About the Authors

Lifelong romance addict JC HARROWAY lives in New Zealand. Writing feeds her very real obsession with happy endings and the endorphin rush they create. You can follow her at jcharroway.com, Facebook.com/jcharroway, Instagram.com/jcharroway and Twitter.com/jcharroway.

New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author CATHRYN FOX is a wife, mom, sister, daughter, aunt and friend. She loves dogs, sunny weather, anything chocolate (she never says no to a brownie), pizza and red wine. Cathryn lives in beautiful Nova Scotia with her husband, who is convinced he can turn her into a mixed martial arts fan. When not writing, Cathryn can be found Skyping with her son, who lives in Seattle (could he have moved any farther away?), shopping with her daughter in the city, watching a big action flick with her husband, or hanging out and laughing with friends.

Also by JC Harroway

A Week to be Wild

Her Dirty Little Secret

One Night Only

The Billionaires Club

The Proposition

Billionaire Bachelors

Forbidden to Want

Forbidden to Taste

Forbidden to Touch

Also by Cathryn Fox

On His Knees

On Her Terms

Under His Touch

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Bad Business

JC Harroway

Under His Obsession

Cathryn Fox

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09954-7

BAD BUSINESS & UNDER HIS OBSESSION

Bad Business © 2020 JC Harroway Under His Obsession © 2020 Cathryn Fox

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Bad Business

Back Cover Text

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

Under His Obsession

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

About the Publisher

Bad Business

JC Harroway

From bestselling author JC Harroway comes the first book in The Pleasure Pact series. Grace Metcalf only wanted a onetime fling…but he’s got her risking it all for more!

After my sister died, I knew I owed it to her and myself to get out there and start living. First order—calling off my wedding to a man I didn’t love. Then a margarita-filled night led to an agreement with my best friends: The Pleasure Pact. We’ve all agreed to live in the moment, which means behaving badly, embracing passion and saying yes to every adventure…even a red-hot holiday fling.

When I agreed to go honeymooning solo in sunny Fiji, I didn’t expect to find a gorgeous paddleboard instructor ready and waiting to take my mind off the mundanity of real life. The mysterious Ryan Dempsey is exactly what I need: no rings, no romance, just raw sex appeal. His enigmatic past has turned him off love—now he’s all about lust and spontaneity.

Ryan might be set on keeping things casual, but each electrifying encounter with him only shows me that our scorching chemistry goes beyond the physical. Can I convince this sworn bachelor that risking our tropical affair for a deeper connection is worth it?

Harlequin DARE publishes sexy romances featuring powerful alpha heroes and bold, fearless heroines exploring their deepest fantasies.

Four new Harlequin DARE titles are available each month, wherever ebooks are sold!

CHAPTER ONE

Grace

THERE’S A MEDICAL term for sudden, uncontrolled, simultaneous laughter and crying. But Friday night cocktails with besties is no time for sobbing over the life-changing decision I made a month ago.

I grab the jug of margarita and top up the three glasses on the table. Seeking a numbness from the doubts making my eyes burn and my voice squeaky, I raise my refilled glass, encouraging my friends Brooke and Neve to follow suit in the perfect distraction technique.

‘To being single,’ I say, trying not to think about the traditional wedding toasts that should have happened this weekend if I hadn’t pulled the plug on my own nuptials.

‘Yes, to sad singletons everywhere,’ says Neve, quoting one of her favourite rom-com movies and taking a hefty swallow of the delicious drink. I too take a gulp that steals my breath, the burn of tequila drowning the rush of shame I feel about being single again by an act of deliberate self-sabotage.

‘At least we’re not desperate singletons,’ adds Brooke, glancing around the bar and catching numerous eyes, male and female. She would protest that it’s the fame thing, the unwanted lot of an international model and renowned London socialite, but in reality the gorgeous Lady Brooke Madden oozes that X-factor, drawing people in like kittens to catnip.

Neve groans, adjusting her new, trendy glasses, which are askew. ‘Speak for yourself. I’m desperately desperate. It’s all right for you.’ She ruffles Brooke’s blonde waif hairstyle affectionately. ‘You’re never short of offers.’

‘Offers of sex have nothing to do with relationships.’ Brooke bats away our friend’s hand and lays a smooch on her cheek to soften the sting, leaving behind a perfect, blood-red lipstick kiss. ‘I have at least four dick pics in my DMs. Besides, most of my offers want to shag a model so they can Tweet about it or steal my underwear and sell it on the dark web.’

Serious accountant Neve’s eyes round before she collapses into a fit of margarita-induced giggles, which rapidly infect Brooke and me.

‘And,’ I say to Neve, ‘you’d have your own share of dick pics if you stopped mooning over Oliver for five minutes.’ I wince when my brain registers the words uttered.

‘Argh! What am I doing?’ I prop my elbows on the sticky table top, grainy with salt, and bury my hot face in my hands. ‘I’m the last person who should give relationship advice. I throw away perfectly good fiancés like confetti.’

The familiar swirl of guilt grips my insides, churning up the margarita. I peer at my friends, seeking reassurance in their concerned expressions that I haven’t made the biggest mistake of my life by cancelling my wedding at the eleventh hour.

‘If it was perfectly good, you’d be shagging him in the honeymoon suite right about now, and Neve and I would be making one-night-stand mistakes with two of the dishiest ushers,’ says Brooke, making an obscene hand gesture that under normal circumstances would make me laugh, but today I’m immune, panic rising up to choke me.

I groan, wishing for the numbing effect of the cocktails, which still have a lot of work to do. ‘All those years spent in a relationship I threw away because it “just didn’t feel right”.’

I close my eyes.

Slam them open again.

I can’t bear to see the hurt on Greg’s face, which is etched on my mind, or my parents’ disappointment as they handed me the list of deposits they lost to the caterers, the florist, the venue… I breathe through the pinch under my ribs, thinking of the pain and expense avoided if I’d been brave enough to break off my engagement sooner.

‘It was more than not feeling right. Don’t forget Greg was pretty lukewarm about getting married in the first place,’ says Neve. ‘You thought he’d only asked you because you’d been together so long and you were engaged for three years.’

‘And you’d postponed the wedding twice,’ adds Brooke. ‘Yes, doctors are busy people, but it was starting to look like neither of you wanted to go through with it.’

I nod, ashamed it took me so long to wake up to my mediocre relationship, cruising along for at least the last two years with Greg.

‘Look,’ says Neve, ‘there’s nothing worse than feeling you’re more committed to a relationship than your man. We want them crazy for us, desperate to put a ring on it…not lukewarm.’

Longing for my sister, Bryony, engulfs me, as it does every time I compare my life with what hers might have been without her health limitations. Despite her being five years younger, I could always rely on her advice, wise beyond her years, and her fearless thirst for adventure. If she’d had the chance, she’d have squeezed life dry, not settled for such self-restraint.

My friends’ arms encircle me, tugging me into a comforting embrace I’ve enjoyed since the three of us became friends at university, but I feel like a fraud. My situation self-inflicted.

I stick a grin on my face. ‘Right, come on, you two—you’re supposed to be distracting me, not indulging me to wallow.’

Neve and Brooke sit up straight wearing matching innocent expressions.

‘So, the big question—’ I focus on the future ‘—do I go to Fiji anyway…alone?’ Part of me thinks going on my honeymoon alone is insane, the act of a woman desperate to prove she made the right decision, which I did. The right decision in the long run, even though it went against my deeply ingrained need to please. But I’m a capable professional. Independent. I don’t need a man to visit a place on my wish list. And Fiji was my dream, not Greg’s—in fact he’d argued we didn’t really need a honeymoon given the hassle of taking annual leave from work at the same time.

‘Go,’ says Brooke. ‘I’d offer to tag along, but I’m working in Italy that week,’ she adds, refilling our glasses for the umpteenth time. The tequila begins to work its magic. I might soon struggle to remember if I even asked my friends’ advice, let alone recall their sage wisdom.

I shrug, picking at a hangnail on my thumb. ‘It would mean I could pay Greg back his share given we didn’t have holiday cancellation insurance.’

‘I can’t come either,’ says Neve, ‘but Brooke’s right. Go—it’s your dream holiday. You deserve a break after the past few months.’ She offers a sympathetic smile, referring to the patient I lost on my watch—every anaesthetist’s worst nightmare. And the devastating incident had somehow acted as a catalyst for re-evaluating my life, awoken all my latent feelings over my sister’s death three years ago, the outcome the realisation I was going through the motions with my fiancé.

I pull the sleeves of my sweater down over my frigid hands. There’s something equally brave and terrifying about the idea of going to Fiji alone.

Neve sees the turn of my thoughts, probably in the queasy expression on my face, and says, ‘They’ve offered you a refund if you teach the staff first aid. Think of it as work if you need convincing. Recharge your batteries in paradise and come home ready for a fresh start.’

My nod feels wooden, as if my head is a bowling ball. What does a fresh start look like? Just because I ended it, doesn’t mean I won’t see my fiancé at the hospital, likely every day… But one less debt equals one less shard of guilt slicing through me.

‘Yeah, you haven’t had a holiday for two years,’ chips in Brooke, pushing hair back from my face in a gesture too tender for my bruised psyche.

‘I’ve had exams…my promotion,’ I say, defensive. ‘You know my job requires unpredictably long hours…’ I deflate with a sigh, because my friends are right. I have zero work-life balance. All I’ve known in recent years is work and study and compromise, the toll itself a kind of tribute to Bryony, who was the very reason I’d wanted to study medicine in the first place. But in the process, I neglected the one area of my life that suddenly seems so important. My relationship.

Neve nods. ‘It’s okay to have some you time, to plot a new direction.’ Her sharp sympathetic stare slices into me. She’s referring to how I haven’t quite been the same since losing Mr Burgess, the professional turmoil unleashing a personal course correction with Greg as the first casualty. Not that he’d put up a huge fight, leaving me to wonder just how long our marriage would have lasted before one of us was brave enough to call it quits.

‘Perhaps you’re right.’ As I speak the words, allow a chink to pierce my failsafe façade, seeds of possibility sprout for the first time in months…perhaps even years.

I’ve been surviving, not living—no way at all to honour my sister, who had so much passion for a life that was taken too soon.

‘Of course we’re right.’ Brooke high-fives Neve as if together they’re quoting the wisdom of the ancients. ‘And while you’re in paradise, it wouldn’t hurt you to live a little, if you know what I mean?’ Brooke says, waggling her eyebrows suggestively, correcting our veer into serious territory. ‘There are plenty of benefits to a beach holiday.’

‘Live a little?’ I roll my eyes at her as she preens like a diva at her wonderful idea. ‘You knit for pleasure and haven’t dated in six months. Do any of us know how to let our hair down?’ If I’m going down, I’m taking these two along.

Neve is the first to snigger at the severity of my tone. We crack up in unison as only the merrily inebriated can. Because all of our love lives are unmitigated disasters.

‘We’re all as bad as each other, aren’t we?’ Neve picks at the remnants of salt on the rim of her glass, sucking it from the pad of her thumb. ‘I think my vagina has healed over.’

Brooke snorts, her grimace telling us she’s sucked margarita into her nose. ‘What about your extensive toy collection—they’ll keep you patent until you abandon Oliver and give some other guy a chance.’

Neve’s cheeks flame as she elbows Brooke and glances at the nearby patrons to see who might have overheard. ‘I told you about those in confidence, Big Mouth.’

Brooke slings her arm around Neve’s shoulders and smacks a kiss on her forehead. ‘What we all need, is a pact.’

‘We’re not twelve,’ I say, rolling my eyes. Most hare-brained ideas come from Brooke, who looks ice-cool and classy but has a dark and devious mind.

‘No, but this is the first time we’ve all been single together. You met Greg at uni. Your first boyfriend. The only guy you’ve ever slept with,’ says Brooke, one index finger levelled on me with accusation, as if never playing the field, never having a one-night regret or a string of dating disasters is some sort of crime against womanhood.

‘What kind of pact?’ Neve chews her lip, the accountant in her no doubt as reluctant as the anaesthetist in me to enter into any agreement with our stunning, extroverted friend.

‘Nothing kinky.’ Brooke laughs. ‘More of a pleasure pact, a seize-the-moment kind of thing.’ She rests her elbows on the table, her wince indicating she’s encountered the stickiness coating the veneer. ‘Grace goes to Fiji and, who knows, perhaps embarks on a passionate holiday fling that helps her to realise there are millions of penises in the world.’

‘Hey, I know that—I’m a doctor, I’ve seen hundreds of penises.’ My voice rises with indignation at the very moment the conversations around us lull. Several heads turn in our direction and we erupt into hysterical laughter.

When we sober Neve casts me a pointed look. ‘Brooke does have a point, sweetie. Even I’ve experienced more than one penis.’ She drops her voice on the last word as if she’s speaking within earshot of a convention of tax lawyers.

I bristle, chugging a mouthful of margarita. ‘Have you both forgotten I’ll be going to a honeymoon destination, not a singles’ resort? My chances of penis are non-existent.’ But now I’ve given myself permission to embrace the idea of some me time in Fiji, a weight slides from my shoulders like the swish of gossamer.

‘There’s bound to be at least one cute waiter or hunky diving instructor. Improvise,’ says Brooke.

