became aware of her deliberate distance. A distance that made him want to ruffle her feathers by pushing against the boundaries she’d erected. It was pointless, but he couldn’t help it.
Even now he inched his body closer to hers, crowding into her personal space just to see her spine stiffen. The infinitesimal shuffle backward was rewarding, especially when she stopped it midway, consciously determined not to let him fluster her.
A grin tugged at the corners of his lips but he wouldn’t let it grab hold. Instead, he asked, “What do you need?”
She raised her hand, a sheaf of papers fluttering with the force of the motion. “We need to go over everything before I leave tomorrow. I sent you an appointment by email.”
“I uninstalled the program.”
Her eyes widened before narrowing to glittering slits. He loved it when Marcy got mad. Her blue eyes sparkled with a passion that made the muscles in his stomach tighten. She reminded him of a pixie; in fact, he almost hadn’t hired her because she looked as if a good stiff breeze could knock her on her ass. But beneath that tiny frame was a spine of steel and the heart of a drill sergeant. She was good at what she did, if a little too organized and into unimportant details for his liking.
“Why would you do something stupid like that?”
Simon shrugged, not caring that she’d just called him stupid. It was by far the least offensive term she’d used for him in the past two years.
“Because I’m avoiding someone.”
“Well, you can’t avoid me.”
If that wasn’t the most obvious statement of the year he didn’t know what was. He chose to let the softball setup she’d just given him slide by.
“What
