Falling Again For Her Island Fling. Ellie Darkins

her tongue. He had spanned her waist with his hands, cupped the curve of her hip and her buttock, teased her with his lips.

      All of which was making this meeting extremely awkward.

      She risked another glance up at him, but his eyes were still fixed on his computer screen.

      ‘I want to know what working with you will mean.’

      ‘I’m glad you’re considering it.’ He didn’t look as if he thought it was great. Considering he’d made the offer in the first place, he looked as if he didn’t want her there at all. Well, it was too late. She’d been thinking about Le Bijou. What it would mean to stand guard over it. However awkward things got with Guy.

      ‘Are you sure we haven’t met before?’

      She wasn’t really aware of thinking the question before it popped out of her mouth. He was just so...unsettling. He unnerved her. And she couldn’t help thinking that there must be a reason he had this effect on her. Must be a reason why her body reacted to him every time that he was close. A reason her heart was racing and her palms were sweating.

      Was it you? Her mind jumped to the familiar question. Did you love me? Did I carry your baby? Lose your baby?

      He sighed, looked up and made eye contact with her for the first time since she had walked into the room.

      ‘What period of time are you missing memories from?’ he asked. ‘I’ve only visited St Antoine once before.’

      She told him the date of her accident, and that she didn’t remember the three months before, wondering at the change in his demeanour.

      ‘I was here then,’ he said. ‘My parents own the Williams resort on the mainland. I was staying there for the summer.’

      ‘But I worked there!’ Meena exclaimed. ‘I was working at the dive school before my accident. It was the summer after I got back from Australia,’ she added, realising she’d never mentioned to him that connection. Was this the reason for his strangeness? For the strange familiarity she felt around him? Would she have mentioned that if she’d bumped into an Australian guest? Would she have struck up a conversation about that common link?

      ‘So maybe I have seen you before, or maybe we spoke back then? I’m sorry,’ she added, realising she was speaking out loud. ‘It’s just, it’s hard, having this gap in my memories. It makes me question myself. Question what I know, you know?’

      Of course he didn’t know. How could he? How could anyone know what it felt like to live in a body and a mind that didn’t fully belong to them?

      ‘Maybe we did meet.’ Guy shuffled some papers on his desk, not looking at her. ‘I went to the dive school when I was here before. Maybe we crossed paths.’

      ‘But you don’t remember? You don’t remember me?’ It was clear from the way that he had turned back to his work that he was ready for this meeting to be over. But it had been so long since she had had any new information about that time that she couldn’t let this drop, no matter how annoying Guy seemed to be finding her.

      Just once in her life, she wanted a straightforward answer. No, scratch that. Once in her life she wanted to know the answer to questions about her life herself, without relying on near strangers to fill in the gaps. But as that didn’t seem to be an option, no matter what she or her medical team had tried, she would have to settle for getting answers from someone else. For trusting other people to paint this picture of who she had been.

      ‘I don’t remember you,’ Guy said, looking back at his screen. ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘No need to be sorry.’ Meena shrugged, tried to cover her disappointment. No answers, again. No reason for why she felt this strange familiarity around Guy. For him and for Le Bijou.

      ‘Get in touch with Dev about the details of the new job, if you want to consider it. And keep him updated with your progress on the environmental reports. If there’s nothing else...’

      It was clear she was being dismissed.

      ‘Okay, great.’ She forced professionalism back into her voice. ‘Well, I’m going to go have another look at the reef tomorrow. To see if there is any way that its decline can be reversed, or at least halted. If you want to come and see for yourself, you would be welcome.’

      Guy glanced up at her, meeting her gaze again. Maybe this was why he avoided it, Meena thought, as she felt her cheeks warm under his scrutiny. Maybe he could see the effect he had on her when he turned his full attention on her like that. No wonder he didn’t want to encourage it.

      ‘I’ll see what I can do. But I have a very full week.’

      Did he remember her? Only every night in his dreams, in waking moments when his mind wandered, and for a moment he was back there, the sun and her lips on his body once again. He remembered everything.

      And it broke him, almost daily now.

      Because whatever, wherever they were now, they were never going to get that back. What they had had back then had been beautiful. It had been pure. It had been innocent. And then the darkness in his heart when he’d thought that she had abandoned him had sullied it. And that simply couldn’t be undone.

      He must have been broken before he had even met her, for that rot to have set in and cause the damage that it had.

      If he told her what they had shared, what would she think of that? What could she take from it? Worst-case scenario, she would want to try to turn back time. To see what had brought them together then. To see if it still existed.

      She had lost all the time that they had been together. He had spent three months on this island, ostensibly getting to know his family’s resort on the St Antoine mainland as preparation for a formal role in the company. But in truth he had spent most of it getting to know Meena. His parents hadn’t even been disappointed when they’d realised how little work he’d done that summer. As if they’d been expecting his failure all along. It was so easy to disappoint them, he realised, when they had such low expectations of him.

      Meena thought that she wanted to know him, but she was wrong. The only possible outcome was her getting hurt, and he could spare her that at least.

      Of course, his heart had hurt when he’d seen how lost she was without those memories. And he could fix that, he knew. He could tell her everything, and she wouldn’t have to worry and guess at what had happened in those months.

      But would that help her, really? To know that she had been in love with a man who didn’t exist any more? No, it was kinder to say nothing, he told himself. Kinder—and safer—that she never knew what they had once had, and what they had both lost.