I exhale the anticipatory flutters in my chest and point an accusatory finger Neve’s way. ‘I’ll scope out available penis in Fiji if you finally confess your feelings to Oliver.’ Sober I might have said the same thing—Neve has loved Oliver, her best friend outside of Brooke and me, since uni—I simply might have said it with a little more tact and sympathy.

‘I’m sure he’s fully aware of her feelings,’ says Brooke. ‘Why else would he demand she be at his beck and call?’ Brooke eyes our rather shy friend with compassion and a small smile. ‘But Grace is right. Perhaps it is time to tell him…’

‘Oh, please, not this again,’ says Neve, flashing her rarely seen irritation.

‘So where is he taking you this time?’ I ask.

‘To his cousin’s wedding… In the Maldives,’ answers Brooke before Neve can open her mouth, which is pinched with defensiveness.

‘Ooh. Romantic.’

‘Hey,’ says Neve, her neck flushed. ‘Just because he needs a plus one doesn’t mean anything. And without meeting you two for cocktails and occasionally accompanying Olly somewhere I’d have zero social life. Have you met my work colleagues…? Forensic accounting is hardly conducive to after-work drinks or letting your hair down.’

Brooke grins. ‘Well, if you’re not going to confess your lust to Oliver, I’m signing you up to my dating app so you can choose from your own collection of dick pics.’

The horror on Neve’s face causes another fit of raucous laughter. Then she lifts her chin, as if accepting the challenge. ‘And what about you?’ She narrows her eyes at Brooke over the rim of her glass.

‘Oh, no.’ Brooke shakes her head, the signature pixie cut she hates but everyone else adores ruffling. ‘This pact was my idea.’

‘Yes, it was.’ I level a no-nonsense finger at Brooke. ‘But you just said you’re off to Italy soon… I’m not the only one ripe for a holiday fling.’

Neve offers an exaggerated nod of solidarity. ‘Yes—a perfect opportunity to get back in the saddle.’

Brooke lifts her chin, offering us her aristocratic profile. ‘That’s different. I’ll be working.’

‘So? Will you be taking that delicious bodyguard of yours?’ I ask, my lips twitching now the tables have turned on Brooke.

Neve flicks me a knowing look. ‘Yes, what’s his name…? Nate? Rick?’

‘Do you mean Nick?’ says Brooke in a bored tone. But she can’t hide the blush in her cheeks or the way her eyes light up at the mention of the big brooding bodyguard’s name.

Neve and I nod. We’ve met the silent, intimidating Nick. We’ve seen the way Brooke looks at him when she thinks no one is looking.

‘Anyway, he’s not a bodyguard, he’s a fixer stroke driver stroke personal protection expert—’

‘Stroke astounding piece of man meat packing a trouser leg full of knitting antidote.’ Neve guffaws behind her hand, the quiet, serious accountant well and truly shelved for the night.

Brooke pokes out her tongue. ‘I like knitting—it’s mindful. Relaxing. I can take it when I travel. And for your information, Nick is the soul of professional detachment. I’m lucky to get a hello out of him.’

‘Well, take your pick,’ I say, refusing to go down alone, while a warm glow of excitement builds in my belly—I’m going to do this. Go on my holiday and embrace fun and possibility and a fresh start. Make Bryony and my friends proud. ‘It’s one of the dick-pic losers or an Italian fling with Nick.’

Brooke sighs an exaggerated huff, flashing her million-dollar pout. ‘Fine. So it’s on. A holiday fling apiece so we can avoid Neve’s sad singletons’ club.’

Neve shrugs and I avoid comment with a swallow of my drink.

‘Okay,’ says Brooke, finding her stride. ‘So, to the terms of this pact.’ She holds up one finger. ‘Pictorial evidence of the holiday hook-up is required as proof, even if you have to take it while he’s asleep or in the shower.’ She adds a second finger. ‘And the next cocktail night will be a full debriefing session so come expecting to share all the juicy details.’

‘Cheers to that.’ Neve drains the dregs from the jug of margarita, sloshing them unevenly into the three glasses.

We raise a toast, clinking our drinks together. ‘To our pleasure pact,’ purrs Brooke in her best Lady Madden voice.

Giggling and more drinking ensue.

CHAPTER TWO

Ryan

I POINT THE paddleboard towards the shore, my paddle slicing through the pristine clear water of the South Pacific Ocean, which covers the live coral reefs below. The early evening sun warms my back as I study the Lailai resort, my newest acquisition, from my unique vantage with a keen business eye.

Twenty secluded wood and straw bungalows, or bures as the Fijians call them, line one side of the turquoise lagoon, which is a protected marine sanctuary. The palm-fringed beach stretches in a graceful crescent to the opposite side, where a row of over-water bungalows jut out into the ocean and link to the shore via individual wooden walkways.

Currently an adults-only honeymoon destination, it’s paradise. A perfect Dempsey singles’ resort in the making to add to my worldwide collection.

As soon as I can dispense with the nauseating couples cluttering up the place…

I paddle away from my own over-water bungalow, the best the resort boasts, with a sigh. Why then am I forcing myself through the motions? Attempting to relax on my ‘working holiday’ when perhaps I should head back to London at the earliest opportunity?

I paddle harder, trying to outrun my restlessness with vigorous strokes.

The expected satisfaction at my expanding empire never arrives, my gut knotted with the looming sense of emotional upheaval I’ve spent my entire adult life dodging.

The frailty of the only person alive who’s always cared about me: my grandmother.

I grit my teeth, telling myself that my business success ensures her comfort and the best healthcare money can buy. That’s why I’m here. Business. I know from bitter experience that indulging in feelings and believing in sentiment in the past ended in decisions taken out of my control and left me alone, cold and homeless.

I stab at the water with the paddle, the break in rhythm wobbling the board under my feet. The daily check-in phone calls to the nursing home are bound to leave me edgy. Apart from the comfort of my grandmother’s voice, which is increasingly frail, the calls usually reveal sobering news. But I can’t think about that now; there’s work to do.

Perhaps, at thirty-six, I’m bored of the lucrative singles’ resorts business, my constant travelling losing its lustre. Perhaps it’s time to diversify, to buy an airline or something…

Yes—that’s it. I’m off-kilter for a new challenge.

Nothing to do with the lure of home.

I snort, the hairs at my nape prickling to attention. Where is home? I have houses all over the world—million-dollar piles of bricks and mortar, a waste of money for the amount of time I spend in them.

In the shallows, I jump from the board, scoop it up and head on dragging feet towards the hut housing the resort’s water-sports equipment. Not even the excuse of temporarily filling in for the island’s paddleboard instructor, Pita, who’s been called back to the main island for a family emergency, is enough of a distraction. I glance back, drawn to the endless ocean view as if I’ll find solace on the horizon.

Movement catches attention. The doctor. My stare holds fast, eyes burning with curiosity.

Of course I’m interested in the resort’s only solitary guest, her presence, her whole demeanour intriguing. Since she arrived forty-eight hours ago, she’s kept to herself, rarely emerging from her bure before late afternoon and then only to walk along the shore looking wistful, just as she’s doing now. But even wistful she’s striking, stirring something in me, an attraction that makes me forget my troubles and the weird clawing restlessness. Something that makes me wonder what secrets she’s pondering as she walks.

And that inquisitiveness, more than the stirring of a sexual itch, is so rare, so enthralling I hardly recognise the feeling.

I watch her slow meander along the shoreline with growing fascination, my focus honed on her body’s movements and her serene but pensive expression. She’s dressed in the complimentary sarong the resort supplies to each guest on arrival and a vibrant red bikini top, her curves perfectly showcased by the revealing outfit.

No wonder I’m drawn.

The paddleboard grows heavy under my arm, but I can’t move away. Why wasn’t I more curious when I met with my resort manager, Taito, for a rundown of the current guest situation? Because all I was thinking was how quickly I could add my signature singles-only stamp of sexy hedonistic luxury to this idyllic resort and move on to the next acquisition, the next destination, make the next million…

Perhaps my curiosity in the doctor is professional. After all, she’s here to teach my staff first aid. But why? Surely she could have found a working holiday gig somewhere less isolated. Somewhere full of singletons…

A slug of disappointment douses me as if I’ve been plunged into iced water instead of the warm tropical ocean—perhaps she isn’t single.

The itch of attraction turns to discomfort, sliding over my skin like sunburn, which makes no sense. What do I care if she’s attached? I don’t even know her name.

Plenty more fish in the sea…

But I can’t stop wondering if one genuine smile from this enigmatic woman, or perhaps hearing her laugh, would reset my balance. The next chance I get, I’ll introduce myself to the good doctor—time to cast off this irritating fixation. I’m in the singletons business for good reason. I have no interest whatsoever in leaving the bachelor club, where I’m a lifelong member.

I catch sight of a slender leg peeking from the sarong as she walks. My groin tightens, a reminder that I’ve been here a week without any female company.

Hmm, perhaps a one-night stand. That would chase away the gnawing in the pit of my stomach. Help me to refocus on working through the changes to Lailai. I press my lips together, torn.

Yes, she’s hitting all the right attractiveness buttons, but what are her philosophies on casual sex? She’s here alone. At a honeymoon resort. That’s answer enough.

I stride up the beach to the equipment hut, shaking off the moment’s regret like the flick of sand from my feet. Inside I stack the paddleboard in the rack against one wall and stow the paddle. I snag my T-shirt from Pita’s battered deckchair and duck outside to collect the handwritten sign advertising the recreations available on the island, which is propped against a pile of fallen coconuts.

My mouth waters, anticipating the ice-cold beer I know is waiting for me back at my bure, but the idea of returning there alone with this strange weight dragging me down holds no appeal. I clench my jaw, fighting frustration. I’m always alone. It’s never bothered me before. A shower, a bite to eat at the resort’s restaurant and a chat with friendly local, Charlie, the bar manager, will shake me out of my strange mood.

‘Am I too late to book a lesson for tomorrow?’

I turn towards the voice, a slug of satisfaction heating my blood at the sight of the doctor close up. I was right—she’s stunning and I’m doubly intrigued, my thumping pulse proof, even as I groan in my head at the bittersweet timing.

She pushes her sunglasses from her exquisite heart-shaped face onto her head and looks up at me expectantly. For a moment, I free-fall into her eyes; they’re startling, sharp, piercing, as if she instantly sees all the crappy dark places in my fucked-up soul but also open, somehow kind, as if she’s about to offer the cure-all pill.

It must be a doctor thing. Perhaps she looks at everyone that way, figuring how to fix their broken parts…

But unless she can wind back the years and fix my grandmother, I have no need for her professionally.

‘No, not at all,’ I say with a smile that feels too wide. Too self-congratulatory. The lack of a ring on that tell-tale finger gives my libido the all-clear to get ideas.

Snapping out of the hold she’s taken by catching me off guard, I stretch out my hand. ‘My name’s Ryan, by the way.’ I train my eyes from her spectacular body, employing willpower I haven’t used in a long time; she’s that tempting. Rocking body, thick, glossy hair. Intelligent dark brown eyes.

Her handshake is firm and warm and too brief, because, touching her, I’m acutely aware I’m a man who hasn’t had sex in a fortnight wearing only a pair of wet, clinging board shorts.

‘You’re Irish?’ she says, pushing her long mahogany hair back over her shoulders as she gives me the kind of once-over I usually relish from a beautiful woman, because it indicates they’re interested in more than introductions. ‘I am, and you’re English?’

‘Yes.’ She laughs. ‘We’re both a long way from home.’

I was right about her laugh—a delightful sound that swells my chest as if I’m the most hilarious comic in the world. I knew an introduction would recalibrate my mood.

‘That we are.’ Am I actually putting an extra lilt to the accent, trying to impress her with a touch of the charming Irish brogue? What the hell…?

Her smile curls up and she does this thing where she looks from under her lashes as if she’s suppressing amusement—sexy as hell… The ends of her hair brush her freckled shoulders. I have the urge to trace those fascinating blemishes on her soft-looking sun-kissed skin until my head is full of pleasure and nothing else. Not the turmoil in me or the daily dose of worrying news from London.

‘Oh,’ she gasps, stepping closer. ‘You’ve cut your foot.’

I look down to see a thin trail of blood seep from a graze on my ankle. ‘It’s fine—I must have caught it on the coral. It’s razor sharp.’

A small pinch of concern surrounds her beautiful eyes. ‘Would you like me to have a look? I have a first-aid kit in my room—I can go grab it.’

I shake my head, which feels light, spaced out, at her attention. ‘It’s fine.’ I know it’s just a professional thing—doctors are probably never off duty—but warmth spills through my veins, almost too hot to bear.

‘You sure?’ she asks, and I nod, as unsettled now as I am intrigued.

‘If my leg starts to fall off, I’ll find you,’ I say. ‘So, back to this lesson.’

She looks away from my foot to the chalkboard advertising the have-a-go activities available to guests. Now would be a good time to tell her I’m just filling in as instructor and expecting Pita to return tomorrow. But I stay silent. I’m a private person. My resorts often attract negative press—the last thing I need is news I’ve purchased Lailai leaking before the last honeymooners have departed. They won’t take well to discovering their idyllic hideaway will soon be full of people looking for depraved, no-strings fun in paradise… Nor do I want the renovations disrupted by some pap sniffing out a story of Dempsey-style debauchery. The press love to paint me as a notorious commitment-phobic billionaire, a playboy of pleasure who sells sex in tropical locations, slamming my resorts as hook-up clubs. But if the shoe fits… The wealthy and single need somewhere to mingle, just like the honeymooners. So if it’s legal and consensual, anything goes at a Dempsey resort.

