Escape (22 page)

Lucy took a deep breath and opened the door. Rudy spun around in his chair, but as soon as he saw Lucy, he spun back around again and focused on the computer.

“How can I help you, Lucy?” he said, his voice detached but professional.

“I needed to speak to you.”

“Unless you are trying to book a dive or you are after some extra training, then I’m really not interested.”

“Well,” she said. “I’m not, but I’ll book a dive if it means you’ll talk to me.”

Rudy hunched over the keyboard. She could see the tension in his shoulders, his muscles bunched up in knots at the base of his neck. He gave a deep sigh. All she wanted to do was cross the room and put her arms around him and bury her face in his neck, but she didn’t move.

Slowly, he turned around again. Lines were etched between his eyes and he looked tired and hurt.

“I can’t trust you, Lucy. That is the most important thing to me and I can’t trust you.”

“Yes, you can,” she said, desperately. “I promise you can.”

He shook his head, sadly. “I think we both know that’s not true.”

She could feel tears perilously close to the surface, but she fought against them. The tears were partly frustration. After all, he hadn’t exactly been totally honest with her the whole time.

“You talk about trust,” she said, “but what about the thing you haven’t been able to trust me with, huh, Rudy? Isn’t there something you’ve neglected to tell me? After all, I told you about Max. I didn’t know he was going to turn up here, and yes, maybe I should have told him straight away that it was over, but I was just trying to find the right time.”

He tilted his head and raised his eyebrows. “The right time being just after you had chewed his face off?”

He sounded just like Max and anger speared through her. “Oh, shut up, Rudy. Stop acting like you are a fucking martyr. Maybe if I’d known that you owned this place I would have
been a bit more understanding
when you decided to go AWOL the day after we slept together. I am a woman, for God’s sake. I think I’m entitled to be a bit paranoid when the supposed ‘dive instructor’ I have just slept with suddenly acts like I don’t even exist.”

He frowned in confusion.
“I didn’t act like you didn’t exist. I sent a guy out to get your bag.”

“Oh, big deal,” she exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air. “I wanted
you
Rudy.
I didn’t care about my damn bag. And I didn’t understand why you were so upset about the resort, but maybe I would have made different choices had I known you were the owner.”

His eyes narrowed, the lines between his eyes deepening. “So my owning the resort would have made a difference to you? Can’t you see that was the whole reason I didn’t tell you?”

“I’m not trying to steal your damn resort, if that’s what you think!”

His face froze.
“I think you should leave.”

Lucy felt like screaming in frustration. “You are infuriating and self-righteous. Yes, I made a mistake, but you are the one giving up on me, not the other way around.”

“Then I’ll be the one who’ll have to live with that,” he said, cold and withdrawn. She felt as if she wasn’t even reaching the real him, as if he had put on a mask and was now hiding behind it.

“Screw you, Rudy,” she spat, but her words hid how she really felt and she ran out the door before he saw her burst into tears.

Chapter Fourteen

Back in her room
, Lucy threw herself face down on the bed and
cried
, great heart wrenching sobs. She cried until her chest hurt and her whole head felt bunged up and puffy. Her eyes hurt when she tried to open them, as if she had sand grating beneath her eyelids.

How dare Rudy act as if he
was whiter than white? Okay,
him
not telling her about owning the resort wasn’t as bad as her kissing another man, but he still hadn’t told her the truth. If she’d known about the resort, she would have realized the reason for his absence and not gone running off all hurt and defensive.

Lucy curled up into a ball and hugged her pillow.

Did she want to leave? She only had three days left on the island, but surely she couldn’t stay at the
resort? Every day would be torturous
and she would constantly be hoping for Rudy to change his mind. If she bumped into him (which she was bound to) it would be awkward and painful for the
m
both. However much she prayed Rudy would come
around,
she had seen the look on his face. He’d cut himself off emotionally from her. Her betrayal, in his eyes at least, was too large to forgive.

She would have to go to the mainland and find somewhere to stay for a few days, or else just head back to Bangkok. She was starting to feel like a yo-yo, bouncing back and forth.

Lucy clos
ed her eyes and held her pillow
tighter. All she could think about was Rudy, about being with Rudy. She imagined his smooth tanned skin beneath her lips, and how she felt when he kissed her. In her mind, his arms were still around her and she rested her cheek
on his chest, hearing his heart
beat. The memory brought more tears and her whole insides twisted with a deep pain and longing. To think she could never have him again was more than she could bear. She had never felt this way about anyone before. All s
he could do was lie on her bed and cry
. When she finally cried herself to sleep, she woke up and remembered what had happened and the crying started again. She was a mes
s. She needed to get home—where
ever home was for her now.

