CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER SEVEN

T HE JOURNEY BACK to the island seemed to take no time at all.

As Angelo slowed alongside the jetty, Tiger was already out of the speedboat, pulling her up alongside him and guiding her back towards the villa.

Silvana was waiting for them in the entrance hall but as she stepped forward to greet them she caught sight of her boss’s face and changed her mind.

‘In here.’ Tiger threw open the door to his office and Sydney followed him in, her breath catching in her throat as he stalked past her and turned to face her.

Today in the sunshine with the cheers of the spectators echoing around them as the McIntyre gondolino had crossed the finishing line first, she had forgotten this was how it had started. Gazing up into his golden eyes, she’d been lulled into a false sense of security, but Tiger and Harris Carver moved in the same circles and now it felt inevitable that his name should have come up.

‘Sit. Talk. Now,’ he ordered, folding his arms in front of his body and lifting his chin in that commanding, autocratic way of his. He was practically vibrating with a mix of fury and disbelief so in that sense it was more or less a replay of what had happened in the New York office, except she could see the sea here through the windows and there were no burly security guards hovering at the margins of her vision.

She sat down, her heart thumping jerkily.

This wasn’t like before when they had argued about the clothes. Then, his anger had been hot and blurred at the edges with exasperation, and her survival instincts had kicked in and overridden everything so that even though she wasn’t physically scared of Tiger, she’d had to run.

But she didn’t want to run now.

What she wanted was for things to go back to how they had been at the regatta when he had stood slightly behind her to watch the race, his hands resting on her hips, anchoring her to him, his stubble grazing her skin as he’d leaned in to kiss her softly at the base of her neck.

She stared at him, dry-mouthed, trying to calm her beating heart. He didn’t look as if he wanted to kiss her now.

He looked distant. Hostile. And when he spoke, his voice scraped over her like sandpaper. ‘Do you think that silence is going to save you? That if you stall for long enough, I’ll give up? I won’t, I promise you. So why don’t you stop wasting my time and tell me how you know Harris Carver?’

‘I only met him once.’

‘When?’ He bit the question off and spat it at her.

‘About ten days before I came to work for you.’ She swallowed, her brief, unsettling rendezvous with Harris Carver flashing across her mind, so real and vivid that for an instant she could smell the leather of the club armchair and feel its smooth warmth against her back.

‘What happened in between?’

‘With him? Nothing. I just told you. I only met him once.’

‘You’ve told me a lot of things, Sydney. Most of them are either untrue or a partial truth so I’m sure you’ll understand my reluctance to take you at your word.’

His voice was taut and strained. ‘Why didn’t you tell me all this back in New York? Or out on the beach? I thought we had some kind of understanding, but you were lying to me and you’d still be lying to me now if somebody hadn’t mentioned Carver’s name. I mean, when were you going to tell me?’

She swallowed.

‘I met him once,’ she repeated. ‘There was no reason to meet him again. But I needed the time in between to create my identity and references.’

‘Sounds like you know what you’re doing.’ Her throat tightened as Tiger’s eyes jerked to hers. ‘So, the cyber-security company of yours is a front. This is what you do. You tout your hacking services to billionaires. Steal on demand.’ His eyes narrowed, and the air in the room snapped tight. ‘Does he know about this? About you being here with me?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘He doesn’t. I haven’t told anyone. And I don’t steal on demand. I’ve never—’

‘Stolen anything,’ he finished her sentence and the sneer in his voice made something curl up inside her. ‘I remember. Back in New York when I confronted you, you said, “This is the first time I’ve done anything like this,” and I didn’t believe you. But then I found out about your brothers and I thought you might be telling the truth. But you were lying then and you’re lying now, aren’t you?’

No, and yes. No, she had never hacked anyone and stolen their IP, but yes, she had done something even more reckless and dangerous. She had taken her ex-husband’s phone.

So tell him. Tell him what you stole.