Somehow I don’t think the serious doc here would approve, and, beyond her professional credentials and the fact she rocks a bikini like a Greek goddess and rivals the sun in delivering that feel-good factor, I don’t know this woman.

I grab a piece of chalk. ‘A lesson for one?’ I’m fishing. ‘You’re here alone, right?’

She bristles, her smile slipping, eyes dulling with something close to embarrassment even as she lifts her chin. ‘Yes, I am. Is that a problem? Don’t you do lessons for one?’

Whoa… I’ve touched a nerve. I’d better not probe any deeper, despite being more intrigued than ever. ‘Of course we do. One-on-one it is.’ Thoughts of her and I alone, every possible distraction, flash through my head, revisiting the possibility of a one-night stand. ‘My favourite kind of lesson.’

I don’t imagine the way her breathing speeds up or those lush lips part. Dragging my mind from all the ways I’d like to see her excited and breathless, I wipe down the board with the side of my fist, erasing today’s bookings, and look up. ‘What time would you like? I recommend a dawn paddle if you’re an early bird—sun’s up around six-thirty and the sunrise is amazing from the water.’

‘Um…’ She hesitates, the small wrinkle of her nose telling me she’s not a morning person but doesn’t want to say so.

‘Do you have a slot around nine?’ She shrugs. ‘You know… I’m supposed to be on holiday.’

‘Supposed to be…?’ Interesting… I shouldn’t care that she might be struggling to embrace the island vibe. All she needs from me is a lesson in paddleboarding. But is that all she wants…? Could we be on the same page, both looking for a temporary distraction involving those shapely thighs wrapped around my waist or draped over my shoulders…?

I clear my throat. ‘Of course. You probably work pretty crazy hours at the hospital—nine it is.’ I shelve my curiosity at her revealing statement, desperately trying not to picture her asleep, her gorgeous, naked body relaxed…

‘What name shall I write?’ I ask. ‘Will Doc do…?’

She flushes, perhaps embarrassed that she’s forgotten the basics of introductions. Do I make her nervous? I want to make her other things—turned on, greedy, demanding.

‘Grace. Grace Metcalf.’ She swishes her toes through the sand as she looks down, and I’m gifted with another flash of thigh through the opening of her sarong.

‘That’s a beautiful name.’

‘Thanks. I’m trying to outgrow Gracie… That’s what my sister used to call me when we were young…’ She shrugs, all sexy awkwardness that leaves me wondering how often she flirts, because I’m getting mixed signals.

A groan echoes inside my head. Oh, Grace, Grace, Grace… Why do you have to be so exquisite? So tempting? So…unexpected?

‘Have you done it before?’ I write her name on the chalkboard—the laid-back, low-tech booking system on the island, where most things are done on island time—and try not to notice that she’s stepped closer, so close I detect her floral scent and something purely feminine on the warm air.

‘Paddleboarding?’ Her cheeks darken as if we share the same dark delightful thoughts my open-ended question has unleashed.

No, fucked a stranger on a tropical island.

‘Yes.’ I swallow hard, tamping down the fierce surge of heat in my groin. ‘Are you a beginner?’

‘Oh…yes. I…mean no,’ she says. ‘I mean I am a beginner. I haven’t done it before. But I’ve always wanted to try.’

I can’t help my wide grin. She’s enchanting—sexy as sin but a little reticent, flustered. ‘Well, you’re in safe hands, and you’re all booked in for nine a.m.’

Shit, I’m in trouble; I had this week planned out, female-distraction-free, but that was before I met Grace. I could swap one distraction for another…

No… Walk away. Stick to paddleboarding.

But she’s still here, still tracing her toes through the sand, still looking up at me with those intensely penetrating eyes, which seem to be saying things she’s holding back from speaking aloud.

‘Do you want to go grab a drink at the bar? I’ve finished for the day.’ The words are out before I know what I’m doing. Curiosity, even mutual attraction, a bit of banter is one thing, but drinks with a woman who looks as if she’d run a mile from one of my debauched singles resorts and gets tongue-tied talking to a member of the opposite sex is another thing entirely. A crazy thing. A thing destined to end in trouble…

But would she run? So flirting doesn’t come naturally, or she’s rusty. Doesn’t mean she isn’t interested. I know that look on her face—she’s eye-fucking me, such a contrast I’m way beyond my usual levels of fascinated, although I don’t usually work this hard to unearth a woman’s interest.

‘I… Um…’ She bites her full lower lip, her sexy eyes swooping the length of my body. My blood heats; I’m certain I’ve lucked out. She’s going to say yes, drag me back to her bungalow and be exactly what the doctor ordered for my sexual-frustration problems.

The damp fabric of my shorts clings tighter to my eager cock.

A warm gust of wind chooses that moment to blow over the chalkboard, which I failed to jam deep enough into the sand. We reach for it together. Our hands collide, fingers brushing.

She steps back, her colour high as if I’ve touched her all the ways I want to, not simply accidentally brushed her hand. But that one touch is telling. Need is a roar through my head, every instinct driving my body towards hers proof that we’d be good together. But I hold my ground—Grace needs to make up her mind. Embrace the situation. Declare her interest. Take that mental leap I can see holding her back.

I secure the board, pretending I didn’t notice the skittish way she snatched her hand away from mine as if I have cattle prods for fingers. It’s okay if she wants to ignore our mutual attraction. It’s probably for the best even though hunger settles in the pit of my stomach like a rock.

When I look up, she’s no longer relaxed, her posture more rigid, arms clasped across her waist.

‘I should let you finish packing up…’ she says in lieu of a direct no to my invitation of a drink.

I shrug, hiding my disappointment, my imagination rampant to know how her letting go would multiply her potent magnetism.

‘But…thanks for the offer,’ she says, stepping away and putting another slice of beach between us so the earlier hollowness inside me re-expands.

Looks like I’ll never know.

‘No problem.’ But, for the first time in my life, I regret inviting her for a drink, because I’d settle for just her company over spending the rest of the week watching and wondering from a distance. ‘I just figured as we’re the only two sad, lonely people here, we could get to know each other.’

Who am I trying to convince? Her or myself? I don’t normally give a shit about being alone. I’ve been practically alone most of my life. It must be a reaction to the near constant state of worry over Grandma’s health. Every time I pick up my phone, I’m almost too scared to look at the screen in case what I see changes my life in the most definitive and devastating way.

‘I’m fine being here by myself,’ she says, her eyes glowing bright with a hint of challenge that boosts my desire to unearth the secrets of Grace Metcalf. To see the side of her shielded behind the straight back and the stiff shoulders that she only seems to allow out to play when she smiles or laughs.

I hold up my hands in supplication. ‘Hey, I didn’t mean anything by that—there’s nothing wrong with being single. I personally wouldn’t be any other way. But a guy needs to save face after a beautiful woman turns him down.’ I grin, aiming for levity.

She looks away, turning her face to the sea, a frown pinching her forehead. ‘Sorry—I… Perhaps I’ve been too isolated since I arrived. You’re probably better off without my company.’

It’s only what I’ve just told myself, so why does it leave me cold? Why am I pushing, rather than walking away?

She seems to shake herself, new resolve glittering in her extraordinary eyes. ‘I should definitely try out the paddleboarding.’

‘There’s that word again—should. But I agree. You should. There’s no feeling like it.’ With clothes on. ‘So, tomorrow at nine, and if you change your mind about the drink, no strings,’ I add to reassure her I’m not a creep, even though my thoughts are far from friendly. ‘I’m in that bure at the end there.’ I point to the most luxurious of the accommodations jutting out into the lagoon and connected to the sand by a wooden walkway.

Grace raises her eyebrows, impressed. Her mouth opens and then closes again. I can practically hear her mind working—how is a lowly paddleboard instructor staying in the resort’s most exclusive suite and not bunked up with the other staff? But for some reason she doesn’t ask. If I were a gentleman I’d explain, but I clamp my jaw shut. We might be trapped here in paradise, but it seems we’re not going to know each other, even as friends.

‘See you in the morning,’ I say and saunter away. My back muscles twitch with unfathomable tension. My toes scrunch the sand, each step full of resolve, as if, left to their own accord, my feet would turn tail and return to the enigmatic doctor. What the hell is wrong with me and what will it take to feel like myself again?

One last look?

I stop. Turn.

She’s where I left her, staring at my retreat.

Her eyes lock with mine, widen, the only move she makes.

My restlessness returns with a vengeance. I continue towards my bure, pick up the pace. The attraction is irrelevant. Now I know the doc and I aren’t going to be on intimate terms, I can refocus on work as a distraction. It’s never let me down in the past.

But as I round the bungalow and catch sight of the sunset strike the water, regret clings like the salt drying on my skin. These solitary moments are the only downside to a life of determined bachelorhood. My nothing serious rule stops me inviting a date when I travel—wouldn’t want to give the wrong impression. And, in my experience, no matter how openly I declare my stance on relationships, some women refuse to accept they can’t change me, magically turn me into marriage material.

But not the guarded doc. She couldn’t get away quick enough. It’s a small island. The newly-weds aren’t going to be very good company. It makes sense for us to get to know each other…

My dick pulses at that remembered slice of toned thigh, the curve of her breast above the cup of the shocking red bikini, the frangipani flower in that beautiful hair…

Yeah, I want to get to know her, all right.

I head to my bungalow’s private pool area where there’s also a Jacuzzi and an outdoor shower. There’s something magical about being so close to nature, to swimming at dusk, showering outdoors, the water on my back as I watch the last rays of sun kiss the horizon.

I snort; I’ll be quoting Shakespeare next. But already I calculate my investment in this place tripling.

An image of Grace naked in the pool, her hair floating in the water, her nipples breaking the surface, drags my thoughts from work… A frustrated groan breaks free. I need to get laid.

I toss my T-shirt onto a lounger and turn on the shower. I shove my shorts down my legs, kicking the fabric aside and reaching for the body wash.

I squirt out a measure, lather up and perform my washing routine on autopilot, my mind free to wander back to other business. Bad business. Grace.

She certainly eyed me like a woman interested in the contents of my shorts, despite her rejection. I can still feel her stare sliding down the length of my body, the subtle rise and fall of her chest on a tiny sigh, almost of longing, the way her spangled eyes clung to mine. Searching…

As I rinse the sand from my hair, my body energises in anticipation of the morning’s lesson. Hopefully I can coax out that sexy smile of hers, that playfulness hovering behind the reserve and hesitation she seems to use as a shield.

Then I remember she’ll likely be wearing another stunning bikini, those delicious feminine curves on display…

I close my eyes and grip my semi-hard cock, offering it a few lazy tugs. Tomorrow I’ll determine her interest, once and for all. Figure out if her hesitation is shyness, or indifference. A shame, because we could definitely have some fun while we’re both here at Lailai.

My fist grips tighter, my jerks pulling a little harder to uncoil the tension of my inconvenient attraction to my island doctor. I brace my free hand on the tiles above my head and focus on the images behind my eyelids. The evening sun strikes my back and I succumb to the presence of Grace in my head as I climb the slope towards release.

CHAPTER THREE

Grace

WHAT NOW? DO I chase after the hot stranger?

Instead, I’m frozen with indecision where he left me with a shrug of those beautifully broad and bronzed shoulders, the memory of his manly scent and the warmth of his strong fingers a call to action blaring in my head.

Why did he have to look back?

I was prepared to walk away, to stick to my decision, telling myself I imagined the way he looked at me, the heat in his playful, sea-blue eyes. Lying to myself while the taste of regret soured my tongue.

And then he looked back, and I wavered, because the expression on his face hadn’t been cocky or roguish, the way it had been when he’d teased me, his smile doing things to my insides. He’d looked…lost.

No. I must have imagined it. Professional hazard; I’m always trying to fix people.

I hear Neve and Brooke’s reprimand ringing in my ears.

The Pact.

I’m supposed to be making my girls proud. Not moping around feeling sorry for myself among the honeymooners and trying to forget that I was meant to be one of them.

‘Shit!’

I had a perfect chance to go for a drink with a handsome work colleague, and I blew it. Easy-going Ryan with his sexy smile and his friendly banter offered the perfect antidote to being alone on an island full of in-love couples.

I scrunch my eyes closed, wincing at my knee-jerk refusal, my stupidity, my fear. I’m so rusty the offer of a drink, some mild flirtation and the touch of a hand freaks me out.

I may as well be a bloody nun.

Well, I’m not here just to hide from the consequences and wallow in guilt.

When I open my eyes again, Ryan has disappeared around the side of his bungalow taking his spectacular toned body out of sight but not out of mind. My mouth may as well be full of sand, I’m so desperate to know what’s at the end of the trail of dark hair from his belly button dipping below the waistband of his shorts… How much of the visible bulge under the wet, clinging fabric is his penis? And am I brave enough to find out the answers?

Oh, God, I want to be brave enough.

