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Rachel. A girl like Rachel. He’d lived with her for a year. He’d slept with Avery once. There was no comparison. None at all.
Punching out enough oaths to make a boxer blush, Jonah hit the floor, tore the sheets off the bed, threw them down the hall to be washed. He didn’t want to hit his bed that night and catch her scent, even if it was all he deserved for letting her in. To his head and his home. Thankfully his heart was tough as an old boot.
Still didn’t mean it wasn’t a smart idea to scrub her scent from his skin, her image from his head, and her presence from his heretofore perfectly fine life. If he saw Avery Shaw again in the weeks she spent in town it would be too soon.
* * *
When the cab dropped Avery at the Tropicana, the sun was barely threatening to spread its first golden streaks across the dawn sky.
She slid her room card into the slot at the front of the resort, opened the door and padded across Reception, which, due to the hour, was even more quiet than usual.
Except that Claudia was behind the reception desk.
Before Avery could think up an alternative escape route, Claudia looked up with a start; slamming shut her laptop, and looking as guilty as Avery felt.
“Hi!” said Claude.
“Morning!” chirped Avery. “What are you doing down here so early?”
“Oh, nothing. Just...bookings. So-o-o many bookings.”
Claude’s hair was a little askew, her eyes a little pink. She had gone hard at the cocktails the night before and yet here she was pre-sunrise, hours before check in, and all decked out in her polyester Tropicana Nights finest.
More importantly, though, she seemed distracted enough not to notice Avery’s walk of shame.
“Okay, well, I’ll catch you later then—”
“Wait.”
Dammit. Avery turned to find Claudia looking anything but distracted, her eyes roving over Avery’s shimmery top, her swishy black dress pants, the ankle breakers dangling from her fingers.
“Yo ho ho! Avery Shaw, you hot dog. You got yourself some Jonah!”
“Shh.”
“Who’s going to hear? The pot plants? Come,” said Claude, scooting from behind the desk to drag Avery over to a sumptuous leather couch where sunlight was starting to hit patches of once-plush rug. “So what happened? Why the pre-dawn crawl home? After all that sexy touching and tractor-beams eyes you two had going on last night I’d have thought you’d have set the bed ablaze. Was it terrible? All smoke no fire?”
Avery sniffed out a laugh. Then laughed some more. Then laughed so hard she got a stitch. Clutching at her side, she bent from the waist and let her head fall between her knees. Nose an inch from an old wad of gum stuck on the underside of the couch, she sighed. “It was...spectacular. Claude, I can’t even begin to describe the things that man did to me. On a cellular level.”
“Ha!” Claude clapped her hands so loud it echoed through the gargantuan space. “Awesome. But if it was so spectacular why aren’t you at Jonah’s shack doing the wild thing with that man right now?”
Because it was only ever going to be a one-night thing? Because her itch for him had finally been scratched? Because she knew Jonah well enough to know he’d give his right pinky not to have to go through a talky-talky morning after?
Avery heaved herself to sitting and stared into nothingness. “Because I am a common-or-garden-variety coward.”
Claudia took Avery’s hand between hers, and waited till Avery’s eyes were on hers. “You, my friend, are generous and kind. To a fault. But even the best of us trip over ourselves once in a while. Find your feet again, and you’ll be fine.”
Avery plucked a mint leaf—left over from some cocktail or other from the night before—from Claude’s hair. She just had to figure out which direction her feet ought to be going.
She wondered if he was awake yet. If he knew she was gone. If the decision as to what her summer entailed was already out of her hands.
“So it’s all over for you and Luke,” Claude said, “one would think.”
Avery laughed, then cringed. “Do you think he had any idea that I had...intentions?” Vague, and reactionary, as they’d been.
Claude’s mouth twisted in an effort not to smile. “If it makes you feel any better I had a huge case of the hero-worships for the guy when I was a kid.”
“Re-e-eally?”
Claudia slapped her on the arm at her saucy tone. “That was, of course, until I realised he was a robot. Thank goodness for Jonah or you might yet have married Luke and moved to wet old London and made robot babies.”
Claudia shivered—but whether it was the thought of London weather or making babies with Luke, Avery couldn’t be sure.
“What about you? Seeing anyone? Since Raoul?”
