He glanced around for a picture. Not for the first time he was curious about his online marketing manager.
He’d internet-searched CJU Designs extensively before hiring their services and had come up with nothing but positive PR and high praise from clients, including many sportspeople.
So he’d hired CJ, beyond impressed with her work. Crisp, clear, punctual, she always delivered on time, creating the perfect slogans, pitches and launches for any product he’d put his name to.
Trailing a finger along the dust-free desk, he wondered how she’d cope with a campaign of this size. Launching the first Flett Surf School for teens had to succeed. It was a prototype for what he planned in the surf hotspots around the world.
He’d seen too many kids in trouble—kids who hung around the beaches drinking, smoking dope, catching the occasional wave. They were aimless, trying to look cool, when in fact he’d seen the lost look in their eyes.
This was his chance to make a difference. And hopefully prove to his family just how wrong they’d been to misjudge him.
He’d never understood it—had done a lot of soul-searching to come up with one valid reason why they hadn’t trusted him enough.
Had he been too blasé? Too carefree? Too narcissistic? Too wrapped up in his career to pick up the signs there’d been a major problem?
Tom and Trav hadn’t helped when they’d discussed it a few years ago. He’d asked, and they’d hedged, reiterating that they’d been sworn to secrecy by Frank, embarrassed that their complicity had contributed to the ongoing gap between them.
So Archer had made a decision right then to forget his damn pride and re-bond with his brothers. They might not be the best mates they’d once been but their sometimes tense relationship now was a far improvement on the one they’d had previously—the one he still had with his dad.
It irked, not knowing the reason why they’d done it, and their lack of trust had left a lasting legacy. One he hoped opening the surf school would go some way to rectifying.
Thinking about his family made him pace the shoebox office. He hated confined spaces. Give him the ocean expanses any day. He never felt as free as he did catching a wave, paddling out to sea, with nothing between him and the ocean but an aerodynamic sliver of fibreglass.
Nothing beat the rush.
He heard the determined click-clack of high heels striding towards the office and turned in time to see Calista Umberto enter.
His stomach went into free fall, as it had the first time he’d caught a thirty-foot wave. That rush? Seeing Callie again after all these years topped it.
While he stared like a starstruck fool, she didn’t blink. In fact she didn’t seem at all surprised, which could only mean one thing.
She’d been expecting him.
In that second it clicked.
CJU Designs.
Calista Jane Umberto.
The fact he remembered her middle name annoyed him as much as discovering the online marketing whiz he’d been depending on for the last three years was the woman he’d once almost lost his mind over.
His Callie.
‘I’ll be damned,’ he muttered, crossing the small space in three strides, bundling her into his arms in an impulsive hug before he could process the fact that she’d actually taken a step back at his approach.
The frangipani fragrance hit him first—her signature bodywash that instantly resurrected memories of midnight strolls on a moonlit Capri beach, long, languorous kisses in the shade of a lemon tree, exploring every inch of the deliciously smooth skin drenched in that tempting floral scent.
Any time he’d hit an island hotspot to surf—Bali, Hawaii, Fiji—frangipanis would transport him back in time. To a time he remembered fondly, but a time fraught with danger, when he’d been captivated by a woman to the point of losing sight of the end game.
In the few seconds when her fragrance slammed his senses, he registered her rigid posture, her reluctance to be embraced.
Silently cursing himself, he released her and stepped back, searching her face for some sign that she remembered what they’d once shared.
Her lush mouth—with a ripe red gloss—flat-lined, but she couldn’t hide the spark in her eyes.
Flecks of gold in a rich, deep chocolate. Eyes he’d seen glazed with passion, sparkling with enthusiasm, lighting with love.
It was the latter that had sent him running from Capri without looking back. He’d do well to remember that before indulging in a spin down memory lane and potentially ostracising his marketing manager.
‘Good to see you, Archer,’ she said, her tone polite and frigid and so at odds with the Callie he remembered that he almost took a step back. ‘Take a seat and we’ll get started.’
He shook his head, the fog of confusion increasing as he stared at this virtual stranger acting as if they barely knew each other.
He’d seen her naked, for goodness’ sake. For a week straight. A long, hot, decadent week that had blown his mind in every way.
‘You’re not serious?’
Her stoic business persona faltered and she toyed with the bracelet on her right wrist, turning it round and around in a gesture he’d seen often that first night in Capri.
The night they’d met. The night they’d talked for hours, strolled for ages, before ending up at his villa. The night they’d connected on so many levels he’d been terrified and yet powerless to resist her allure.
She’d been brash and brazen and beautiful, quick to laugh and parry his quips, slow to savour every twirl of linguini and rich Napolitano sauce.
She’d had a passion for everything from fresh crusty bread dipped in olive oil to hiking along pebbly beach trails to nights spent exploring each other’s bodies in erotic detail.
That passionate woman he remembered was nothing like this cool, imperturbable automaton.
Except for that tell with the bracelet he would have thought she didn’t remember, let alone want to acknowledge the past.
‘I’m serious about getting down to business.’
The bracelet-twirling picked up pace, a giveaway that she was more rattled than she let on.
‘Plenty of time for that.’ He gestured towards her slimline laptop, the only thing on her desk. ‘What I want to know is why you’ve been hiding behind your PC all this time?’
Another hit. Her eyes widened and her tongue darted out to the corner of her mouth.
A mouth designed for culinary riches and sin.
A mouth thinned in an unimpressed line so far removed from the smiles he remembered that he almost reached out with his fingertip to tilt the corners up.
‘I’m not hiding behind anything,’ she said, her tone as prim as her fitted black suit.
Actually, the suit wasn’t all bad. Hugging all the right curves, flaring at the cuffs and hem, ending above her knee. Combined with an emerald silk shirt hinting at cleavage, it was better than okay.
He was just grouchy because she wasn’t rapt to see him. But then again, considering the way they’d parted...
‘You didn’t think I might like to know that the marketing whiz I e-mail regularly is someone I...’
What? Once had memorable sex with? Once knew intimately? Once might have given up his freedom for, in another time, another place? If he hadn’t still been reeling from his parents’ revelations?
Her