I can do this, be true to myself, go forwards with courage, and demand more from life. Prioritise passion and adventure. Embrace more than work and obligation and live for all the moments Bryony couldn’t have. Starting with a drink with a stranger and followed by learning to paddleboard.

With determination dragged up from my toes, I trudge across the beach after Ryan.

My reassuring self-talk slows the fight-or-flight impulses firing in my brain as I rehearse what I’ll say to the sexy Irishman.

I would like that drink after all…

When you said drink, I thought you meant coffee…

I’m crap at this so can we just run through our conversation one more time…?

Or perhaps I’ll be honest about my feelings. Mmm… A little holiday flirtation with a man who looks like Adonis and sounds like Aidan Turner with laryngitis. Keeping schtum and not rocking the boat hasn’t worked out. My fresh start should be the complete opposite.

Hi, Ryan, sorry about my freak-out earlier, but if you still want that drink I’d love to. And if you fancy me as much as I fancy you, perhaps we could…

Could what? I’ve never had a one-night stand. How do we travel from strangers to shagging? I bet Ryan knows. My blood pumps harder just thinking about it. About him. About being intimate with anyone other than my ex…

Nausea and excitement battle for control of my body, but I forge ahead with renewed energy. I’ll have a drink with him and see what happens. Easy. And at least I’ll have something more to confess to Brooke and Neve than the books I read while working on my tan and staying hydrated.

Pathetic, Grace, real pathetic.

I step off the sand onto the wooden walkway, practically vibrating with anticipation as my bare feet pad along the sun-warmed timber.

This heady rush is the feeling I hoped to capture all those months ago when I’d woken up to my two-dimensional, mediocre relationship. This clarity is what I longed for when I experienced an epiphany after losing my patient—the fleeting fragility of life, the reminder of my beloved Bryony losing her final battle and how I most definitely wasn’t living my fullest version. If Bryony had survived beyond twenty-three, if she hadn’t died waiting for a heart transplant, there’s no way she’d have lived such a safe and sanitised life.

She’d have trampled me out of her path to go for a drink with a man like Ryan, if she’d had the chance.

Well, I can trample. I owe it to her and myself to find that courage of conviction.

The delicate scents of frangipani and honeysuckle hit me as I skirt the side of the bure, every nerve electrified by adrenaline. I’m momentarily blinded by the horizontal rays of the setting sun, and then I round the corner and jerk to a standstill.

Suck in a gasp.

Freeze.

Ryan is naked under the outdoor shower, one hand braced on the tiles overhead, every toned muscular plane taut, his right arm bulging and flexing with a jerky rhythm that can mean only one thing.

He’s masturbating.

My breath catches, wave after wave of longing coursing through my veins, burning me alive.

I should look away, tiptoe back the way I came on silent feet to avoid embarrassment, both his and mine. But it’s not shame causing my heart to bang at my ribs. It’s lust. Excitement.

Every inch of me incandescent. Bold. Alive.

I moisten my dry lips with the tip of my tongue, my stare raking his wet body—his thick thighs spread, his tight arse, every muscle delineated and bulging, an anatomist’s dream, as his hand works between his legs—his male beauty barbaric, primal, brutal.

My unblinking eyes burn. This is wrong. I’m trespassing, invading a private moment, perving unseen in the shadows, but my feet may as well be glued to the walkway.

My throat grows tight, my mouth flooding with saliva and my aroused nipples graze against the fabric of my bikini top. I press my thighs together to ease the fierce throb that has taken up residence in my ravenous clit.

When was the last time I had sex…? The final months of my relationship with Greg were barren, our excuses of fatigue and stress and apathy mutual.

Panic flutters in my veins as the seconds stretch. I worked myself into a frenzy with all those thoughts of one-night stands and by drooling over Ryan’s sexy dimples and washboard abs, and now he’s going to turn around and tell me to piss off…

I must make some sort of noise, a whimper maybe, because Ryan’s head whips around and our eyes meet, his fierce with arousal, as if he expected my sudden presence, and mine dragged half closed by the most erotic sight I’ve ever seen, even as adrenaline spikes to every cell in my body.

My face flames at being spotted invading his privacy, as I try to battle the arousal taking control of my body. But anyone could have walked around this corner. He wanted to be caught, or perhaps he just doesn’t care who sees him naked and aroused.

What now?

Don’t look down.

What would passion-seeking Grace do?

The old me would run like a startled rabbit, mumbling an apology. The old me would deny her feelings, shoving them down into a sterile version acceptable for others. But no more.

I look down. I can’t help myself.

He’s still tugging at his cock, which is long and thick and every bit as magnificent as I’d imagined. My stare lingers, mind blank, core pulsing with need—his big hand, those warm fingers that made me shiver pleasuring himself, albeit with less brutality now he has an audience.

Was he thinking of me as he jerked off?

‘Oh, my God.’ I must actually say this aloud, because he chuckles, drawing my eyes back to his, which are sparking with mischief and challenge, brows arched.

‘Care to join me, Doc? Or are you happy just to watch?’ Gravel infects his deep voice, which curls around me, sensual fingers teasing, touching and taunting. And I want it. I want his touch on me as much as I want to watch him touching himself, the shock blinding me to reason and sense.

But join him? In broad daylight where anyone could see, not under the covers with the lights out, missionary style…?

‘Perhaps you should shower inside, if you don’t want to be caught.’ My skin tingles, my nipples sensitive to the point of pain against my bikini top, a million feelings pounding me like the waves crashing against the reef beyond the lagoon. My body has disconnected from my overthinking mind, taking over, leaving me no choice but to stand here braced on the knife-edge of a delicious, dangerous decision.

His mouth twists, his smile slipping from cocky to downright sinful. ‘Who says I mind being caught?’

Blood thunders in my ears.

Why not take him up on the offer? Be honest. Don’t play it safe, always doing the right thing, the responsible, cautious, considered thing.

My whole body sags with relief as I admit that I want him and there’s not a reason in the world I can’t have what I want. I inch closer, drawn by forces almost too strong to resist doing something so unlike me. Unlike the old me.

But the new me? The me I came here hoping to nurture… I know what she’d do.

His hand slows, barely stroking, although he’s as hard and proud as ever. ‘You’re free to leave if my show offends you,’ he says with his trademark self-assuredness. I can tell he’s expecting a repeat refusal from me by the challenging curl of his mouth.

‘I’m not offended.’ Turned on to the point of delirium. Sick on my wild, unexpected thoughts. So tempted to take him up on his offer, but not offended.

But I’ve just met him. He’s clearly a man of the world and I’ve slept with one person in my entire life. He’ll see through me, see that I’m unadventurous, a charlatan. A woman who belongs in a nice neat couple, not a ‘wildly passionate one-night stand’ kind of woman. A ‘watching someone jerk off’ kind of woman.

My thoughts turn jagged, risky, caution crumbling, letting go of all the self-imposed constraints holding me captive. I followed him not for a drink, but for what might come after.

I want the kind of passion I see in his stare—raw, hungry, undeniable.

‘Good,’ he says. ‘Then you won’t be offended to know that you’re the inspiration for this.’ He looks down to where his hand now caresses his erection with slow, twisting tugs that make my internal muscles clench and my entire body go up in flames. Why is that the hottest thing I’ve ever heard? That I’ve inspired his flagrantly male display. That he couldn’t wait to indulge in a Grace-themed fantasy. That he’s not afraid to tell me, a complete stranger, that I turn him on, when I struggled to admit to my long-term partner what I wanted.

Because I didn’t know myself. I’d never allowed myself to be that honest. But now…?

I want to know what that feels like for him. I want to taste him and drive him back to that place he inhabited before I interrupted, just with my mouth. I want to be the kind of woman I imagine when he looks at me with sin and hunger in his eyes.

My feet move in his direction, while my brain screams and my pulse races so high, I’m scared of passing out before I reach the shower.

He drops his hand to his side and turns to face me, his angular face taut with arousal and his blue eyes blazing with challenge or need or something else.

Or maybe I’m hallucinating. But I’m past holding back, my body molten with the release.

Rather than dousing me in sense, the first shock of water cascading down my back inflames me higher. Ryan lifts his eyebrows, part impressed, part surprised, his expression shredding my usual caution.

He smells great, arousing—delicious shower gel, hints of sunscreen and seawater and maleness. As if magnetised, my body sways closer until I’m almost touching him, this stranger. This naked, turned-on man.

A head spin reminds me how I haven’t felt this heady, euphoric and frankly terrifying rush for a very long time. But I want to live out wild erotic fantasies with this beautiful man, here where I can re-invent myself.

I want to be honest and brave.

‘Kiss me,’ I whisper, so profound is my desire now I’ve surrendered to the idea.

He reaches for my face, his palms big and directive on my heated cheeks, and then I rise up on my tiptoes, my fingers dragging at his wet hair until our mouths connect.

The first foreign, and oh-so-thrilling taste releases an involuntary moan. I collapse against the wall of muscle that is his chest, my knees soft and my body flooding with wild, wonderful and freeing endorphins.

He angles my head to the slide of his mouth, his lips soft but demanding, exploratory, his eyes fiercely connected to mine, and the spray of warm water a welcome antidote to the inferno burning me alive.

He pulls away to gruffly say my name, a groan, and then we’re kissing again. This is crazy, exotic like this island. I’m sucked under by the waves of desire pounding my body. I’ve never kissed or been kissed this way, with such feral abandon.

My hands find his hips and I tug him out from under the worst of the deluge until my back hits the tiles and he’s a wall of naked maleness and hard muscle trapping me there.

Triumph sings through every cell. Would cautious, serious Grace kiss a naked, aroused stranger she’d interrupted masturbating in the shower? Would she hell. But I’m done with her.

I pant, my grasping hands jerky on his wet, slippery skin as I try to drag him impossibly closer. Here I am, surging against his kisses, bucking against his hips and the firm prod of his erection and practically climbing him, so desperate is my need to be consumed by whatever spell has taken hold.

When he leans back, pinning me with those piercing blue eyes of his, I almost cry aloud. I don’t want this to stop.

‘Condom.’ His breath gusts over my lips. ‘Let’s go inside.’

Condom…?

My brain clamours for a solution to the problem, which feels as wispy as the steam rising from our bodies. But those few seconds are enough time for sense to return like an unwanted party-crasher.

I push at his hips, shoving him a few inches away. No, no, no. I don’t want to be sucked into reality.

‘I shouldn’t have interrupted,’ I say, lips buzzing from the delicious scrape of his stubble. But I don’t want to go back to safety and caution. My fingers curl, digging into the flesh of his flanks and lower back, the only part of me bold enough to be completely honest.

Ryan braces one hand on the tiles above my head and pushes back the wet hair clinging to my forehead with his other hand, his body held inches away from mine so the only contact between us is my hands, still gripping his waist. ‘Do you always do what you should, Grace?’

Yes! I do…

I’m trapped between my bold and honest leap into the unknown and mortification that he sees my failings so clearly.

‘Don’t you?’ My voice is breathy, tinged with the ferocity of my desire. I already know the answer. I see it in his carefree body language and the rakish ease with which he’s embraced the chemistry that led us here.

‘Never.’ His stare pierces me. ‘I do what I want, when I want. That’s why I invited you for a drink.’ His finger traces a line down my cheek, leaving a trail of fire. ‘Why I didn’t stop when I turned around and saw you watching. Why I suggested you join me.’ He drops his hand to his side and steps back as if releasing me to my decision.

My body clamours for the return of his touch and his incendiary kisses, even as I list what-ifs so deeply ingrained, they’re part of my DNA.

‘You should try it,’ he says, ‘now.’ A shrug. ‘Leave or stay, just do what you want, not what you think you should.’

This is it—my call to make.

My brain scrambles with static. What do I want? And can I be honest enough to verbalise my desires? I know what I don’t want. I don’t want to move, because if we go inside, I’ll have time to second-guess and revisit well-worn paths of overthinking.

I sag back against the tiles; I can have what I want. I just have to say the words.

‘I want to watch you finish what you started.’ The words rush from the darkest corner of my mind, bringing with them a lick of shame but a flood of exhilaration. Until I spoke them I didn’t know what I’d say. But they’re three-dimensional, so raw and true they make me burn.

His eyes blaze. He grips his erection once more and slides his hand up and down his length with agonising slowness. I’m envious. I want to touch his beautiful cock.

‘Like this?’ His voice drops an octave as arousal takes him.

I nod, my breathing too thin to generate speech. Shaking off invisible shackles and acting on my desires is so foreign, it feels part of this landscape. A mirage. A fantasy that will cease to exist when I board the plane home. But I’m here in this moment. A moment I created. One I can orchestrate.

‘Yes. Kiss me while you touch yourself.’ I tug his hips closer and curl my hand around his neck. The minute our tongues touch, tangle, I surrender on a protracted sigh, further doubts or cold feet forgotten. I can barely stand I’m so aroused by what I’ve seen and what I’ve said and what I’m doing, caution thrown to the warm tropical breeze.

But even with a wall of determination at my back, tendrils of the old me persist. ‘This is crazy… What are we doing?’ I say in between the hot and frantic kisses I’ve demanded and which make me feel reborn.

Without breaking his pumping rhythm, Ryan rests his forehead against mine and grins. ‘Well, if you don’t know, Doc, I think you need to go back to med school.’

