Harlequin KISS August 2014 Bundle (16 page)

At least kissing was more easily explained.
Hopefully.

Claudia glanced at Luke as their mothers kept raving about what a wonderful couple they’d always known she and Luke would make. Luke looked as if he was about to throw up.

She knew how he felt.

This was bad. Very bad. Exactly what they’d wanted to avoid—involving two people who wouldn’t understand it when Luke left to go back to London.

She had to do something, say something—quick.

‘This is not what it seems,’ Claudia said.

SEVENTEEN

Gloria and
Lena stopped talking abruptly and a spike of guilt at bursting their bubble poked Claudia right in the centre of her chest.

‘Okay,’ her mother said although clearly she didn’t believe Claudia. ‘What is it, then?’

Good question Luke thought as he glanced down at Claudia. How on earth could either of them explain away what their mothers had seen?
Convincingly.

‘Luke and I were just sharing a good-luck-for-opening-day kiss,’ she said.

‘That didn’t look like a good-luck kiss to me,’ Gloria said and winked at Lena.

‘It got a little out of hand,’ Claudia admitted, ‘but we’re both exhausted from working so hard and nervous about tomorrow... It was...pure reaction...just one of those strange
isolated
moments that sometimes happen when people
work closely together on something and the stakes are high. That’s all.’

‘That’s all?’ her mother repeated, clearly unconvinced.

‘It happens all the time in advertising, doesn’t it, Luke?’ she said, nudging Captain
Silent-pants
for help.

Luke nodded. It sounded crazy but maybe they could convince their mothers if they stuck to her ridiculous isolated-reactionary-incident-brought-about-by-exhaustio
n story. ‘That’s right.’

‘Oh? Kissed a lot of your colleagues, have you?’ his mother asked.

Luke cleared his throat. ‘Some,’ he said lamely. Lying to his mother was more difficult as a grown man than it had been as a teenager.

‘There is absolutely
nothing
between us,’ Claudia said. ‘
Nothing.
Just old friends who let something go too far because we were exhausted and...overwhelmed
and it won’t happen again, right, Luke?’ she asked him.

Luke nodded vigorously. ‘It won’t.’

Gloria and Lena glanced at each other and grinned a little. ‘Okay, sure,’ Gloria said. ‘That makes sense. A one-off.’

‘Won’t happen again.’ Lena nodded.

Luke narrowed his gaze. ‘It won’t.’

‘Okay, sure,’ Gloria said, and Lena nodded her agreement.

Claudia sighed. They both looked
suspiciously bright-eyed and Claudia’s dismay grew. She and Luke didn’t need the pressure of their parental expectations. They both knew nothing short of the royalesque wedding their mothers had
apparently
been planning for the last twenty years would satisfy Gloria and Lena.

Their
thing
was over before it had even begun.

Dead in the water.

‘Was there a reason why you barged in
without knocking?’ she asked her mother.

Lena tutted at her daughter’s sass. ‘The door was unlocked.’

‘I haven’t been locking it with the hotel empty.’

‘We just wanted to let you both know that if everything goes smoothly the next two days we’ll be setting off on Wednesday.’

Luke wanted to say,
And you couldn’t use the phone?
but that would be rude and ungrateful and they spent
the next few minutes talking over their parents’ travel plans as if their mothers hadn’t just caught them making out like horny teenagers.

It felt awkward and unnatural and Luke was relieved when Gloria and Lena took their leave. ‘Be good,’ Lena said as they both walked to the door, springs in their step.

‘And if you can’t be good, be careful,’ Gloria threw over her shoulder as the door
slowly closed.

Claudia and Luke stared at the door as it clicked shut on a burst of raucous female laughter and excited chatter they could hear despite the thick wooden barrier. ‘Oh, God,’ Luke said. ‘They’re already picking out china patterns, aren’t they?’

Claudia nodded miserably. She wondered if her mother or Gloria had any idea that their unintentional interruption had actually
had the opposite effect to what they’d clearly been plotting all these years.

‘You and I can never just have a...fling, can we?’ he murmured.

