Falling Again For Her Island Fling. Ellie Darkins

CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

       CHAPTER TWELVE

       Extract

       About the Publisher

       CHAPTER ONE

      MEENA LAY ON her back, the sand hot beneath her, the sun reaching her face through the leaves of the coconut trees, and breathed deeply, grateful for the shade even this early in the morning. By lunchtime the heat would be fierce, and she would be forced indoors, so she really should be making the most of her time here on the island of Le Bijou before she had to get back to the St Antoine mainland. But lying on the beach, alone in the sunlight, was still something of a dream. Especially here. Something that she had imagined for so long. Had started to fear would never happen again. It was something she could never take for granted.

      She took another breath, long and slow, relaxing her body from the tips of her fingers down to her toes. It was still a marvel that she could make it follow her commands so easily, after the years that she had spent relearning how to use it. It had taken more strength than she’d known she had to get her body working again after the accident, and still more for her to be able to face the world and reintegrate herself into real life.

      From the outside now one would never guess what had happened to her. Her thick dark hair, worn in its natural curls, did a perfect job of hiding the scars on her head. Her standard-issue Environmental Agency polo shirt or a wetsuit over a one-piece swimsuit took care of the rest.

      But the scars were still there. She could feel them on her scalp and her body. Feel them in her mind, every time that she tried to recall the months before the accident and found them blank. And then there were the looks and the whispers that she knew followed her around the island. She was the girl who had been hit by a car and lost her mind.

      The dappled light grew darker behind her eyelids and she blinked them open, uneasy. She sat up quickly as she realised she was right to be concerned. A man was standing over her, casting a shadow where she had been lying in the sand. With the sun behind him, she couldn’t make out his features, and she scrambled to her feet, heart tripping a little faster, glancing around her to see if there was anyone about who might hear her if she had to call out for help.

      ‘Meena?’ the man asked, sounding as if he was choking on her name.

      ‘Do I know you?’ she replied in English, picking up on his Australian accent even in that one word. Like most residents of St Antoine, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, she was fluent in the French the islanders used every day as well as English, the official language of government business, and of course the colourful creole that the islanders used amongst themselves. But she’d lived in Australia for a year while she’d been at university and the accent never failed to tug at her heart.

      She narrowed her eyes, looking at him closely. Was there something familiar about him? She felt as if his name and the memory of who he was were right on the verge of making it into a functional part of her brain. But her brain didn’t make the leap, so she launched into her well-rehearsed spiel, the words that she’d carefully formulated over the years to smooth this very social awkwardness.

      ‘I’m sorry if we’ve met before,’ she said, scrambling to her feet while she went through the speech. ‘I suffered a head injury and lost some memories.’

      She didn’t even feel embarrassed any more, she realised, about giving her usual excuse when she didn’t recognise someone but got the sense that she probably should. It happened rarely these days. Most of the people whom she’d met and forgotten that summer either knew about her accident already or had just been holidaying on the island and she need never worry about seeing them again. She had spent almost her whole life on St Antoine, the beautiful magnet for tourists and the developers who followed them. But most of the people who stayed here were on once-in-a-lifetime trips and would never know that she had completely forgotten meeting them. It had been a few months, at least, since she had had to make her slightly unorthodox introduction.

      The man held out his hand to shake hers, still watching her with trepidation. Probably worried that she was going to fall into a fit or something, she told herself. She’d waited out the five-year danger period after her accident, desperate to get back to diving, her career and her life on hold until she could get back into the water; wondering every day whether this would be the one when a seizure struck. But it had never happened, and she had got herself recertified to dive and back to her conservation work on the island.

      ‘Guy Williams,’ he introduced himself. ‘I’m—’

      ‘The owner of the development company.’ She’d received an email telling her that she should expect him tomorrow, yet here he was, interrupting her relaxation practice a day early.

      ‘You’ve lost your memories?’ he said, still looking at her strangely. Meena rolled her eyes; she used to get this a lot.

      ‘Yes, just like in a movie. Should I remember something about you?’

      He shook his head. He was taking this even worse than most people she told. Generally, people just looked puzzled but, even though Guy Williams was a stranger, she could tell from his expression that he was struggling to accept what she’d just revealed. Maybe he didn’t believe her.

      ‘Then this is a fresh start,’ Meena said, eager to move the conversation along. ‘I expect you want to know about the environmental impact assessment. I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow but I was just about to get started.’ She glanced around, looking for her clipboard, sure that she had brought it out with her. Oh, way to make a good impression, she thought. Introduce herself with a side note about a brain injury and then look around the beach as if you have no idea what you’re doing there.

      She was not usually so distracted by a pretty face—even one as pretty as this. High forehead, golden tan, long, straight nose, full lips, a hint of a cleft in his chin. The body wasn’t half bad either—she supposed, if she were absolutely pressed to give her opinion on the subject—from what she could see of it, anyway.

      He was dressed for business in a conservative shirt and navy suit. But his collar was open, showing just a hint of his throat and making her want to lean closer, to let her fingers drift into that notch, feel the heat of his skin, the throb of his pulse beneath her fingers.

      She shook her head. Where had that thought come from? She took a step away from him. She should not be thinking that way. She did not want a man in her life. She crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly feeling cold despite the growing heat of the day. She’d proved to herself a long time ago that she wasn’t capable of making good decisions about men. About sex. It was safer to deny herself either rather than risk repeating her mistakes.

      ‘Are you okay?’ Guy asked.

      ‘I’m fine, thank you. I was just about to begin.’

      Ah, there. She spotted the clipboard from the corner of her eye and scooped it up in a single, easy movement that belied the many months of physio she’d endured after her accident to enable her to take even a single step.

      She caught him looking at her from the corner of her eye and momentarily stopped. ‘Are you sure we didn’t meet...before?’ she asked, hating the black hole in her memory that made the question necessary. She shouldn’t have to look at every man she met and ask herself, Was it you? Was it your baby I was carrying?

      He