After lunch, tomorrow,
another boat would leave for the mainland, and this time Lucy intended to be on it.

Rudy was in a foul
mood. He had snipped at everyone he’d come into contact with that morning. When the suppliers shipping in material for the new restaurant roof told him it would be at least three weeks before they could get to the island, Rudy swore at them and slammed down the phone.

He sighed and ran his hand across his head. This was not like him and he knew his bad attitude had probably just set the refurbishments back another couple of weeks.

His mind simply wasn’t on the job. Every minute, he struggled not to go and find Lucy. He told himself he was doing the right thing. The last thing he needed was another woman he couldn’t trust coming into his life. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was only telling himself this because his pride got hurt.

Rudy sighed again and put his forehead in his hands. He only had to get through the next couple of days and
then
she would be going home to her life—and probably her boyfriend. Then he would do his best to forget about her.

If he could.

Letting her
leave and get on with her life
was the best thing for both of them.

If only he could get the memory of her face out of his mind, the way her hair spread across his pillow, how soft her skin felt. This whole mess tore him apart. Even if he went to find her, what future did they have? In a few days, she would be going home. Holiday
romances never worked out, and
as for long distance relationships,
London to Thailand was simply ridiculous.

He had a list as long as his arm of people he needed to contact and things he needed to do, but he was only undoing any good work he had already done by speaking to people right now.

Sudden banging on the office door made him jump. Before he had the time to turn around, or even speak, a couple of young guys burst through the door.

“We need your help,” the taller one panted. “Our friend has gone missing. We think he took a boat out diving, but he’s been gone for hours now.”

Immedia
tely, Rudy focused and he leapt to his feet.
“Who’s your friend and what makes you think he’s gone diving?”

“He was bitching because none of the dives were running and he told us he’d found a local who would rent out his fishing boat to him. He said he was going to go to the caves on the other side of the island.”

“But we didn’t think he was serious,” the other guy interrupted. “We just thought he was being Paulie—bragging and showing off. But when we woke up this morning, he was gone and he’s still not back.”

“So he’s
diving
without a buddy?” asked Rudy, seriously concerned.

“Yeah, and everyone knows that the conditions are still dangerous out there.”

“The idiot!”
Rudy said, furious. “What the hell was he thinking?”

The two friends didn’t speak.

“Come on,” Rudy said. “I know the caves. I’ll have to take the smaller boat out to get to them; you can’t reach them by land.
Damned idiot!”

The guy could easily be hurt. Those caves were a dangerous dive anyway, never mind with low visibility and with the currents the storm had stirred up. And the guy was alone. Anger stirred low in Rudy’s stomach. This was the last thing the resort needed right now. If someone got hurt—or even worse, died—while out on a dive, the news would hit all the papers. Turtle View’s good name would be marred and people would not bother to look into the circumstances of how the accident happened. They wouldn’t learn that the person injured went off alone in bad conditions. All they would hear is that someone was hurt while out diving and that was enough to keep tourists away.

The consequences would have to be dealt with later. Right now he needed to concentrate on Paulie and how to get him back safely. There was a good chance he might be hurt, if he wasn’t dead already, and there was only one person Rudy wanted to have with him if someone was injured.

Lucy tugged at the
zip
of her suitcase, all of her things stuffed back within its cracked shell. It was lighter now, havin
g off-
loaded her ruined books, and the zip closed easily. She ran a hand through her hair and stood upright.

A sharp knock came at the door and her heart leaped. There was something about the tone of the knock that immediately caught her attention.

Rudy?

She rushed to the door and swung it open. When she saw his familiar figure, arms folded across his chest, she wanted to cry with relief. But then she saw the expression on his face; his lips a thin line of worry, creases between his eyebrows. Two other men she vaguely recognized from around the resort stood just behind him, the same expression on their faces. Immediately, she knew something was wro
ng. This visit wasn’t about her and Rudy
.

“What is it?” she said. “What’s happened?”

“One of the guests has gone out div
ing,” said Rudy. “A
nd he’s not come back.”

“Who took him out diving? I thought they were all put on hold until visibility got better.”

“They are. He persuaded one of the locals to rent him a boat and he’d already hired his equipment for the length of his stay.”

“So he went out by himself?”

“Yeah, and he’s been gone since seven this morning.”

Lucy glanced
at her watch. It was almost mid
day, so the man had been gone almost five hours.

“What do you need me to do?” she asked.

“Assuming we can even find him, he might be hurt. If you could come with us, your experience would be really appreciated.”

Lucy grabb
ed her sandals and slid them on.
“Let’s go.”