Chapter Six #2
Raffaele made it back to the hotel with not much time to spare.
He felt borderline traumatised by lunch with the bore who had droned on interminably about every single little setback that had befallen him and his wife on their six-week sailing tour of the Grenadines.
Raffaele was sorely tempted to tell him that he should just pack it in because if he couldn’t enjoy what everyone else would have given their right arm to do, then he didn’t deserve the opportunity to do it.
He’d refrained but had spent several hours trying not to look at his watch too much and swatting away the man’s wife.
Bridgette, blonde, leggy and all of thirty-four—thirty years younger than her rich husband—had greeted them at the yacht in a bikini and had spent the rest of her time surreptitiously trying it on with Raffaele.
It had been exhausting.
She’d reminded him a little of the women he was accustomed to dating, the same pouting physical perfection that expected attention from the opposite sex. But in this case, a wedding ring on her finger hadn’t stood in the way of her relentlessly flirting.
The thought of seeing Erin, with her interesting background and her intelligent, cool, witty conversation, had had the call of the siren.
Now, as he shut the cabin door behind him to head to the hotel for the drinks party, he debated whether to knock on her door.
But no. He should leave her to it for now.
Let her savour her time before the party.
She was probably nervous. Strange place…
unfamiliar faces…look at how spooked she’d been the night before when a bat had flown into the cabin!
She hadn’t yet settled into the vibe on this small tropical island.
Her normal cool control was temporarily missing in action.
He liked the thought of holding her hand, metaphorically speaking, for the evening. If it came to discussing business, she would be brilliant as she always was, but he doubted there would be much of that.
There would also be a lot more people than originally planned. The modestly sized gathering had swollen to include friends and friends of friends and businessmen who all knew each other because the island was so small. Word of mouth had sent the numbers soaring.
She would be lost.
He idly savoured the pleasurable thought of swooping in as her knight in shining armour once again as he strolled unhurriedly towards the main hotel, which was lit up like a Christmas tree.
The place was much busier than it had been previously. Not only busy with the hotel guests, scant though their numbers were, but busy with people arriving in droves, laughing in groups.
He marvelled at the informality of it all. Back in the UK, no one would have ever contemplated tagging along to any party he threw unless there was an official invite. For starters, they would never have been able to bypass border patrol at his front door.
He spotted Gary, waved and cast one backward glance over his shoulder in the direction of the cabin where Erin was no doubt getting ready and maybe wondering whether she would fit in.
‘A few more people than I’d anticipated.’ He had to raise his voice as Gary fell into step with him. They entered the main hotel together, Raffaele towering over the smaller guy by at least ten inches and exuding the sort of lazy power that made people spin around to look at him with interest.
He was idly looking around. He reckoned there would be perhaps forty people there in total, excluding hotel guests who would be milling around but not allowed through to the various rooms where the informal get-together was being held.
He could hear the sound of music growing more insistent as they exited towards the back of the main hotel, out to a separate building which was used for functions.
Gary was telling him something about the function rooms. Weddings…anniversaries…private parties…not as popular as it could be…sometimes tourists in particular liked to have a beach on their doorstep…how could a beach compare to a rainforest…beaches were two a penny…every Caribbean island had one…
Raffaele was half listening.
He was busily searching the crowd when he spotted her. For a couple of seconds, his brain simply didn’t register what his eyes were telling him.
Erin.
She was dancing! Since when did his well-mannered secretary dance? And she was dancing with a man…
Raffaele stopped dead in his tracks.
The room was cleverly lit. Sultry, shadowy nooks and crannies gave an atmosphere of intimacy, but it wasn’t so dark that people couldn’t see what they were doing.
The crowd was lively, mostly young. On the edges, groups of older men and women were chatting.
There was a space in the middle cleared for dancing and on a small rostrum, a trio of steel band players was rocking classic old tunes.
And there Erin was…dancing.
And here he was, hardly able to breathe as he watched her sway to the beat of the steel band without a scrap of inhibition. In the arms of some young, good-looking guy who was grinning like the cat that got the cream.
