The Heat of the Night

Another spike of guilt drove a stake right between his eyes. Crap. He hesitated before he crossed the threshold into her room but what the hell? He’d come this far.

The curtains that matched the bedspread were pulled back and the balcony doors were thrown wide, admitting the magnificent tropical view. A cool ocean breeze tickled at the open neck of his shirt as he tentatively edged inside, and felt heavenly against his sweaty skin.

‘Claude?’

Claudia almost leapt out of her skin as Luke’s deep, rich voice reached straight into the middle of her misery and yanked her out by the roots of her hair. She sat abruptly, her tears temporarily forgotten.

‘Jeez,’ she said, her hand clutched to her rocketing heart, ‘are you trying to scare me half to death?’

Luke stalled where he was, holding up his hands at the frightening sight of a puffy-eyed, wild-looking Claudia. Her hair was half in, half out of her ponytail, the loose bits clumped together into some kind of bird-nest-like creation, her nose and cheeks were red and she was surrounded by piles of well-used tissues.

‘Sorry...I didn’t mean to startle you.’

‘Who gave you a damn key?’ Claudia demanded, ignoring his apology. ‘No, don’t worry, it was Jonah, wasn’t it? Bloody traitor.’

Luke took a tentative step closer. ‘I just wanted to see if you were okay,’ he said, avoiding selling out Jonah.

‘Do I look okay?’ she snapped.

Luke shook his head. She looked as if she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. She looked angry and sad and tired.

She looked defeated.

And that probably kicked him the hardest. Claudia was a glass-half-full kind of girl.

‘Oh, just go away,’ Claudia groaned as the fright wore off and the surge of adrenaline mixed with her already precarious emotional state to make her feel even more edgy and vulnerable. Emotion clogged her throat and the hot scald of tears pricked at her eyes again.

She fell back against the mattress, resuming her former foetal-ball position. ‘Just let me cry in peace,’ she said, dragging another tissue out of the box.

Luke was torn between leaving and not having to listen to her cry and staying put, being some kind of emotional support for Claudia. Or trying at least.

Neither prospect thrilled him.

But the part of him that had run barefoot through the resort with her and swum with her in the ocean just across the pathway and played hide-and-seek with her amidst the resort gardens won out.

He shut his eyes, sending up a brief plea to the universe that she wouldn’t jab him in the ribs or knee him somewhere a little lower as he moved around the other side of the enormous bed and climbed on.

Claudia frowned as she felt the bed give behind her. She looked over her shoulder as Luke approached on his hands and knees. ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.

‘I’m doing what I should, according to Avery, have done down on the beach. I’m going to hug you.’

Claudia blinked and swallowed against another threatening tide of tears. She gave an inelegant sniffle. ‘If you hug me I’m just going to cry harder.’

Luke chuckled at her husky threat as he settled in behind her, slipping his arm around her waist. ‘I guess that’s probably kind of the point.’

Claudia’s breath caught at the light tease in his voice and she looked away from him, turned to face the doorway over the other side of the room. Her back was all smooshed against his front—his big, broad, hard front—his breath was a warm caress at her neck, the slight scrape of stubble skating delicious shivers to dangerous places.

She shut her eyes, her heart racing now for an entirely different reason. How many hot, fevered dreams had she had as a teenager about exactly this? Lying with him like this?

Minus their clothes, and her inhibitions?

Luke shut his eyes as his exhausted body revelled in being horizontal. Claudia felt stiff as a board but it was bliss to lie down and he could already feel the tug of sleep pulling at the hazy hold he had on consciousness.

How many times had they lain in her parents’ bed as kids, watching reruns of Claudia’s favourite television show, The Love Boat, while their parents finished up for the night? She’d always offered to let him watch something he wanted to but he hadn’t minded—as long as whatever they were watching had ads, he was happy.

How many times had Tony, the head chef, who had been at the Tropicana for all its forty years, personally brought them up his speciality Hawaiian pizza? And how many times had he woken to his dad picking him up and carrying him to his bed next door?

But so much had happened in the intervening years to put distance between them. He’d gone away—far away. He’d rarely been back as he’d fought to establish himself in a dog-eat-dog industry. He’d got married. And divorced. He’d refused to come back and play when the resort was handed to him. He’d disagreed with her vision.

In short, he’d changed.

But Claudia? Claudia was still the same girl she’d always been. He’d thought less of her for that this last decade but, lying here with her now, he was immensely pleased that she was still the same old Claude.

Except she was so quiet and rigid. Taut as a bow. He wished he knew the right words to comfort her. The time when they’d been close and their conversations had been easy seemed a million years ago now.

He’d spent a decade in the cut-throat advertising game where men and women alike fought tooth and nail for an account. There wasn’t a lot of softness, of emotion, in the advertising business. Nobody comforted you when you lost an account—if anything there was a certain degree of triumph at someone else’s misfortune, the scent of an opportunity in the offing.

God knew he’d witnessed the pointy end of it three years ago after being the golden-haired boy for so long.

None of that helped him with right here, right now. None of that equipped him to deal with a grieving Claudia.

‘Was it awful?’ he whispered.

Claudia tensed as the whisper seemed to punctuate the silence like a blaring trumpet. She’d been trying not to think about that night. Trying to keep busy and organise. Trying to look ahead, not back. Not think about the howling wind and the sounds of destruction that not even a large underground cellar had insulated them from.

Her face scrunched up in a most unpleasant fashion as the fear rolled over her again and she was pleased he was behind her. A tear rolled down her cheek as she relaxed back into him.

‘I was so scared,’ she said, choking on a lump high and hard in her throat, trying to hold it all back but failing because Luke was here. ‘I knew we were all safe down in the cellar but...it was so loud. And it destroyed everything.’

Claudia paused as the next thought formed. It was too awful to speak aloud. ‘What if I can’t do it?’ she whispered. ‘What if I fail? What if I let everybody down?’

She started to cry again and Luke finally understood the true root of her anxiety. Claudia had spent her whole life keeping everyone happy—their parents, the locals who relied on the resorts for their economy, the tourist industry. She’d spent her entire adult working life at the resort juggling all these responsibilities.

And, if she wasn’t careful, she was going to crack up under the pressure.

‘Shh,’ Luke said, his arm tightening around her waist as he absently kissed her neck. ‘Shh.’

Claudia cried harder then. It felt so good to have him here. To lean against him for a while. To feel his lips brushing against her neck as he assured her over and over he was here. Right here. She felt as if she’d been juggling so many things alone for so long, trying to make the place a viable concern. Trying to be true to their parents’ vision and prove to him it could be done.

And it was nice that he didn’t say anything else, didn’t try and fix things so she’d stop crying. Throw out some trite words about her being strong and how she could do it. Because deep down she knew she was strong; she knew she could do it. She was just having an extraordinarily weak moment, and his being here, putting his arms around her and letting her cry was exactly what she needed.

So she cried. She cried until there were no more tears left and she drifted off to sleep.

THREE (#ulink_c0ea92bc-9e58-5675-876e-239a61ca6e9d)

Luke slept too. Unfortunately not the deep, dreamless sleep of the severely jet-lagged. The sleep his body was craving. Whether that was the total chaos his diurnal rhythms had been thrown into or the fact that he was draped around warm, soft woman he wasn’t sure. But his sleep was disturbed with fevered images cavorting through his head.

Difficult to understand, impossible to hold onto.