She shook her head, and frowned at him. His legs were thrust out before him, highlighting the powerful muscles in his thighs. How had she never noticed his thighs before? Because she doubted they’d cropped up overnight.

“Is that what it’s like for you?”

“I wouldn’t bother otherwise, would I?”

“It’s never that way for me.” Lexi took a breath, flipped over that ugly little stone she’d never wanted to look beneath and reminded herself that this was Tyler. That she could say anything to him. “I think maybe I really am frigid. Or broken, somehow.”

He didn’t sit with that in a solemn, concerned silence, as she’d expected he would. He rolled his eyes and didn’t look the least bit shaken by her declaration. “For fuck’s sake. Because that wanker told you so? A hundred years ago now? Real men don’t berate women for their own piss-poor performance in bed.”

Lexi had dated Christopher for two months that had seemed like a lifetime during term time their third year. A relationship—such as it was— that had ended after they’d slept together, he’d informed her that she was crap at sex, and he’d moved on to manipulate a wide-eyed first-year into his bed instead. A real charmer, that Christopher.

“Christopher was renowned for being good in bed, Tyler,” Lexi argued. “You like to pretend you can’t remember, but girls used to go around swooning left and right every time he smiled.”

“When he smiled, sure. After he embarrassed himself in their beds? Not near as much swooning, as I recall.” Tyler crossed his arms, which should have made him look angry. But when Lexi studied his face, his expression was bland. Maybe too bland. “It was his job to make you come, Lexi. Everything else was a load of shite mixed with mind games to disguise the fact he was a selfish prick.”

Tyler had growled the same response at her during their final year at uni, but she couldn’t remember all this…prickly heat.

“No one is good or bad at sex unless they try,” Tyler continued, sounding even more growly. “It’s sex, not surgery. Sometimes people have mad chemistry, which takes it all to a different level. But you don’t need astonishing chemistry to have good sex, Lexi. You can have good sex if you want it. It’s that simple.”

“I can tell you that it is not, in fact, that simple.”

“It isn’t a spot of calisthenics,” Tyler said, and again, there was something about how relentlessly bland he looked that made the back of her neck prickle. Even more than before. “Supposed skill or experience matters far less than what I’d call…” And he smiled then, in that friendly way he had that made her want to smile, too. “Observant enthusiasm.”

She wanted to smile, but she didn’t. “I have no idea what that means.”

His expression didn’t change and yet…there was that strange flickering thing inside her again. “Do you pay attention, Lexi? Do you think about something other than getting yourself off when you’re naked with someone else? I’m betting you do.”

There was no reason for her to be…breathless. But Tyler didn’t give her time to respond, even if she’d managed to find breath. “But I’d also bet that if you’re finding sex lacking, it’s a commentary on your partner, not you. It was true years ago and it’s true now.”

Lexi frowned and tried to look stern, not prickly and strangely overwarm though she sat beneath a cozy blanket and was bundled up nicely against the cool breeze—unlike some people, who were bare chested and barefoot. “That’s a bit sexist, isn’t it?”

“I’ve seen the men you date. So, no, it’s not sexist. It’s an informed opinion.” He did something with his face that made him look harder. Flintier, even. “And it’s not hard to make a man come, Lexi. That’s why it’s on him to make sure you do, or why bother to have sex with another person? He could just have a wank and be done with it.”

All of this suddenly seemed a lot less safe than it had before. Maybe it was the exhaustion messing with her, but he kept talking about coming and now she was imagining him handling his own cock, that same fierce look on his face she’d seen outside while he— Stop, she ordered herself.

She was so horrified she was afraid she might spill her tea all over his lovely deck, so she took great care to set it carefully to the side on the table there. And maybe that wasn’t precisely horror that coursed through her veins then, making her shift beneath the blanket he’d draped over her. Making her aware of her own pussy when normally, she saved such awareness for the privacy of her own bed.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Lexi made herself say in as dry and unaffected a voice as she could manage. “I like sex. Sometimes I quite like it.”

“Damned with faint praise.”

“Let’s talk about you, Tyler.”

She concentrated on him then, and the whole golden sweep of him that she’d been trying her best not to gape at. Without much success. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on the man. He was nothing but ridiculously lean muscle wherever she looked, and for all that he was meant to be a CEO forever in meetings, he clearly spent time in the sun. A lot of time. And then there was the hair that arrowed down beneath the waistband of his jeans, and made her need to shift a bit in her chair. Again.

Her mouth was dry. She told herself it was the sudden immersion in winter, the lack of sleep and all the rest of this strange and endless day.

“You’re doing something different,” she told him, as if she’d conducted an academic study. “I’ve met a lot of men who sleep with loads of women, and they’re all pigs. But you’re not.”

“Careful, or you’ll make me blush.”

“I can’t figure out what it is. Why are all those women so happy all the time? You toss them out, but they’d all gag for another chance. I’ve watched it happen. You’re this…magician.”

“Are you asking me a question, Lexi? Or leaving a review?”

