Escape (4 page)

Padding down the path, her flip-flops
slapping against the stone, she crossed through the trees and
headed
down to the beach. People dotted every inch of sand, chatting and laughing. In the middle of the beach, a bonfire roared, and in front of the restaurant and reception area, a bar and barbeque had been set up.

Lucy scoured the groups of people, looking for Rudy. His invitation was probably nothing more than his way of letting her know the party was happening, yet she couldn’t help search the beach for him, hoping to see him.

She caught the eye of a few different people, who smiled politely at her, but she didn’t recognize anyone.

Feeling like a spare part, she headed over to the bar and ordered a beer from the young Thai serving. She turned around, leaning her back again
st the bar, trying to look as though
she was having a good time.

I should have stayed in my room with my book,
she thought.

She’d never been good in a crowd.

Lucy scuffed her foot in the sand. She’d been silly to pin her hopes on seeing a guy who had only been doing his job. He’d obviously just been being polite and had probably forgotten all about the invitation as soon as he’d walked away.

She sighed and took a swig of her beer. Cold, fizzy fluid flooded her throat and she gulped, grateful to have something to do.

Well, if Rudy wasn’t here, she didn’t want to be either. She didn’t want to just hang around, watching everyone else
enjoying themselves
.

With h
er drink clutched in one hand, she walked away from the party and down across the beach.

Pausing for a moment, Lucy slipped her sand
als from her feet. T
he sand, s
till warm from the day’s sun, sa
nk between her toes and she looked out across the ocean. Moonlight glimmered off the waves and the stars stretched on endlessly.

This place is beautiful,
she thought
. No wonder people came to places like this and never went back.

She rounded the curve of the small bay and came to a sudden halt. A couple stood beneath one of the palm trees. The man had his back to Lucy, his hands held out either side of his body. The girl had her fingers knotted in her hair, the other hand held out to the man. As she watched, the girl shook her head and turned her back. In the moonlight, Lucy saw the dark mark of a tattoo down one
shoulder
.

Rachel.

With the realization, came the instant knowledge that the man was Rudy. Though Rudy had his back to her, she recognized his broad shoulders and dark hair. Rachel turned back to Rudy, keeping her voice low and controlled, as if trying not to be heard.

Maybe they were together, after all.

Guiltily, Lucy stepped back behind the trees. She knew she was being nosy, but she couldn’t help herself. She poked her head out just in time to see Rachel storm off in the opposite direction. Rudy ran a hand over his head and his shoulders sagged.

A lover’s tiff,
Lucy
guessed. She wondered if it
anything to do with Rudy stepping in to help her out today.
A
mean little thrill went through her and she hoped it
did
have something to do with her. It would serve Rachel right.

Backing away, Lucy headed back to the party. Her stomach grumbled. She’d not eaten dinner. Though most of the food was being barbequed—chicken and fish and burgers—a Thai woman also flipped noodles on a flat griddle.

Lucy ordered some noodles and the woman dished them up onto a paper plate. The heat seared through the thin paper, burning her fingers. Fragrances of garlic, soy, and ginger rose in the steam, making her mouth water. Tiny slivers of fiery red
chillies
poked through the flat noodles and Lucy picked up a plastic fork from a container, eagerly stuffing her mouth with food.

The appetite she had lost over the past few weeks seemed to be back with a vengeance.

Walking as she ate, juggling the hot plate from hand to hand, she headed back to her room.

It was too early to go to bed, so Lucy put her food down on the small table on her balcony. Giant bugs flew in circles around the small lamp mounted on the wall beside her front door. The light was enough to read by. She unlocked her door and went into her room to change into something more comfortable.

As she rooted around her suitcase, her fingers touched the cool plastic of her mobile phone. Her fingers wrapped around it and pulled out the slim, black Nokia.

She hesitated, but then forced herself to switch the phone on.

The screen lit up and proceeded to beep several times. A text message from her mother flashed up, asking her to call home, and there was another from Max saying he understood that she needed some time, but please remember he was still part of her life. She also had about thirty missed calls from work. Someone had obviously forgotten to switch her from on-call doctor to absent.

Lucy sighed and switched the phone back off,
feeling
deflated.

After that night at the hospital, Lucy had gone home to Max in floods of tears. She
’d
tried to explain to him how she thought she couldn’t do it anymore, how the job was making her depressed, but he
’d
just patted her on the back and went to make her a cup of tea.

That was the sort of man Max was; simple, steadfast, and thought almost anything could be solved with a cup of tea. They had been together for more than two years now and he was the sort of man Lucy had come to think of as her type; tall, dark and slightly bookish. Everyone thought they were the perfect couple and Lucy would have been the first to say what a great guy Max was. But she was bored. Bored, bored,
bored
. Everything was so
routine
; from the times they saw each other, to the meals they ate, to the things they did in bed.
Boring.

