So she put on a bright smile and went round the table towards him.

‘Goodnight, Tom,’ she said, opening her arms.

It was obvious that he wasn’t expecting her to hug him. Taken by surprise, he stood rigidly as she pressed her cheek against his, and it was a moment before his arms closed awkwardly around her.

Anyone would think he had never hugged a woman before.

As Imogen stepped back, Tom found his voice at last. ‘Goodnight,’ he said gruffly.

‘Well…’ Her smile almost faltered but she pinned it back into place. ‘See you in the morning, then.’ She turned for the bedroom. ‘Sleep well.’

Oh, yes, sure he’d sleep well! Easy for Imogen to say, thought Tom as he tried to make himself comfortable on the long sofa. She didn’t have to lie in the dark, remembering the feel of her body pressed against him, the feel of her arms around him.

He had been shockingly aware of her softness, of the smoothness of her cheek. The smell of her shampoo and the clean, fresh scent of her skin had struck him like a blow, and when he had recovered enough to respond to her gesture, his hand had rested on the small of her back, and he had felt the soft cotton of her dress shift and slip over her body.

Tom’s mouth dried at the memory, and he turned restlessly on the cushions. He should be thinking about Julia. This should have been his wedding night, after all.

He tried to recall the sick churn of rage and humiliation when he had to tell those people Imogen hadn’t managed to warn that the wedding was off. He had loathed seeing the sympathy in their eyes, hated knowing that they saw him now as the one who had lost, the one who couldn’t make it work, the one they could all feel sorry for. But now, listening to the shrill of the insects in the tropical night and the distant boom of the ocean on the reef, none of it seemed to matter quite so much.

Tom was glad that he hadn’t loved Julia the way Imogen had thought he should. If he had, he would be lying here in the dark, longing for her, raging against Patrick, who had strolled in at the last minute and thrown all his careful plans into confusion.

Instead of which, he was remembering how Imogen had looked before she grabbed that towel. He was thinking about Imogen alone in that big bed, and wondering what it would be like to lose himself in that lush, lovely body.

Maybe that wasn’t such a good thing.

Imogen…Who would have thought she could look like that? So warm, so soft, so disturbingly, unexpectedly desirable?

Tom punched the cushion beneath his head a few times and tried lying down again. The friends thing had seemed a good idea at the time, but he had a nasty feeling it wasn’t going to be that easy in practice.

Especially not if she was going to keep hugging him like that.

Imogen was his PA, for God’s sake, he reminded himself savagely. He had barely noticed her before, and now was not the time to start. He didn’t want to spend the next three weeks not thinking about her skin, about the curve of her breasts, the silky tumble of her hair, the way her blue eyes reflected the sunshine…

The cushion took another pummelling.

Friends, that was all she had suggested. A friend wouldn’t be thinking about that glorious body. A friend wouldn’t be fantasising about unzipping that dress, letting it fall in a pool to the floor so that he could explore every inch of that warm, creamy skin.

A friend would remember that she was still more than half in love with her college sweetheart. He would know that she had been hurt and that the last thing she needed was her boss lusting after her body.

No, friends were just…friendly. Friendly was all he could be.

Imogen woke slowly. For a long while she just lay there without thinking, simply savouring the comfort of the bed and the delicious awareness of sunlight striping across her eyelids.

When she opened her eyes at last, the first thing she saw was a huge wooden ceiling fan, turning lazily in the turgid air. At the window, wooden blinds let in bright slivers of light and, as her ears became attuned, she could hear a bird squawking somewhere and the indistinct murmur of the ocean.

In spite of the fan, it was already hot and Imogen stretched luxuriously, filled with a sense of well-being. It wasn’t every day you woke up in paradise.

What was she doing in paradise?

Imogen sat bolt upright as she remembered, and she grabbed her watch from the bedside table. It was almost ten o’clock.

Throwing back the sheet, she wrapped a sarong around her and padded into the living area.

It was empty, except for a laptop open on the dining room table, a cursor winking reprovingly at her, but the smell of coffee drew her to the kitchen tucked away behind a room divider, where she found Tom shaking freshly ground beans into a cafetière.

‘Good morning,’ she said, suddenly shy.

‘Morning,’ said Tom.

Imogen clearly thought nothing of hugging her friends goodnight, and he was a little nervous in case she greeted them the same way in the morning, so it was a relief to discover that she limited herself to a smile. He had been braced to resist another hug, but he didn’t fancy his chances of keeping his hands to himself, especially not when her blue eyes were clouded with sleep, her hair was tousled and she was wrapped only in a strip of cloth that would unwind at the merest brush of his hands.

Tom concentrated fiercely on the coffee. It was all very well resolving to be friendly, but much harder to remember when she stood there, smiling, looking dishevelled and unaccountably desirable.

Friends shouldn’t smile like that, he thought crossly. PAs definitely shouldn’t. If Imogen hadn’t been both, it was the kind of smile that would make him want to take her straight back to bed.

Luckily she was his PA, so Tom turned firmly away to pour boiling water into the cafetière.

CHAPTER SIX

‘HOW did you sleep?’

Extraordinarily, his voice sounded almost normal. It would be hard to guess that his throat was tight and his heart was slamming against his ribs.

‘Like a log, thank you,’ said Imogen. ‘What about you? Was the sofa very uncomfortable?’

‘It was fine,’ said Tom, who had spent a restless night feeling edgy and hot and confused.

‘Good. I was feeling guilty about having that comfortable bed.’

