Escape (13 page)

With a sinking stomach, she typed in her email address and password. She hated doing this—making a connection to the outside world.

Reluctantly, she opened her in
box. Fifty-six new messages popped up.

Scanning the messages, ignoring ones from work colleagues and spam messages from people trying to sell her things, one jumped out at her; an email from her mother.

She frowned. Her mother never sent emails. Lucy hadn’t even thought she knew how to switch the computer on. She had set up her mother’s email address herself and didn’t think her mother paid any attention when she showed her how it worked.

Lucy chewed at a piece of dry skin on her bottom lip and hesitated over the cursor. Whatever her mother had to say, it wouldn’t be good. Lucy hadn’t told her she was going away, so she could only guess her mother had spoken to Max and he had told her about Lucy’s sudden disappearance.

Her mother was the type of woman who believed in ‘doing the ri
ght thing’ and ‘being sensible.’
She had married Lucy’s father not far out of secretarial college and had given birth to Lucy not long after that. They had wanted more children, but it hadn’t happened for them, so Lucy was their only child and naturally they wanted the best for her. Unfortunately, ‘the best’ wasn’t always what Lucy wanted, but enough of her parents had rubbed off on her to always make her make the sensible decision. This was the first time she hadn’t and she knew her mother would be mad.

Lucy sighed and clicked on the mouse.

Dear Lucy,
             

I’m sorry to write when you are on holiday, but I am afraid your father is unwell. Yesterday he had what they thought was a heart attack, but it turns out it is angina. It was all very worrying, but he is going to be okay with the medication. I was most surprised when I called home to find you were away. Why did you not tell me you had a holiday planned? Max told me he had to work. What a shame you had to go alone. Anyway, obviously I am very worried about your father, it is horrible to see him in a hospital bed, but don’t feel that you need to come home. I wasn’t going to tell you until you got back, but I know how you are with these ‘medical things,’ and I know how you hate to be kept out of the loop.

Love Mother.

She sat, frozen above the keyboard. Her father was sick? She couldn’t believe it. She didn’t think she could remember a single day in her life when she had known him to be sick. Of course that probably wasn’t true, but he was too strong and too proud to let his only daughter see it.

She felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. Maybe she was overreacting, but the news had come as a shock. It was the last thing she had expected.

The last thing she wanted to do now was to write to Max. Suddenly the whole thing seemed so insignificant.

Lucy put her head in her hands and tried to figure out what the hell she was going to do.

Chapter Eight

Rudy hadn’t arrived yet.
She
was late herself, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Lucy found herself a table on the beach front and sat down.

The waves swelled and
barreled
, crashing onto shore, creating white foam which churned in an angry mass. Around her, people laughed nervously, making jokes about tsunamis and tropical storms. The force of the wind seemed to have increased, even since she’d left her room. She chewed her nail, wondering if the nervous jokes weren’t too far from the truth.

She scanned the tables for familiar faces, searching out Rudy’s, hoping they’d missed each other.

“Lucy!”

She looked up at the sound of her name.

Leanne and Stacy approached her table. Leanne gave an
embarrassed
grin and held up her right arm, which was now up to her elbow in plaster and held in a sling.

“I think I owe you a beer,” Leanne said, sliding into the seat opposite her.

“I can’t believe you are a doctor!” said Stacy, diving straight in. “Why on earth didn’t you tell us?”

Lucy shrugged. “It didn’t come up.” Then she realized Leanne only had her arm in a sling. “So your ribs were okay?” she asked in surprise.

“Yeah,” she said. “I think I may have over-reacted at the pain. Turned out they were only bruised.”

“That’s good. I was worried about you.”

“Well, I still owe you that beer,” said Leanne, signaling one of the waiters.

Lucy tried to glance at her watch without anyone seeing her. It was after seven-thirty. Where the hell was he?

“Waiting for someone?” Stacy asked innocently.

Lu
cy’s cheeks flushed.

Leanne noticed.
“You are aren’t you? You’re waiting for a man?”

Her blush deepened.

Stacy leaned forward, a willing conspirator. “Who is he?”

“Just one of the dive instructors.”

Leanne gave a little gasp.
“Oh, you sly dog!
It’s that gorgeous
one
,
isn’t it? The one you were with when you helped me? I wondered about you being together then, but I was in so much pain I was kind of concentrating on myself. I thought he had gone to get you because you were a doctor, but you were already with him!” Realization dawned and she put a hand—the one that wasn’t in plaster—to her mouth. “God, I’m so sorry. I interrupted your date, didn’t I? And now here I am doing it again.”

“Well, he kind of hasn’t shown,” she admitted, “so I don’t think you can interrupt something that hasn’t actually started.”