“Too busy,” Claude said with a wistful sigh. “No time. No energy. Especially for the likes of Raoul.”
“Stuff Raoul. Stuff Luke. You should have a fling with some hot blond surfie type, who has big brown muscles and never wears shoes and says dude a lot.”
“Not leaving much room for movement there.”
“It’s a beach. In Australia. Walk outside right now and you’ll trip over half a dozen of them.”
Claudia checked her phone as if checking the time to see if she could squeeze in a quick fling, then saw she’d missed a message. And her whole demeanour changed: back stiffening, her eyebrows flying high. “It’s Luke,” she said. “He’s gone.”
“What? Where?”
“London.”
“When?”
“Some time between when he dropped me back at the resort last night and now. Dammit. We had the best conversation we’ve had all summer last night. About the old days, the mischief we used to get up to behind the scenes in this place, and the crazy plans we made for when we got to take over the resort, and how we used to watch The Love Boat.... And then he ditches me...us faster than a speeding bullet?” Frowning, Claudia pressed a thumb to her temple. “Jerk.”
“Why?”
“Why is he a jerk? Let me count the ways—”
“No, why did he leave?”
Claudia waved her phone at Avery, too fast for her to catch a word. “‘Important Work.’ More important than here? His birthright? This place is the entire reason he’s as successful as he is!” Claudia nibbled at a fingernail, her right knee shaking so hard it creaked, and stared over at the desk. “I’d better get back.”
Avery’s eyes glanced off her friend’s less than perfect chignon, the dark smudges under her sunny blue eyes. The curve of her shoulders since Luke’s message. It was obvious things weren’t as peachy as Claude was making out; even Avery could see the resort wasn’t as busy as it ought to have been at the height of summer. But she knew her stubborn little friend well enough to know that Claude would come to her in her own time.
Till then, Avery worked her magic the way she best knew how. She took Claude’s stressed little face in her hands, removed a bobby pin, smoothed the errant hair into place, and slid the pin back in. “There, there. All better. Now, my clever, inventive, wonderful friend, go get ’em.”
Claude sighed out a smile, and then tottered off, her hips swinging in her shiny navy capris, the yellow and blue Hawaiian-print shirt somehow working for her.
Good deed for the day done, Avery lay back on the couch. Unfortunately the second she closed her eyes the night she’d been holding at bay came swarming back to her.
Jonah’s mouth on hers, tasting her as if she were precious, delicious, a delicacy he couldn’t get enough of. His calloused touch making paths all over her body.
She snapped her eyes open, early morning light reflecting off the white columns and walls.
At least Luke had had the good grace to let Claudia know when he’d done a runner. Avery had dressed in the dark, called a cab and split. Even if none of her expensive schools had given classes on Mornings After, she was well aware that it was just bad form.
She pulled herself up and padded back to her room. She needed a shower. She needed a coffee. Then, as usual, it was up to her to put the world back to rights.
EIGHT
Avery really got the hang of the right-hand drive in Claudia’s car—a bright yellow hatchback named Mabel with Tropicana Nights’s logo emblazoned over every possible surface—about the time she hit Port Douglas.
The GPS on her phone led her to Charter North’s operations, down a long straight road past a bright green golf course, million-dollar homes, and ten-million-dollar views.
She eased through the high gate and pulled to a halt by a security guard in a booth.
To her left was a car park big enough to fit fifty-odd cars, with a dozen gleaming sky-blue Charter North charter buses lined up beside a neat glass and brick building. Oceanside was a perfect row of crisp white sheds, as big as light airplane hangars, the Charter North logo on each catching glints of sunshine.
She knew the guy owned a few boats. And a helicopter. And a shack. Now nautical empire didn’t seem such a stretch.
“Ma’am?” the security guard said, bringing her back to earth.
“Sorry. Ah, Avery Shaw to see Jonah North.”
He took down her licence plate and let her through with a smile. She pulled into a car park in time for a super-friendly man in chinos and a navy polo shirt—who introduced himself as Tim the office manager—to point the way to a big white building hovering over the water. To Jonah. She would have known anyway, as right in a patch of sun outside lay Hull.
The sun beat down on her flowy shirt, and her bare legs beneath her short shorts. Her silver sandals slapped against the wood of the jetty and Hull lifted his speckled head at her approach.