She told herself that was what had kept her awake long after Tom had switched off the last light. He had lain out of sight around the corner, but she had still been desperately aware of him.

It was all very well to talk about being normal, but normal would have been to be lying in this bed together, holding each other, touching each other.

Making love.

But they had decided to be friends instead. Friends was much better than being normal.

Wasn’t it?

Of course it was.

In the kitchen, there was an awkward pause. ‘Want some coffee?’ said Tom after a moment.

‘Thanks.’

Fastening her sarong more firmly around her, Imogen perched on a stool at the breakfast bar. ‘How long have you been up?’

‘A couple of hours. I slept late this morning. I’m usually awake about five.’

‘That’ll be why you’re always at the office before me,’ said Imogen, who was a night owl and had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of sleep by a piercing alarm every morning in order to get to work on time.

But as soon as the words were out, she wished that she hadn’t mentioned the office. It was too bizarre to be sitting here in her sarong, watching Tom make coffee, and remembering that he was her boss and she was just his PA.

Then again, perhaps she should remember that more often. Last night, it had been all too easy to forget.

‘You’ve been working,’ she said, nodding at the laptop in the other room.

‘I thought I might as well see what was going on.’ There was a faintly defensive edge to Tom’s voice. ‘The world hasn’t stopped just because we’re here. There are still things to do, and I’ve got to-’

He stopped. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘Are you asking me as a PA or as a friend?’

‘As a friend,’ said Tom after a moment’s hesitation.

‘OK, then I think you’re mad,’ she said bluntly. ‘You need a break, Tom. If I were you, I’d take that laptop to the end of the jetty and toss it into the lagoon.’

‘What?’ He looked absolutely horrified at the thought.

‘This is supposed to be a holiday. You shouldn’t even be thinking about work. Why don’t you just relax?’

‘And do what exactly?’

‘You said you would teach me how to snorkel,’ she reminded him.

‘Hmm.’ He had said that, Tom remembered, but he wasn’t buying the idea of relaxing for three weeks. Who did she think he was? ‘What would you have said if I’d asked you as my PA?’

‘Certainly, Mr Maddison, what would you like me to do first?’

His mouth twitched. ‘I don’t remember you ever being that demure in real life!’

‘Of course I was,’ said Imogen, pretending to bridle. ‘I’m the perfect PA.’

‘You think so?’

‘I’m reliable, aren’t I? And discreet. So discreet, in fact, that you hardly knew I was there half the time. What more do you want from a PA?’

‘I knew you were there all right,’ Tom said. ‘You were always talking to someone.’

But he knew what Imogen meant. He hadn’t really been aware of her. It was hard to believe now that he had worked with her for six months and never realised that her eyes were that blue, or her skin that soft. How could he not have noticed her body before? He must have been blind.

All that time Imogen had been there, and he hadn’t given her more than a passing thought. The office was never going to be the same again, Tom realised with a sinking heart. Now that he had noticed her, he wasn’t going to be able to stop. He wouldn’t be able to walk past her desk without knowing how soft and generously curved she was beneath whatever prim PA outfit she might be wearing.

Without remembering how dishevelled she looked when she had just got out of bed, with her hair all mussed. Without thinking about the way those dark blue eyes danced when she was teasing him, about the feel of her and the scent of her when she hugged him.

Tom rolled a shoulder uneasily. The office had always been the place he felt most comfortable, but it looked as if that was all going to change. Perhaps it was just as well that Imogen would be leaving soon.

‘Is there a problem?’ Imogen had been watching his face more closely than he realised.

‘Problem? No!’ he said quickly.

‘So are you going to listen to me as a friend or as a secretary?’

‘Both,’ said Tom, taking a firm grip of himself. ‘I’ll teach you how to snorkel and we’ll go out to the reef, but it’ll be very hot by the time we get there so we won’t be able to spend too long. When we get back, I want to do some work and I don’t want to hear anything about switching off or relaxing or any of that stuff. Deal?’

‘Deal!’ Imogen jumped off her stool and grinned at him. ‘I’ll go and get ready.’ Her eyes were bright and blue, and she looked so pretty and so vivid that Tom felt his throat close.

He actually had to clear it before he could speak. ‘Have you got anything like an old T-shirt with you?’ he asked her, forcing his mind back to practicalities. ‘You should wear something over your bikini to stop your shoulders getting burnt.’

‘Old T-shirts are about all I have got,’ said Imogen cheerfully. ‘I’d have had much more of a problem if you’d asked me to wear something smart.’

It didn’t take long to put on a bikini and a T-shirt and she was back a few minutes later, eager to get going.

Tom had been checking the snorkelling equipment and mentally lashing himself. Somehow things had got off track in the last twenty-four hours. He’d come to Coconut Island to save face, to get away from the pitying looks that were bound to follow him once it became known that Julia had jilted him practically at the altar, and to do some work. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

He just hadn’t counted on Imogen being quite so…distracting. It was time to take control, Tom decided. Yes, she was more attractive than he had realised, and yes, the friends thing made sense while they were here but, when it came down to it, she was still his PA. If he wanted to get any work done here, and once they got home, he had better start remembering that. He needed to get things back onto the friendly but impersonal footing he had originally intended.

So it should have helped that Imogen turned up in a baggy old T-shirt unlike anything Julia would ever have worn. He had always been drawn to women who were well-groomed and dressed with style, so the faded T-shirt ought to have been enough on its own to remind him of all the reasons he shouldn’t, couldn’t, didn’t find his PA remotely attractive.