I can’t help a smile. How can he make such a momentous and sexy moment light-hearted? Does it matter what we’re doing? There’s no one else to consider. We’re just two strangers caught up in a perfectly honest moment of mutual lust.

‘Do whatever you want. Ask for whatever you want,’ he says, his breath warm on my lips.

I allow my stare to touch every magnificent inch of his aroused, naked body. I drag in a shuddering breath and cover his pumping hand with mine, learning the contours of his tight knuckles and how much pressure he likes in his grip. I want to know what this feels like for him. What makes his buttocks clench and his steely thighs judder against mine. While our pants of breath mingle, the heat from his body a thick cloud between us, I stroke my thumb over the crown, trace the slit at the top of the silky head, an exploratory move that drags a sexy warning growl from deep in his throat.

As if he’s reached a limit, his mouth mashes to mine, blocking my delicious view. My tongue rushes to meet the bold, thrilling thrust of his, every thought unrelated to Ryan and his mounting pleasure banished from my mind. I’m tempted to slide my other hand inside my bikini bottoms and join him on the race to climax, I’m that heated and slick down there, but instead I slide my free hand between his legs and gently cup his balls. For reasons I can’t explain beyond the fact that it makes every inch of me feel alive and free, I want to see and feel his moment of release. To see him complete what I interrupted, knowing he’s thinking about me while he pleasures himself, and I’m part of this snatched moment.

At the last minute he tears his mouth away from mine to roar my name as he comes, hot jets spilling over the back of our combined hands. His head lolls back in glorious release as he wrings the last spasms from his orgasm in a sight so male, so primitive, my clit throbs with shocking violence before he collapses forward, his head buried in the crook of my neck, breath gusting.

I’m breathing just as hard with euphoria, the rush almost as good as if I’d come with him. And I never want this moment to end. This feeling. This freedom.

‘For fuck’s sake, woman. That was the best hand job ever,’ he mumbles against my skin as shower after shower of elation rains down on me.

I did that. Took a leap. A risk. Made a decision based purely on instinct and impulse. But try as I may to cling to the high, my skin grows cool, goose bumps rising.

What now? Do we wash the evidence from our hands and shake on a job well done? Do we go for that drink and learn superficial things about each other? Do we say goodbye and avoid each other for the rest of the holiday?

I swallow down my questions on casual-sex etiquette, my heart galloping anew.

When Ryan looks up, vulnerability replacing the harsh arousal in his face, my instincts polarise, half of me desperate to kiss him with tenderness the way I would if I knew him beyond his first name, and the other half wishing I’d gone inside with him in the first place so that I wouldn’t have to stand here horny and awkward and covered in goose bumps.

It’s one thing to touch someone else, to kiss someone else, but to have a stranger touch me…? To be that intimate with a man I don’t know having only ever been intimate with one person? Not that he’s offering any longer, of course.

I peel my cooling body away from the heat of his. ‘I should go,’ I say to fill the silence.

Something like disappointment flashes in his eyes for a split second. ‘Should…?’

His question slashes like a whip across my back, unleashing white-hot stings of regret. So I’m still me, then? Still hesitant and cautious. Still overthinking. So much for the new improved version…

When I look up again, Ryan’s face is blank.

Almost of its own accord, my head bobs in confirmation. I need to get away. To regroup and analyse where I went wrong. To probe my instincts, which it seems can’t yet be trusted for all my brave talk of sexual adventure.

Ryan appears oblivious to the cyclone of heat and chills and pressure inside me, which replaces the heady abandon and arousal of seconds ago. ‘Sure.’ He slides his hands from my hips and presses a brief, almost polite kiss to my mouth. ‘Always do what you want, Grace.’

He steps back under the shower spray, water bouncing off his back and shoulders and cascading down his abs to his still-hard cock, his stare free of judgment, but also devoid of the addictive heat as he shakes the water from his face and slicks back his hair.

I waver back and forth a thousand times in those few tense seconds, my triumph decimated by the return of doubts. Now I’ve said I’m leaving, I have to follow through and he’s making no move to stop me. Perhaps this is the hook-up code.

Thanks for the orgasm. Have a great evening.

With heavy limbs, I walk away from his bold nakedness and his bland expression, my mind the only fucked thing about me.

CHAPTER FOUR

Grace

THE BEACH IS quiet at this time of the morning save for the gentle lap of the sea. Propped on his elbows as he looks out to the reef in the distance, Ryan lies stretched out on the sand next to two paddleboards.

He showed up—my pulse trips over itself, the niggle of doubt that he’d stand me up evaporating. Ryan turns, his grin lit with triumph and a hint of relief similar to that now robbing every thought, every question I’ve had since I opened my eyes at dawn. Should I keep the lesson, or assume he’d call it off? Should I pretend last night didn’t happen, or beg for a repeat? Should I stick to what I know, or take leap after leap of faith, until shaking off my reservations and being honest about what I want becomes second nature?

Ryan rises to his feet, uncurling his long limbs with natural grace, his eyes touching my bikini-clad body with heat to rival last night’s too-brief touch of his hands.

‘I thought you’d chicken out,’ I say, something hot and drugging passing between us so I’m acutely attuned to every grain of sand on my feet and every brush of the breeze on the tiny hairs covering my skin. An awareness. An intimacy shared by two people, strangers, who’ve touched each other, kissed each other. Still strangers, but weirdly more because of what we did last night in the shower while the sun set.

‘You thought I’d chicken out?’ He raises his eyebrows, laughter in his eyes. ‘I’m right where I want to be, Grace. Same as last night. Same as always.’

‘Fair point,’ I say with a breathy laugh. The release feels like a sneeze or, better, a mini orgasm, the tension I’ve been holding recoiling from my body and leaving behind a storm of fierce lust pulsing in time with my heartbeat.

We fall into silence.

He’s wearing nothing but board shorts and his tan, his arms relaxed by his sides. I’m reminded how those big hands of his held my face, my waist, my back while his sensual mouth delivered kiss after kiss, his bold tongue duelling with mine, pushing me to higher, more reckless heights until I witnessed the moment of his glorious climax like a woman starved. My breath catches in the back of my throat—nerves replaced by drugging arousal.

His stare slides down my body. My core clenches. Last night I fuelled his fantasies. Drove him to touch himself. I want that passion.

‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘no free show today.’

It’s only when he speaks that I’m aware I’m ogling him back, my focus paused on his lean hips and the bulge in his shorts.

I laugh again, my audible sigh laced with a hint of disappointment. As if watching naked strangers jerk off in outdoor showers is one of my regular pastimes.

‘Shame.’ I glance again at his crotch. ‘I kind of cock-blocked myself last night.’ I look up from his brightly coloured board shorts, a lump of need lodged in my throat. Who am I around him, here in this place? Certainly not the woman I recognise—too contained to rock the boat, too fearful of disappointing people, too scared to demand more than a relationship grown stale, forced and passionless.

Last night, strung taut with unfulfilled desire and the hollow certainty that running back to my room was the action of the old Grace, I made a promise to embrace this thing with Ryan. Properly this time. No more holding back from what I want.

His eyebrows dip in that sexy way he looked at me last night while he rocked into his own fist. ‘Well, today is another day in paradise. Anything is possible.’

He takes half a step towards me, and I look up, his eyes that intense blue of my fractured erotic dreams. At one stage I’d actually orgasmed in my sleep, waking up disorientated and far from fulfilled.

‘I almost chased after you,’ he says, ‘but two brush-offs in a row turns out to be my limit.’ His tone is light, teasing.

‘You have limits?’ I want to touch him so bad, to reach up and kiss him again, but I need to respect the teacher-student boundary.

He shrugs one broad, golden shoulder, humour dancing on his lips. ‘A few. Especially for women who interrupt a good wank, insist on watching and then scarper.’

Heat boils in my face. ‘Yeah, well, no one is sorrier about leaving than me…’ I say, emboldened to be honest by the way he’s still mentally undressing me as if his orgasm barely took the edge off. ‘I kind of…panicked. I was trying to…embrace the holiday-fling vibe, but I messed up, I guess. We should have gone for that drink, first.’

He watches with growing fascination, his eyes moving between mine and my mouth, staring as if entranced by my gobbledegook.

‘Thanks for not standing me up this morning,’ I whisper.

His shrug lifts those broad shoulders, reminding me of how it felt to be crushed against his chest.

‘It’s a small island, Grace.’ His sinful smile is contagious. ‘We were always going to bump into each other, but I’m glad you didn’t allow a little thing like lust ruin a good paddleboard.’

I take a shuddering breath and compose myself while my mouth burns to reunite with his kisses until neither of us gives a toss about paddleboarding. I glance back at the deserted equipment hut up the beach wondering if I could persuade him to rekindle where we left off last night.

Just then, two honeymooners emerge from the palm-tree-lined path that winds behind the hut. Each carries snorkelling gear and flippers in their free hands the other arms wrapped around each other. They stop so often to kiss they can barely walk.

My lungs grow tight with remorse. Greg and I would never have acted that way if we’d come here together. I look away, the comparison stealing my Ryan-induced high. Perhaps my brain is somehow convinced I’m betraying my ex by being intimate with another man, and that’s why I fled last night.

Ridiculous. But my eyes burn as I avoid looking at the couple in love. I want more than regret of my past actions and holding back the unknown. If I want Ryan, I’m the only thing standing in my way.

‘So…’ Ryan grabs the paddles. ‘You still keen for a lesson?’

I grasp the lifeline, desperate to be away from the resort and what it represents—my failure—for a short while. ‘Yes. My sister raved about how she always wanted to try, so I’m definitely keen.’

He eyes me with curiosity so I march to the waiting paddleboards. ‘Shall we get started?’ I ask. The fierce attraction still hums through my veins but, no matter how tempted, I can’t jump a man I met yesterday before nine in the morning, not when I had my chance last night and blew it.

But I can change. Build on what I did last night. I can be honest and daring. Starting with standing on this damn paddleboard.

Face the fear and do it anyway.

That was Bryony’s motto. Every time she pushed herself to do things most people take for granted. Every time she faced surgery, or a prolonged stint in hospital.

Ryan holds up a life jacket, his eyebrow cocked in question. ‘How are your swimming skills? The lagoon is shallow enough for the first couple of hundred metres, but I recommend the jacket unless you’re a confident swimmer.’

‘I’m good—I used to do some lifesaving.’

He nods and drops the life jacket onto the sand.

‘Anyway I’m sure this is harder than it looks, so the chances of me actually standing up on this thing long enough to get out of waist-deep water are pretty slim.’ I scoop the board under one arm the way he picks up his and reach for my paddle.

But he doesn’t relinquish it, forcing me to meet his eyes. ‘What’s the worst that can happen? You lose balance and get wet? Big deal.’

I shrug, my stomach twisted just from being this close to him dressed only in a bikini. My nerves frayed because I want him so badly.

He steps closer, holding my eye contact so I’m aware of every touch of warm air between us, aware of his hand above mine around the shaft of the paddle.

‘You forget…’ his voice dips low ‘…I’ve seen you all wet,’ he says. ‘It’s sexy as hell.’

The ache in my clit returns, liquid heat pooling in my bikini bottoms.

His stare sweeps down my body to my feet. ‘Nice ankle bracelet, by the way.’ His lips twitch, the gesture making me want to kiss him again. Then I’m caught in the piercing beam of his bright blue eyes full of the knowledge that he noticed the delicate chain.

‘Thanks. I had a pedicure at the spa.’ A bonus of my sleepless night, which allowed me to snag the first appointment of the day. I don’t add that I thought of him when I purchased the silver chain now adorning my perfectly pampered feet, imagining his face buried between my thighs, my legs draped over his shoulders, the silver glinting in the sun while I claim everything I want from this man in one big sexual exploration.

Between studying, supporting Bryony and my parents through her multiple hospital visits and meeting studious, like-minded Greg, there wasn’t time for a misspent youth… But I can rectify that with Ryan.

He chooses that moment to release his hold on my paddle. I force myself to focus on his safety talk and technique tips. He applies the same confidence to teaching the nuances of paddleboarding as he did to his one-man al-fresco show last night, switching from flirt to teacher with easy relaxed competence so I almost forget about the wild kissing and the sexy way he stared at me as he came. I try my best to follow his instructions.

We wade out into the warm water and sit on our boards, side by side, Ryan watching me the way an instructor would.

‘Grace—you seem distracted. Are you sure you want to do this?’

Of course I’m distracted—that broad chest with a sprinkling of dark hair I can still feel under my palms, his sexy abs contracting as he kneels on his board the way they contracted as he pumped into his fist, the mussed flop of his damp hair looking exactly the way it did when I left him after twisting that hair in my hands so I could kiss him deeper.

The want inside me bubbles up in a rush so strong, every muscle below the waist clenches.

‘I’m good.’ I groan in my head. I’ll never get through this lesson without falling into a sexual-frustration-induced coma. ‘Just nervous that I won’t be able to do this and I’ll make a fool of myself.’

Now why did I say that?

‘Do you have to be good at it the first time? I’m the only person watching. I don’t care if you can’t stand up perfectly straight away. I fell plenty of times on my first attempt.’

I sigh. ‘That came out wrong—I don’t have to be perfect…’ Liar. ‘I just meant…it looks easier than it probably is.’ My justification burns my cheeks. Of course I have to be perfect. Perfect daughter, perfect sister. More old habits.