“Hey, Hull,” she whispered. His tail gave three solid thumps—meaning he at least wasn’t about to eat her alive for dissing his master—then he went back to guarding the door. Her heart took up the rhythm; whumping so loud she feared it might echo.
The door was open a crack so she snuck inside—and understood instantly why Hull was stationed outside. Jonah had said the dog hated water, and inside huge jetties criss-crossed the floor and a ways below the ocean bobbed and swished against the pylons holding the building suspended above the waves.
A few boats were hooked to the walls by high-tech electrical arms, one in the process of being fixed. Yet another was getting a wash, and spray flew over the top and onto the jetty.
Not seeing any other movement, Avery eased that way, taking care where she stepped as the wood beneath her feet grew wet.
Until against one wall she saw a familiar surfboard. Silvery-grey, like its owner’s eyes, with the shadow of a great palm tree right down the middle, and her heart beat so hard it filled her throat.
Because she knew why she’d fled in the middle of the night. Somehow in the odd sequence of meetings that had led her to Jonah’s bed, she’d got to know the guy. And despite his ornery moods she even liked him.
She’d woken up terrified that those feelings would unleash her Pollyanna side upon him—Like me! Love me!— like some rabid pixie hell-bent on smothering the world with fairy dust. Not quite so terrified, though, as what it might mean if Pollyanna still didn’t show up at all.
Her feet felt numb as she came upon a curled-up hose, water trickling from its mouth. Then around the bow of the boat she found suds. And at the end of a great big sponge was Jonah. Feet bare, sopping wet jean shorts clinging to his strong thighs, T-shirt clinging wet to the dips and planes of his gorgeous chest.
As Avery’s gaze swept over him, over his roguish dark hair, over the curve of his backside, his athletic legs, she didn’t realise how dry her mouth had become until she opened it to talk. “You could hire people to do that, you know.”
Jonah stilled. Then his deep grey eyes lifted and caught on her. She felt the look like a hook through the belly—yet he gave nothing away.
A moment later, he turned off the hose, threw the sponge into a bucket at his feet, wiped his forearm across his forehead, and slowly headed her way.
And when he spoke his deep Australian drawl twisted the hook so deep inside she was sure it would leave a scar. “I have hired people to do this.” A beat, then, “But today I find being around water a damn fine release of tension.”
Avery considered picking up the sponge herself. “Well, that’s why I’m here, actually.”
“To wash my boat?” His voice skittered down her arms like his touch—coarse and gentle all at once. How did the guy make even that sound sexy?
“To apologise.”
“For?”
He was going to make her say it, wasn’t he? Not nice. Not nasty either, though. Just...plain-spoken. Direct. True.
“For leaving. This morning. After—” She waved a hand to cover the rest.
“After you fell asleep in my bed, exhausted from all the hot lovin’.”
“Jonah North,” she muttered, throwing her hands in the air in despair, “last of the great romantics.”
“It was sex, Avery,” he said, walking towards her again. “Good sex. Nothing to apologise for.”
He didn’t stop till he was close enough she could feel his warmth infusing the air around her. Could see his eyelashes all spiked together with water, as they had been that first day. And that his face was a picture of frayed patience, also as it had been that first day.
But the difference between that day and now was vast.
“It was more than good,” she said, her voice as jerky as a rusty chainsaw.
One eyebrow lifted along with the corner of his mouth.
“It was freakin’ stupendous.”
His mouth tilted fully into a smile so sexy it made her vision blur. Then he ran a hand up the back of his hair and said, “Yeah. I’ll give you that.”
Then he moved nearer, near enough to touch. But instead of touching her, he reached out for a towel draped over a mossy post near her feet. She closed her eyes and prayed for mercy, lest she drool and lose the high ground completely.
Jonah wiped the towel over his face, and down his arms, smearing the sweat and suds.
“Why, then, did you run?”
“I didn’t run. I caught a cab.”
By the way his brow collapsed over his eyes, she was pretty sure that being flip wasn’t going to cut it. But there was no way on God’s green earth she was about to tell him she ran because of how much she wanted to stay. She’d been very careful till now not to let anyone have that much sway over her desires. Keeping things light, happy, above the surface. The flipside was unthinkable.
