‘I know it’s hard to see,’ she said. She knew that all too well. It broke her heart, seeing what had become of what had once been a lively, vibrant reef. ‘But this is why we’re here. You’re doing the right thing, putting this right before the building work starts. Not everyone would.’
Guy shook his head. ‘Looks like we were too late.’
‘Maybe not. I’ve seen other reefs recover.’ Not many. Not often. But she had fresh young coral growing in the lab, waiting to be transplanted out. ‘The situation’s bad, but not hopeless,’ she said as she steered them around the coral, back towards the little dock on Le Bijou. ‘We have to try.’
* * *
Seven years hadn’t seemed so long until he went down under the surface of the water and saw for himself the evidence of how much time had passed. How different the world was now compared to the last time that he had been here. How something that had once been beautiful had been so completely destroyed. Meena had said that maybe the reef could be saved, that they at least had to try. But he could see for himself that it was a lost cause.
When Meena had denied his applications for the permits he needed, he’d not been able to see it as anything but an inconvenience—and an expensive, time-consuming one at that. But now he could see why she was so concerned.
He looked around the island after he had waved her off in her boat and tried to imagine how it would look when the resort was finished. He had artists’ renderings and a three-dimensional model, but they couldn’t tell him how it would feel to lie on the beach with the resort behind him and the sea creeping towards his toes.
Could he lie on the sand, imagining what was happening to the crumbling coral below the sparkling water? That was why he was going to hire Meena, he reasoned. It would be her job to worry about that. Not his. And, now that he had seen her out here, he was satisfied that she knew what she was doing and he shouldn’t have to worry about it any more.
Except, he owned this island now. He was always going to worry about it. He wondered, not for the first time, if he had made a mistake when he had bought it. He looked back at his thought-process; he’d been so sure that he was making a rational decision, but the more he pondered it the more he realised that he just couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else having it.
He remembered the first time they had come to the island. Meena had mentioned it when they’d been sitting in the back of a different boat, on their way out to a group dive at the resort he’d visited before—back when he’d just finished university, had been an apprentice in the family’s global, multi-million-dollar business, trying to impress his parents. Before he’d started his own company, trying to earn their respect if he couldn’t have their love, instead being accused of trying to undercut them and steal corporate secrets. Long before he’d realised that it wouldn’t matter how hard he tried: he would always be a disappointment to them.
That summer he’d noticed the beautiful dive instructor—of course he had. But, in a large group, he hadn’t had a chance to speak to her. So, when he had spotted a space beside her on the boat, he’d jumped at the opportunity. They’d chatted as they’d motored through the waves out to the dive site. He’d not been able to take his eyes off her: the way her eyes had lit up with excitement as she’d explained the dive to him. The way she’d gestured with her hands to emphasise what she was saying. The passion in her voice as she’d spoken about the reef ecosystem.
They’d been diving at one of the larger reefs with the group, a regular stop on the tourist train. He’d wanted to see what was on offer at the other resorts on St Antoine, still trying to find his place in the business for which he’d just found himself responsible decades before he’d expected it.
‘
If you want a quieter dive site,’ she’d said, ‘there’s an island I love—Le Bijou.’ ‘The jewel’. ‘I could take you out there some time, if you wanted.’
If he’d wanted? He was fairly sure that what he’d wanted had been written all over his face. He’d been too young, too green in business and too in love to have mastered hiding his feelings.
Anyway, back then, he’d had no reason to. He’d been free to fall for Meena. And he had—hard. And then he’d gone back to Australia and had waited for her to call. To email. To turn up on his doorstep as they had arranged. But she hadn’t. He’d never heard a word from her.
Because she’d been lying in the clinic, with no idea who she was, never mind her feelings for anyone else.
And no one had called him about it, because no one had known about him. They had been so careful to keep their relationship a secret. She’d said that it was because he was a guest at the resort, the owner’s son, and she just an employee. Because the conservative society of the island would judge their relationship. Would judge her for having a relationship with a white guy from a wealthy family.
She’d been worried that she would lose her job for breaking the rules. That the gossip that would follow her around the island would be unrelenting. He hadn’t pushed her then because it hadn’t occurred to him that he needed to. He’d gone back to Australia full of plans for their future, and when she hadn’t turned up he’d assumed that she’d changed her mind about him. Her mobile number had stopped working. He couldn’t ask about her at the resort without risking getting her into trouble. So he’d had to let it go.
Except he hadn’t, had he? He’d buried his feelings in drink, had partied harder than he ever had before. Convinced himself that he was over Meena. He had started a relationship with a woman he’d met in a nightclub, who’d agreed that all he needed to cheer himself up was her and a bottle of something potent.
And it had worked, for a while. They’d distracted each other from the pain that had driven them to numb rather than face their feelings. Until the morning that he’d woken in a too-quiet flat to dozens of missed calls, and realised that something was horribly, horribly wrong.
And now it turned out that Meena hadn’t abandoned him at all. The opposite. He was the one who had left her fighting life-threatening injuries. Alone. There could be no doubt that she was better off without him in her life. The sooner he could get off this island, get himself well away from her, the better.
She looked at him now and had no idea of what they had once shared. He’d come here because he’d wanted to wipe his memories of that time. To overwrite them. To overwrite the whole island. And instead he found himself as sole guardian of these memories—if he wanted the job. If he chose to forget, it would be as if they had never happened. But it didn’t feel right, doing that. She had lost enough. He couldn’t tell her what they had shared—not when being so close to him could bring her nothing but harm. Not when he himself knew that he couldn’t offer what he had once promised.
Keeping it a secret was for the best. Telling her would only hurt her. It would have hurt him, if that was even possible any more. No. He had to plough on with the plans he had made before he had arrived here. Get work on the resort under way and then start forgetting he and Meena had ever been here. Even if it seemed that she was remotely interested in him. Which she most definitely didn’t seem to be. He couldn’t risk hurting her all over again. Even though he knew now that Meena hadn’t meant to hurt him, that didn’t change who it had made him.
The fact was that he hadn’t been able to trust in any relationship that he’d had since then. His inability to trust and commit had hurt people. No—she was better off without him. Better off not knowing. If he told her how they had once felt about one another, she’d be curious. She’d have questions. She’d want to pick at wounds that had long ago scarred over.
He walked back towards his boat, feeling the sand beneath his feet, the sun pounding his shoulders. Was this it? The last time he would stand on their beach? The last chance to remember what they had shared here before he went back to Sydney, the bulldozers moved in and he moved on with his life?
CHAPTER FOUR
THIS WAS PROBABLY a huge mistake, Meena told herself for the hundredth time as she scrolled to Guy’s office number on her phone and her thumb hovered over the call button. It was fine. She could just leave a message with Dev, letting him know that she was going to be visiting the site of one of her coral transplants. Let him know that Guy was welcome to join her if he was interested in how the restoration of the reef might go and then hang up. She wouldn’t have to talk to Guy. And there was no way that he’d even turn up.
So why bother inviting him?
Because she wanted him to care, she told herself. When they had been on the boat before, she had seen the shock on his face at the state of the reef of Le Bijou. And at that moment she’d thought that maybe she’d misunderstood him. Yes, he wanted to build a big hotel complex on this beautiful, untouched island. But that didn’t make him evil. He had offered to hire her to ensure that no harm—or, realistically, as little harm as possible—came to Le Bijou. That counted for something.