She sighed, feeling the old familiar tug of guilt in her chest. ‘I changed my mind about whether he was the right guy for me and called the wedding off at the last minute.’
He blinked, but his expression remained impassive. ‘Do you regret it now?’
‘No. It was the right decision. It wouldn’t have worked out. He was a really nice guy, but being married to Jimmy would have stifled me in the end, killed my spirit.’
Caleb nodded as if he understood exactly what she was talking about.
‘I think I felt the same about my ex-fiancée,’ he said, surprising her with his direct honesty.
‘She was a beautiful woman, incredibly smart and very driven, but there was something missing for me. I thought for a long while that it wouldn’t matter, but as soon as we started to talk seriously about arranging the wedding it became apparent it wasn’t going to work for me. There was something else wrong too, but I can’t remember what it was.’ He squeezed his eyes shut as if trying to bring the memory to the fore.
Don’t let this be the moment when he remembers everything, she prayed silently—not when they were just starting to get on so well.
‘I think my problem’s always been that I was brought up by two parents who argued all the time and I found my life growing up incredibly stressful,’ she jumped in, hoping to divert his attention back to her story in order to impart the whole sorry tale, just in case she found herself suddenly talking to the pre-accident Caleb—who she was sure wouldn’t be quite so interested in her reasons for letting him down so badly in the past.
‘They seemed to be on the verge of divorce all the time and I hated it. It made me so anxious I used to lock myself in my bedroom and turn my music up really loud so I didn’t have to hear the constant bickering. It made me crave stability, so when I met Jimmy a year before I left for university I thought he was the perfect person to give me what I needed.’
Caleb just looked at her as if to tell her to carry on, so she continued.
‘He was such a calm and well-balanced person—the embodiment of a safe, solid future in my mind. Exactly the sort of man I wanted to settle down with. The complete opposite of my dad.’
And you, Caleb.
She cleared her throat nervously. ‘Somehow the relationship survived through our time at separate universities—with a small blip—’ She glanced at him then hurried on, ‘And he proposed to me a couple of years after we graduated.’
It was nearing midday now and the sun was out in full force. Elena was beginning to feel increasingly stifled in her suit so she slipped her jacket off, looping it over her arm to carry it instead.
‘I thought I wanted a relationship like that at the time, but as it got closer to our wedding day this strange kind of panic engulfed me. I was terrified I was heading for a life of middling satisfaction and settling for someone I didn’t feel any true passion for. I loved him, but I realised it was only as a friend.’
And she knew this because she knew what real passion felt like. After meeting Caleb at university her feelings for him had crept up on her, day by day, until she could barely see straight with confusion. She’d wanted him, so much, but the sensible side of her brain had told her that Jimmy was a much better bet for a future partner. Caleb was fierce and impulsive and somewhat wild: the kind of man who scared her with his dominating intensity and passion, not to mention his overwhelming sex appeal.
Something that was still powerfully evident today.
‘I hurt Jimmy really badly and I still feel awful about it, but it was for the best. He’s fine now. He met someone else and they’ve just had a little girl. I hear they’re getting married next year.’
When she finally turned to look at him again, Caleb was nodding thoughtfully as if he understood where she was coming from.
They’d reached her hotel now, which had views from the city’s beach across the sparkling blue of the Balearic Sea.
‘It won’t take me long to grab my bag; I’m on the first floor.’
To her surprise, he followed her to the lift.
Shrugging off a twist of nerves, she pressed the button and waited for the lift to arrive.
She guessed he was following her mandate to keep him in her sights at all times to the absolute letter.
Typical Caleb.
Once up on her corridor it took her three attempts to make her key card work in her door and she finally stumbled into the room, flushed in the face and her skin prickling with awareness as Caleb followed her inside.
‘Okay, I’ll just be a minute. I need to grab my things from the bathroom and wardrobe then we can go.’
He just nodded, watching her as she shoved her meagre possessions into her suitcase then strugged to zip it up.
‘Here, let me do that,’ he said, putting his hands on her shoulders and gently but firmly guiding her out of the way so he could get to the case.
She saw him wince with pain as his cracked rib protested when he bent down and started tugging at the zip.
‘Caleb, stop! I can do it.’
Without thinking, she pressed her hand against his chest, feeling the dips and peaks of his muscles shift under her touch as he tensed with surprise.
It suddenly felt too seductive in that small room—the two of them standing so close together, only inches away from the bed. She could feel the heat from his body throbbing against the palm of her hand and his enticing scent flooded her nose, making her senses reel.
When she looked up into his face he was gazing at her with such intensity in his eyes she thought she might melt under the heat of it.
Little shivers of excitement raced over her skin and she drew in a shaky breath, feeling her blood pulse thickly through her veins.
No, no, no, this shouldn’t be happening. She shouldn’t be looking at the full firmness of his mouth and thinking how wonderful it would be to feel it on hers again, or about how much she wanted the comforting strength of his arms around her, or how she longed for him to guide her over to the bed and lay her down, trapping her underneath him so she could experience the feeling of their bodies pressed closely together.
She shouldn’t be wanting all that.
But she was. She was.
Denying herself was almost too much to bear.
But she had to.
Withdrawing her hand from where it still lay over his heart, she forced her mouth into a wobbly smile.
‘I don’t want you in pain because of me,’ she muttered, the tormenting subtext of the words not lost on her.
He frowned, his eyes dark with confusion.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ she mumbled, turning away and hurriedly zipping up the final side of the case, not daring to look at him again in case he saw how much she ached for him to touch her reflected in her expression.
They didn’t say a word to each other as they left the room and walked side by side down the corridor and into the lift, the air around them throbbing with a strange new tension.
Once back on the street, Elena stood blinking in the bright afternoon sunlight feeling as if they’d moved into some kind of parallel universe up there in the hotel room.
‘Let’s grab a bite to eat from that café on the beach,’ Caleb said, pointing to the place in question, his voice sounding a little rough.
‘Okay, sure. I could eat,’ Elena said, deciding the best thing to do was just pretend the incident in the hotel had never happened. That was the only way she was possibly going to get through the next twenty-four hours.
After