the hallway as I walk down the stairs fixing my tie. She was gone when I woke up and her side of the bed was cold.
“Seriously? Eve said I could interview him?”
Her eyes meet mine briefly as I walk into the kitchen and motion to the coffee machine. She nods, leaning against the counter. I feel her eyes follow me as I move around fixing our drinks.
“It’s amazing. I can’t believe it. Yeah, I will. Bye.”
“That was Chloe,” she says as she places her phone on the counter.
“She okay?” I place her cup underneath the machine first and wait for it to fill.
“Yeah. She’s enjoying my apartment. I think I’ll have to give her an eviction notice when we get home.”
“She’s got one more night there. What if she’s changed the locks when you get back?”
Maddy shrugs as I hand her the cup. “Then I guess I’ll have a roomie on my couch. At least for two more days. That’s when Frankie leaves.”
“The housemate’s boyfriend?”
“That’s the one.” She sips her coffee. “You know what else?”
She’s glowing as I look at her and she finally meets my eyes properly.
“What else?” I can’t help smiling at the excitement on her face.
“Eve’s been so happy with the updates and drafts of the article I’ve been sending her that she’s lined me up another interview next week.”
“Oh yeah?” I lift one brow.
“Yeah.” She’s almost breathless with giddiness as she bites her bottom lip. “It’s with a narrator, Nate Black. Eve wants me to do a whole behind-the-scenes interview with him.”
“Is he the audiobook guy with Frederica that—?”
“That’s him.” Maddy blushes.
“That’s great. Congratulations.”
“Thank you.” She sips her coffee, glancing up at me from beneath her lashes.
“Mads—”
She turns and gazes across the room and out of the back doors to the pool. “I can’t believe you have an amazing pool and I’ve swam in it once.”
This is becoming our norm. Sex, heavy talk. Or heavy talk and then sex. And then pretending nothing happened. If I push her to talk about it when she doesn’t want to, she’ll shut down, and it’ll end in a fight.
“I’ve got a beach too. And you’ve never even seen that,” I say.
“Right.” She rolls her eyes. “The thirtieth birthday present. Everyone else gets a watch or a weekend away. You get an island.”
I take my now full cup of coffee and lean against the opposite counter, crossing my legs at the ankle. “It’s an investment.”
She laughs. “Are you going to build a rocket launcher there like a Bond villain?”
I smirk. “Do I detect some jealousy there, Ms. Harper? Don’t tell me you always wanted your own launch pad?”
She shakes her head with a sarcastic snort as she drinks her coffee.
“Do you want to see it?”
Her head jerks back. “Your island?”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “It’s just off the coast. We could stop off on the way back home. Spend a day there. It might stop you needing to kick Chloe out early.”
Her brow furrows as she stares at me. I wait for her knockback. She’s made no secret of looking forward to getting home since the minute we boarded the jet in London. I know she can’t wait to get away from me.
“Do you… Does it have somewhere to sleep?”
I mask my amusement. “Don’t worry about that. We’ll manage.”
“You asshole.” Maddy shoves me in the chest as she walks inside the island’s main house.
I grin as she gazes around the open foyer. I love this house. It’s become my place for a retreat if I’ve ever needed one over the past couple of years. It’s designed like a small hotel with twenty rooms, all curving around a central open-air hallway. Each room is its own self-contained apartment, but it’s also got a main kitchen and a large dining hall on the ground floor for when guests want to dine together. My housekeeping team comes by boat from the mainland. But unless I ask them to be here overnight, they leave each day, and the place is monitored by a security system.
And it’s private. It’s what I love about it most. It’s away from the world. But as much as I love it, I haven’t been here in over six months.
“I can’t believe this.” Maddy spins around in a circle, her head tilted back as she looks up at the clear blue sky overhead the open entryway. “Why don’t you live here all the time?”
“You hate me that much you want me out of the country now too?”
She snaps her gaze to mine, her shoulders softening when she sees the smirk on my face. “Very funny.”
“You want a tour before dinner?” I incline my head toward the main staircase.
“Dinner?” She frowns as she gazes around the space again, noticing the large double doors that lead to the dining hall.
“I have a chef who comes over from the mainland when I visit.”
“I thought when the guy dropped us off on the boat that…” Maddy’s frown deepens. “He’d come over here tonight, just to cook for us?”
I lift one shoulder. “If I ask him to. Unless you’d rather it just be you and me? The kitchen will have been stocked when I said we were coming.”
Maddy looks between me and the double doors again. “Um. I…”
I step closer to her and take a gamble, reaching out and placing a finger underneath her chin to bring her eyes back to mine.
“I can cook, you know,” I say softly as she looks into my eyes, a hint of uncharacteristic nervousness held in her gaze.
“Okay.” She swallows, her pulse fluttering in her neck.
I let my eyes linger on her face a moment longer than I should, considering she’s trying to avoid eye contact with me again. But I can’t stop myself. She’s either fighting with me, clawing at me, or clamming up. I can’t work out what’s going on in her head. And fuck if I understand what’s going on in mine either.
I pick up our suitcases before I lead her to the stairs. She’s quiet as I show her around, except for the odd gasp as she looks out of the window and sees the view. Deep blue sea and a small stretch of sandy beach.
And no one else.
“I bet the girls you’ve brought here loved it,” she muses as she trails her fingertips over the white voiles of the four-poster bed in my master apartment. She looks at the plush, white bedding and then diverts her eyes around the room.
I place both suitcases down on a trunk at the end of the bed.
“I’ve never brought a girl here.”
“None?”
“None,” I confirm.
She glances at me and then at her suitcase. “Do I have my own room?”
“No.”
Her brows shoot up at my quick answer.
“I want you in here with me.”
I expect a fight, a look of defiance, a protest.
Nothing.
She walks over to me and unzips her suitcase. “One night. Then we go home to London.” She purses her lips. “And we carry on like before.”
“With you hating me?”
She stalls, her eyes flicking to mine. Then she rummages around in her suitcase and pulls something out. “We carry on,” she repeats as she drops the items onto the floor.
She steps into the monogrammed slippers, then unpacks her suitcase.
I fight away the urge to grab her and force her to look at me, to acknowledge that there’s no way in hell we can go home and just carry on like before. Like it’s no big deal. There’s no way I can go back to seeing the look of disgust in her eyes every time she sees me. I never realized just how deep her hate for me ran. Not until I’ve been gifted rare moments of it lifting like a veil this past week. Lifting for long enough for me to see her. To see the girl I hurt all those years ago. The girl I swore to my friend I would look out for. The girl who was never meant to be mine. Despite the way she fit inside my arms like no one else ever has as she slept last night.
I unzip my suitcase, unpacking in silence next to her, and when I go for a shower, I’m tense with anticipation, waiting to see if she follows me.
She doesn’t.
When I come out of the bathroom, she’s gone.
