Minus their clothes, and her inhibitions?
Luke shut his eyes as his exhausted body revelled in being horizontal. Claudia felt stiff as a board but it was bliss to lie down and he could already feel the tug of sleep pulling at the hazy hold he had on consciousness.
How many times had they lain in her parents’ bed as kids, watching reruns of Claudia’s favourite television show, The Love Boat, while their parents finished up for the night? She’d always offered to let him watch something he wanted to but he hadn’t minded—as long as whatever they were watching had ads, he was happy.
How many times had Tony, the head chef, who had been at the Tropicana for all its forty years, personally brought them up his speciality Hawaiian pizza? And how many times had he woken to his dad picking him up and carrying him to his bed next door?
But so much had happened in the intervening years to put distance between them. He’d gone away—far away. He’d rarely been back as he’d fought to establish himself in a dog-eat-dog industry. He’d got married. And divorced. He’d refused to come back and play when the resort was handed to him. He’d disagreed with her vision.
In short, he’d changed.
But Claudia? Claudia was still the same girl she’d always been. He’d thought less of her for that this last decade but, lying here with her now, he was immensely pleased that she was still the same old Claude.
Except she was so quiet and rigid. Taut as a bow. He wished he knew the right words to comfort her. The time when they’d been close and their conversations had been easy seemed a million years ago now.
He’d spent a decade in the cut-throat advertising game where men and women alike fought tooth and nail for an account. There wasn’t a lot of softness, of emotion, in the advertising business. Nobody comforted you when you lost an account—if anything there was a certain degree of triumph at someone else’s misfortune, the scent of an opportunity in the offing.
God knew he’d witnessed the pointy end of it three years ago after being the golden-haired boy for so long.
None of that helped him with right here, right now. None of that equipped him to deal with a grieving Claudia.
‘Was it awful?’ he whispered.
Claudia tensed as the whisper seemed to punctuate the silence like a blaring trumpet. She’d been trying not to think about that night. Trying to keep busy and organise. Trying to look ahead, not back. Not think about the howling wind and the sounds of destruction that not even a large underground cellar had insulated them from.
Her face scrunched up in a most unpleasant fashion as the fear rolled over her again and she was pleased he was behind her. A tear rolled down her cheek as she relaxed back into him.
‘I was so scared,’ she said, choking on a lump high and hard in her throat, trying to hold it all back but failing because Luke was here. ‘I knew we were all safe down in the cellar but...it was so loud. And it destroyed everything.’
Claudia paused as the next thought formed. It was too awful to speak aloud. ‘What if I can’t do it?’ she whispered. ‘What if I fail? What if I let everybody down?’
She started to cry again and Luke finally understood the true root of her anxiety. Claudia had spent her whole life keeping everyone happy—their parents, the locals who relied on the resorts for their economy, the tourist industry. She’d spent her entire adult working life at the resort juggling all these responsibilities.
And, if she wasn’t careful, she was going to crack up under the pressure.
‘Shh,’ Luke said, his arm tightening around her waist as he absently kissed her neck. ‘Shh.’
Claudia cried harder then. It felt so good to have him here. To lean against him for a while. To feel his lips brushing against her neck as he assured her over and over he was here. Right here. She felt as if she’d been juggling so many things alone for so long, trying to make the place a viable concern. Trying to be true to their parents’ vision and prove to him it could be done.
And it was nice that he didn’t say anything else, didn’t try and fix things so she’d stop crying. Throw out some trite words about her being strong and how she could do it. Because deep down she knew she was strong; she knew she could do it. She was just having an extraordinarily weak moment, and his being here, putting his arms around her and letting her cry was exactly what she needed.
So she cried. She cried until there were no more tears left and she drifted off to sleep.
THREE
Luke slept too. Unfortunately not the deep, dreamless sleep of the severely jet-lagged. The sleep his body was craving. Whether that was the total chaos his diurnal rhythms had been thrown into or the fact that he was draped around warm, soft woman he wasn’t sure. But his sleep was disturbed with fevered images cavorting through his head.