Emily smiled reluctantly and cradled the wine in her hand. She allowed herself to be amused by his rendition of the photographer who had tried to get him into various artificial poses, and the journalist covering the feature, who had stumbled over her words and asked him the same question several times.
By the time their starters had been brought to them—casual hors d’oeuvres, because neither of them had the appetite for anything more substantial—they had moved on to a more serious conversation about the effect the article would have on business and then to the wider topic of the effects of tourism in small, undiscovered places.
Even talking shop, she was aware of him in ways she had never been before—or had never thought she had been before.
Almost without her being aware of it, her eyes took in the smallest changes in his expression, the movement of his hands as he lifted the wineglass to his mouth, the way he had of leaning back in the chair, half smiling, head tilted to one side, listening to her when she said something...
Leandro was beginning to find the work chat tiresome. So many other areas of conversation were up for grabs.
‘There’s something I feel I ought to tell you,’ Emily began uncomfortably when the wooden board with their starters had been cleared away and there was a lull in the conversation.
‘I’m all ears.’ Leandro sat forward and looked at her with dark intent. ‘Of course if it involves an animated discussion of world events, then I might find my attention drifting...’
‘It’s always interesting to talk about what’s happening in the world,’ Emily said. She looked to find, with some surprise, that she had finished her glass of wine and, following the direction of her eyes, Leandro leaned across to pour her a refill.
‘I shouldn’t,’ she murmured, acquiescing.
‘Because you might trip again? I might enjoy coming to the rescue... I did last time...’
There was no mistaking the flirtatious innuendo even though his face was perfectly serious, as was his voice.
‘I’m not the sort of woman who has time for knights in shining armour,’ Emily told him crisply, but she couldn’t meet his eyes and instead chose to focus on the attractive displays of hibiscus flowers that dotted the bar counter. ‘And I happen to find world events fascinating. I guess, from what you’re saying, it’s not the sort of thing you like talking about with the opposite sex!’
‘I can’t say I have known many of them who would have had the remotest clue as to what was happening outside their immediate range of vision.’ Leandro raised his eyebrows with wry amusement. ‘So what you’re telling me is that the boyfriend isn’t your knight in shining armour?’
‘I understand why you’re curious about my...my situation...’ Emily mumbled. ‘I know you think that I should be more...excited...about the whole getting married thing...’
‘Ah...’ Leandro settled back and waited for her to continue. ‘It all seems a bit sudden,’ he prompted as the silence lengthened.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see their food being brought over to them with all the smiling enthusiasm he had taken note of over the past few days. It couldn’t be happening at a worse time. He didn’t want her to retreat behind any more banalities about the state of the world.
Restlessly he waited as platters of food were placed in front of them. Fresh fish, plantain, plates of local sweet potatoes, yam and aubergine.
‘You were saying...?’ He resumed the conversation when the waiter had faded away. He was keenly aware of her deliberate attempt to avoid catching his eye. Curiosity ripped through him—not a mild stirring of interest, but a sharp, biting feeling that raced through his veins like a shot of pure adrenaline.
‘Oliver and I go back a long way...’ She cleared her throat, focusing on how she could placate his inquisitiveness with just enough of an explanation. ‘I mean, he’s been abroad working, but when he returned we picked things up...’
‘Picked what up? Hot sex?’
‘We don’t all see sex as an answer to everything.’
‘I’m curious as to why you’re with the man.’
‘It’s something of an arrangement,’ Emily told him, without inflection in her voice. ‘Something that suits us both. We get along fine with one another...’
‘You’re marrying for convenience because you “get along”? There must be more to it than that.’
‘I’m not into romance,’ she said with a trace of bitterness in her voice. ‘I’m into...security...’
‘Explain.’
‘There are no more explanations, Leandro,’ she told him pleadingly. ‘I’m your secretary. I don’t have to answer these questions, but I’m doing it because I know you’re curious and I know what you’re like. You won’t give up and we’re stuck here...’
She concentrated on the food on her plate and felt his eyes on her, burning a hole straight to the deepest part of her where her thoughts were hidden.
‘So what do we do about this situation?’ Leandro drawled, closing his knife and fork on yet another fantastic meal.
‘Well, I will, of course, carry on working for you until my notice is up. I’ll try and source my replacement before I leave, obviously, but if I can’t find anyone you’re satisfied with, then I’m going to leave anyway.’
‘I wouldn’t have it any other way!’ He spread wide his arms in a gesture of magnanimous generosity. ‘Let’s go for a walk on the beach.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘It’s an exquisite night. Do you hear the insects just above the sound of the water lapping on the shore?’ He allowed her a few seconds to appreciate the imagery. He hadn’t been aware that he had such a poetic streak to his personality.
‘A—a walk?’ Emily stammered.
‘Or a dip in the sea. There’s something special about swimming at night.’
‘I definitely won’t be doing that!’ Emily said, horrified at the idea.
‘That’s fine. We’ll settle for just the walk, in that case...’
She wondered how she had managed to be railroaded into this when, fifteen minutes later, she was standing on the beach with him. There was a slight breeze, but nothing to deflect the warmth of the night. The sky was clear, with the stars out, and the sea was just a silvery body of water.
Leandro had rolled up his trouser legs and kicked off his shoes, which were lying somewhere by the little outcrop of rocks leading up to the hotel gardens.
‘You’ll need to take those sandals off,’ he suggested, turning around to look at her, a tall, dark, shadowy looming mass of pure muscle and undefined, exciting threat. ‘There’s nothing worse than sand in your shoes. Very uncomfortable.’
Reluctantly Emily slipped off the sandals and dangled them in one hand. Leandro reached out, removed them from her loose grasp and tossed them in the general direction of where his own shoes were.
‘Don’t worry, they’ll be fine. Enjoy the sensation of sand between your toes.’
The hotel beach was long and unspoiled. As the hotel compound was left behind them the broad strip of sand, banked on one side by the dark water and on the other by an equally dark mass of tightly packed coconut trees, assumed a strangely intimate air.
Jittery, Emily lurched into an awkward, stilted conversation about something trivial she had read about online that was happening back in England. A dreary story concerning two celebrities and an on-screen feud that had ended in fisticuffs. After Leandro’s amused remarks about his girlfriends taking no interest in world affairs she had felt suddenly dreary and dull and pedestrian in her interest in what was happening on the big stage, although trying to raise a laugh about a ridiculous piece of showbiz gossip hardly seemed an improvement now.
She petered out into awkward silence and only realised that he had stopped walking when she glanced sideways to find no one next to her.
Bemused, she turned around and looked at him. He was standing perfectly still, arms folded. In the darkness there was no way that she could decipher the expression on his face.
‘So...’ he drawled.
‘So?’ She felt a little shiver ripple through her body, and of their own accord her disobedient legs jerked into action and headed slowly in his direction, until she was standing right in front of him, staring up into his dangerously sexy face.
‘What are we going to do about our...little situation...?’
‘What situation are you talking about?’
‘You know exactly what I’m talking about, my dear secretary.’ A light gust blew some strands of hair across her face and he brushed them back and then kept his hand where it was, by her ear, which he proceeded to caress idly.
Emily had never experienced anything quite so erotic in her life before.
She had been in two relationships—if they could be called relationships—in all her twenty-seven years.