Page 32 of Stuck

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Sanchez complained. “How am I supposed to beat that?”

He continued to grumble, but I’d stopped listening because everyone else had taken Polanski’s lead and begun to remove their outer layers, and suddenly Elizabeth was in front of me in a red one-piece that had me fighting for my life. It covered her arms and neck like the top half of a wetsuit, with a zip at the collar that was open to her cleavage. I averted my eyes but not soon enough to miss how toned her bare legs were. I hated myself for noticing. I hated Bingley more, for having the privilege of looking at this woman—admiring her, worshipping her—whenever he wanted.

More for the relief of hiding her from my view than any eagerness to swim, I pulled my compression top over my head, taking a deep, steadying breath as I did. For a split second when I lowered my arms, I could have sworn Elizabeth was looking at me—or more accurately at my uncovered torso—and heat flared inside me. But she looked away quickly enough that I second-guessed it. Good. I kept fit and had the body to show for it and wouldn’t usually complain if a beautiful woman showed her appreciation, but I couldn’t have Elizabeth looking at me like that. I wouldn’t survive.

“There are lockers by the entrance gate if you’ve got valuables with you,” she said, pointing a thumb over her shoulder in that direction.

Everyone else seemed to have abandoned their clothes and towels on the ground. I tossed my top down next to her parka and shook my head. “It’s fine. I left them in the car.” I wished I hadn’t admitted as much when I saw her smirk. “What?”

“You’re one of those people who drives around London.”

“One of those people?”

“Yes, you know, the sort who can afford to pay the congestion charge and would rather sit in traffic than on public transport.”

It would have been confrontational except for the way she smiled as she said it and bit her lip afterwards. It took all the sting out of her words and rendered them more of a tease. I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Only when I’ve been up half the night volunteering and would have been late otherwise.”

She pouted slightly. “There must be a limit to how many times you can pull the Good Samaritan card to fend off a roasting.”

“There is. I’m nowhere near it.” Fighting my own smirk, I toed off my sliders and pulled down my joggers, dropping them on top of my shirt. She didn’t respond, and a small, degenerate part of me wondered whether she was checking out my legs the same way she’d checked out my abs, but when I looked up, her expression was softer, more contemplative.

“Did you have to take many calls?”

“A few.”

“Was it… Are you all right? It can be hard, talking to people at rock bottom.”

That snagged my attention. What did she know about that?

“I’m fine, thank you. Are—” Before I could ask her whether she was speaking from experience, one of the Hydro Crops team called her name.

“Hurry up, Elizabeth! You can’t dare us all to come here then not get in the water yourself.”

She cocked her head towards the water. “That’s my cue. Coming?”

With a nod, I followed her down to the water’s edge and out along a small jetty, looking anywhere and everywhere but at her incredible backside. Or the way her thighs tapered into shapely calves and slender ankles. Or the small tattoo of what looked like a house, high up on the outside of her right leg, half hidden by the hem of her costume. Or the way her plait swung seductively between her shoulder blades.

“Let’s get this over with,” I said abruptly and jumped in. As I’d hoped, all the blood that had been heading at speed towards my groin instantly rerouted to my internal organs. What I wasn’t prepared for was all the air being forcibly ejected from my lungs.

An expletive burst out of my mouth on a tide of bubbles that I frantically chased upwards, breaking the surface with a gasp. I trod water, shaking my hair out of my face as I looked around. Elizabeth was still standing on the jetty, looking surprised and highly amused. Had she heard me swear?

“It’s colder than I was expecting,” I puffed out breathily.

In response, and with no more warning than a happy laugh, she launched off the jetty in what looked to my untrained eye like a flawless dive. Her lean body knifed into the water, causing barely a ripple. She surfaced right in front of me, blinking droplets from her long eyelashes and beaming in a way that had me worrying maybe the water wasn’t going to be cold enough after all.

“The trick is to keep moving,” she said, treading water as she pulled her goggles on. “Come on.”

Moving did not turn out to be a trick worth its salt. Less than twenty minutes later, as soon as the Legal team had proved themselves to be the far superior swimmers, everyone from Hydro Crops had abandoned the water in favour of warm clothes and hot drinks in the café.

I didn’t know how I’d ended up at the same table as Elizabeth—I’d deliberately not sought her out—but I wasn’t complaining. My sole objection to the arrangement was that we weren’t alone; Polanski and another member of his team, Andy, were sitting with us.

I wasn’t sorry for the chance to meet the latter, since he’d been tasked with producing a report on the pros and cons of licensing our software instead of buying Vertex out in its entirety. The idea Polanski had brought to me had legs, but Bingley would take a lot of convincing, and we were on the cusp of moving forwards with the takeover, so a thorough report and a quick turnaround were essential. Andy seemed competent and knowledgeable, but we didn’t talk shop for long. As soon as Elizabeth joined us, the conversation turned to our curtailed swim.

“So, you do this every week?” Andy asked her.

“Most weeks.”