Ryan nods, accepting me at face value, and continues the lesson.

My first attempt at kneeling on the board causes a wobble and a squeal. Ryan abandons his own board to steady mine while I attempt the move once more. Even with him holding it, it shifts beneath my knees. ‘Ah…’ I laugh, reaching for his muscular shoulder to steady myself but then I find my balance and look up to find him smiling.

‘You’re going to conquer this—I can tell by that determined look in your eye. Trust your instincts.’ He releases his hold on the board and miraculously I stay in place, no embarrassing face plant into the ocean.

I mimic his paddling actions and try not to notice his beach-perfect body and how he could probably advertise water sports, or anything else, for a living.

When my heart rate settles and we’re gently paddling side by side, I risk conversation. ‘How long have you been doing this?’ I ask.

‘Oh, a few years. I find it very relaxing.’ His lips press together and he doesn’t elaborate on how long he’s worked on the island. ‘The conditions today are perfect, hardly any wind.’

‘So is it time to stand up?’ I say, because I can never go easy on myself. Push, push, push.

‘So impatient. We’ll master kneeling first. There’s a small cove just past the lagoon. Let’s head in that direction.’

Ryan must adjust his pace to paddle next to me, because I’m certain he can go faster than the snail’s pace I’m keeping, but every stroke feels more certain, my paddle planted a little more surely, adrenaline seeping away to make way for euphoria. I’m out of my comfort zone but doing it anyway.

Twice in twenty-four hours.

‘So do you live here, on the island permanently?’ I ask. He’s a conundrum of a man—competent and confident, but laid-back and patient. Plus he’s a gentleman. He could so easily have made this morning awkward, but he’s professionally providing the lesson, with only a few inappropriate heated looks.

‘No, I’m new here, like you. I’m filling in until the regular instructor returns from visiting his family on the mainland. To be honest, I travel around so much, I’m not sure where I call home.’

So he’s a professional beach bum… ‘Do you have family back in Ireland?’

He shakes his head, his easy smile dimming. ‘My grandma is my only family, and she lives in London. What about you, Dr Grace?’ he says, expertly shifting the focus my way. ‘It’s a fair distance to come to teach first aid and learn how to paddleboard.’

My titter of laughter sounds evasive. I can’t confess I should have been on my honeymoon to a man I’m contemplating having casual sex with—he’ll know I’m an amateur. I don’t want to scare him and his strings-free offer away, and if he’s in his thirties and still single, he’s clearly anti-commitment.

Or perhaps he’s had his heart broken…

Familiar regret at the enormity of what I did—the bills, the disappointment, the broken promises—shuts down my bout of curiosity. Admitting why I’m here means admitting that I settled for so long in a relationship I knew lacked vital elements. I should have simply enjoyed the view, of both Ryan and the ocean, and canned the conversation.

Now I have to brazen it out. ‘It is a long way, but Fiji is a place on my bucket list and Taito made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.’ Not a lie. ‘The hospital is a fair way away and he wants all the staff to be able to manage emergencies, including CPR, basic first aid and use of the very expensive new resuscitation equipment. You included, I’m afraid, so don’t try and get out of my first class tomorrow.’

‘I’ve told you before, I do what I want.’ He grins, winks and I wobble again, so dazzling is his hotness.

‘Your life must be one long holiday,’ I say, glancing at a neighbouring island lined with palms in the distance. ‘I can’t imagine a more idyllic location.’

‘I’m not complaining.’ But his eyes don’t carry the same degree of contentment as his words. ‘Plus the company is great.’

I smile but the sense he’s being as cagey as me tenses my shoulders. But this is how casual must work—superficial facts only. No talk of everyday life or real feelings…

‘Look at the fish.’ He points down at the crystal-clear water.

I look where he points, give my eyes time to adjust, wait for the surface ripples to settle and then gasp. The clumps of rocky reef below us teem with brightly coloured tropical fish darting this way and that as silver ribbons of sunlight highlight the surface currents. ‘Wow. That’s amazing.’

‘I know, right. We have snorkel equipment back at the resort. This is the best spot if you want to give it a try.’

I watch the fish dart and dive for a few minutes, my face aching from my smile. ‘Is this where you cut your ankle? Is it okay, by the way?’

He stares and I grow uncomfortable at my fussing over a graze. ‘I, um…only ask because it’s easy for cuts like that to become infected.’

‘It’s fine, thanks for asking. You don’t have to worry about me, you know,’ he says.

I laugh. ‘Sorry…habit. And you may as well benefit from my being here.’

‘Don’t apologise. I’m just not used to the attention. So, ready to stand?’

‘Sure.’ But his cryptic response fires my curiosity—what happened to the rest of his family? Why is he single? And am I one of a long list of women to watch him masturbate in the shower?

He pushes up from his kneeling position to standing, making it look effortless. I copy his moves, follow his instructions, desperate now to master this for Bryony and to prove to myself that I’m more than a woman willing to settle, a woman who sticks out like a sore thumb on an island full of couples, a woman who runs from the offer of easy, commitment-free and probably amazing sex.

The wobble of the board under my feet intensifies, shunting my pulse sky-high, but before I know it, I’m standing.

‘Okay, keep your eyes on the cove, not down at the water,’ he says.

Flooded with adrenaline, I focus on the horizon, as he suggests, making small pushes with the paddle as I head for the beach.

The cove is little more than a patch of white sand nestled among the palms. I almost comment on how romantic it is, but then I remember who I’m with—casual and romance don’t go hand in hand. I would know this if I’d actually had full-blown strings-free sex rather than the one-sided, frustrating encounter I orchestrated last night.

Ryan rests his paddle on his board without so much as a wobble. ‘Do you want to explore the cove, look for coconuts? Or if you prefer, I can leave you to your own devices now that you’ve mastered paddleboarding.’

Disappointment pinches under my ribs. I want him to stay. I want to kiss him again, to touch all the parts of him I didn’t get to explore because I held back, and not stop until we’re both sated and spent. If I allow him to go back to the resort alone, I’ll send a message I don’t want to send.

I stare at the deserted beach for a couple of beats, my mind racing with his unspoken subtext and what I want.

I’d love your company if you don’t have somewhere else to be.

I want to kiss you again…pick up where we left off.

The words should be easy after what we shared, but instead I hear myself saying, ‘I should let you get off to your next lesson.’

Bugger. Why is this such a hard habit to break?

‘Should you?’ he says, deceptively soft.

I’m focussed on staying upright so I can’t see his expression but I feel his eyes on my skin as I paddle into the shallows, his words from last night in my ears.

Just do what you want, not what you think you should.

In my peripheral vision I see him step from his board and pick it up. I do the same as he wades in my direction, fine tremors skating down my legs to my toes as I meet him at the water’s edge.

I look up.

His eyes burn bright blue with intensity. ‘I’d like to stick around if you want the company, but it’s your call.’

‘I’d like you to stay,’ I say, sticking with the honesty that served me so well in the shower. ‘I’m enjoying your company.’

‘Great. That’s decided, then.’

I barely notice the breathtaking cove, fringed with palm trees, as Ryan carries his board up the beach and lays it on the sand. I place mine next to his, releasing the ankle strap while I grow hot and hyper aware that he’s close. Before I can turn to face him, he grips my fingers, the shock intimacy of the gesture enough to jerk my head up into his line of vision.

I don’t know what I’m expecting, but his face is relaxed, as if holding my hand is no big deal. And it shouldn’t be, because we’ve kissed. Touched. But the wobble in my legs and the catch of my breath makes it a big deal. It feels as if we’ve been propelled from strangers to something full of possibility. Something tantalising, promising the kind of passion I hoped to find.

When he moves to walk further up the beach I tug him to a standstill. I step closer, my nipples aching against the fabric of my bikini top. I crave the heat and desire of last night as he pleasured himself and stared at me with challenge, or this morning when his eyes raked my body from my head down to my ankle bracelet. I want it all.

‘Thank you.’ My husky voice sounds sexy and sensual.

‘What for?’ he says.

‘For being such an awesome instructor. For not making this morning awkward… If I knew you were such a gentleman, I would have gone inside in search of that condom. I’ve regretted it ever since.’ I reach for his shoulder, stand up on tiptoes and press my mouth to his before he can speak. If I can stand on that paddleboard, I can do anything.

The kiss tastes salty from the ocean spray and still foreign, but it instantly transports me back to that moment in his shower, where I was too turned on to think straight, too boneless to act on anything other than instinct. And brave. So wonderfully brave.

Ryan grips my upper arms and pushes me away so our lips part before I’ve had a chance to devour him the way I want, but he holds me firm, still close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body, which douses the sting of what feels like rejection.

‘Ever since I saw you on the beach on your first day wearing this bikini, ever since that mind-blowing hand-job, my thoughts have been anything but gentlemanly. Don’t make me out to be something I’m not.’

‘Okay, I won’t.’ My body incinerates so I’m certain the droplets of seawater clinging to my skin must be evaporating. ‘Why don’t you tell me about those thoughts, just so I’m clear?’

His eyes narrow. A tiny twitch of his decadent mouth. He looks as if he’s about to drag me in for more kissing, but he holds back. ‘Are you sure you want to do this? Because I can tell you that I wish I’d tasted your hard nipples last night. I wish I’d peeled off your bikini and seen you naked, touched every inch of you, tasted every inch, even after I came so hard it felt like the back of my head blew off.’ His expression is pained, as if he can’t quite believe he’s talking instead of ravishing me on the sand. Or allowing me to ravish him, as I planned.

‘I’m sure. I want you to do those things.’ I slide my arms around his waist, the heat of arousal burning through any self-recrimination I feel at applying the brakes. ‘I was stupid last night. Overthinking.’ But he makes me feel invincible, challenges me to be honest and demand what I want. Or perhaps it’s this place. The pact. Bryony, my guardian angel. Who knows? All I know is that, with him, I’m reminded that my heart beats, that I’m breathing fresh air and that the sun warms my skin.

I slide my hands up his back, crushing my breasts and sensitised nipples against his firm, warm chest. ‘Have you changed your mind?’ I can barely utter the words for fear of his answer.

He offers me that lopsided grin of his. ‘Feck, don’t be daft.’ He lowers his mouth to mine in a rush. He groans. I slide my fingers into his hair. His arms tighten around my waist, hauling me up so I’m crushed to his hard chest.

I surge into his heat, into the kiss with the same abandon of last night, pressing as much of my body to his as I can, the skin-to-skin contact adding rush after rush of arousal to my frenzied bloodstream so I can barely stand.

Kissing him here, on a deserted beach with only the sound of the lap of the waves onto the shore, releases a pressure valve. My heart climbs into my throat, its wild thudding robbing me of the ability to think, leaving me with only sensation. A place I want to wallow and linger until everything about my life feels this right.

I’m aware of movement and then my back hits the warm, dry sand. A sigh of almost painful relief leaves me. Ryan’s thick thigh slides between my legs and I spread them wider, rocking my pelvis to rub myself and relieve the worst of the fiery tension burning my clit.

He breaks free, looking down at me, a halo of bright sun behind him. ‘You’re so sexy. This bikini, watching you move all morning…torture.’ His mouth covers mine once more and then slides down my neck, the scrape of his stubble on my skin making my toes curl.

‘I couldn’t get you out of my head all night.’ His lips glide over my skin as he talks.

‘Me neither. I dreamt about you.’ I grip his shoulders as if I don’t want him to get away, riding his thigh with abandon while I pant to get oxygen, because need has enslaved me until I see a glimpse of the woman I was last night, a woman I fully intend to embrace. But then my mind blanks as Ryan peels the triangle of fabric from my breast, plumps the flesh in his palm with slow thoroughness and covers my peaked nipple with the heat of his mouth.

I cry out, not caring that, distance-wise, we’re not that far from the resort. That other holidaymakers could at any time happen upon this tiny cove from the land or the sea. That I’m half naked on a beach with a man I barely know… But I’m done overthinking. I know enough—his integrity in seeking my consent and his concern about protection.

I’m about to ask him if he has a condom in the pocket of his board shorts when he releases the tie of my bikini top and shifts his mouth to the other breast, which is achy and impossibly more sensitive than the first.

Spontaneous combustion threatens. I’m drugged on the hormones raging through me. Paralysed. Cries trapped in my throat.

All the while he’s laving and sucking, his hand rubbing the other breast, fingers toying and tweaking, his eyes are open and either glued to the attention he’s lavishing on my breasts or watching my reactions to his touch. When I moan aloud, my hips jerking against his thigh so I rub both myself and his hard length, he repeats the soft stroking touch of his fingers on one side while he adds extra pressure to the other nipple by pressing it between his tongue and the back of his teeth. I’ve never been so turned on, every part of me tingling. An out-of-body experience.

‘Ryan…’ I don’t know what I’m asking for, I only know I don’t want him to stop worshiping my nipples, but I simultaneously want more, want everything he has to give. I’ve forgotten my pledge to touch and explore every inch of him, selfishly wallowing in his glorious attentions. But he’s started a chain reaction in me and I can’t stop.

He’s rock hard against my hip but makes no move to hurry this along, as if he has all day to play with my breasts. Not that I’m complaining, because I’m too breathless, the tension building inside too overwhelming, the sight of him sucking and toying with rapt focus and sporadic grunts too erotic when combined with the incredible sensations.