‘No.’ Claudia shook her head. ‘Not with our parents knowing anyway. If we’re in any kind of a relationship, they’re going to be sending out invitations and humming the wedding march. But we always knew that...’

‘Yes.’ Luke rubbed a hand along
his neck.
They had
. They’d just let their hormones get in the way.

Stupid!

Look what had happened the last time he’d let them take over—an ex-wife and a torpedoed career. Did he learn nothing?

‘We can’t do this, can we?’

Claudia looked at him. A quarter of an hour ago she’d been minutes away from having him naked and inside her. Now she knew she’d never know that feeling again
and she thanked her lucky stars for last night. To have known Luke in the carnal sense.

‘No. We’ll break their hearts when you go back to London, back to your other life. I don’t want that to be a source of friction between them.’

She waited for him to say he wasn’t going to go back. That he’d decided to stay.

Luke shoved his hands on his hips. ‘Yes.’

He looked frustrated and
weary and Claudia knew exactly how he felt. Their kissing had revved her up and now she was standing here, her engine running, with nowhere to go. ‘We’ll always have last night.’ She shrugged.

Luke gave her a half-smile. ‘Yeah,’ he murmured, his gaze dropping to her mouth briefly, the muscles in his corded forearms flexing and for a second she thought he was going to leap the distance between
them and kiss her anyway.

But he didn’t.

Instead he looked away, dropped his hands to his sides and headed for his room. ‘See you in the morning,’ he said, pulling the door closed after him.

Claudia stared at the door.

Morning.

One long, sleepless night away.

* * *

Opening day was a success. Everything went off without a hitch and their guests were all lovely,
very aware of the hardship that had recently befallen the Tropicana and extra accommodating with the limited activities available. Mostly they were family groups, grateful for the lower-key atmosphere, happy to hang out at the pool and play on the beach.

On Wednesday their parents left to much fanfare and relief as far as Claudia was concerned. Even just the disappointment she’d glimpsed
on her mother’s face as she’d realised she and Luke had been serious about their non-relationship had been hard to take.

She couldn’t begin to imagine how much worse it would be if they had gone ahead and had a fling, built up their mothers’ hopes and dreams only to dash them all when Luke left to go back home again.

Because he
was
going back to London—he’d made that very clear.

Thankfully over the following days and weeks they were much too busy to dwell on it. Between running the hotel and moving things along with the spa complex, not to mention Luke working all hours of the night as well as working with Jonah on a new advertising campaign, they didn’t have time to be social.

They didn’t have time to be lovers.

Make time, that pesky little devil that seemed
to have taken up permanent residence on her shoulder, urged her every night as she lay in bed trying
not
to think about Luke lying in his bed. Right next door. Completely naked.

Sure, she could make the time if she wanted to throw caution to the wind, set up something clandestine with him, but the outcome wouldn’t change. He was still leaving and all nights and nights of endless sex and passion
would ultimately get her was even more exhausted than she was now.

There was a lot to do and she had to be on her game—not yawning and constantly distracted by whatever acrobatic sex they’d had the night before. Her guests deserved bright, chipper Claudia of old and that was what they were getting. The Tropicana had been dealt a huge blow both physically and financially and turning that around
took hard work and focus.

And that was what she chose to concentrate on. Getting the Tropicana back. Salvaging the old reputation at the same time she forged ahead with establishing another—a first-class spa facility with luxury tent accommodation.

Who needed nights and nights of endless sex and passion?

She put Luke and what could have been in a special place to pull out and look
at again another day in the future.

Maybe when it had stopped hurting so damn much.

* * *

The weeks blended into months and the resort exceeded Claudia’s expectations, achieving a seventy per cent occupancy over the winter season. Everyone was busy and it was good to have a cash flow again. They were able to re-establish a lot of activities—lei threading, bush-tucker tours, beachcomber
collaging, shell jewellery and ballroom dancing were all added to the programme along with the Saturday night luau. Several regular themed nights—pirate, medieval and mermaids—were held in the dining room with food and entertainment to match, and proved popular with the families.

