‘Uh-huh?’ The girl gave her a thorough once-over that had the heat steaming into Ella’s cheeks. ‘I guess he’s up at the big house.’
The big house? What big house?
‘Sorry to wake you,’ the girl said. ‘Henry didn’t tell me Coop left the Runner with company last night. Just that he headed for his beach hut. Suppose Henry was messing with me. And Coop.’
And me, thought Ella, annoyed by Henry the barman’s joke, and acutely embarrassed that this girl now knew she was the sort of woman who got picked up in bars.
What had seemed wildly romantic last night, now felt pretty tacky.
Ruby had encouraged her to let her inner flirt loose, but there had definitely been no mention of getting tipsy on rum cocktails, then getting nekkid with Captain Studly and jumping him four...no, five...oh, heck, make that at least a half-dozen times during the night.
‘You Coop’s new lady?’ The girl interrupted Ella’s panicked reappraisal of her behaviour.
‘Um, no, we’re just...’ What? Snorkel mates? Dance partners? Bonk buddies?
The burning in her cheeks promptly hit maximum voltage as she searched for the appropriate term while recalling in X-rated detail exactly how intimately she and the invisible Coop had got acquainted last night, after very little provocation. ‘Friends,’ she finished lamely.
With benefits. Gold-standard benefits.
The phrase hung in the brisk morning air unspoken, but not unfigured out if the girl’s frank appraisal was anything to go by. ‘Do you know when he’s going to be back?’
Hardly, seeing as I have no clue where he is.
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Could you tell him I stopped by? I’m Sonny’s daughter, Josie, and I—’
‘Why don’t you come in and wait for him?’ Ella shoved the door wide, determined to make a fast getaway, before this situation got any more awkward. ‘I was just leaving.’
Josie sent her a doubtful look as she stepped into the room. ‘You sure, I—’
‘Absolutely positive,’ Ella replied, grabbing her bag from the hook by the door and slipping past the girl, before she could ask any more unanswerable questions.
‘You want me to give Coop a message?’
Ella paused on the porch, the clutching sensation she’d had as she fell asleep the night before returning. ‘Would you tell him thanks?’ She cleared her throat, the stupid clutching sensation starting to squeeze her ribcage.
For being a friend when I needed one, she added silently as she jumped off the hut’s porch and her feet sank into the wet sand.
Josie called out a goodbye and she waved back as she set off down the beach. But she didn’t glance back again. Knowing it would only tighten the band squeezing her chest.
She’d had an amazing night. Maybe she’d gone a little off piste from Ruby’s plan—and discovered the liberating powers of flirtation, soca dancing, Rum Swizzles and sweaty, no-strings sex in the process. Okay, make that a lot off piste.
But it was all good.
Give or take the odd heart murmur.
* * *
‘Up you get, Sleeping Beauty, breakfast is served.’ Coop bumped the hut’s door open with his butt, keeping a firm hold on the tray his housekeeper had piled high with freshly sliced fruit, French toast, syrup and coffee. It had taken Inez a good half hour to assemble everything to her exacting standards—and quiz him mercilessly about his ‘overnight guest’—during which time he’d got stupidly eager to see Ella again. Enough to question why he hadn’t just woken her up and invited her to his place for breakfast.
The fifteen-acre estate that overlooked the cove, and the two-storey colonial he’d built on the bluff, were a symbol of who he was now. And he was super proud of it—and all he’d achieved, after ten long, back-breaking years of dawn wake-up calls refurbing second-hand equipment, long days spent out on the ocean running back-to-back dives, late nights getting his brain in a knot at the local community college studying for his MBA, all while keeping a ready smile on his face to schmooze a succession of tourists and corporate clients and bank managers and investors.
His business—Dive Guys—had made its first million-dollar turnover five years ago, and he’d celebrated by buying himself a brand-new motor launch, and the beach hut he’d been renting since his early days with Sonny. Three years later, he’d expanded the franchise across the Caribbean and had finally had enough to invest in the construction of his dream home on the land he’d bought behind the hut. He’d moved into Half-Moon House two years ago—but still couldn’t quite believe that all those years of work had paid off in a wraparound deck that looked out over the ocean, five luxury en-suite bedrooms, a forty-foot infinity pool, a mile of private beach and an extremely nosey housekeeper.
Normally, he loved showing the place off to women he dated.
But when he’d woken up with Ella cuddled in his arms, he’d decided to keep the place a secret until after he’d finessed Inez into cooking a lavish breakfast for his overnight guest.