‘Ryan,’ I gasp again. I want this. I want more. I want everything. But he ignores my incoherent pleas and continues, his face intense, as if he’s enjoying what he’s doing too much to stop. If I’d known this last night, I wouldn’t have run.

I think of my dream, my sleeping orgasm, think of my fantasy of him licking between my legs with the sun on his back. I cradle his head, holding him tight, my fingers tangling in his decadent hair as my hips buck against his erection to their own, innate rhythm. The orgasm sneaks up on me, building with as much slow care and gentle stimulation as Ryan delivers to my nipples, and with a final grind of my clit against his thigh I detonate, slow rolling waves of biting pleasure consuming me until I’m spent and weak and almost part of the sand at my back.

I can’t speak, but I want to sing hallelujahs. I’ve never had a nipple-only orgasm before. Is it just the excitement of a new partner? Someone different? The sexual frustration of last night? Or is Ryan some sort of sexual god rising up from the ocean for my pleasure?

When I open my eyes, he’s gently blowing a stream of warm breath over one nipple, which is damp from his mouth, his face still intensely focussed. Then he looks up. ‘That was so fucking hot. I’ve never met a woman who can do that. You are so sexy…’

I’m still panting but I laugh too. ‘I didn’t know I could do that. You’re clearly a breast man.’ After the depth and intensity of that orgasm, I’m surprised he didn’t feel the island shifting.

‘I’m a Grace man.’ He trails his hand over my stomach to my hip, his touch sure and firm and all-consuming so I want him to lavish my entire body with that degree of focus. I direct his mouth back to mine and then slide my hand to the front of his shorts where he’s straining and hard against the fabric.

‘Do you have a condom in your shorts?’ I ask, grinding the damp, molten heat between my legs on his thigh. Still needy, still wanting.

He kisses me for a beat, two, three and when he pulls back, his face tight with arousal, I deflate, disappointment a bitter taste on my tongue because I see the regret in his startling blue eyes.

‘I don’t. I didn’t want to assume. I thought I’d been…I dunno…friend-zoned or something. Thought I’d got you all wrong and you didn’t actually like watching some bloke jerk off over you. Now I hate myself for being so…’

‘Chivalrous?’

He snorts. ‘No, not that. I wouldn’t use that adjective to describe myself. I was going to say stupid.’ A small frown settles between his brows. He reaches for my bikini top, covering my still-tingling breasts with the triangles of fabric. I take the ties from him and finish the job of refastening the bikini, my high draining away with the knowledge he’s now the one applying the brakes.

He peels his body from mine and I instantly miss his heat, his strength, his size. He sits up and faces the sea, his arms propped on his bent knees, giving me some privacy to pull myself back together.

‘I want you, Grace, don’t doubt that for a second. It’s just…’ He looks back over his shoulder, and I try to force my body into some sort of relaxed, easy-going posture so he can’t sense the disappointment boiling in my veins. ‘It’s just I don’t want to give you the wrong idea about me. I’m not looking for a relationship. I don’t really do relationships.’

Ah…so this explains why he’s single.

‘Neither am I, believe me. I thought we were just going to have sex, you know—no strings, a good time, holiday-fling kind of sex…’ My mouth feels all sorts of alien speaking these oh-so-casual words, but it’s a good feeling. Liberating. Because we want nothing from each other but pleasure, and now I’ve stepped out of my own way, I’m all in. ‘That’s what I want, anyway,’ I add so there’s no confusion.

He watches me closely, perhaps looking for reassurance. But I didn’t come here looking for love. A sarcastic huff blasts in my head. I came to the wrong resort for that. But now we’ve started this, my mind clears for the first time in what feels like years. I want what he’s offering. Fun in the sun. A fling with an expiry date. No big deal, just the kind of sex I already know is going to be amazing, from the couple of bases we’ve already covered.

I can’t help the smile that dances on my lips. ‘But if you want to go getting all serious about it… I love you, Grace…let’s get married, Grace…’ I bump his shoulder with mine and grin wider.

His eyes search mine for a few seconds longer, and then he chuckles, slings his arm around my shoulders. ‘All right, then.’ His ‘T’ is hard in that Irish way so it sounds as if he said ‘ten’. He must be accentuating the accent, playing up the brogue as if he knows how incredibly sexy it sounds.

‘We’re agreed—casual sex it is.’ He tugs me close and presses a firm heated kiss to my mouth, a kiss filled to the brim with the sexual frustration I know he must be feeling because I’m there too.

I pull back, my voice playful. ‘Although if you want to get beyond second base, you might want to start carrying a condom in your shorts.’ I wriggle free of his arm and stand. ‘Come on—we need to cool off.’ I walk to the shore, leaving him seated.

At the water’s edge I turn back, catching the moment his stare rises from my butt. ‘And so neither of us has an excuse next time—’ I tap one of the triangles of fabric of my bikini top ‘—I’ll tuck one into my bikini.’

With a frustrated groan, he collapses back onto the sand.

CHAPTER FIVE

Ryan

WHEN I ENTER the bar that evening, after another call to the nursing home, my burning eyes seek out Grace in the crowd. Wearing a simple denim dress that cups her delicious figure, she’s sipping a colourful cocktail and talking to the French couple that arrived at Lailai today. Laughing and carefree, her face alight with animation, she shifts something in my chest. A cold hard block of concrete there throughout my call to my grandmother’s nurses. Just the sight of her makes me feel lighter somehow, dragging a small indulgent smile to my mouth.

I take a deep breath, trying to dissolve the gnawing and ever-present worry, despite the staff’s reassuring prognosis. But I can’t seem to shake the deep-seated kernel of dread that wants to sprout and expand.

What if I lose her? My grandma.

Despite the distraction of delightful and lovely Grace, that haunting vulnerable place exposed near the surface like an open wound coils my muscles tight and presses on my temples with sickening pressure.

I break out in a fine sheen of sweat.

I’m seventeen again. Terrified for my grandma, who has just suffered her first stroke. Alone in the frigid dark. A homeless boy in a man’s body.

The panic makes me latch onto Grace, a foreign, almost overwhelming urge to get her alone taking hold. Her company will crush the worst of the trepidation and impotence eating me alive. It happened on the beach last night and again this morning, her sometimes hard-won smile, her grit and sense of humour an anaesthetic.

And I crave that numbness with every daily reminder of my grandmother’s frailty, even though I know not to trust another soul for my happiness.

Been there done that with my absent parents.

I prowl to the bar, wound tight, every nerve ending vibrating. I could play my owner’s card. Clear the bar of everyone but Grace and me. Touch her freely, watch her eyes glaze with passion, splay her out on the table under the stars and pound us both to oblivion until my troubles exhaust themselves. Instead, I signal Charlie, the barman, for my usual, which he produces with a speed that pleases the businessman in me, and that’s where I hang my pinballing thoughts.

Business.

The resort is perfectly placed to be the next Dempsey success. Some minor refurbishments to the communal areas, installation of Jacuzzis and plunge pools near the spa, a designated nightclub and some specialised rooms for the voyeurs and other kink-lovers and it will be good to go. A second call, to my assistant, confirmed that work can commence as soon as the current guests vacate. I take a drag of my beer, waiting in vain for the rush of satisfaction.

Thinking about catering to people’s kinks draws my stare back to Grace. She’s still laughing with the French couple, but she can’t stop looking my way any more than I can clear her from my head.

But focussing on her is better than dissecting my thoughts. She makes a delectable conundrum. She looks classy, almost regal. When she lets go of her reserve, she’s gutsy and determined, but beneath the surface there’s a passionate goddess, candid and dauntless.

Who knew the hesitant woman who baulked at a drink with a stranger would enjoy watching me jerk off in the shower? How spectacularly uninhibited she was on the beach earlier… And how stupidly unprepared I was.

I spin my beer bottle on the bar, my fingertips against the cool glass—which is slick with condensation—the only part of me not on fire. Would she enjoy being watched, or having others watch her orgasm, the way she’d watched me? As if it fascinated her… As if her honest desires shocked the hell out of both of us.

Need roars through my blood. Here, away from the reality I managed to dodge in our conversation this morning, we can indulge in pleasure. Just what Dempsey resorts sell. But the idea of her at one of my establishments, her openness and fearless abandon, turns my stomach inside out, that possessive urge peaking once more.

What the hell…? I blame sexual frustration.

I’m still staring, trying to keep the alien feelings from my expression. The French couple smile in greeting before moving to the small dance floor, which is open to the gardens and lit by thousands of sparkling lights wound among the rough sawn timber rafters of the roof.

Grace cocks her head, her pretty eyes searching my face as if equipped with X-ray vision. ‘Why don’t you join me?’ She taps the stool next to hers in invitation.

She sees it, the turmoil I battle.

‘What are you drinking?’ I ask, sliding onto the seat. ‘It’s making my teeth ache.’ The purple cocktail is garnished with slices of star fruit and a perfect frangipani bloom. I lean my upper body close enough to detect her light floral scent and take an indulgent deep breath, which goes some way to calming the storm in me. ‘You smell fantastic, by the way.’

She laughs, offers that little smile—half hesitant, half sexy temptress—that makes my blood pound and renders me hard. There’s a very satisfactory way to banish my demons and have Grace all to myself. Then I remember I need to confess my true identity. Dammit—for the first time in years I wish my life were as simple as the beach bum I’ve been acting like since I arrived on the island.

Acting…? Try hiding.

‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘While you were teaching paddleboarding, I spent the afternoon back at the spa. I had the most relaxing aromatherapy massage.’

Irrational jealousy grips me, my mind whirring to remember if we have any male staff working at the spa. Then Grace clinks her glass against the neck of my bottle. ‘Cheers. This is the house cocktail. A Beachcomber.’

‘Sláinte,’ I say, taking a long refreshing swallow of my beer, resting my arm next to hers on the bar so our skin brushes and her pupils dilate. I could be making her relax in other ways, ways that would help me forget my woes for a while.

Her perceptive stare raises the hairs at the back of my neck. There’s an inquiry coming. I see it in the set of her mouth against the tip of the paper straw in her drink.

‘You seem troubled tonight—is everything okay?’ Her voice is low, soothing, her compassion creating what feels like a safe space for any confession I might have.

A dangerous feeling.

My first instinct is to reject her caring side. I stopped myself relying on others years ago, learning those bitter lessons every time my grandma’s door slammed closed on my retreating mother. That’s why her concern over my grazed ankle made me uncomfortable.

I could lie, assure her everything is fine, but there’s something about her that I like. A lot I like, actually. She’s real and honest…smart and charming. And now we’ve crossed that line into a physical connection we’re trapped on the island until our flights home. I can risk giving her a few breadcrumbs.

‘I’m fine. Just distracted,’ I say. ‘My grandmother, the one I told you lives in London, is unwell. I’ve just finished talking to her on the phone.’

‘Oh, Ryan, I’m sorry to hear that,’ she murmurs with understanding. ‘Is it serious?’ Her hushed voice wraps warmth around me, when I hadn’t realised I was cold.

I swallow, look away, not ready to confirm something so definitive, even to myself.

‘She had a stroke a year ago, which left her weak down one side. It’s not her first stroke. She has diabetes. But she’s been fine, until recently.’ A small, unbidden grin tugs at my mouth when I think about the powerhouse of a woman who raised me solo after my grandfather died not long after I came to live with them. ‘Her mind is still sharp, and fortunately her memory was unaffected.’ I chuckle, shaking my head. ‘I’m in my thirties, but she still has enough gumption to lecture me on wearing sunscreen and remind me that she’d like a visit when I’m next home in London.’

I wince, guilt lashing me. The promise came easily—she’s all the family I have. The only person to truly care about me, unconditionally. The only person to never let me down.

Why am I still here? I could leave tonight…first thing in the morning…any time I want, my private jet on standby at the airfield on the main island.

‘Well, that’s a positive,’ says Grace, ‘She sounds like a formidable lady—you’d best do as she says.’

We share a smile, my throat thick with memories and ghosts and what-ifs.

‘So what changed recently?’ she asks.

‘She’s developed a chest infection.’ I sigh, spilling more details than I thought I’d share at Grace’s gentle probing. ‘She’s on antibiotics. Oxygen.’ I curl my fingers into a fist, the exposed feeling back. ‘It’s… I hate feeling helpless.’

Grace nods, her warm hand settling on my arm, her touch a comfort I didn’t know I needed. ‘It must be hard being so far away. But I’m sure she’s in good hands.’

I take a swill of beer to stop myself blurting my darkest fears. She’s so easy to talk to, opening me up when I’m normally a closed book.

A big part of me, the part my grandmother picked up and nurtured after my mother left, wants to jump on the first flight home and see with my own eyes that she’s as well as she claims on the phone, to ensure she’s receiving the best of care, even though I know she is, because I ensure it. And the other part—the part I bury deep inside—wants to pretend, to deny the ever-present knowledge that if anything happens to my grandmother I’ll be truly alone.

My chest aches again, the pain reminiscent of so many times in my past.

I glance around for a distraction. Then I wish I hadn’t. The place is wall-to-wall doting couples. Yeah, they all look loved up for now, but what happens when times get hard, when inevitably people lie and cheat and hurt each other? How many of these newly-weds will clutter up the divorce courts in years to come and how many children will be casualties of their parents’ disappointed expectations and changes of heart?