She was wearing something and nothing much: a bright yellow vest that clung to her slender body and emphasised her small, rounded breasts, and a flowered wrap-around skirt in shades of yellow and orange and bright green, slit up both sides so that her thighs were visible with every sinuous movement.
And where were her sensible shoes? All-weather and practical?
He remembered the pale pink toenails… Now the shoes she was wearing matched those pale pink toenails. They were tan gladiator-style sandals with beads.
Raffaele had no idea why he was so shocked by the vision of his secretary being twirled on a dance floor by a complete stranger, her head thrown back as she laughed with delight.
She was doing the very thing he had been encouraging her to do and yet…
and yet…he wasn’t sure he liked to see her in action.
Of course he had meant every word he had said about her needing to relax, to just let go, but had she any real idea of how easy it was to give some young guy—and some young guy they didn’t know from Adam—the wrong impression?
He realised his jaw was slack and quickly pulled himself together. Briskly, he walked towards her, only stopping when he was towering over her partner.
‘Erin!’
Her cheeks were pink and her eyes were sparkling. She looked every inch the carefree girl he’d been imagining she could become when he’d encouraged her to step out of the box she liked to hide in. Although now he wondered whether he had got that completely wrong.
Maybe the box had only ever been for his benefit. Maybe this was the real Erin and she’d simply chosen not to show him.
He sensed that his smile was more of a scowl as he cut in, inserting himself between the couple just as the tempo changed from bouncy to cosy.
He slid his arms around Erin’s waist and dipped down so that he was more on her level.
‘Having fun?’
Erin felt the sinewy hardness of Raffaele’s body against hers and everything in the room disappeared. Suddenly, it felt as though it was only the pair of them on a dance floor that had shrunk to the size of a postage stamp.
‘I was,’ she managed in a wry voice, edging back but finding that his hold was just slightly too tight to easily disengage.
He looked amazing in a pair of linen grey trousers, loafers and a black polo shirt that fitted him like a glove. He hadn’t shaved and his six-o’clock shadow was unforgivably sexy.
‘Who’s the kid?’
‘Kid?’
‘The one you were dancing with.’
‘He’s a year older than me so I’m not sure “kid” would be the right description, Raffaele.’
‘Exchanged personal information already? Quick work.’ His voice was light and amused.
Erin shrugged.
‘I didn’t expect to find you here before me,’ Raffaele said, sweeping her towards the side of the room so that they were now on their own, away from the hubbub of people.
He stopped abruptly and stepped back to look at her with an expression, Erin noted, that looked a lot like disapproval.
She felt her hackles rise.
Did he imagine that he owned her? That because she’d shared something of herself with him, he could now dictate what she did while they were over here?
Maybe he figured that an episode with an errant bat now warranted full protection just in case she had another Victorian-maiden-style meltdown over nothing.
‘Why not?’ she asked bluntly.
He looked away briefly and raked his fingers through his dark hair.
‘I figured that you might have been a little…nervous. I did actually make an effort to get back here so that I could be by your side when you came over to the main hotel but everything just dragged on and on with Clive and his wife getting more and more inebriated over lunch until I finally managed to escape.’
‘Oh dear. But wait…why do you think I might have been nervous? Didn’t you say that I should head over here to meet and greet and get the lay of the land if you weren’t around?
Didn’t you remind me that that was something I was accustomed to doing?
So why would you think that I might have been nervous? ’
‘Because you’re in unfamiliar territory… It can be daunting…’
Erin’s hackles rose a little more but she wasn’t going to be drawn into self-defence.
‘We should be mingling,’ she said coolly. ‘If you like, I can see what business I can do but it doesn’t seem the right place or the right time to try to introduce profit-and-loss discussions into the conversation.’
‘Of course I don’t want you to work!’
‘Thank you. I’ll get back to the party in that case?’
‘Erin…’
‘I’ll be up first thing tomorrow morning, Raffaele, and I can meet you for breakfast at eight thirty if that suits.’
‘You’re overreacting…’