Falling Again For Her Island Fling. Ellie Darkins
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Название: Falling Again For Her Island Fling
Автор: Ellie Darkins
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
isbn: 9781474091671
isbn:
She narrowed her eyes.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, the last time I saw it, it was teeming with life. We could barely move for fish.’
We? She didn’t ask. Didn’t want to know with whom he’d been here before.
‘You’ve swum here before?’ she asked, surprised that he’d not mentioned it yet.
He nodded. ‘Last time I visited St Antoine.’
The shock was evident on his features, and she softened towards him a little. It was clear that he did care about the environment of the island, despite his impatience to move on the building project.
‘What happened to it?’ he asked again.
She explained about coral bleaching, the effects of rising sea temperatures and the impact of tourism and watched his face as the information sank in. She would have to wait and see whether that carried through to the decisions that he made as the project progressed. It was easy to be shocked by environmental issues when you were sitting on the water with the evidence right in front of you. In her experience, developers started caring a lot less about the coral when they were back in their offices, staring at a spreadsheet and a schedule.
Well, that was why she was here, she reminded herself—so that Guy wouldn’t forget. She smirked to herself at the irony of the amnesiac being the one responsible for reminding someone of anything. She softened towards him, though. He clearly was very shocked by what he had seen.
‘I know it’s hard to see,’ she said. She knew that all too well. It broke her heart, seeing what had become of what had once been a lively, vibrant reef. ‘But this is why we’re here. You’re doing the right thing, putting this right before the building work starts. Not everyone would.’
Guy shook his head. ‘Looks like we were too late.’
‘Maybe not. I’ve seen other reefs recover.’ Not many. Not often. But she had fresh young coral growing in the lab, waiting to be transplanted out. ‘The situation’s bad, but not hopeless,’ she said as she steered them around the coral, back towards the little dock on Le Bijou. ‘We have to try.’
Seven years hadn’t seemed so long until he went down under the surface of the water and saw for himself the evidence of how much time had passed. How different the world was now compared to the last time that he had been here. How something that had once been beautiful had been so completely destroyed. Meena had said that maybe the reef could be saved, that they at least had to try. But he could see for himself that it was a lost cause.
When Meena had denied his applications for the permits he needed, he’d not been able to see it as anything but an inconvenience—and an expensive, time-consuming one at that. But now he could see why she was so concerned.
He looked around the island after he had waved her off in her boat and tried to imagine how it would look when the resort was finished. He had artists’ renderings and a three-dimensional model, but they couldn’t tell him how it would feel to lie on the beach with the resort behind him and the sea creeping towards his toes.
Could he lie on the sand, imagining what was happening to the crumbling coral below the sparkling water? That was why he was going to hire Meena, he reasoned. It would be her job to worry about that. Not his. And, now that he had seen her out here, he was satisfied that she knew what she was doing and he shouldn’t have to worry about it any more.
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