I must make some sort of snort of disgust.

Grace follows my line of sight. ‘What? You don’t approve of PDA?’ She watches the French couple smooch on the dance floor, a dreamy look on her face.

‘I have nothing against PDA, I just—’

‘I know you don’t “do” relationships,’ she says, quoting me. ‘But you must see how romance is good for business in a place like this. You know, they’re getting married here in a couple of days.’ She inclines her head towards the dancing French couple. ‘How perfect is that?’

When I don’t comment, because I’ve clamped my jaw shut, she swivels on her stool, returning her undivided attention my way.

‘I’m sorry.’ She smiles. ‘I don’t mean to rant—I have happily married parents as role models, and, according to my sister, romance novels are an antidote to all the crap in the world…’ She trails off, perhaps at the look on my face.

I grit my teeth. What can I say? That I don’t believe in the bullshit people call love? That I hate what people do in the name of something that’s supposed to be hearts and roses and for ever? People like my parents.

‘Did you get hurt…’ she asks ‘…by a woman?’ At her hesitant question, all the sparkle dims from her eyes, replaced by a pained expression as if she were said fictional woman witnessing the fallout of her heartbreaking actions.

I hold in my skeptical snort. I don’t want to insult her; she clearly believes in all this happily ever after bullshit. But the truth is, I’ve never risked my heart in a romantic way, so I have no idea what she’s talking about.

‘Don’t look so sad,’ I say, swigging my beer and looking away from the compassion in her eyes, as if she truly cares that my heart might lie in tatters. ‘Nothing like that—I just don’t do feels or rings or romance. Never have.’ Spoken aloud to this woman, with her deep well of empathy and her optimistic outlook, the words seem small, beneath me, irrelevant. Perhaps simply because she’s under my skin in a way I’ve never experienced.

I decide on a dollop of truth.

‘I didn’t have happily married parents as role models—my father cheated on his wife with my mother and then returned to his family when he discovered she was pregnant with me. I’m afraid I’m a cynical bastard.’

The empathy in her eyes scrapes at my skin, exposing the root of my trust issues.

Abandonment.

No doubt the doc here knows all about ways to screw up the human psyche the way my mother deserting me to chase after my father screwed me up. Good thing she’s an anaesthetist, not a shrink, or I’d have to watch what I let slip.

‘I’m not sad… I thought you might be grieving and I guess I can’t help helping people—occupational overspill, I’m afraid. And something you said…you know, earlier…’ She flushes, her skin that pretty pink that tells me she’s remembering this morning. ‘I realised this must be quite a difficult place to work if your heart was broken.’ She tilts her head in the direction of the dance floor where several couples have joined the French in slow-dancing to some sappy love song.

I swallow, breathe a little easier. ‘Well, thanks for your concern, but I guess I just don’t believe in love. Half of these couples won’t last. Hopefully it will be before they procreate and bring another life into their mess.’ I watch her eyes round, astonishment flickering in their depths telling me she very much does believe. I grit my teeth and ponder saying more. I’ve been as clear as possible about my expectations, but I know from experience that some women see my stance on commitment as some sort of personal challenge…

I contemplate wrapping things up early, going back to London to spend time with Grandma. Most of my business with the experienced and competent team here can be conducted over video call. But…

My body plunges back into that dark and cold place of uncertainty, chills chasing away the warmth of a tropical evening. It’s not just unfinished business with Grace holding me back. Going home may confirm things I can’t bear to be true.

Incredulity hovers in Grace’s small smile. ‘You’ve never been in love?’

I shake my head, the pain lurking under my ribs since I hung up the phone returning with a vengeance. I take another drag from my beer. ‘Nope, but don’t feel sorry for me—I do all right with the ladies.’ I wink, trying to steer us back to casual sexy banter. Back to numbness.

Of course she sees through me, her eyebrows raised in question.

I sigh. It seems Grace and I are going for absolute honesty. ‘I can’t imagine giving anyone that kind of power. It seems unnecessary in this day and age. Have you been in love?’ I say to divert the spotlight.

Now why did I ask that? I don’t want to know. It’s irrelevant. And I can guess the answer. Her dreamy expression alone tells me she’s a romantic.

My question dissolves her small frown, and she takes cover herself behind an elaborate swirl of her cocktail. ‘Just once.’ She pauses. ‘I’ve not long been through a break up. And…well…’ she swallows hard ‘…I was the one who ended it.’ The pallor returns to her cheeks, her eyes taking on a haunted look that speaks of her guilt and concern for her ex.

Compassionate Grace, with her should and shouldn’t, likes to do the right thing. She cares, about people, their needs and wants. It’s who she is. Breaking someone’s heart must have taken some serious soul-searching. I grow restless in my seat. I want to drag her out of here and kiss her so hard, we forget everything but what happens when we’re together.

‘I’d hate to think that my ex would abandon relationships altogether because of my change of heart. I guess I was extrapolating.’ She looks up from her drink, her eyes shining.

My heart thuds with foreboding. What kind of man would Grace throw away? What did her ex feel, loving this woman? Was the risk worth the heartbreak she’s worried she inflicted?

The block in my chest twists and turns, the burn making me wince.

This is why I prefer simple.

‘See, my way is easier,’ I say. ‘If you avoid all the feels and rings and romance, you avoid all that messy stuff.’ I’m trying to lighten the mood, predominantly for myself, because otherwise I’ll have to probe those tender places she’s exposed simply by looking hard enough, but then I catch her expression and sober. She’s devastated to be the cause of someone’s pain—she worried about my grazed ankle, for fuck’s sake.

‘Of course, you still care about him.’ It’s a statement, one that sees me sucking another swallow from my beer bottle to counter the acidic taste in my throat. What the hell? I haven’t even had sex with her and I’m…jealous. I’m never jealous. This all-consuming Grace obsession needs dealing with, before it grows out of control. Hopefully I’ll be less enslaved once we exhaust this chemistry we have brewing.

She fiddles with the straw in her cocktail. ‘Yes, of course I care. He’s not a bad person—we just wanted different things in the end.’

‘I can’t imagine you with a bad person. You’re too smart for bullshitters.’ Which begs the question, what is she doing messing around with me, the ultimate playboy, as the press would have her believe?

My stomach turns and I slide my unfinished beer onto the bar. She doesn’t know who I am. She doesn’t know my reputation or how I make my livelihood, because I’ve been evasive.

She offers a small sad smile I want to kiss away. My fingers curl into my palm. I can’t believe I’m probing her past regrets instead of convincing her single really is the best medicine. ‘So why did you break things off with this good man? Wasn’t what you had with him real?’ I ask, a metallic taste in my mouth. I can’t imagine Grace leaving when the going got tough, not with her wide vein of determination…

Not like some. Selfish people who only think about themselves. People who commit to having a child only to abandon them when it no longer suits.

I try to relax. Now isn’t the time to dwell on my parents. And her answer, her reason, doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t care, but I’ve never met anyone like her before and I’ve no idea what to do with the relentless way she fills my head, my blood, makes me as unsettled as I am infatuated.

She looks up, her expression earnest, reminding me of the way she looked at me last night in the shower. ‘I wanted more than he did.’ Truth blazes in her pretty eyes, stilling me, even my heartbeat.

‘More?’

‘Yes. We’d been together a long time, but we’d both lost our way somehow, as if both of us were no longer feeling it but still going through the motions. We prioritised work over our relationship, rarely making time to connect. It began to feel like a friendship. An obligation. And I realised I was more committed than him.’ She swallows hard and I want to hold her, but instead I force myself to listen.

‘Then one day I had an epiphany, and I knew that staying with Greg was the easy option, but I’d always wonder if I’d settled. I wanted to be braver than that, open to the possibility of finding more, not that I’m in any hurry.’ She takes a huge gulp of her drink while I stare.

It’s the most fearless, honest thing I’ve ever heard, and I’m struck dumb for a few seconds. Then curiosity wins out.

‘More of what?’ If I wore a collar I’d be running my finger under it. On the beach earlier she said she only wanted sex—that I can do. And I quashed her idea that I’m a gent or chivalrous.

Grace shrugs, drains the remnants of her drink. ‘I don’t know… Sparks. Passion. Something extraordinary. Something that makes me feel alive. Something my future partner and I prioritise as first in our life. Isn’t that the way love should be?’

I shrug, dumbfounded. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘That’s right—well, that’s how I think it should be. Just like my sister’s romance novels.’ She laughs. ‘Don’t look so worried—you’re not in any danger.’

The pounding in my head feels dangerous. I’ve never met anyone so fearless, not afraid to admit what she wants and to risk everything to find it. Is she scared of nothing?

She leans closer, her stare dancing with mischief and sensuality. ‘You see, I want all the feels, and the ring, and the romance,’ she whispers, quoting me again, her hair brushing my neck. ‘So you are perfectly safe.’ She glances at the dance floor, swaying to the music.

Panic courses through my veins—I knew the first time I saw her that she wasn’t my usual type, yet I wanted her anyway. But, reality check. Despite her recently leaving a relationship, we’re on the same page. And wanting what she wants isn’t a character flaw, no matter how much our core beliefs differ. We’re on holiday for all intents; by nature this is a fling. And then we’ll go back to our real lives…

I ignore the way my skin seems to prickle, hollowness in my gut. ‘That’s good to know.’

‘And when I’m ready,’ she says, ‘I’m sure I’ll find it. But for now,’ she stage-whispers, ‘I have a condom hidden in my dress and I want to dance.’

Her sexy smile sends my blood thrumming enough to distract me from the irrational and entirely selfish spikes of jealousy for some future guy lucky enough to be the answer to Grace’s dreams.

But dreams are pointless; I know first hand. Hope, wanting something, relying on someone for your happiness, rips out whatever heart you had, over and over again until all you can do is patch the ragged hole left behind.

Perhaps I should counsel her on her folly. Give her the benefit of my jaded wisdom…

She stands, takes my hand and heads towards the tiny dance floor. Her hand feels small, but sure and steady. Reliable and competent. I can’t wait to see the doctor in action tomorrow.

We attract a few looks as I pull her close—the staff know my identity and the mushy newly-weds probably think it’s cute that we, the island’s only singles, found each other.

Another victory for true love.

My ribs pinch again, despite her assurances. I swallow, strangely livid. Irrational, because all she’s done is accept my usual commitment-free spiel in her understanding, forthright way. I should be relieved. But, why do I feel I’m running but can’t get ahead of myself?

After a few minutes of swaying together to the beat of the music, she looks up, hesitant. ‘I feel I should tell you something. You’ve been honest with me about what you want… So I want to be honest with you.’

I wince; I’m a cagey, untrusting bastard who hasn’t yet confided my true identity…but now’s my chance. She’ll tell me her secret and I’ll confess mine. We’ll laugh and then fuck and I’ll shake off whatever spell Grace cast and be back to myself.

‘And if you want to, you know, stop carrying things around in your shorts, then I’ll totally understand.’

‘What are you talking about? I’m totally happy with the contents of my shorts.’ The foil packet may as well be radioactive; it’s burning a hole in my pocket. I’m so aroused, so blown away by this surprising woman and all her contradictions, I can’t think straight, let alone concentrate on the riddles coming from her kissable mouth.

She lifts her chin. ‘Well, I’m sure you’re…used to casual sex.’ She whispers the last words in an adorable display of respect for our privacy. I want to tear her out of here right this minute and hide her in my bungalow until the end of the week.

‘I know how holiday resorts work,’ she says. ‘Fresh bodies delivered every two weeks… The hunky paddleboard instructor must see quite a lot of action.’

I bristle. I have seen a lot of action; I’m thirty-six, for fuck’s sake. Yet for some reason I can’t get my head around, I want to shock her, to make her as unsettled and knocked sideways as I feel every time I’m with her. ‘It’s not Ibiza, Grace. It’s a honeymoon destination.’

For now.

‘Oh, yes.’ She laughs. ‘Well, I’ve only had one sexual partner and that was my ex. So I just wanted to be upfront about it, like you’ve been with the “no relationship” thing, so that our expectations are aligned.’

My face goes slack with shock. The fact she’s a serious relationship person and that for some reason she’s chosen me to test out a fling with should send me running. Instead, my mouth wants to twitch into a smile, while heat builds in my gut. She seems to think she’s somehow lacking because of her…lack of partners, rather than the sexiest woman I’ve met. No wonder I’m completely enchanted.

I stoop lower, press the side of my face to hers, until the smell of frangipani fills my nose. My lips hover near her ear, but I don’t make contact the way I want. ‘You can orgasm from nipple stimulation alone,’ I murmur. ‘I’m not remotely worried about how good sex is going to be between us, so no need for the heads-up.’

The air around us feels like a furnace. I’m inebriated on Grace, my head actually light with need to slake every impulse I’ve had since we met, free and unfettered. I’m lost in her eyes, the scent of her hair, the memory of her pleasure-racked body splayed out on the golden sand…

‘Neither am I,’ she whispers, her eyes heavy-lidded with desire and sexy determination, a baser version of the way she mastered the paddleboarding this morning…before she shattered in my arms and called my name. Her voice is husky, arousal a palpable force around her when she asks, ‘Wanna get out of here?’

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