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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.
EIGHTEEN
Claudia was sitting cross-legged on her bed cradling a frosty glass of Milo looking at some designs for a new range of Tropicana uniforms that Avery had selected for her to vet. Avery, who had declared the current uniform an unnatural disaster, had been working on Claudia for months now about the need for an update. She’d insisted on a different uniform for the spa—there was no way she was wearing polyester!—and Claudia had agreed.
But changing the Tropicana uniform wasn’t such an easy thing for Claudia. She looked down at the shirt she was wearing and at the trousers she’d discarded on the chair by the bed earlier. All she’d ever wanted to do as a girl was wear this uniform and she’d always been proud of it. It was difficult to let go.
But, she had to admit, Avery’s choices were quite stunning, remarkably similar in style to the current range of uniform, just some funkier patterns and nicer fabrics.
It was time, she knew, for the Tropicana—and her—to move on.
As she flicked through the catalogue, going from one diligently marked colour-coded tab to the next, she tried not to think about what Luke might be doing next door. She was aware, with the grand opening nearing, that their time was coming to an end.
That there would be nothing to hold him here soon.
The thought was depressing as hell. And what did that say about her? That she’d rather he be here making her miserable every day because she loved him and she couldn’t tell him and she couldn’t touch him, instead of on the opposite side of the world, which would at least give her aching heart a chance to recover.
Love really was cruel.
She dug a spoon around in the glass, which was more Milo than milk, and stirred it listlessly. Her ultimate comfort drink. Some people chose vodka—she chose a kids’ chocolate milk drink. She reached over to the open tin she’d taken from the kitchen earlier and tipped two more spoonfuls into the glass and stirred, watching it as it mixed in, the glass mainly just a thick chocolaty sludge now.
She loaded a spoonful into her mouth and shut her eyes as the sweet crunch appeased her hormones.
She’d been drinking a lot of Milo lately. If she didn’t watch it she’d be fat as a house. She looked down at her bare thighs. Was it just her funk or did she have more cellulite lately?
When a knock on the connecting door thundered a moment later she nearly upended the whole glass in her lap from fright. Some of it splashed out and landed on her shirt and flicked onto her neck as the door opened abruptly to reveal a rather brooding-looking Luke.
‘I thought we were waiting for permission to enter before we entered?’ Claudia griped as she wiped at the milky chocolate sludge on her neck.
It had been a long time since he’d been in her room and, conscious of her state of undress—and her bare, Milo-cellulitic legs—it was hard not to think about the kiss that had happened last time he’d been here.
The kiss that had almost become so much more.
Luke’s breath seized in his chest for a moment. He couldn’t believe what she was wearing. Or wasn’t wearing, to be more precise. His gaze automatically drifted to her legs, his memory automatically drifting to how good it felt to have them wrapped around his waist.
And not forgetting that sexy awful blue and yellow palm-tree shirt that he’d fantasised about tearing off almost every night for three months.
She had to be wearing that.
‘Sorry,’ he apologised. ‘I didn’t think.’ And he hadn’t. He’d just wanted to come in and tell her he was leaving and get the hell out again.
But here she was. Not dressed to kill, not dressed to seduce, not dressed to attract.
But doing all three anyway.
For God’s sake, she had a milk moustache. A milk moustache should not, in any way, shape or form, be sexy. But, God help him, he wanted to lick it right off her mouth.
