Her chest lifted in a tremulous sigh as she started breathing again and turned her head.
‘Nobody is surprised,’ she’d read.
Well, they were wrong; she’d been. Self-disgust left a rancid, metallic aftertaste in her mouth as she asked herself, Why are you surprised? You saw what you wanted in him, not what was there. He’s a man, and you were an easy lay.
Anger and devastating hurt clawed at Lily’s throat as she struggled to swallow a sob. Hands clenched, her nails gouging deep into the soft skin of her palms, she turned her hard, glittering stare on his sleeping face.
At sixteen she’d seen through him; she’d had more sense then than she did at twenty-two! Even if he had assumed that she was perfectly all right with one-night stands, he was engaged, newly engaged, for God’s sake!
On the brink of waking him, confronting him, Lily pulled back, breathing hard as she struggled to regain some control. Would venting her feelings of outrage, would the satisfaction of confronting him, be worth exposing her own humiliation? It would be tantamount to admitting she was a naïve idiot who believed in soul mates and true love.
Anything, she decided, was better than that!
Shaking from head to toe, she pushed back the covers, freezing like a creature caught in the headlights when he groaned. She waited, heart hammering, until his breathing had settled into a deep regular pattern again before standing up.
Naked, she moved around the room, shooting wary glances at the sleeping figure as she gathered her clothes. She dressed in the bathroom, not daring to put on the light, and slipped like a thief into the early morning. It felt furtive and sordid, but then, she reflected grimly, it was.
It wasn’t until she was on the tube that she realised she had lost one of her earrings.
It wasn’t the only thing she had lost. But what Lily didn’t know then was that she had also gained something...
CHAPTER ONE
FOR THE FIRST two days of her holiday Lily had put on a sundress over her bikini, applied some clear gloss to her lips and a light smudge of eye shadow before walking, sandals in hand, along the white sandy beach. She’d joined the other guests in the dining room, a structure with a roof but no walls. In the evening, guests could eat and listen to music provided by a talented in-house pianist, while watching the sun go down over the ocean as they sipped exotic-looking, but lethal, cocktails.
Pretty much idyllic with one small but significant negative: Lily had no one to share the experience with. This was not a problem for her, just other people, it seemed. So this morning, she’d decided to have her meals on the patio of her beach-front bungalow.
‘Just ring through if you’d like lunch here too, miss.’
Lily smiled at the maid, Mathilde, who had come to collect her breakfast things. ‘I thought I might explore a little, walk into town maybe, so afternoon tea would be better and I’ll have my dinner here.’
‘Alone?’ The maid looked almost as disapproving as her mother would have.
Lily nodded firmly.
To say you couldn’t move without falling over honeymooners was a slight exaggeration, but the adult-only luxury resort was, unsurprisingly, geared towards loved-up couples. The only other singleton Lily had encountered was a chatty middle-aged travel writer. While it was interesting to know that the island had once belonged to Denmark before they sold it to America, another lecture over dinner tonight did not appeal.
And besides, these days being alone was something of a treat. Until you were a mother, she mused, picking up her towel and setting off along the white sand in the opposite direction to the maid, you could never quite grasp how much your life changed.
Not that she’d change it, she thought, her expression softening into a warm smile as she thought of her daughter. Motherhood might not have been something she’d planned, but Lily could not imagine her life any other way now. She missed Emmy so desperately, it actually felt as though she had a body part missing. But there was a guilty pleasure in spending half an hour on her nails and a couple of hours reading without interruptions.
Still, a new laptop—the third prize in the magazine competition—would have been a more practical option.
‘You can’t pass up a holiday in a tropical paradise!’ Her mother had been outraged by the suggestion.
‘But Emmy...’
‘You think I can’t look after my granddaughter for a week?’
‘Of course you can. But I couldn’t possibly let you...’