Three cold beers were slid onto the table and Lucy picked up
her glass
, sipping the beverage half-heartedly.

Leanne looked around. “He’s probably just caught up somewhere. I wouldn’t worry, I’m sure he’ll be here.”

Lucy appreciated her support, but she was starting to wonder. The clock was rapidly heading toward eight and the certainty that she had been stood up slowly started to sink in. That, combined with the news of her father’s bad health, made her tearful and a painful lump stuck in her throat. She couldn’t even swallow the beer properly.

“So what about this weather?”
Stacy said, glancing out toward the ocean. The sky had darkened with heavy clouds and the water rippled and churned with the force of the wind. “I thought this was supposed to be a tropical island?”

“Yeah, a tropical island with tropical storms,” Leanne said.

Stacy gave a little shiver. “I don’t like the thought of being in one of those rooms with gale force winds battering down the door. It’s so exposed up there.”

For Lucy, the weather was the last thing on her mind but she didn’t want the others to be scared. “You’ll be fine,” she told them. “I’m sure the rooms have sustained worse than this and come out in one piece.”

Just in her line of vision, Rachel walked across the restaurant floor. The instructor turned and saw them at the table. With a sinking heart, she realized Rachel was walking over. This was the last thing she needed or wanted. Rachel was going to let her know that she had been stood up. She would want to rub some salt in the wound and take great pleasure from the process.

Screw it
, she thought. Rudy had asked her here and she had spent the day with him. It was hardly out of order to ask after him.

“Hey girls,” Rachel said, flashing the others her billion watt smile. “How’s the arm?”

Leanne lifted her cast. “Not so good. No more diving for me this trip.”

“That is such a shame,” she said, seeming to genuinely mean it.

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen Rudy anywhere?” Lucy asked, trying to sound casual.

Rachel creased her pretty face up, thinking. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “I have seen him. He took a dive party out this afternoon so I expect he’s hanging out with them. He’s around here someplace.”

Lucy felt sick with disappointment. She had hoped she’d been wrong, hoping there was a logical reason why he hadn’t shown, but if he was already back at the resort, he’d obviously just found something better to do. Part of her couldn’t believe it. He had seemed so genuine. She couldn’t believe she had nearly thrown away her relationship for him. Even if Max wasn’t the perfect man, at least he was dependable.

Except she didn’t want dependable.
If she
’d
wanted dependable, she would have stayed in London with Max or
invited him along.
She’d done neither.

Lucy stood up. “Excuse me,” she said, pushing away from the table. The others looked up at her in surprise but she didn’t give them the chance to ask her if she was all right.

She headed to the bathrooms at the back of the bar, banging through the door to an empty room. She stood at the sink, her hands on t
he porcelain, her head hung
. It was ridiculous to get upset about some guy she barely knew. She was an intelligent woman. She should have known better than to trust some young dive instructor. The whole situation was such a cliché.

Lucy composed
herself. She didn’t want to face the rest of the world; she’d just go back to her room.

She walked back around the corner and
froze in her path.

Rudy stood behind the reception desk.

Her heart lifted, but then plummeted as one of the young girls from his dive walked up
to him, smiling, her long hair brushing
down her back, and handed him a drink. He smiled back at her—the head-cocked, half-smile Lucy had grown to love
—and clinked his bottle to hers. He took
a long swig from the neck.

Lucy’s heart climbed up the back of her throat. She’d been stood up
and
replaced by a younger model. It was almost laughable.

Mortified, she just wanted to get away. She didn’t want Rudy to see her, d
idn’t want him to realize she’
d
been stupid enough to wait
here all this time while he was with someone else.

Stupid
, she thought.
Stupid, stupid, stupid
.

Feeling like a guilty spy, she retraced her steps, back to the bathroom. From there, she slipped around the back of the building and raced up the steps, heading for her room.

Letting herself in, she shut the door on the wind and the waves and the humiliation. She leaned her back against the closed door and slowly slid to the floor. She didn’t want to cry, didn’t want to allow herself to sink into a well of self-pity, but she couldn’t help herself. Why had she thought he was different, just because he said some nice things and took her out for the day? He probably did exactly the same thing for every wave of tourists who hit the island, picking out a susceptible girl to work his magic on.

She didn’t understand why he had chosen her in the first place. Maybe he wanted a bit more of a challenge. Obviously, the challenge became too much and he had moved onto easier prey. She wondered
,
if she had let him go further with her on the beach, would he have turned up tonight?

Lucy sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She’d been lucky to find out the truth about Rudy before things went any further.

Yet if that was the truth, then why did her heart hurt so much? If he was nothing more than a womanizing scum
bag, why did she feel like her chest
had been ripped open?

She closed her eyes and allowed her head to fall back, resting against the wood.

The wind continued to batter against the door.