“Just hit me with it, Avery,” he said, throwing the towel over the back of his neck and holding onto the ends, his biceps bulging without any effort at all. “It’s about Luke.”
“What? No! Luke was...a brief flirtation with finding a way to distract myself from the goings-on back home by dipping my toes back into the past. But from pretty much the moment you hauled me out of the ocean and manhandled me back to shore and glared down at me with your steamy eyes...” Okay, heading off track now. She breathed deep, her cheeks beginning to heat with a slow burn that showed no signs of stopping, and said, “I want you.”
Jonah didn’t so much as twitch. He let her sway in the wind. Getting his money’s worth. Till finally he said, “Okay, then.”
“Okay, then?” That was it? That was all she got? For basically telling the guy he turned her to putty?
He took a step her way but Avery planted her feet into the floor so as not to sway back. “Was there something else?”
“Yeah. You’re an ass, Jonah North. A gorgeous ass, one I can’t seem to get out of my head no matter how much I try, but still an ass. I’ll see you ’round.”
She turned and walked away, waving a hand over her shoulder that might have had a certain finger raised. But she’d given her apology and that was all that was important. She had the high road. He only had her pride.
Then suddenly he was walking beside her.
“So,” he said, “I was just about to head up to the Cape to check on a tour-boat operation I’m thinking of buying.”
“How nice for you.”
“Avery,” he said, his voice a growl as he slid a hand into her elbow, forcing her to stop and look at him. She crossed her arms and glared, as if facing all that sun-soaked skin, and those deep grey eyes, and that pure masculine beauty were some kind of chore.
He tipped his face to the ceiling and muttered, “God, I’m going to regret this. Would you care to join me?”
Pollyanna showed up long enough to flip over and waggle her happy feet in the air. But Avery’s dark side, her careful side, pulled Pollyanna’s plaits and told her to shut the hell up for a second.
This wasn’t as simple as being forgiven. This was the tipping point. Her chance to hole up with her heart and spend her summer reading, and swimming, and refilling her emotional well; or to dive into uncharted waters with no clue as to the dangers that lay beneath.
“Are you asking me on a date, Jonah North?”
He watched her for a few seconds, his eyes sliding to settle on her mouth, then with a hard heavy breath he said, “I’ll let you decide when we get there.”
Because there was no choice really. She was going with him. He knew it, and she knew it too.
* * *
Avery leant against the battered Jeep that had brought them to the edge of the crumbling jetty on the side of the marshy river, watching Jonah grumble his way through a business call.
He shot her the occasional apologetic glance, but honestly she could have stayed there all day, watching him pace, listening to that voice; it was nearly enough for her to forgive him the hat—a tatty Red Sox cap that he’d foraged from who knew where, as if the fates one day knew she’d be owed some payback.
Avery turned when she heard a boat. It appeared through the tall reeds; not as fast and streamlined as the boat to Green Island, or sleek and sexy as the one Jonah had been washing down back at Charter North HQ. This was squat, low riding, desperately in need of a paint job.
And had Cape Croc Tours written on the side.
While Jonah chatted with the tour operator, Hull—who’d been pacing back and forth by the Jeep, one eye on the water the other on the man-who-was-not-his-master—huffed at her with a definite air of You asked for it.
Jonah rang off, slid the phone into the back pocket of his shorts, and came to her, long strides eating up the dusty ground. While she subjugated her panic beneath a smile.
“You okay?” he asked, and she dialled the smile back a notch.
“Fine! What girl doesn’t dream about the day a guy offers to take her on a croc tour? Okay? No. I’m not okay. Are you freakin’ kidding me?”
A grin curved across his mouth. Then he reached into the cabin of the Jeep and pulled out an old felt hat and slapped it on her head. Not the most glamorous thing she’d ever worn.
“Can they climb in the boat?”
“The crocs? No.”
Hull huffed as if to say Jonah was pulling her leg. Avery glanced back to find him lying in a patch of shade by the Jeep, his head lying disconsolately on his front paws. In fact, maybe she ought to keep him company—
“Ready?” Jonah asked.
“As I’ll ever be.”
Avery took Jonah’s hand as she stepped into the boat, gripping harder as the boat swayed under her feet. Jonah didn’t let go till he sat her on a vinyl padded bench at the rear of the vessel.