But the biggest change was the building of the day spa, which they’d decided to call Tropicana Retreat. Thanks
to government and tourist-industry pressure on banks, councils and insurance companies, everything had gone through without a hitch and they were able to get the build started within two months.

Claudia had hired a local building company who were surprisingly available given how much of the area needed rebuilding. But so much couldn’t be done yet, not until insurance money had come through,
so the company had jumped at the chance to create something special at the Tropicana.

Once the work started it took hardly any time to build. It was just a simple rectangular plan with a large open reception area that flowed into a salon area where manicures, pedicures and facials were done. Beyond that were four rooms for massage treatments and another room where a state-of-the-art Vichy
shower was installed allowing them to do scrubs and all kinds of body wraps.

The fit-out took longer with Avery and Claudia poring over every single tile, pedicure chair, paint colour and blind-fabric swatch. Claudia was pleased to have Avery and her eye for the exquisite and happy to leave her to it once the big decisions had been made, freeing her up to tackle the hiring of staff.

Luke took on the task of managing the luxury tent accommodation, which, again, wasn’t a huge construction job. The wooden platforms were simple and sourcing the right fabric for the tent-like shelter wasn’t as difficult as he’d thought. The largest part of the build was the attached luxury bathroom facilities.

Nobody paid a few hundred dollars a night to sleep in a tent to have to go walkabout
for a bathroom in the middle of the dark so it was important that they catered for that.

The biggest issue and the one that caused the most debate was deciding where each of the six tents would ultimately be located on the grounds. They had an enlarged aerial photograph of the grounds as they were now, post cyclone, that Jonah had taken from the chopper, and they used monopoly houses for
the tent sites, which they moved around and around trying to choose the best positions.

It was exciting to watch
everything
come together. Claudia felt a renewed sense of pride and vigour in the Tropicana as her dreams slowly became reality.

And if there were times where things were a little tense between her and Luke or she caught him looking at her with such abject hunger she wanted
to rip all his clothes off, then knowing they were creating something amazing together, that they were reshaping this wonderful legacy of theirs, helped to temper those times.

They were both doing the right thing with a relationship that was never going to go anywhere so pouring all their sexual energy into the Tropicana made sense.

Indulging would be easy. But the consequences would
be hard.

It was better this way.

* * *

Two weeks out from the official launch of the Tropicana Retreat, Luke sat at his desk at eleven o’clock at night staring at the email recalling him, in no uncertain terms, to London. The multimillion-dollar account he’d been working on for months was ready to go and the company CEO in question wanted Luke there to do the presentation.

Only Luke.

It was his chance to redeem himself and restore his reputation. And he wanted it.

He
needed
it.

It wasn’t as if he were needed here any more with the bulk of the new project complete. Claudia could handle it from now on in. Hell, she’d always been able to handle it.

Damn their interfering parents.

What
he
couldn’t handle for too much longer was keeping his hands
off her.

Another good reason to get the hell out of Dodge.

She swanned around in that awful uniform that was fast becoming the sexiest piece of polyester in the world, being all chirpy and pleasant and efficient, and all he wanted to do was drag her down behind that reception desk, demand that she open her legs and say, ‘Yes sir,’ to him, the way she said it to guests.

God, the
number of times she’d leaned over that damn map moving a stupid little green plastic house around while giving him a full view of whatever bra she was wearing for the day...

He deserved a medal for not ripping that awful shirt off her and dragging her onto his lap.

At every turn she’d tempted him. Not deliberately, he knew that, but his body just would not listen to reason. He’d taken
to running on the beach every morning just to run off his morning erection.

It was that or open the connecting door to their rooms and the consequences be damned.

Even the thought was making him hard, frustration biting deep into his groin. Irritated at himself, at his erection, at the continual sexual fantasies of Claudia, he tapped Qantas into the computer’s search engine and looked
for a flight leaving asap.

Fifteen minutes later he was booked out at lunchtime tomorrow. And his erection was gone.

Now he just had to break the news to Claudia.