Their eyes tangled as they both shared the same moment of relaxed banter and for a few seconds Emily’s heart seemed to skip a beat—several beats. Her mouth went dry and there was a strange roaring in her ears.
‘Have you...? Have you...?’
‘Have I what?’
‘Have you...got any idea as to whether there are any last-minute things that might need doing at the hotel when we arrive...?’
She barely recognised the breathlessness in her voice, but at least she had managed to drag the conversation back down to Planet Earth—although when he lowered his eyes and moved fractionally further back she felt herself missing that moment of warmth that had suddenly and unexpectedly ignited between them.
Leandro wondered if she might just scrabble in her multi-purpose handbag and extract her laptop computer so that she could hide behind it.
‘I’ve appointed some good people to oversee all the building work. Everything should be in pristine condition when we arrive. Bar cutting a ribbon, the place should be up and running and ready for its first happy holidaymakers to arrive.’
‘Its first extremely wealthy holidaymakers...’
‘Are you telling me that you disapprove of people who have sufficient money enjoying expensive holidays abroad?’
‘Not at all.’
But bitterness had found its way into her voice. There had been a time, when she was growing up, when she had been on those sorts of holidays. She could barely remember them—she had made great strides in blanking those memories out of her head—but right now they crept back in. Those holidays as a child, when she and her parents had gone to expensive hotels in expensive destinations.
‘No, of course I don’t,’ she said in a more normal voice. ‘After all, if your hotel is fully booked then it provides countless jobs for the locals, and I know from reading the literature that it’s all going to be eco-friendly. The food will be locally sourced...everything’s been cleverly done to cause as little disturbance as possible to the natural environment...’
‘You’re beginning to sound like a tour guide,’ Leandro said drily.
He realised that he would miss this about her—her ability to absorb the bigger picture of any deal he undertook, to transform it into much more than a money-making exercise.
What was she thinking...handing in that letter of resignation?
He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration and shifted in his seat. However much he paid, there was a limit to how much space was available on an aircraft, and right now he wanted to walk about, flex his muscles—do something highly physical to counterbalance the restlessness inside him at the thought of her dumping him.
No, he amended mentally, she wasn’t dumping him. She was moving on to greener pastures.
It was a notion that didn’t make him feel any better. Greener pastures with some guy she could barely bring herself to mention! Was there something wrong with the man? He felt there probably was or she would have pulled out a wallet full of photos by now, however tight-lipped she was by nature.
‘Perhaps that might be my next job,’ Emily quipped without thinking.
‘So you will be getting another job after you’re hitched to this man of yours...?’
He wondered where the time had gone. They would be landing in under an hour and he felt as though he could have carried on talking to her for another eight.
‘Possibly,’ Emily murmured vaguely. ‘Gosh. Is that the time? I must go to the ladies’...freshen up... I can’t believe the time’s gone so quickly! Literally flown past...!’
Leandro scowled and watched as she slipped out of the seat. Keen eyes followed her hands as she smoothed the prissy shirt and readjusted the equally prissy jacket. She was as slender as a reed and he wondered if she worked out.
He turned to gaze out of the window, down at the bank of clouds. He was finding it hard to get his mind off the woman. Usually on long-haul flights he could devote his time to work. Huge amounts could be achieved with the luxury of not being interrupted. He glanced down at his laptop and realised that he had barely skimmed the surface of what he had optimistically intended to do.
He was in the act of snapping shut the laptop when he looked up and saw her returning from the bathroom.
For a few seconds, he was deprived of the power of coherent thought. She had brushed back her hair and done away with the sensible bun. Instead she had swept it into a low ponytail which hung over one shoulder like a gold, silky rope. Her hair was long. Much longer than he had imagined. She had also done away with the jacket, and her clinging tee shirt, while still the height of modesty, was sufficiently tight to show off the shape of her high, small breasts.
Emily didn’t want to look at him as she walked back to her seat. She felt conspicuous and she wasn’t entirely sure why, because her outfit was hardly revealing.
‘Your turn.’ She addressed the armrest. ‘It’s now or never.’
Leandro was grappling to find something to say. For the first time in his life he was lost for words as he mumbled something before sliding past her.
The plane landed and the passengers were disgorged into an early evening which was still sticky and warm.
‘We need an interconnecting flight to the island,’ he said to her. ‘I have a private island hopper on standby.’
He fought an insane urge to release her hair just to see what it looked like loose. It joined the host of other inappropriate thoughts that had recently afflicted him and he cursed himself yet again for looking at a woman who was taken by someone else. There were plenty of fish in the sea, he had always thought, for him not to be bothered with trying to catch one that belonged to someone else.
But he wasn’t trying to catch her, he reasoned firmly to himself as they cleared their bags and were ushered to the adjoining strip where their plane awaited them. He was simply trying to work her out—and if he happened, in passing, to notice how crazily attractive she was, then who could blame him? He was a one hundred per cent red-blooded male after all!
She moved with a calm, unhurried grace that didn’t try to draw attention to itself. In the closed confines of an office it was something he had never really noticed before, but it was evident now, when she was surrounded by open space.
He was aware of her asking questions about their flight to the island and joking nervously about the reliability of such a small plane, which looked barely big enough to hold a handful of people, and he was aware that he was responding in a perfectly natural manner. All the time his rebellious mind was on a rollercoaster ride.
What would she look like without those clothes on? With that long vanilla-blonde hair spread across a pillow and that half-smile of hers inviting him to take her? Her body would be smooth and supple and pale, her breasts small and shapely, with rosebud nipples... He wondered what they would taste like. The thought of filling his mouth with one of them brought him back down to earth with an agonising bump just as they boarded the light plane.
‘I’ve never travelled like this before.’
Leandro looked at her. Already, outside, darkness had descended abruptly, and the violet colours that had streaked the sky had faded into deep velvet blackness. As the little plane taxied down the runway and took off like a small, buzzing mosquito they could have been anywhere in the world. Anywhere hot. The temperature was in the eighties and Emily’s face was shiny with perspiration.
‘In a small, dangerous object hardly bigger than a washing machine and with the engine of an underpowered lawnmower?’
‘Please don’t say that.’
Leandro laughed with genuine amusement. ‘Don’t worry. This plane wouldn’t dare drop out of the sky with me on board.’
Emily relaxed. His voice was light and teasing and she felt some of her nerves about the short flight begin to ebb away. ‘I had no idea you had such power over inanimate objects,’ she returned in similar vein, because it distracted her from a worst-case scenario that involved them all plummeting to the ground in a disarray of twisted metal.
‘Reassuring, wouldn’t you agree? I know the pilot personally. He’s excellent.’
‘Have you ever been in something as small as this before?’
‘I can go one step better. I’ve flown something not dissimilar...’
‘You haven’t?’ She found she was totally absorbed by what he was saying. His lazy, teasing gaze held her spellbound.
‘When I was sixteen.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
Leandro chuckled and threw her a superior look that was strangely boyish. ‘Flew over my father’s ranch in a light aircraft which he kept securely housed out of reach of curious juvenile hands—or so he fondly imagined.’
‘You stole your father’s plane?’ She grappled with the twin notions of living on a ranch which housed its own personal light aeroplane and Leandro as a teenager, breaking and entering to get his hands on it.
On the back burner were all her fears about being on such a tiny plane, about having to spend a fortnight in his company, about what lay ahead of her beyond that...