Feeling a little less terrified, she caught his eye and smiled. “I like your shirt, by the way.”
He glanced down at the faded American flag with the eagle emblazoned across it, pulling it away from his chest for a better look and giving her an eyeful of his gorgeous brown stomach.
“Were you thinking of me when you picked it out this morning?”
His deep eyes slunk back to hers, then in a voice deeper than the water below he said, “Believe it or not, princess, I go entire minutes without thinking of you.”
Her smile turned into a grin. “Good for you.”
He flipped some keys into the air, and caught them, then moved to sit on what looked like a modified barstool up near the helm.
“You’re driving?” she called.
“Yep.”
“Shouldn’t we have a chaperone?” She earned a lift of two dark eyebrows for her efforts. “I mean because the boat’s not yours.”
Jonah glanced back at the dock. “If we go down he can have the Jeep. And the dog.”
“The dog that’s not your dog.”
His eyes slid back to hers with a sexy smile.
“Fine. Whatever,” she said, tipping her hat lower on her head and squinting against the sun. Just the two of them, heading off into the wilderness, where crocs were near guaranteed. She really hoped he’d forgiven her for sneaking out on him.
The engine turned over and the boat shifted in the water, giving her a fair spray of river water in the face. Gripping the bench, she looked back over her shoulder and saw how low the boat actually was. The edges of the thing looked real easy to scale. With an agility she wasn’t aware she had she scuttled up to take the stool next to Jonah’s.
“Happier there?”
“Better view.” Her disobedient gaze landed on his muscular arms as he put the boat in gear, eased it into the middle of the thin river, and took the thing along at a goodly pace. Yep, much better.
“So, feel like a date yet?” he asked, and her insides gave a hearty little wobble.
“This is textbook. In New York a date isn’t really a date if there aren’t wild animals involved.”
And just like that she and Jonah North were officially on a date. And she was okay. Not deeper than her limits. Just...about...right. Feeling unusually content about her world and everything in it, Avery propped her feet on the dash; the wind whipping at her hair, the sun beating down on her nose, the deep rumble of the engine lulling her into a most relaxed state. Till the hum, and the heat, and eau de Jonah had her deep in memories of the night before.
“I hate to think what you’re conjuring up over there, Ms Shaw.”
She nearly leapt out of her skin. “Nothing. Just soaking it all in. Thinking.”
“Dare I ask what about?”
To say it out loud would be pornographic. “I really liked your shack.”
A surprised smile kicked up the corner of his mouth. “It’s hardly the Waldorf.”
“Why would you want it to be? It’s unique. And cool. It suits you.”
After a few beats, Jonah added, “It was my father’s house.”
“Were you brought up there?”
He nodded. “Never lived anywhere else.” He frowned. “Not true. I spent three months in Sydney a few years back.”
“You? In Sydney?” She was already laughing at the idea by the time she noticed the twitch in his jaw and the sense that the air temperature had slipped several degrees towards arctic. Okay... “Was it for work? Play? Sea change...in reverse?”
“My ex-fiancée lived there.”
Well, she’d had to go and ask!
A deep swirly discomfort filled her up and she struggled to decipher if her reaction was shock at the fact a woman had managed to put up with him for any length of time, or that she’d been wrong about his lone-wolfdom. There was a woman out there that this man had at one time been prepared to marry. A fiancée. Ex-fiancée, her subconscious shot quickly back.
“I’m assuming things didn’t turn out so well,” she said, her daze evident in her hoarse whisper.
But he was clearly caught up in thoughts of his own. She jumped a little when after some time he answered.
“She came here on holidays and stayed. Then she left. I followed. Got a position with a shipping company to manage their freight in and out of the harbour. Told myself water was water.”
Clearly it hadn’t been, as here he was. Mr Not Quite So Thoroughly Unattainable After All.
On a date.
With her.
“Wow,” she croaked, “Sydney.” Yep, she was focusing on the easier of the two shocks. “Try as I might I can’t picture you living in the big smoke.”
Storm clouds gathered in his eyes, his jaw so tight he looked liable to crack a tooth.
“Jonah—”
“Don’t sweat it, Avery. You’re not the first woman to think me provincial.”