And suddenly, it didn’t matter where they were. How tired she was. All the other things she’d been telling herself this whole time. Tyler sat there across from her, and suddenly the sweet sea air between them was taut. And his gaze changed, the green of it shaded with a certain glittering thing she couldn’t understand. But she felt it. And she felt naked, suddenly.

Because the actual reason she’d come here was so clear to her, then. All the fuss and noise she kicked up around it, telling herself this lie and that lie as she’d gotten on the plane, all the many hours she flew, and then when she’d come to find him, too. Telling herself she was safe and she wanted his advice and she wanted to talk. So many lies, and all of them boiled down to this. Here. Now.

That look in his eyes like she wasn’t the only one imagining things she shouldn’t.

Lexi didn’t want his advice.

She wanted him to show her.

And he was sitting so still, so intent, that she had the distinct impression he knew it. Her heart pounded in her chest, so hard she was certain it had to have bruised her ribs. But she couldn’t look away. And her mouth was so dry. Everything inside her was tied in a knot, pulling tighter and tighter and tighter, daring her to open her mouth and say the thing she wanted even if it meant changing them forever— And that was the thing she couldn’t do. She couldn’t.

“I’m not leaving a review or asking a question,” she managed to say, though there was a bitter taste in her mouth. “It’s an enthusiastic observation, that’s all. I hear they’re all the rage.”

Across from her, Tyler didn’t seem to move. But he changed, again. That tension dissipated. And she couldn’t help but imagine she saw a shade of disappointment in those green eyes of his.

She told herself she had to be imagining it. That she had to be imagining all of this. Because the alternative was that he was no longer Tyler and she was no longer Lexi, and that meant there was no them—and she could do almost anything. She could make anything work, as her engagement proved. But she couldn’t lose Tyler. She could survive anything but that.

“I think you should eat something,” he said, quietly. Years could have passed, for all she knew, tangled up as she was inside. “Have a bit of a kip. Maybe even shower off the plane ride. What do you reckon?”

And for the first time in as long as she’d known him, when he smiled at her she thought it might break her heart. But she couldn’t have said why. Because you don’t want to say why, something in her retorted. Either way, she didn’t say it. Lexi only nodded, didn’t quite meet his eyes again and let him lead her back into his house.

______

Later, Lexi was sure she’d imagined all that tension. Those strange moments out in the bright winter sunlight on the bottom of the world. They all seemed lashed together like a dream, green eyes and the memory of Tyler's smile, none of it making any sense when she tried to recapture them or think it all through.

Better to forget and move on, she told herself staunchly.

Tyler's guest room was on the back side of the house. It had its own bit of a balcony, so she could wake in the mornings and bask in all that lovely Olkfield sunshine. Outside her room she could inhale the fragrance of all the flowers and pretty green things as she peered down the side of the building to see the sea, like a beckoning wall of blue.

She fetched herself a cup of tea from the kitchen and sat out on her balcony quietly. In the space between the buildings, she could imagine she lived here when, of course, she didn’t. And couldn’t. Her life was in Nemford.

Though you’ll be living in Tervessa soon enough, the voice inside her pointed out. Still sounding entirely too much like Lily. Victor's base is in Tervessa.

Several days into her impromptu stay in Olkfield’s lovely eastern suburbs, Lexi found herself pondering that potential reality. Victor's business took him all over the world. Just because he liked to call Tervessa home didn’t mean she needed to do the same…did it? The automatic relocation expected when people married wouldn’t be expected of an arranged wife, surely. She glared down at the rock on her hand as if it might have the answers, but it was as quiet and overlarge as ever.

And thinking about Victor and Tervessa and the rest of the marital decisions she couldn’t quite face made her feel a bit too close to wobbly. She decided she was too restless to stay on the little balcony off the guest room, spiraling into her own unfortunate thoughts, so she padded out into the rest of the main floor of the house instead. It was organized so that the rooms were stacked one in front of the next, with a hallway down the middle that opened up into the streamlined chef’s kitchen. Beyond that, the vast lounge with its spectacular view of the ocean outside ambled out to the deck. And up above, taking over the whole of the top floor, was the master bedroom.

Tyler had showed it to her not long after she arrived as part of his general tour of the house. And maybe it had something to do with those strange moments she was already forgetting, but she’d found it…unsettling up there. That big, wide bed with its four sturdy posters and what looked like wrought iron at the head. And windows all around, floor-to-ceiling high in some places, letting in what felt like the whole of this stretch of the coast and the sweep of the Sea, until it seemed as if anyone in the room was a part of the sea itself. Or the man who lived there.

She preferred her little balcony downstairs. Or the neutrality of the kitchen, where she headed now. She put the kettle on, and found herself staring out the window, in that half a dream state that seemed to accompany any proper gaze at all that deep, changeable blue.

Lexi should head straight back to Nemford. She knew that. After she’d slept, eaten and showered as ordered that first day, she’d sat down and sent off a raft of emails to explain her absence to all and sundry.