She told herself boring was good, it meant they were comfortable with each other. Yet when she came home that night, he hadn’t understood a single thing she’d said. He saw her i
n the same way she saw him—stable, sensible, reliable—
and suddenly that wasn’t enough. Th
e th
ings she’d seen at the hospital had changed her, and her morbid thoughts frightened her. Max’s inability to understand that dark, scary part of her, meant he never really knew her.

She knew her leaving was unfair to Max; he hadn’t done anything wrong. Yet she couldn’t help feeling resentful at his message, annoyed that he had reached into this great place and dragged her back to earth.

I should never have switched the damn phone on.

Lucy threw the offending item into her case and covered it with clothes, promising herself that this was the last time she would look at it.

The buoyant spirit she had found after her first dive lesson had been replaced with a horrible, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. It was the same feeling she got every time she left the house to go to work and it made her want to climb into bed and hide from the world.

Leaving her food forgotten and growing cold, that was exactly what she did.

Chapter Three

The next morning, Lucy was
the first person to arrive at breakfast, eagerly waiting for the diving trip to start.

She knew she looked too keen, but due to a combination of jet-lag and excitement, she had been awake since five that morning. For once, nightmares had eluded her that night. She’d grown tired of waiting out on her little balcony, however beautiful the sight of the rising sun over the water had been. Instead, she managed to disguise her over-eagerness by ordering breakfast and dragging out her meal with her chick-lit novel in hand. 

She sat, peeping over the top of her book, people watching. She tried to pretend to herself she wasn’t looking out for anyone in particular, but her eyes
were
peeled for Rudy. Those dark eyes and tanned, strong forearms had stayed at the front of her mind, lingering in her thoughts, despite what she’d seen the previous night.

Though she ordered banana pancakes and they arrived, hot and sweet and delicious, she was worried if she ate too much she would end up either getting sick on the boat or somehow drowning during the dive. Her mother’s ever-cautious warnings of not eating before you went swimming rang in her ears.

Of course, she had to rationalize to herself that technically you were
supposed
to sink when you were diving.

Lucy waited until a small crowd had appeared outside of the dive office, before paying for her breakfast and getting up to join them. Rudy still hadn’t appeared and she could feel the disappointment already weighing on her. She wouldn’t have admitted it, but she had chosen her favorite casual clothes and spent a lot more time than she normally would have perfecting her ‘no-make up’ make-up. She didn’t expect anything to happen between them—
clearly
Rachel and he had some kind of relationship—but spending the day in close proximity to such a good-looking guy made her want to look her best.

But
all her efforts might be
wasted. It would be just her luck to have to spend the whole day with the bitchy Rachel.

Lucy stood
and wandered over to the small group gathering outside the of
fice. Both Leanne and Stacy waited
there and they smiled at her as she approached.

“Yesterday didn’t put you off then?” Stacy called out to her. “The Aussie didn’t scare you away?”

Lucy laughed. “It takes more than that to scare me.”

“Yeah, anyway,” Leanne joined in, nudging her friend in the ribs. “She had that gorgeous dive instructor buddying up with her. I know I’d come back if he paid me that much attention.”

“Someone talking about me?”

All three women turned at his voice and Leanne’s cheeks burned red. She plastered a smile on her face and then turned back to Lucy and pulled a face that screamed ‘help me!’

Once again, Lucy couldn’t help but laugh; she hadn’t laughed so much in ages. The good feeling gave her extra confidence as s
he turned to Rudy and said ‘hi.’

Was she imagining the friction between them as he smiled back at her—an impossibly cute, lopsided grin? He was tall enough to tower over Lucy’s five-seven
frame
and his broad shoulders made her feel small and delicate, something she wasn’t used to. Fine blond hair covered the nut-brown skin of his forearms and glinted golden in the sunlight. The image of her fingers running down the ridge of muscl
e in his arm flashed in
her head and she glanced away, embarrassed.

“So you all ready?” he asked them as one of the SUVs pulled in beside them. Rachel climbed out of the vehicle, her slim tanned legs shown off in the tiny shorts that seemed to be her trade mark.

“What’s everyone waiting around for?” she called out. “We’ve got gear to load up.”

Lucy followed the rest of the divers as they all headed into the storage shed and picked up the pieces of equipment they had been shown the day before. She chose a mask, fins and weight belt, and then went to select her regulator and air tank. Hoping she
’d
remembered everything, she glanced around at the others, making sure she had all the same stuff. When she saw a few people standing around, looking equally unsure of
themselves
, she relaxed a little.