Falling Again For Her Island Fling. Ellie Darkins
popped out of her mouth. He was just so...unsettling. He unnerved her. And she couldn’t help thinking that there must be a reason he had this effect on her. Must be a reason why her body reacted to him every time that he was close. A reason her heart was racing and her palms were sweating.
Was it you? Her mind jumped to the familiar question. Did you love me? Did I carry your baby? Lose your baby?
He sighed, looked up and made eye contact with her for the first time since she had walked into the room.
‘What period of time are you missing memories from?’ he asked. ‘I’ve only visited St Antoine once before.’
She told him the date of her accident, and that she didn’t remember the three months before, wondering at the change in his demeanour.
‘I was here then,’ he said. ‘My parents own the Williams resort on the mainland. I was staying there for the summer.’
‘But I worked there!’ Meena exclaimed. ‘I was working at the dive school before my accident. It was the summer after I got back from Australia,’ she added, realising she’d never mentioned to him that connection. Was this the reason for his strangeness? For the strange familiarity she felt around him? Would she have mentioned that if she’d bumped into an Australian guest? Would she have struck up a conversation about that common link?
‘So maybe I have seen you before, or maybe we spoke back then? I’m sorry,’ she added, realising she was speaking out loud. ‘It’s just, it’s hard, having this gap in my memories. It makes me question myself. Question what I know, you know?’
Of course he didn’t know. How could he? How could anyone know what it felt like to live in a body and a mind that didn’t fully belong to them?
‘Maybe we did meet.’ Guy shuffled some papers on his desk, not looking at her. ‘I went to the dive school when I was here before. Maybe we crossed paths.’
‘But you don’t remember? You don’t remember me?’ It was clear from the way that he had turned back to his work that he was ready for this meeting to be over. But it had been so long since she had had any new information about that time that she couldn’t let this drop, no matter how annoying Guy seemed to be finding her.
Just once in her life, she wanted a straightforward answer. No, scratch that. Once in her life she wanted to know the answer to questions about her life herself, without relying on near strangers to fill in the gaps. But as that didn’t seem to be an option, no matter what she or her medical team had tried, she would have to settle for getting answers from someone else. For trusting other people to paint this picture of who she had been.
‘I don’t remember you,’ Guy said, looking back at his screen. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No need to be sorry.’ Meena shrugged, tried to cover her disappointment. No answers, again. No reason for why she felt this strange familiarity around Guy. For him and for Le Bijou.
‘Get in touch with Dev about the details of the new job, if you want to consider it. And keep him updated with your progress on the environmental reports. If there’s nothing else...’
It was clear she was being dismissed.
‘Okay, great.’ She forced professionalism back into her voice. ‘Well, I’m going to go have another look at the reef tomorrow. To see if there is any way that its decline can be reversed, or at least halted. If you want to come and see for yourself, you would be welcome.’
Guy glanced up at her, meeting her gaze again. Maybe this was why he avoided it, Meena thought, as she felt her cheeks warm under his scrutiny. Maybe he could see the effect he had on her when he turned his full attention on her like that. No wonder he didn’t want to encourage it.
‘I’ll see what I can do. But I have a very full week.’
Did he remember her? Only every night in his dreams, in waking moments when his mind wandered, and for a moment he was back there, the sun and her lips on his body once again. He remembered everything.
And it broke him, almost daily now.
Because whatever, wherever they were now, they were never going to get that back. What they had had back then had been beautiful. It had been pure. It had been innocent. And then the darkness in his heart when he’d thought that she had abandoned him had sullied it. And that simply couldn’t be undone.
He must have been broken before he had even met her, for that rot to have set in and cause the damage that it had.
If he told her what they had shared, what would she think of that? What could she take from it? Worst-case scenario, she would want to try to turn back time. To see what had brought them together then. To see if it still existed.
She had lost all the time that they had been together. He had spent three months on this island, ostensibly getting to know his family’s resort on the St Antoine mainland as preparation for a formal role in the company. But in truth he had spent most of it getting to know Meena. His parents hadn’t even been disappointed when they’d realised how little work he’d done that summer. As if they’d been expecting his failure all along. It was so easy to disappoint them, he realised, when they had such low expectations of him.
Meena thought that she wanted to know him, but she was wrong. The only possible outcome was her getting hurt, and he could spare her that at least.
Of course, his heart had hurt when he’d seen how lost she was without those memories. And he could fix that, he knew. He could tell her everything, and she wouldn’t have to worry and guess at what had happened in those months.
But would that help her, really? To know that she had been in love with a man who didn’t exist any more? No, it was kinder to say nothing, he told himself. Kinder—and safer—that she never knew what they had once had, and what they had both lost.
WHY HAD SHE invited him? Meena asked herself for the millionth time that day. It had been a stupid idea at the time, and felt even stupider now that she was sitting in her boat, in a rash-guard swimsuit and shorts, wondering if he was going to show up.
Of course he wasn’t. He had been awkward and uncomfortable for the entirety of their short acquaintance, so he was hardly going to be signing up for extracurriculars. And no wonder, considering the way that she had quizzed him the last time that they had met, making a near stranger uncomfortable by trying to use his memories to patch together her defective one. And it had all been for nothing anyway. He hadn’t known her then and didn’t care now.
She checked over her equipment one more time, including the battery and memory card on her underwater camera. Ideally she needed some close-up shots of the unstable areas of the reef so that she could make a more thorough assessment of whether the damage could be reversed. She was hoping that transplanting in new corals would stabilise it. But if the damage had already gone too far and the reef was starting to crumble she would have to rethink her options. The best way to decide was to get down there for another look. But if Guy didn’t show she would have to make do with photographing from the glass-bottomed boat. Even seven years after her accident, when the chance of having a seizure was minimal, she wouldn’t risk being out in the water alone.
She needed to choose the best sites for transplanting in the coral pieces she’d retrieved after a storm a few months before, and had been growing out in the lab ever since. If Guy turned up and she had a buddy, then she could get her fins wet and take a closer look.
She looked along the beach, wondering how long she should wait for him, then shook her head; it was time to get to work. She steered her boat over to the reef, anchored carefully in the white sand, taking care not to damage the reef, and pulled out her clipboard and her camera, ready to make her observations.