She told the charity she needed a bit of personal time, and laid out all the reasons why she thought her second-in-command was more than capable of stepping into the role. She wrote her second-in-command, apologizing for the short notice, but making sure the woman she’d handpicked knew that it was her very competence that had made Lexi so sure she could slip away. It was true, she’d realized as she wrote it all out, even though she might not have thought it through before she’d gotten on that plane.

She emailed her father—or rather, his personal secretary—and felt badly about the relief she felt because she didn’t have to have an actual conversation with him. Because she already knew what he’d say. Or rather, how he would sound while he said it. And he was far too good at triggering her guilt. That it was unintentional on his part, and always motivated by concern, somehow always made her feel more guilty. The truth was, Lexi didn’t feel guilty at the moment. She didn’t want to feel guilty.

I’ve decided to take a little break, she had texted Lily.

I support this move completely, her best friend had fired back. I hope a beach is involved. Hot boys and cocktails.

More or less, Lexi had replied. And it had still been that first night, so that strange fear had washed over her, gripping her tight. I’m in Olkfield. And she’d stared down at her phone, watching as the three dots that indicated Lily was typing appeared. Then disappeared. Appeared again. Then disappeared once more.

She’d been sitting in the guest room then, her feet crossed beneath her as she sat in the armchair in the corner of the room. She’d stared at her phone, nervously worrying her knuckle between her teeth.

Tell Tyler I say hello, came the reply, at last.

And that was all.

But it didn’t matter. Lily knew. And if Lexi let herself think about it, it was likely that Lily knew a whole lot more than the two of them had ever discussed directly. Like those moments with Tyler, taut and strange, that Lexi had been pretending not to notice for years now. And yet none of them as intense as what had happened here.

It took her two days to remember that she ought to let Victor know where she was, too.

I have gone off to Olkfield, she texted him, feeling as stiff as the words sounded when she stared at them on her screen. I don’t expect to be gone too long.

Victor's reply had come swiftly. Please update my assistant with return date.

Just in case Lexi had been tempted to romanticize something that had nothing to do with romance. She told herself that what she’d felt, then, staring at his message, was peace. Relief. She told herself that was what she felt now, too.

“What are you scowling at?” came Tyler's low voice from behind her.

Lexi jumped, then turned that scowl on him. And immediately wished she hadn’t.

Because Tyler worked on that marvelous body of his. There was a gym in the house, where he put in at least an hour a day, but he also liked to run. He’d introduced her to the coastal walk that stretched from the Beach, and Lexi had taken to walking it on fine mornings, breathing in deep. Letting the Sea breeze and the lovely sunshine dance over her face like happiness. Stopping here and there to gaze at the water or take pictures from the rocky cliffs.

Tyler ran it. She could tell that he’d been out on the run already this morning, because he wore nothing but a pair of athletic shorts, and he was…gleaming.

Sweating, she corrected herself crossly.

She should have been revolted. But he didn’t smell bad. He smelled clean. Male. And the sweat of his exertion only made him look better, somehow. It made his green eyes gleam brightly, and Lexi felt reduced to a stuttering, bumbling mess.

It happened more and more the longer she stayed here. One more reason she should leave.

“I’m not scowling,” she told him, ignoring all that gleaming. “I was thinking about business-related things. I’m so far away I keep pretending Nemford doesn’t exist. But it does.”

“Last I heard, yes.” He sounded amused as he went to the refrigerator, and pulled out the makings of the shake he put together every morning.

Several different powders she assumed were proteins and superfoods and whatever else it was health nuts liked to put in themselves to keep up with all the gleaming. Green things and antioxidants and worthy supplements packed with vitamins. The very opposite of the full breakfast she remembered him tucking into with gusto on hungover mornings.

There was no reason for her to be here, but she leaned against the counter, her mug of strong tea in her hands and watched. Tyler fixed himself his drink then chugged it down, tipping back his head so she could hardly help but stare at the strong column of his throat. And all the lines, planes and ridges of that body he worked so hard on almost entirely exposed to her view.

She studied the tattoo on his back, the line of Gaelic down his spine and the Celtic knot he wore over his heart. Why did she want to put her hands on him so badly? To trace those tattoos she recognized like old friends, to remind herself how well they suited him and how easily he wore them.

Because you need to go home, she told herself sternly.

“I’m headed into the office,” Tyler said. And when he looked at her, his green gaze swept over her the way it always did, after that first conversation. Friendly. Happy. Not complicated in the least.

There was no reason it should make her teeth ache, so hard that she clenched them. “The housekeeping service will be in,” he continued mildly, though something about the way he looked at her made her unclench her teeth. “I told them to expect a guest on the premises, so don’t be put off if you wake from a nap to find someone hoovering up the place.”

“I won’t be here,” she said grandly. And without thinking it through. “I’m going to do a bit of the tourist thing.”

“And here I thought you planned to waft up and down the coastal path again.” He studied her. “You should roam about Quay and the Rocks. Take the ferries all over Olkfield Harbour. Get a sense of the place.”