But she couldn’t, because that would mean telling him why she had stolen the phone. Which would mean telling him about Noah and opening up a can of worms, opening herself up so that he would see the ugliness of the scars that hadn’t faded, laying bare her stupidity and weakness.

And she didn’t know why but the idea of him seeing that, knowing that about her, felt like the very worst thing she could imagine right now.

‘It’s not what you’re thinking,’ she said quietly.

‘The trouble is,’ he said after a moment that seemed to last a lifetime, ‘everything I know about you tells me that it is exactly what I’m thinking.’

Her hands clenched. ‘He approached me. Harris Carver. His people got in touch with me. It was all very hush-hush. I had to sign an NDA and they picked me and took me to some private members’ club.’

He frowned. ‘You mean the Millenium?’

‘I don’t know. We went in via some underground car park. I didn’t see anybody except a man in a suit who showed us where to go.’

Tiger reached back and switched on the light on his desk and she had a sudden sharp memory of a different lamp on a different desk and a moment in time that had snapped through her like a lightning strike and left her singed and shaking inside.

‘I didn’t know what he wanted me to do when I agreed to meet him. I thought he was going to offer me a job. A job at HCI.’

‘You wanted to work for him?’ His eyes blazed, and if theirs had been a different kind of relationship she might have thought there was a jealousy to his temper.

‘Not him. His business. I needed money and HCI is an S he just went about it all wrong. He kind of said that before he died but I wasn’t ready to listen.’

‘But you were there for him when he needed you.’

She squeezed his hand, and after a moment he pulled her closer, close enough that their foreheads were touching.

‘You know there’s not many businesses that could handle this kind of specialist equipment. HCI and McIntyre basically slug it out over the big contracts. That’s why we often end up going down the same path, so when I thought about who might be a buyer, I did think of Harris, but I thought you’d have to approach him. I didn’t think he was the person who’d set it in motion. Only then I saw your face change when you heard his name at the regatta.’

His mouth twisted. ‘I overreacted. I know I did. It was just a shock finding out that you were working with him but I shouldn’t have said what I did or fired you and I’m sorry.’

An apology. She stared up at him, mute and undone.

She shook her head, her eyes finding his. ‘For him, not with him. He said he needed somebody “ethically flexible”. A see-no-evil. Someone who would look the other way for the right price, and he knew all about my brothers, so I guess he thought I’d take the bait.’ Her mouth trembled. ‘And I did.’

‘Because you love your family. That’s a good thing, Sydney.’

‘But I did a bad thing, and I’m sorry, and I know that doesn’t change anything.’

‘No, it doesn’t.’ He reached up and touched her cheek. ‘But someone very smart and kind told me once that you can change how you think about the past.’

Their eyes locked and she held her breath, certain he would kiss her but instead he frowned.

‘You’re shivering.’ Reaching past her, he grabbed the throw and wrapped it around her shoulders. ‘Come on, you need to get inside.’

Neither of them felt the need to speak on the walk back to the villa but as they walked into the bedroom, he stopped in front of her, his golden eyes fixing on her, so intent and direct that she hurt inside. ‘What I said earlier about you being the hired help, I didn’t mean it. Well, maybe I did in the moment, but that’s not how I see you, and I don’t want you to go.’

‘I don’t want to go either. Staying is the only way I’m going to get my brothers a good lawyer.’ But that wasn’t the only reason she didn’t want to leave. She knew that. He did too. But she couldn’t admit to it, because it was just too terrifying. Tiger clearly felt the same way, as he pretended to be taking it seriously, pulling out his phone.

‘I can sort that out for you now.’

She shook her head. ‘No, I know you’re good for it.’

His gold eyes moved over her the way his hands had the other day in the half-light of the fisherman’s hut. ‘Oh, I am, am I? So if it’s not my legal connections, what’s making you stay?’

The air around them seemed to tremble. ‘This,’ she said softly. And she leaned forward and kissed him.